Forget about ‘saviours’, go for competent, accountable leaders
Voters queue to cast ballot during Jubilee primaries at Moi Primary School, Nairobi on April 26, 2017.
What you need to know:
- The politicians are moving to outfits that are not widely associated with political failures and misdeeds.
- As political history informs us, all political wheeler-dealers do is align to what suits their interests.
That there is a leadership crisis in Kenya is not in doubt. The political mayhem has become so commonplace that it is difficult to tell who's in charge anymore. Take, for example, the ruling party. It is a shell and not even its sworn members believe in its ideology anymore.
They are switching parties in droves. The politicians are moving to outfits that are not widely associated with political failures and misdeeds as the current regime has. But, as they say, only the forests have changed; the monkeys remain the same.
This migration is a seasonal ritualistic exercise to save face and avert shame. As political history informs us, all political wheeler-dealers do is align to what suits their interests.
Bad governance
That aside, the nine years of Jubilee administration remain a case study in how to live in oppression. For the many times we have endured overtaxation, poor market rates for our agricultural produce, or seen the total collapse of such industries as sugar in the Western region, we have heard the distasteful retort that we get the leaders we deserve.
The propagators of that notion, who are mostly dishonest, suggest that we should not hold our elected leaders liable for bad governance.
Instead, the argument goes, we should endure and "finish the journey". It has been a sad and difficult time for Kenyans, but a time to redeem ourselves is nigh. We have a few months to reflect on what ails us. Just when we hoped that our elected leaders, especially MPs, would stand with Kenyans, they were "on the ground" promising us what they would do if re-elected.
At the height of the pandemic, they hibernated to their posh estates as the police clobbered citizens in the slums and rural areas. Our elected leaders betrayed us, and the only way to get justice is by sending them back to their caves. We must not look for political saviours in 2022. Let us look for competent public officers can hold to account.
The writer is an advocate of good governance and a Risk and Insurance Consultant at Half-moon Africa Holdings
