There is something cancerous about Kenyan politics. The most highly accomplished persons will enter those putrid spaces promising to clean them out from within; but they get instantly consumed by the rot.
Within a short time of wading into the dirty game, an acclaimed academic, professional, journalist, doctor, entrepreneur, religious leader or other highly-regarded personage will be indistinguishable from the functional illiterates he found in the murk. A key clinical symptom that one has one been fully immersed in the sickness of Kenyan leadership is “Foot-in-Mouth Disease”, a condition diagnosed by the propensity to thoughtless and inflammatory utterances.
UDA Secretary-General Hassan Omar Hassan was once a highly respected campaigner for human rights and justice. He cut his teeth in student leadership, then caught the eye with stellar work at the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
One of his key accomplishments was the ground-breaking investigations into the 2007-2008 post-election violence, an effort that contributed to some prominent Kenyan leaders, including President William Ruto and his predecessor Uhuru Kenyatta , being hauled before the International Criminal Court at The Hague to answer to charges of Crimes Against Humanity.
Hassan worked with the statutory human rights body during the period it was widely recognised for fierce independence despite the fact it was publicly funded.
The Hassan of today is the polar opposite of the rights campaigner of yesteryears. Where once he stood for human rights and justice for all, he has gained notoriety for threats based on ethnic profiling in the cauldron of coastal Kenya politics. Just four months ago, he was investigated by the National Cohesion and Integration Commission over threats seen as targeted at an immigrant community over alleged land justice issues. His real motivation, however, was to bully all communities in the region to line up behind President Ruto’s re-election campaign.
This is in a region where scars have not healed from State-sponsored ethnic cleansing in the 1990s designed to enforce a pro-regime vote.
It remains the irony of ironies that a scion of the Mazrui dynasty is the one pretending to talk against historical land injustice at the Kenya coast.
During his time at the rights body, Hassan also led efforts on election monitoring. However, his unguarded mouth was at it again last week when he vowed that the dead would be made available to vote for President Ruto’s re-election next August.
He even proposed a formula by which those who died would have their fingerprints preserved and inserted in the elections biometric register, and somehow have their votes recorded for President Ruto.
In the ensuing uproar, Hassan was unapologetic, claiming that he used a metaphor that was twisted out of context by opposition leaders. His words spoke for themselves.
The UDA Secretary-General is not your ordinary low-level functionary or party youth-winger. His high position makes him the effective spokesman of the governing party. Every word coming from him, other than on strictly personal issues, is taken as the official party position, and also presumed to reflect the thinking of President Ruto.
Scrap presidential elections
This is not just about UDA and its broad-based government ODM bedmate; but also the opposition formations, including the United Alternative Government and the Linda Mwananchi brigade.
The same principle applies to every organisation, including government. You cannot have Cabinet secretaries, principal secretaries or other senior officials shooting off at the mouth, as President Ruto’s social media guru, Dennis Itumbi, recently did by floating a trial balloon suggesting that Kenya scrap presidential elections altogether, and leave the choice to a ruling party conclave or a parliamentary cabal.
Disciplined, coherent and coordinated messaging is an absolute necessity; for the alternative is the words of rowdy rabble being taken to represent the policy position of the organisation. It can thus be presumed, unless officially disowned, that President Ruto intends to secure a second term through dead voters, or doing away with universal suffrage.
Talking of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights of today, one can extend the conversation to other public agencies that are not living up to their billing. At the end of June, I wrote to the CEO of the Independent Policing Oversight Authority seeking an update on their abandoned or stalled investigation into my abduction and assault by officers of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations two years earlier.
The letter was copied to the aforementioned commission, as well as to the Commission on Administrative Justice (Ombudsman) and the Director of Public Prosecutions. None of them, to date, have bothered to reply.
Mr Gaitho, an independent journalist, is former NMG Managing Editor for Special Projects. [email protected] .
