Can We Have A National Day Of Forgiveness?

• I want to invite each of you to take a harrowing walk with me.

Our walk must start in Eldoret, only because when I was a student at the University of Eastern Africa, Baraton, I loved going to that town. It was there that, like I revealed here once, I met the late Bishop Alexander Kipsang Arap Muge. He left a permanent impression in my life. Every day of my life I wake up and hope that I can have the courage and dignity that he projected. Even these many years later, I still miss him.

• But that's not gonna be the focus of our conversation as we walk.

We are taking this walk because I want to demonstrate the power of forgiveness. Let's start our walk right in the town center. As we walk, you and I know that an army of seething men is ahead of us with arrows and spears. They've painted their faces black and are carrying twigs. You and I have been warned that these furious warriors have been tasked to drive out of their land anybody from the Mt. Kenya Region that they encounter. Whoever refuses to leave must be killed.

• As we follow these warriors, we see them approach a church where we know that women and children have sought shelter. You and I hold our breath, wondering what's gonna happen. We freeze when we see one of the warriors hurl a can of paraffin at the church. We didn't even know they had paraffin. Now we do. Then we watch in horror as another warrior tosses a red-hot object at the church and it explodes in gigantic flames.

The church is burning.

People are burning.

Your nose catches the smell of raw flesh burning.

You hear children crying.

Women wailing.

• And within minutes, there is quiet. The church crumbles. And we stand there wondering whether this is a dream or reality. But we don't have to wonder long because the warriors start to move on, sounding off war cries. They are ready to drive out all the Kikuyu!

I turn to you and say, "I can't handle this. We have to go back to town."

• We go back.

Two days later we take a walk in Naivasha. This time we follow another group of warriors who seek out the Luo and the Luhya and the Kalenjin. This group slashes and burns people. They destroy homes and property. But when they approach a home and we see them slash a man and his wife, then set their home on fire and the couple burns to shells, you and I decide we can't take any more walks. We are traumatized by what we've seen.

• A week later we are strong enough to ask what happened in Eldoret and Naivasha. We are told that in Eldoret and in Naivashsa people died cursing those who killed them. We don't hear a single story of anybody who died with these words on their lips: I forgive you!

Being human, as you and I are, we know that it's never easy to forgive those who do us wrong. Yet there is nothing that feels as good as taking the moral high ground, forgiving those who don't deserve forgiveness from us. Take Nelson Mandela for example, how would South Africa have turned out if he'd come out of prison seething and intent on exacting revenge?

• Wretched things have happened in Kenya. There have been assassinations. Deceit. Corruption. Name it. But I also know that we all retain the capacity to look deep inside ourselves and make amends where we went wrong. It's in this vein that I call for a national day of forgiveness. Kenya desperately needs to start afresh. We all need to hear the agonizing cry of those kids in that Eldoret church and seek each other's hand in forgiveness and a pledge to never let anything so despicable happen in Kenya again.

In like manner, I hope that our brothers and sisters held in prisons across the nation because of the post-election clashes can be released. I'm not calling for amnesty here. I'm saying they should be forgiven. Yes, let Kenya forgive them so we can all move forward as brothers and sisters bound by a common destiny.

• I'm waiting for the day when President Mwai Kibaki, Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka will invite Kenyans to Uhuru Park and lead the nation to a place of heartfelt healing on that national day of forgiveness.

Let the blood of our brothers and sisters bind us together in love and unity.

Perils of Living Expensive, Painful Political Lie

The burden of living an electoral lie continues to pile on our back. The shouts to move on may casually appears objective but the startling revelations and confessions from last year’s poll officials is like a screw riveting into a healing wound. So are we living a political lie in the hope that time as the good old adage puts it is a healer?

Judge Kriegler's electoral postmortem probe team is resuscitating the dead and the pain is unbearable. The Changamwe Constituency’s returning officer must have considered it extremely humorous admitting that he erroneously gave Kibaki 9,366 votes while Emilio actually garnered 15,151 votes. To rub it on the RO shamelessly concedes that he mistakenly recorded 17,706 votes for Raila’s instead of the correct tally of 29,648. Leaves you wondering which base he was using in his arithmetic.

It would have be forgivable if the electoral FRAUD was limited to isolated cases and committed by junior staff. Well, hold your breathe for the bombshell revelation that the ECK boss Samuel Kivuitu himself announced the presidential results before results from 31 constituencies were officially verified. That is almost 15% of Kenyan’s 210 electoral constituencies locked out or discarded while declaring Kenya’s president for the next 60 months.

Numbers don't lie
In Changamwe return officer’s mind it must have been an act of unrivalled honesty to simply explain his criminal act as a mere mistake reminding Judge Kriegler for good measure that to error is human. Smart rigging takes place many months ahead of the polls itself. Mr Sheikh Aman was handed his RO job without any interview in present day Kenya and he had to deliver. You can bet your next lunch that he was not the only Aman in the whole scheme.

ECK’s IT team ordered laptops and trained ROs six months before the poll only to advice on the reliability of manual tallying. That is enterprising Kenyans killing numerous birds with no stone. You see the taxpayers purchase the computers which are not used, trainers pocket the allowance for doing nothing and more importantly you create the impression of work done and meet the ultimate objective THEFT.

So what is the price of stealing an election? Simple answer UNQUANTIFIABLE. Our future generation will continue to pay the steep price. Leaves you wondering who is fooling who in this whole fiasco. If only we were honest and took the singular bold step to correct the bleeding wrong by conducting FRESH and FAIR elections. Well, dream on. That is a risky gamble no enterprising Kenya will engage in given its guaranteed gloomy returns.

Insulting democracy
That two wrongs never made a right has been more true. Justifying the bungled elections with the hollow argument that both sides stole except the better thief won is flawed logic at best and an insult to democracy at worst. Unless we shun our DECEPTIVE ways and confront the truth head on, the charade will continue cascading and mutating into ugly monster waiting to collectively gobble the last Kenyan left standing.