Leaders taking country down a dangerous path
What you need to know:
- The presidency remains the core of our politics and its occupant still enjoys sweeping powers, which are sometimes used to benefit a small clique.
- Politicians have retreated to their ethnic and regional cocoons and are aggressively mobilising to take over or retain the presidency in 2022.
Former South African judge Johann Kriegler, who chaired the Independent Review Committee after the violence that followed the 2007 bungled election, had a harsh message for Kenyans.
He said unless we cleansed our politics, we stood to face a far worse tragedy in future that would make the previous chaos a mere child’s play.
That message rings true today. The political overtones reverberating across the country have the potential to stoke anarchy. Politicians have retreated to their ethnic and regional cocoons and are aggressively mobilising to take over or retain the presidency in 2022. Yet, it is this selfish and shortsighted political scheming that Justice Kriegler warned against.
Despite elaborate reports published after the 2007-8 violence to avoid another catastrophe and, subsequently, the enactment of a new Constitution in 2010, politics remains largely ethnicised, balkanised, exclusionary and vengeful. Although it is two years to the next elections, the political class, unless checked, risks driving Kenya to anarchy.
The current Constitution was expected to cure historical injustices and check the political excesses of an imperial presidency, skewed allocation of resources, impoverishment and disempowerment of the citizens.
Devolution and the creation of independent constitutional bodies was part of a plan to demystify and divest power from the presidency and diminish the craze for that office. That seems not to have worked.
The presidency remains the core of our politics and its occupant still enjoys sweeping powers, which are sometimes used to benefit a small clique. Moreover, politicians have mastered the art of using their ethnic or regional blocs as a bargaining chip to trade for selfish political and economic gains.
Danger looms large in the horizon and we urge the politicians to slow down on the ethnic-charged political scheming and posturing. Citizens must resist the temptation to be herded by ethnic chauvinists to the political slaughterhouse.
