President William Ruto (left) with former President Uhuru Kenyatta (right) and Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed on the sidelines of the 39th AU Summit in Addis Ababa.
Daily Nation on Wednesday led with a story that had me go: “ Blimey, there goes an editor’s nightmare.” It was about a closed-door meeting between one President, one Prime Minister and one recently retired President during which, the story says, there was a clash and heated exchange.
I couldn’t quite figure out whether only the three were present – it would be unprecedented for Kenyan leaders at that level to bicker in front of a foreign leader and staff, but that’s really beside my point.
By the way, journalism is not called the science of verification for no reason, the editor would know that unless he could speak to one of the three, unless he could establish the facts from primary sources, he would be in danger of trading in faith, rather than golden facts.
My point is this: I have come to understand that the Kenyan presidency is very secretive. It is also very deceptive. In this country, power is won – and kept – by running rings around goats like me, bleating at beans and running away from snakes the whole day. In Kenya, electoral choice hinges more on the relationship between senior politicians than the welfare of the people.
The relationship between Raila Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta would determine how some of the political blocks voted – not manifestos, not competence, not honesty.
During the last election, a lot of voters elected President Ruto because of the bad relationship he was said to have with his predecessor, they rewarded him with sympathy votes. And quite a few voted for Raila because of the good relationship he was said to have with the then President Kenyatta.
By making elections primarily about the personal relationship between senior politicians, the door is flung wide open for deception and emotional manipulation of the electorate to become the thing that determines how we choose leaders. And this is why we are a lousy democracy, electing wash-wash conmen and why, as Pastor Ng’ang’a has pointed out amidst bursts of mirth, a bishop got far fewer votes than a bhang smoker in the last presidential election.
You need Tarot cards, Ouija boards to consult the spirits, tea leaves and other divination equipment to discern how a crafty politician feels – as opposed to what he says he feels – about his brother in politics of many decades.
The people who pull wool over our eyes are diabolically clever; they know our secret weaknesses and desires. And they use them to play us like the rhythm guitar. Remember, Kenneth Matiba was never really popular. He was puffed up by Moi men to make him believe he was the people’s choice so that he could split the opposition and give Moi victory over Mwai Kibaki. And it worked.
Our lot would improve if we had a clear agenda against which to judge those who wish to rule us. For me, the most important is the sovereignty of the people of Kenya, that the tendency of successive governments to trample the rights of the people, to jail, torture and kill citizens for exercising protected rights is intolerable.
No person who has ever violated the rights of Kenyans or failed to protected them when he was in a position to, should be given power over the nation. The second one is economic competence – the capacity to manage our resources to meet our needs and position us for further growth.
Persons who use public wealth for populist jousts, quixotic escapades and unreasoned experiments, vacuous and ego-driven enterprises, you are outta here! Corruption is a big disqualifier – if you have unexplained wealth, money you couldn’t have earned with your talent and application, you should be sent back to your lonely beans in the village.
The final one is tribalism. Truth is, tribalism did not start with the current regime, there has been lots of it since 1963; some tribes have indulged in it so much that we have become desensitized to it. Kenya should go back to the business of building a nation; doing stuff and building symbols that create a credible, effective fiction around which the people can unite and be effectively mobilised for the shared good.
If you must have feelings, let them be for your country.
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The graduation ceremony at the National Research and Intelligence University in a location I pass daily struck me as a rather audacious recognition of the absolute importance of improving the talent pool in achieving institutional and national goals. You can’t beat good performance out of lousy spies, but you can train and motivate them to do big stuff. It reminded me of the great training we got in the course of our careers in the media. Linus Gitahi, our CEO of those days, was a great talent developer. I got strategy training at Stellenbosch Business School; my colleagues got some training on how to manage creatives in Hollywood by people who managed Will Smith at Columbia Pictures, no less. Good training pays; the spooks are thinking right.
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Mr Mathiu is a communications consultant and farmer. [email protected]
