Henry Gekonde./HANDOUT
The audacity of former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua’s public incitement yesterday eliminates the necessity of any polite rejoinder.
In broad daylight, he instructed Kenyans to abandon their workplaces
and shutter their businesses on Thursday, 25 June 2026, all on the singular
authority of a fabrication so threadbare it could only have come from his own
desperation.
Dressed as a warning, the impeached DP’s claim that the
government is mobilising terror gangs against citizens is a calculated attempt
to manufacture premeditated chaos. We know Gachagua. Such reckless theatre deserves unfettered condemnation
by all right-thinking Kenyans.
The claim that the State is plotting violence against its
own citizens is a wretched lie dredged from the deepest swamp of political
irrelevance. No evidence has been presented, but this is not because the evidence is hidden but precisely because
it does not exist.
The accusation was crafted to ignite fear, disrupt daily
routines, paralyse commerce, and turn kitchens cold and schools empty. When
Gachagua instructs parents to keep their children indoors, he is peddling
terror dressed as concern and hoping no one reads the label.
The timing of this provocation is particularly odious. It wraps itself in the memory of young Kenyans who perished during the 2024 anti-Finance Bill protests. But it dishonours their memory by exploiting grief for partisan political gain.
To drape an economic shutdown in the shroud of fallen
protesters is a cold-blooded transaction in which the dear departed are currency and Gachagua
is the cashier.
Equally contemptible is the invitation to economic
self-sabotage. To instruct citizens to abandon their livelihoods is to assault
them while calling it solidarity. Gachagua issues this command from behind the fortress
of his own considerable comfort, presuming to demand sacrifice from those who
cannot afford the luxury of losing a day’s earnings. This is not leadership but
the arrogance of a man who has mistaken his private grievances for a non-existent
national emergency and is now billing the public for the confusion.
Kenya’s recent history offers sobering lessons about what
happens when demagogues beat the drums of war under the guise of protecting the
people. Those who spread the fiction that the State is the enemy of its own
citizens are attempting to light a fire they hope will morph into civil
disorder. But the doomsday prophets who speak of burning the country seldom
intend to be the ones consumed by the flames.
The government's obligation, in this hour, is to uphold
the law without fear or favour. When incitement crosses from bluster into a
clear and present danger to public order, the instruments of justice must be
neither shy nor slow. Restraint is a virtue, but the tolerance of sedition is a
vice that invites doom. Citizens must recognise what Gachagua so conspicuously
lacks: that the loudest doomsayers are often the least reliable custodians of
liberty.
Kenyans are neither naïve nor defenceless against this
brand of political manipulation. They know the difference between a genuine
alarm and a political arsonist ringing the bell. They have seen what rumours do
to the streets, and they have buried children who were told that destruction
was a form of patriotism.
Kenya deserves better than leaders who peddle panic to
remain relevant. We deserve a public square where truth is not ceremonially
slaughtered on the altar of someone’s wounded ambitions. Above all, we must
refuse to be conscripted into the army of those who would burn this country down and then apply for the contract to rebuild it.
The writer is a Kenyan citizen who believes in the power of peace
