Kenya’s many immoral politicians

When I see the constant criminal blackouts at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, I weep for my native country. Can you imagine that happening in South Korea or Singapore, two countries that were at the same level of development with Kenya in the 1960s. It’s all about leadership.

I’ve repeatedly written until I am numb that no country has ever become great without a great focused elite. An elite that understands the country’s irreducible national interests, no matter who’s in power.

An elite that can be trusted to be a steward of the country. In this, Kenya’s elite has been an abysmal failure.

We were betrayed by our “founding fathers” under the First Republic chaperoned by Mzee jomo Kenyatta, he of the Burning Spear fame. Old Jomo laid the foundation for a callous, thieving elite that didn’t have a conscience.

Their motto was to eat like pigs, and damn the country and everyone else. Under him, the Kikuyu elite and a coalition of ethnic kleptocracy stole Kenya blind.

Mzee’s accidental successor, Daniel arap Moi, picked up where Mzee’s gluttony’s elite left. His Second Republic saw the rise of a Kalenjin-led ethnic political octopus whose elite similarly plundered the country.

The man – who was barely literate – reduced intellectuals to swooning buffoons. His calamitous 24 years in power can only be described as the Age of the Looter. Mercifully, Narc put an end to that abomination 2002.

But like the cursed lot that our elite are, Narc quickly degenerated into another tribal affair and although President Mwai Kibaki revived the economy and built our infrastructure, he stole the 2007 election from ODM’s Raila Odinga and plunged Kenya into a genocidal pogroms. We remember that he left Kenya in the black.

Mr Kibaki, like his predecessors, fed the leviathan of tribalism and the looting of the public purse. He failed to forge a conscientious elite. Corruption was a raging bull when he left office. After Mr Kibaki’s exit, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, the scion of the aforementioned Burning Spear, took the country’s helm.

Educated at the elite Amherst College in Massachusetts, Mr Kenyatta presented a polished and thoughtful exterior. But he who should’ve known better fell into the same pit as his famous father and his predecessors. He was aloof and imperial.

At the end of his tenure, he was dejectedly alone. His deputy William Ruto had revolted. A painful legacy is that he shepherded Azimio La Umoja to an unlikely electoral defeat.

President Ruto himself has started on a wobbly footing. The economy is reeling. Many of his political and executive appointees leave a lot to be desired.

He talks a good game, but the results are wanting. Unless he boldly cleans house and politically decapitates many of his Rift Valley and Mt Kenya confidantes who surround him, he will have a very rocky five years.

He must dismiss incompetents and thieves and appoint an elite group based on training, merit and competence to recover the teetering economy and moral fabric. If not, his Fifth Republic will go down in infamy. Mr Ruto needs appointees who will help him reimagine a greater destiny for Kenya devoid of theft and ethnic machinations.

I have to say that many of those in Azimio are cut from the same cloth as those in Kenya Kwanza. Many of them have been in power before with little to show for it. Were it not for Mr Odinga who still carries the flame of democratisation and reform, Azimio would be rudderless.

So, I am not looking for the reformist elite to be plucked from the luminaries in Azimio. As we’ve seen with the national dialogue process, some in Azimio are now opposing the NADCO report without a defensible and coherent reason. I can only surmise it’s because they think Wiper’s Kalonzo Musyoka and not them, will politically benefit from it. It’s what visionless elites do.

The NADCO report is a result of democratically consultative processes within Azimio and between Azimio and Kenya Kwanza. Those who say they reject it because it doesn’t address the cost of living are either lying, unschooled in politics, or simply Machiavellian.

In a word, they are part of the myopic elite. It’s not the role of Azimio to tell KK how to implement its manifesto on the economy. Let KK rise or fall on its record. Azimio would co-own any failure of the economy with KK if they took a common position. Hello! Azimio should conduct oversight, not be a co-governor with KK. This is why we need a new elite.

- Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. @makaumutua.