Abracadabra, Let There be Lights in Kogelo

With lightening speed, Obama’s ancestral home at Kogelo in Siaya was fully connected to the national electricity grid in two days. And that came after Kenyans were granted an Obama holiday last Thursday while the Americans who elected him had no such luxuries. Either its the paradox of a so-called working nation in love with RECESS or the smart scoundrels grieving with king size tears and louder than the bereaved to mask their hitherto disdain.

Well, either way the true face of deception never fails to embarrass. Welcome to African brand of leadership of personal whims selfishly played to gain political scores at whatever cost. No prize is big enough to catch an eye when expediency rules supreme.

To hell with informed leadership from in front and by example. Mediocrity is our forte while integrity remains an alien virtue these shores of ours. We are led by the leash using outdated whims of yore. Anything unfamiliar is shunned and new ideas are summarily dismissed with the wave dinosaur hands struggling to steady the wheels. What is more, the leaders can chose their actions at any tangent well secure in the knowledge that their kinsmen will foam at the mouth trying to sanitize the rot on their behalf. In the process the country suffocates from official rigidity and becomes too intoxicated with the fumes of moral decay. The free fall towards self-destruction has been so effortlessly

Leaves you wondering what bleak fates await thousand of villages which don’t have their won Obama. So resources are there aplenty and can be SELECTIVELY deployed at the flash of a finger. And that proves the perils of personalized rule legalized in IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY. In the whole game Kenyans remain helpless collateral in the political chess board.

Kibaki seems to be on an ego trip to turn Kenyans into torches to light his Christmas tree. Kenyatta and Moi may have found it difficult to conceptualize what it takes to serve neither the commensurate responsibility demanded of the same service. But Kibaki perfection of penchant for contempt to all Kenyans is inexcusable in this age and time.

Forget about the nostalgic fad of being a scholar of yore. The present leadership simply acts on sectarian whims bereft of any intellectual spine. And as for the street rants that intellectuals don’t make good politicians you can as well go ahead and tell than to the birds so that they fly high in the skies.

Leadership from the rear
We need leaders with the mien and capacity to inspire and not promise miracles. Leaders with quality housed in the box above their shoulders who leave their names in history books as builders and custodians of durable institutions that remain the bedrock of a nation’s present and future prosperity in all spheres towards sustainable stability.

Smart leaders exploit crises to shape and make history. Formulating sound policies that outlive their reign is what uniquely defines them. Focused hope is a bankable virtue that once successfully sold to a populace gains a momentum of its own for the long term good. Instead what we have flying around us are jingoists who won’t miss an opportunity to populate any opening with their TRIBESMEN with no regard to equity and fairness.

While Einstein may have preferred imagination to knowledge, Kenyan leaders are very keen to demonstrate their lack thereof of both. The only commodity they sell and dispense in abundance is fertile and creative mind to fleece and rape Kenya to the bone. Our national sense of success is so impaired so much so that without opulence, you stand accused of laziness and failing to make hay when the sun shines.

One only hopes and prays that maybe someday soon Kibaki will shuffle in shame when he miraculously rediscovers that what is housed in his head is a brain meant to be used. Predictably, Emilio's apologists will readily jump to his defense with such cheap take as promoting tourism or creating a plastic higher pedestal of fake statesmanship or any such hollow derivatives for that matter. Well, we cannot stop them from cheering on the nude king.

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Waki's Is A Hit Job

About four months ago I called upon our political leaders to initiate measures to bring Kenyans to the Uhuru Park with the sole purpose of spearheading a national forgiveness campaign. The way I envisioned it, this would have been a time and a place where people who were massively wronged would look deep in their hearts and utter those difficult words: I Forgive You. Okay, I know you're about to say...how can you forgive a person who has not asked for forgiveness or even acknowledged their wrongdoing?

You have a point.

But this is eleven months since the debacle that was our elections and look at where things are going. We have a man named Waki, who has produced a report that suggests some prominent Kenyans decided to suddenly start planning to kill and maim other Kenyans. This is incredulous coming from a man of this judge's stature. Has Waki ever heard of the shameful distribution of land in Kenya? Has he ever heard of the blatant tribalism that characterised Kibaki's first term? Has he said anything about Kivuitu and gang? And has he bothered to warn the country of the potential bloodletting that may follow the full implementation of his report?

Here is where I come down on this matter. We have to see the Waki Report as nothing but a carefully packaged hit job. I don't know who's name appears on it, but I know for a fact that the blame for the events of December and January lie squarely with President Kibaki. This is the man Kenyans elected to protect them and ensure the security of the nation. Where was he when, as is widely reported, a meeting of a known gang was held in the State House, ostensibly to plan how to deny Hon. Odinga the presidency and terrorize Kenyans? Where was he when the Kalenjin warriors were organizing themselves into a force that would later kill many innocent Kenyans and destroy property worth millions of shillings? Indeed, where was the commander-in-chief when the forces he controlled killed and maimed people in Kisumu, Naivasha and Nakuru? Don't you think Waki should have probed these issues?

Like I said last week, we Kenyans created the situation we went through and must find ways to correct it. We don't need Kofi Annan and the U.S. ambassador, or anybody else for that matter, to tell us how, when and at what pace to do things. Had it not been for the troika that comprised Kibaki, Renneberger and Kofi, Raila Odinga would today be president and Kenya would have been the better off for it. So when Waki zeroes in on some two months worth of events and asks us to punish people who did things within that narrow window, conveniently ignoring years of injustices on Kenyans, he's asking us to practically succumb to the whims of those who have perfected the art of manipulation.

We will not do it.

Fellow Kenyans, time is rapidly running out. We can still save the nation we all love while we still can. Forgiveness. Atonement. That's the answer. The alternative is this misguided call for justice, which if you ask me looks a lot like revenge. State-sponsored revenge. What I find very disturbing is that pastors from various churches are also preaching this brand of justice! Can they look Kenyans in the eye and tell us where they've been for forty five years while the nation was descending into the mess we are in today? Can they look us in the eye and tell us why the Kenyan youth who participated in the demonstrations are guilty while men like Kibaki and Kivuitu are not?

I have to end this piece with a warning today: There can be no justice that the Kikuyu see as just while the Kalenjin see as a witch-hunt. There can be no justice that the Luo see as serving the interests of one community and not Kenya as a nation. And there can be no justice where the interests of Kenya are decided in foreign capitals. That's the raw truth.

There is a better way to have a fresh start. Let's go to Uhuru Park. Let's ask Kenyans to bury the hatchet. You'll all be surprised how much Kenyans are longing for that day.

The day of atonement.

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