Third-term ideas must be nipped in the bud

Kenya is an interesting country. Whenever we are doing badly and things are threatening to get out of hand, those of us who suggest a different way of doing things are accused of misrepresenting our country and comparing it to banana republics.

FAMOUS DESPOT

We are reminded that we are a thriving democracy and cannot be placed in the same basket as the despotic Third World regimes surrounding us. Our democratic credentials are held up, including the fact that we have had regular scheduled elections ever since we became a republic, and that even our most famous despot agreed to hand over power when his chosen successor was defeated in an election.

SUCCESSION 2.0

When things have cooled down a little, and everyone is trying to get on with the business of their lives, the same ‘protectors of the regime’ will emerge and start campaigns so ludicrous that one is left in no doubt that our ‘third-worldness’ is still very much alive and kicking. The latest idiocy revolves around what will soon come to be called the Kenyatta Succession version 2.0 which is meant to involve the man actually succeeding himself.

ACTUAL POWER

A bunch of elected politicians have been doing the rounds trying to convince everyone (but mostly themselves) that this country can find no leader better than President Uhuru Kenyatta after the end of his current term. In media appearances and well covered junkets they have argued in support of a third term for the president, failing which they suggest that a new powerful position be created for him in a constitutional referendum. The position and its functions and powers has already been mooted — the so-called Executive Prime Minister to work with a figurehead president so as to enable him to continue in actual power.

IN PERPETUITY

Since the suggestions sound so ludicrous even to the President himself, the politicians have attempted to come up with economic justifications based on figures pulled right out of a hat to indicate that their constituencies are responsible for most of our national growth and must therefore always be ‘represented at the core of the Executive’. These politicians are trying to make the case that whoever they represent is entitled to be at the helm of this republic in perpetuity, for as long as they continue to hold up our economy.

BANANA REPUBLIC

The proponents of the argument that Kenyatta must succeed himself are unknowingly promoting the fiction that no region in this country can develop unless ‘one of our own’ is the president or more powerful than the president. After 50 years as a pretend-republic these fellows are now exposing our third-world underbelly, rooting for a banana republic type of government in which progress depends on the whims of the individual leader.

ETHNIC JINGOISTS

We continue to listen to these idiotic ideas at our own peril. Just a few months ago we were grappling with very real threats of secessionist conflict and the unravelling of our republic due to the perception of lack of inclusion in national decision-making and resource allocation. Over the past twenty years we have been a relatively unstable democracy, with every potential change of government attended by threats of going over the precipice. Today it will only take a little comfortable yapping by a few ethnic jingoists to set this nation aflame again.

CATACLYSMIC

We have spent considerable resources creating a constitutional system of government that was meant to reassure every young Kenyan today that as long as they pursue their dreams within their abilities, nothing is beyond their reach. The emerging reality is that the constitution is just a collection of suggestions meant to provide a cabal of ethnopolitical elites with the opportunity to lord it over the rest of us at the bottom of the food chain. This is unsustainable, and a sure recipe for cataclysmic conflict that will sweep away both the good and the bad.

Don’t say you weren’t warned!

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