• At stake is Kenya’s future amidst crippling corruption and political gibberish.
• It is thus disheartening to see some Rift Valley leaders degenerating into pitiful crybabies, lamenting daily about the handshake and the war on corruption
Image: COURTESY
The political noise from a section of the Rift Valley politicians over 2022 Uhuru succession politics and the ongoing anti-graft purge is baffling.
For them to run berserk and launch a bitter campaign to demonise their own government, because the authorities have stepped up the war against looting of public cash by well-placed officials and conniving rogue businessmen to the detriment of the state and the citizenry, something must be very wrong with their mental faculties.
Corruption is a crime, it is evil, it is unconstitutional, it negates our cultural heritage, it undermines human life, and it mutilates our independence and the spirit of our national anthem. It further sabotages the state and the citizens. It is thus every Kenyans’ duty to fight it at all times. Its secret rationality as the facilitator of 2022 or any other succession politics cannot validate it!
Today, Kalenjinland is boiling with ethnic and political rage. Yet the question remains, are the leaders’ temper tantrums justified or is it a case of misplaced aggression? Could this be a rebellion or a case of political constipation?
Why oppose a national course, which, constitutionally, all leaders are supposed to support?
A dichotomy of this political storm points to a web of political, ethnic and pro-corruption manoeuvres coined to bulldoze the ascendance of Deputy President William Ruto to the pinnacle of State power in 2022 when President Uhuru Kenyatta retires. Proponents of this scheme swear it is Ruto and the Kalenjin’s entitlement due to a “deal” with President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Mt Kenya community.
As much as such a political deal is valid in terms of political mobilisation, it is not binding constitutionally. It strictly survives on the whims of its influential stakeholders. Besides, nowhere in the agreement was it ordered to be fuelled by plundered national resources and misdirected toxic tribal incitement.
The ongoing historical anti-corruption war, thanks to the handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, is Kenya’s moment of “hope out of despair”.
At stake is Kenya’s future amidst crippling corruption and political gibberish. For various reasons, politics of negative ethnicity, regionalism and personality cults derailed all the noble intentions and plans of our founding fathers to build a modern, progressive, united and prosperous country.
Bad politics bread corruption, nepotism, bad governance, dictatorship, abuse of public office and under-development. These, in turn, drowned the country into political and social decay atop widespread abject poverty. Hence Kenya was unable to keep pace with our peers at Independence in 1963 such as South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia, among others.
President Kenyatta is currently enjoying massive support from majority of Kenyans for his patriotic choice to join forces with Raila and invite the entire country to fight this runaway corruption, which risks bringing Kenya to its knees.
For sure I am one of those Kenyans, who before the handshake, was strongly opposed to the President and wanted him kicked out of office. I believed he and the Jubilee government had been presiding over serious mismanagement of the country.
But like Biblical Paul, Uhuru saw the light and received Raila and other progressive patriots on the journey of sanitising Kenya through political reforms, the war on corruption and uniting the country, whose good fruits are emerging. We have never demanded more from our leaders, more so the presidency since 1963. Today I whole-heartedly support the President, especially in the ongoing war against corruption and abuse of office.
We know Uhuru is NO angel. He is human and he can fall short many times. But for his choice to harness the national good and protect citizens from political and economic vampires devouring our motherland, we fully support him. That is a serious mark of patriotism and sense of duty to his country.
Similarly, Raila is a normal human being capable of shortcomings. I and many others do not support him because he is superhuman, but in pure appreciation of his unbending resolve and focus to fight and alleviate corruption in our midst, push for and mainstream governance and economic reforms and to work for the transformation of our country into a modern economy and a political success story.
It is thus disheartening to see some Rift Valley leaders degenerating into pitiful crybabies, lamenting daily about the handshake and the war on corruption. So much until it appears like corruption and their boss, Ruto, are two sides of the same coin, or it is their oxygen. It hurts when Kenyans see well-educated young professionals and leaders, who should know better, such as Senator Kipchumba Murkomen and Nandi Governor Stephen Sang, precariously sucked into the pro-corruption warriors’ bandwagon, waging a misguided war against the President and Raila. The diminishing pockets of support for this Kalenjin uprising as noticed in Gusiiland, Maasailand, Nakuru, Kikuyuland, Coast and Western do not help matters.
We can only pray for them to see the light and support this revival national agenda. We remind them that Kenyans have yet to come to terms with the events of 2007-08.
Bosire is ODM national treasurer and former Kitutu-Masaba MP