The patronising message shrouded in tycoons’ quest to protect Uhuru

This week, the tycoons came calling. In a highly billed jamboree beamed live on television, ‘the owners of capital’ profiled themselves as the true decision-makers who man those listless marionettes we call political leaders.

They took great pain to suggest strongly that Kenya’s destiny, for better or for worse, fundamentally lies in their hands.

Of course, the point of this performance was not only to assure their guest that he was at the right place, but also warn him that getting on their bad side would bring untold grief.

The oligarchs’ chinwag followed closely on the heels of a bizarre disclosure by a former top securocrat, who intimated that Kenya’s democracy is basically a sham, since a shadowy cabal makes the real decisions.

Unsurprisingly, this bureaucrat, now in full-time political practice, was at the festivities, where he had further occasion to advance his ‘deep state’ proposition.

And so he did, thus: the guest of the day would accept to become the political project of the gathered oligarchs, who would do their part to make him president.

In turn, the project-president would be committed to deliver certain projects. Four of these are connected to the serving President.

Security, comfort and prestige

In an effusive supplicatory monotone, the securocrat-turned-politician rattled out the projects as: securing the President in retirement, securing his family, securing his property and securing his legacy.

In a country that has gone to extraordinary lengths to institutionalise the security, comfort and prestige of retired heads of state, this frantic plea was curious.

No one has identified a lacuna that materially affects the post-presidential situation and cannot be managed within the existing legal framework.

After all, these benefits, facilities and privileges not only subsist for the rest of the former leader’s life, none may be varied to their disadvantage.

This leaves us with the question: why were the oligarchs so particular about a matter that has been placed, and should remain beyond the domain of quotidian bickering and angst?

Other speakers at the event unwittingly elaborated on the matter. Of course, the old saw   – that the Handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga saved the country from utter disintegration and gave us peace –was rehearsed ad nauseam.

Inevitably, a discursive context emerged, outlining a dynamic in the Handshake by which the obligations and commitments canvassed in the luncheon were formulated.

It is as follows.

Before the Handshake, Kenya hurtled precipitously along a perilous trajectory.

The state, all its people and the President were overhung with the spectre of precarity.

While the Handshake was a bilateral initiative, there was a principal benefactor and a principal beneficiary.

 In other words, the President’s tenure and legacy staggered on the brink of eternal meaninglessness, and he needed the Handshake more.

Similarly, the oligarchs’ proposition implies that at the end of a Handshake-sustained presidency, Mr Kenyatta will revert to his presumed former precarity.

Handshake-like protections

Therefore, the tycoons assembled at the forum propose an extension of Handshake-like protections beyond Kenyatta’s term.

They offer Mr Odinga an encumbered presidency, charged with restrictive covenants and entailed mandates in the name of protecting Mr Kenyatta.

On the face of it, the selflessness of these merchants is plainly astonishing.

That they would volunteer to craft a monumental political instrument for no other reason than the advancement of the Kenyatta-Odinga entente is profoundly admirable.

Yet at its very foundation – at the very soul of the thing – is a definite disdain for Mr Kenyatta.

The founding premise of the entreprise bristles with condescension and brazenly patronises the President.

Not to put too fine a point to it, the tycoons, like their Kieleweke ilk, proceed on the presumption that Mr Kenyatta is intractably vulnerable, needing care and protection to function as President and thereafter in perpetuity. They have never hidden the fact they consider themselves to be the President’s guardians. Thus, their counsel, help and assistance is always nauseously patronising.

It is a matter of time before someone actually declares that Mr Kenyatta, without Mr Odinga, would be a truly sorry failure.

Deficiency of self-awareness

This very fact: this abysmal deficiency of self-awareness renders our tycoons singularly incompetent to attempt the Herculean feat of statecraft they so clearly hanker after.

Like him or hate him, a politician who has managed to rise to the presidency of this country is, ipso facto, eminently proficient, if not altogether prodigious.

This fact deserves respect.

Suggestions of abject vulnerability, just like campaigns to muster guardians and protectors to keep him functioning, are deceptive melodramas.

Assuming that the President was indeed in dire straits, under what circumstances would he call upon the good offices of such a group?

 Anybody who knows any politics, particularly the Kenyan variant, will not be taken in, which leaves the question: who is their mark? Who is being ‘managed’?

What and whom are the oligarchs after?

The writer is an advocate of the High Court and a former State House speech writer.       @EricNgeno