Beware the fraudsters now seeking your votes

The Standard, Commentary
October 12, 2006
By Okech Kendo

Vultures are hovering ominously and greedily again.

They are politicians and the would-be meal is the electorate, assumed to be vulnerable to deceit, citizens of limited memory.

Politicians speak balderdash loaded with self-interest, but the people are yet to hear all as the next phase of the struggle for power enters the conspiracy zone.

Scheming politicians need power to control Government machinery so that they can protect what they have amassed, largely through corruption.

Or how else would a person born to peasant parents have acquired thousands of acres of land in Nakuru, Laikipia, Nyahururu and beaches at the Coast?

They still want more, and more, while squatters hardly prepared to survive the ravages of want, toil for a pittance in the farms they have a right to own.

As politicians seek to widen the space between them and want, which is the lot of the many they rely on to climb the opportunity ladder, the people sink deeper into desperation. One hundred billionaires are lording it over millions of labouring citizens.

There are thousands of locations that do not have tarmac roads; villages where the nearest health facility is 100km away, where tapped water is a dream; classrooms are withered tree shades, where the only university graduate is the local DO, probably from another province.

The villages have no role models, no source of income except for the few who peddle chang'aa. Successive governments have undermined people's sources of income. Cotton, groundnuts, pyrethrum or sunflower sub-sectors are dead. But political liars tell us that the economy is booming.

There are a few teachers who buy newspapers once a month when they go for their miserly pay at the district headquarters, tens of kilometres away, or to charge old car batteries that run their black and white TV sets. They are a generation away from electricity.

Poverty is a threat to national security in ways that only the critical may appreciate, not opportunists in power or who want it. Consequently, there is no ambition, no aspiration and no dissent among the captives. They are fodder for political manipulation, goons for hire. Who is burning peasants' huts in Molo? Whose war are those hungry goons fighting and for what gain?

While many parts of Kenya would rather be kept that way — dependent, gullible and susceptible to electoral manipulation — there are others for whom modernity is a matter of course.

Yet those in power now, who promised equity, are still canvassing for the next General Election under the disguise of One Kenya, One Country, One people.

Why can't they make Kenyans feel the oneness now and enjoy the overdue sense of belonging? Don't we have enough police to ensure peasants are not harassed in Kuresoi?

Those who have power crave it to dominate. A number of people who entered Government and became part of the Executive only four years ago now behave as if they own the country. They even believe that they own the people. People who once talked of democracy are preoccupied with conspiracy to undermine change.

But only a few seem interested in the end value of power for the 32 million citizens who yearn for a better and people-driven leadership. Some are driven by an excruciating urge to revenge, and hope to step on wananchi while they amass wealth.

They are politicians who stand for nothing and would probably fall for nothing. Only a few of the politicians have the temerity to listen to the crying shame of the state of our development after more than 40 years of political independence.

"I promise 10 small and medium-size dams per constituency a year," they thunder during campaigns for electoral office. But after they bag the votes, where are the dams? Have you seen any in your village, four years later and a year to another election of new promises?

After about half a century of trying to run our own show with indigenous faces on the controls of State machinery, the economy is still begging for foreign help.

We are dealing with political leaders who believe in nothing and do not care about legacy. This country must move beyond this, and instead of being trapped in the past, it must look into the future with leaders who have a passion for public good.

The noisemakers have told the people that they do not want to be part of alliances aimed at acquiring and sharing power. Yet behind the declarations of assumed good intentions, there is unstated logic of political gambling.

The people know the presidential queue is getting crowded and only a few have a chance of going beyond mere presidential aspiration.

But only the very gullible are cheated by the public declarations of righteousness that belie spite for reason. There is nothing wrong with acquiring power, but this time the people must question the raison d'etre of the power struggles.

The people must ask: Power to do what, and for whom, when every time we elect people they end up loading their pockets and belching in our space?

The writer is The Standard Managing Editor, Quality and Production