History exalts leaders who are decisive

It was Clint Eastwood 1966 cowboy epic movie called “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”. The plot was about three gunslingers (one was deemed as the ‘good’, the second as the ‘ugly’ and the other as ‘bad’) fighting and competing amongst themselves to find some fortune of gold amid the violent chaos of the American Civil War. The ugly was called Tuco.

In one scene, a thug that Tuco nearly killed eight months earlier tracks and finds him relaxing in a bathtub. Brandishing a pistol, the thug mistakenly thinks Tuco is subdued and helpless, and expounds at length his plan for revenge. However, he is not aware that Tuco is holding a revolver under the water hidden by soap foam. Suddenly, Tuco pumps a few bullets into the thug. Tuco then makes a famous joke that the man should have just shot him instead of talking: “If you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk”.

This statement is poignant in politics. Many in politics will talk to no end. But blessed are those who dominate through actions.

Take for instance Uhuru Kenyatta. After the 2017 presidential elections, it was his idea that William Ruto wait to be taken to the Mountain after “some discussions”. But Ruto proved wiser to ‘act’ by going to the Mountain directly as opposed to waiting for those discussions. The pragmatic Ruto won the 2022 presidential election as a result. At times talking without doing fast action in politics can have devastating effects.

No one knows this better than a French revolutionary called Maximilien Robespierre (1758 –1794) — a French lawyer and statesman who became one of the most widely known, influential, and controversial figures of the French Revolution.

The French Revolution is a very important political event that shaped the world. Contrary to what many might think, the right for every person to vote and be deemed as equal is a recent development and less than 200 years old. For thousands of years ( except probably in the enlightened Rome days ), it was accepted as normal that common people were inferior and the clique that ruled society without elections had a divine right to do so. That small elite, commonly known as aristocracy, was represented at the top by a king or queen.

Sovereignty, which basically means ‘ultimate political power’, rested with an unelected King. It is the French Revolution that upended this idea and changed things. And Robespierre in the 1790s was at the centre of propagating these progressive ideas that we take for granted in the world today.

As a member of the National Assembly, he campaigned for the right to vote of all people, and for abolition of the death penalty and the slave trade.

But Robespierre committed a major error that cost him his life. After the violent toppling of the monarchy and the king beheaded using a guillotine, he was appointed to the powerful committee of public safety. The committee started dispatching to the guillotine persons it deemed as counter-revolutionary, including members of parliament. This sowed fear even among supporters of the revolution.

One day Robespierre went to parliament and announced his intention to unveil in some future a list of traitors among the legislators to face the guillotine. This was a great miscalculation because it triggered the assembly to turn against him, as no one knew who was next to be guillotined.

He was arrested and guillotined, birthing the famous line “Revolutions eat its children”. Probably with the benefit of hindsight, if he needed to take some action against any parliamentarian, he ought to have acted immediately as opposed to giving notice of such an intent.

This explains why people love leaders who act decisively.  In Mt Kenya, Dedan Kimathi is loved. This is because, as opposed to many ‘constitutionalists’ during the colonial era that sought to talk mzungus into surrendering land (which everyone knew was impossible), he chose to act by going to the forest for guerilla warfare.

Kenneth Matiba is loved because, as opposed to many academicians who chose to discuss the reintroduction of multipartyism with Daniel Arap Moi (an impossible task), Matiba chose action by taking to the streets culminating in the Saba Saba protests.

Those of us in UDA as led by our good President Ruto are right when we cite President Mwai Kibaki as an inspiration because he ‘acted’ decisively by resurrecting a dead/moribund economy.

However, this does not mean planning before executing the same is discouraged. One should spend time meticulously planning but what matters most is the outcome and results.

Even the Bible states that faith without actions is dead. And Jesus Christ further stated ‘we shall know them by their fruits and a tree without fruits should be felled’. And indeed when Jesus went to the synagogue and found merchants selling wares, he acted by ejecting them out of his Father’s house.

Therefore, leaders should be judged on their empirical outcomes — like what Ruto did in ejecting sugar barons out of Mumias. That is very good.

Leaders have to “shoot, shoot. Don’t talk”.

 Dr Kang’ata is the Governor of Murang’a County. Email: [email protected]