• There has been opposition from various quarters to the integrated registration.
• The religious leaders opposing it aver that it is a fulfillment of the biblical writings in the book of Revelation.
The government recently launched the rollout of the National Integrated Identification Management System after successful piloting.
The registration is being undertaken in all the 47 counties in numerous centres spread as close as possible to the people. As usual, many Kenyans could be waiting until the last minute to throng these centres to register.
There has been opposition from various quarters to the integrated registration. The opposition has been based on many assumptions, some of which are not rational and lack factual grounding.
Some of these grounds seemed legitimate and were out of economic, social and constitutional concerns. However, the opposition on religious concern appeared to have more sway on the people, yet it is equally bizarre and not sound. The religious leaders opposing it aver that it is a fulfillment of the biblical writings in the book of Revelation. It is predicted that at end times, the beast will rule the world and every person will have the number 666 embedded in their bodies for identification.
It is further claimed that without this number, one will not access any services anywhere and will thus be subjected to persecution. To practicing Christians, the number of the beast is a frightening mental image complete with the picture of a seven-headed demon. It is an image of happenings in hell used by fundamentalist church ministers to scare congregants into submitting to the bounty of heaven. Associating the Huduma Numba with the Mark of the Beast is a sure strategy of mobilising Christians against this registration. On the contrary, the evidence available does not link the NIIMS to the religious position on universal identification. This religious point of view has been given political life through the propagation of the philosophy of the New World Order.
NEW WORLD ORDER
The New World Order has for a long time been the ideology of leading US political operatives opposed to the original republican values of the founding fathers at Philadelphia. This cohort believes that humanity belongs together and the US has a moral authority and responsibility to realise a unified world government.
They started off incognito but later infiltrated government systems and became bold. They pervade the diverse political formations of the world ranging from republicans, democrats, communists, socialists, humanists to religious orders. The 1990s and the dawn of the 21st Century looked more promising and was considered the watershed moment for the full actualisation of the New World Order.
In this regime, it is expected that the world would be governed by one government under one military command, with a unified economic system. The UN would supersede the regional political groupings such as the European Union, the African Union and the Asia-Pacific Organisation. It would then establish a global military outfit structured on the foundations of NATO. All national sovereignties would crumble and instead emerge a real United Nations, no longer crippled by a split personality but held together by a common faith.
When George HW Bush assumed office in 1988, he proclaimed that he would preside over the establishment of the new world order as his legacy. In political terms and world geopolitics, the New World Order, NWO, entailed dismantling the bipolar superpower arrangement that brought in the US and the USSR as global watchdogs and creating unified economy through universal trade regulations as superintended by the World Trade Organisation.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev soon joined Bush in this crusade and inadvertently dismantled his country through the infamous Glasnost and Perestroika. The USSR collapsed as did the Berlin Wall, leaving the US as single global prefect. The WTO emerged as a strong dismantler of trade barriers erected by regional and national protectionist policies. The US had unfettered access to national and regional sovereignties so as to champion their international interests clothed as global governance best practices.
Things have not worked well in favour of the globalisation evangelists and today there have been more rollbacks than rollouts of the one global government agenda crusade. The burden of failure of the NWO lies with the US as was its formulation and anticipated success.
The NWO was hinged on unified politics, economics and religion. In terms of politics, there have been more nationalist movements taking over strategic governments. Leaders opposed to global unity of governments have appealed better with their respective electorates compared to the more outward looking competitors. In the US, Donald Trump won the presidency on “American First” advocacy against the more internationally consummate Hillary Clinton. He has proceeded to close the US borders for what his administration considers wanton immigration that denies Americans job opportunities.
The same had earlier happened in France with the youthful Emmanuel Macron and later with the fall of David Cameron at the Brexit referendum. The world has also witnessed an avalanche of military and unorthodox government takeovers in recent times. This is against the intended push by the US for global democratic and orderly change of leadership of governments.
The Arab spring and the instability in South America have been an indictment on the US campaign to entrench what they consider as best practices in governance. On the flipside, there has been diminished glamour of the UN as the world stabiliser and peace promoter.
China has instead emerged as the leading player in intercontinental political relations. It has brought in new dimensions to international relations and diplomacy. UN organs that were to help in enforcing the legal resolutions of the General Assembly have lost stature. The ICC at The Hague received a thorough reduction of its powers through an onslaught led by African states. It has generally remained a lame duck.
On the trade and economic front, states have been revoking their membership in major regional blocs. The UK resolved through a referendum to leave the European Union, while the US has stalled NAFTA. The WTO no longer has authority to issue enforceable guidelines on bilateral exchange of goods and services.
States have enforced more protectionist legislation in promoting their goods and restricting emigrant workers. This is against the vision of the NWO for free movement of goods and labour. Governments now have a preference for bilateral capital financing instead of the Bretton wood Institutions of the World Bank and IMF. This model of project financing is pushed more by China which seem to have inexhaustible fund vaults. It enters into agreements with partner countries on terms that are more confidential than could have been envisaged by the fathers of the NWO. The rise of atheist China as global financier has come against the backdrop of failure by religion to move forward as the harbinger of peace.
The NWO anticipated a world united by one religion promoting global peaceful coexistence without the necessity of arms for war. Instead, the efforts of Pope John Paul II and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Council to bridge the Christo-Islamic divide has come to naught. The dichotomy between Islam and Christianity is more glaring today.
There has been a steady rise in radicalisation and fundamentalism on both sides and yet there are also no serious attempts to stem the tide. The leading religions of the world have both been plagued with moral decadence and the allure of temporal authority. The schism is no longer restricted to the main orders but has found itself right inside the small factional church and mosque formations.
The NWO as the domicile for the Mark of the Beast as foretold in the Biblical Revelation is, therefore, not yet here and may never be here. Therefore, people should find alternative reasons not to register with NIIMS other than the religious justification. At the same time, the government should make the exercise an ongoing activity instead of self-imposing deadlines.
All the same find time to register before the current exercise is closed.