If one understands the political process in Kenya beyond elections, individuals, political parties, politics of division and monetisation, then the challenge will be to understand the state of the planet and Kenya in it. Kenyans must understand the global economic, social, cultural, spiritual, and political crises.
It is only in doing so will it be clear to all of us that the current political impasse is bigger than Ruto and Raila. The followers of Ruto and Raila fail to understand that both leaders are pawns of the global crises mentioned. Just like the home guards of the colonial era, both of them, and the national and international interests they represent, clearly do not rule in the interests of Kenyans and the Motherland.
Let me give some examples and some questions.
Changes in the global systems
One can clearly see that objectively the changes in the global systems since the financial crises (2002-2009, and continuing), Covid-19, war in Ukraine, and the dollar instability, all have brought about a new international situation. The unipolar world has makings of a multipolar world going forward. This new situation at the global level impinges on Kenya, Africa, and the Global South in many ways.
Specifically for Kenya, along with the Finance Bill/Act 2023 and the aggrandised powers of the Ruto government, the US and the European Union are pressing hard for Kenya to give up all its sense of political and economic independence. The very nature of the negotiations for the Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership is calling for Kenyans to sign on this STIP without discussions in Kenya, even excluding the Kenyan “capitalist” classes, the euphemism for the private sector in Kenya.
Katherine Tai’s press conference on why the trade minister was excluded from the discussions is only one indication of the exclusion of representatives of trade, finance, industry, telecommunications, and the working people of Kenya. The US and EU interests are subverting Articles 1(1) & (2) and 10 which decree that Kenyans are the basis of sovereign power and their participation in STIP is critical.
So, both Raila and Ruto make the Finance Bill/Act their bone of political contention while denying Kenyans the right to participate in STIP negotiations. Neither of them, and their leading political lights in their Coalitions has spoken about STIP although they are aware of it. None of them is organising or mobilising Kenyans about what this Bill/Act is all about.
Some months back I wrote to Dr David Ndii about this issue of participation in STIP. He dismissed me in his Twitter handle, saying that my politics was frozen in 1975! He has the audacity to say, so it seems, that the 2010 Constitution is frozen in 1975!
Those of us who have heard of computational counterinsurgency know that this is a new form of subversion that is dependent on the control over all forms of social media and digital spaces. Kenyans should understand where the threats from the Director of Criminal Investigations about social media are coming from. The timing is just right because the US STIP team is in town. It seems therefore, that our 2010 transformative constitution is inconvenient to the US and EU, and their agents in Kenya.
The current US ambassador is from the Silicon Valley. Eight of the top digital companies from the Silicon Valley sectors are on the negotiating team of the STIP. If one needed an indication of the concentration of the US Security apparatus winning Kenya over to the complete subservience to the US security interests, there you have it.
The engagement of Senator Chris Coons for the Biden administration is another indication of the pressures coming from the very top of the US government. I believe the Western European ambassadors, representing their countries interests are one with the strategy of the US to remove the Kenyan people from the decisions about their future. Many leadership countries in the Global South experience this domination. STIP is about US military interests, including its cyber wars with China.
I believe the pressures to stop the demonstrations will intensify. Our demands are bigger than any one party or coalition. Not even buying out the opposition leaders can mollify the economic hardships of the wenyenchi. Should it not concern Kenyans when important global issues that affect Kenyans are not the subject of the mobilisation and organisation by our political leaders?
Should it not concern Kenyans that investment agreements, the sovereign debt, capital flight from the country, the subsidisation of our billionaires who do not pay taxes, corruption, and wastage of our resources are issues that are not the subject of debate in this country by our political parties?
Calls for dialogue between Ruto and Raila
Do Kenyans have a dog in this political struggle between Ruto and Raila? Why have both leaders not joined forces to tell the IMF and the World Bank that the Kenyan political leadership has to mitigate the economic crises to forestall a national uprising? I am not as naive as to believe that they would do so. Their struggle may as well be about who between them will serve foreign interests better!
Calls for dialogue between them is politically naive. These calls imply they are in total political control. Yes they are geniuses in politics of division and monetisation, but this will not work in the long run. Their brand of politics has only only helped breed gross inequality in Kenya and the material interests of the majority of Kenyans do not count.
There is a growing realisation that poverty and inequality cuts across ethnic, religious, gender, generational, and regional divides in the country. Both leaders cannot have answers for this fundamental issue because they are not people’s representatives, but representatives of national and foreign interests who benefit from their respective leadership.
Sovereign people’s convention
I believe the present conjuncture in Kenya calls for a different type of dialogue. It is a dialogue among the people without their political leaders. It is a dialogue that withdraws the sovereign power from the political leaders. It is a people -to -people dialogue to save ourselves from our political leaders and the political blocs they represent.
We must see the impending societal breakdown and be quick to summon our youth, women, workers, farmers and intellectual community to form a robust civil society of the Kenyan to discuss the safety of the Motherland.
I believe those who should participate, however few, should be those who believe, without a doubt, that none of the two warring political factions can lead the new Kenya we envision and demand.
Chief Justice and president of the Supreme Court, 2011-2016