Ruto: Trappings of power just a trap

In Borana community, future wives prepared for their new homes by making crochet from pre-pubescent phase. A secretive exercise whose handiwork is only revealed at marriage. Every woman designed a unique pattern for her home that is jealously guarded. 

These beautiful designs adorned many homes. They covered everything from milk gourds to seats, water containers and bed covers too. Women brought with them a lot of stuff for their marital home, from lovely china (if they can afford) and matching plates and glasses for the showcase to be used for guests and plastic alternatives for the family. 

Pots and pans and ladles and the obligatory 20-litre water jerrycans used to collect water from the rivers made up the list too. All these items created a happy and beautiful homes until the couples rowed. If the wife chooses to leave her husband, rest assured, she will strip the house of all the items she brought with her. The man will be left in a ghost of a house with no colour, beauty, or rhythm until he remarries. The moral of this story is never sit pretty enjoying what you do not own.

Political frustrations and humiliation have been our way of life in Kenya. The soft loans given to politicians by banks while in power easily get recalled overnight when they step out of line. That government house becomes no go area as it is handed to the next sycophantic character. Cars and your ex-chauffeur transferred swiftly as you are forced to look around for matatu you long forgot to use. These bullying tactics have ended up infantilising our politics. It is behaviour expected of a school playground and not political environment and sadly is thriving by the decades.

Free or cheap goodies

Politicians’ past and present are to blame for their woes for getting too comfortable with power trappings. These were treats that were going to be here now and gone the minute you fell by the wayside. Humiliation has been on the political wall all along. But why do our politicians not ever learn? Ego is the answer. 

It also shows how cheap it is to afford a politician in Kenya. Throw them material things they cannot afford and pull the rug under their feet when they least expect. These free or cheap goodies have turned our politicians to sitting ducks or lambs waiting to be taken to the slaughterhouse. It has taken their voices away. 

How can they have or use their heads when it has been programmed to think in a tunnelled manner because of all the inducements? When things go awry, the system knows which plug to pull to bring our beloved honourables crushing down. How many MPs have had their security details interfered with in the recent past or demoted from house committees? Too many to count and that now includes the second in command.

Kenya’s political ground is always left shaky or covered in eggshells with an agenda of course. National Assembly should have been at the fore front of creating firm and solid grounds for an equitable society and to save its members humiliation from underhand tactics. Service delivery seems to benefit members of our political class but that is proving to be just a blinker to the risk facing them when political alliances shift. Had public transport been available and efficiently run, they probably would have been suitable for politicians too. Many of their colleagues abroad hop in and out of public transport they championed for all. 

Security for the ruling class

All the billions lost on bodyguards, cars and chauffeurs need investing in public service for all. Healthcare system and security should be fit for each and everyone, including politicians, but the latter chose a temporary cushy lifestyle that is not theirs to begin with, full of Items and services that are always at risk of being taken away in a blink of an eye.

Insecurity in the country has been trending once more with some of the incidences even perpetrated by part of the police providing security for the ruling class. Neither Parliament nor MPs from areas badly affected have hardly come out to condemn and seek permanent solutions to our perennial insecurity problems with a view to keeping everyone self. 

Once a politician loses his security detail, all hell breaks loose and politicians who are mute in Parliament on woes facing ordinary Kenyans come out to rally behind a rich politician who could and should be able to afford his private security. It is this type of hypocrisy that comes back to haunt the very politicians who were self-absorbed in trappings of power when all the free goodies are taken away.

As public services crumble, the honourable thing for our leaders to do is to accept a reasonable lump sum to live on and release the funds used for their unjustified security, private hospital insurance and cars to create a more equitable society and save itself from humiliation of traps lurking in the trappings of power.

Ms Guyo is a legal researcher. [email protected]. @kdiguyo