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| Sunday, 05 September 2010 |
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The Ballast of NARC Politics |
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The Ballast of NARC Politics: A Repertoire of Absurdity
By Patrick Ochieng
It is not my intention in this paper to make star gazing part of my talent but I am sure that even to a casual observer it is now a palpable fact that the future of this great country lies somewhere between the doghouse and the sewer with the election of NARC to office a few months ago. The NARC leadership is Kenya’s greatest enemy, it has not shown any capability, leave alone any inclination, to lead Kenyans on the road to freedom. Without the foundation of a constitutional base, I find the trappings of democracy to have little meaning
It is not my intention in this paper to make star gazing part of my talent but I am sure that even to a casual observer it is now a palpable fact that the future of this great country lies somewhere between the doghouse and the sewer with the election of NARC to office a few months ago. The NARC leadership is Kenya’s greatest enemy, it has not shown any capability, leave alone any inclination, to lead Kenyans on the road to freedom. Without the foundation of a constitutional base, I find the trappings of democracy to have little meaning
. Thus for me it will be crucial that we develop a constitutional state as a first prerequisite towards the establishment of a democracy.
I launch onto this debate without firm answers and the reason is simple, this is a continuation of a suspended debate. Many Kenyans perhaps for lack of enlightenment have since December 27, 2002 felt that NARC was the best thing that happened in the new year, “Kibaki was what we have been looking for” and every wrong decision this new government has taken has been justified by flippant reasons such as “the complexity of transition”, “lets give them time”, “the need for ethnic balance is not negotiable” etc. Much water has passed under the bridge now and I am sure with the continued theatre of one absurdity after another time has come to offer some signposts. In electing Kibaki as our president the truth is we harvested thistles, his theory and practice of politics and governance remains the acquisition and retention of power at all costs, the very reason why we voted overwhelmingly against the past regime. The euphoria surrounding the entry of NARC to power was however both a source of hope and disappointment. The greatest distortion is to make the new government a beast of burden, to load onto it unintended baggage and/or to misconstrue both the quality and quantity of the load. And so it came to pass that the exaggerated prognosis of the new guys at state house could not be found on any map: NARC promised continuous sunshine so that people started talking of another country, or a place where no one lives anymore. It is not surprising that this has been the fate of the new government which was really just another tyranny whose ideology remains the desire for power, of having, of pleasure and of luxury; abusive exploitation of primary resources, sacrifice of people abandoned to their own destinies at the cradle of greed. For how can one explain the composition of Kibaki’s cabinet? What justifications can one offer for the recycled faces in the list of permanent secretaries? If the director of Kenyatta National Hospital could be that dead wrong on just about all the important issues, how could his PS be innocent? May be Chunga’s judiciary is too irreparably corrupt that Kibaki could not allow them to clear Mwongera of his pending corruption cases before considering him for reappointment to the government. Kibaki’s men in the cabinet are still gripped in the backcloth of the high voltage meetings and campaigns, which were rending the political sky towards the end of last year. Look at minister Maitha running a ministry like he is managing a pigsty or Michuki displaying a frozen and fossilized 1998 circular as a justification for his excessive action against the airline company that was involved in an accident that claimed the life of a minister or Mukhisa Kituyi talking down at Kenyan workers like Delemare would do to his African farm workers. Let us tell this government something about revolutions. When despotism relaxes vigilance, it is in peril. The governed whose lot is improving, become aware, simultaneously, of the wrongs they are suffering and the future possibilities. It is the hope rather than misery that inspires revolutionaries. The sleeping masses had awakened from their consigned slumber of apathy and surrender to fate. NARC is not wholly responsible for this awakening, this march to intellectual honesty and democratic ethic was spurred by the gains made from civic education following the constitutional review process, efforts of civil society institutions and the mistakes made by Moi in KANU and the way in which Raila interpreted and responded to those mistakes. My first duty as an intellectual, which I must fulfil here is the duty to doubt. NARC is a flower, which blossomed before its season and has since wilted. As stated earlier, the greatest mistake one can make is to look at the NARC government as the elixir of the immediate problems beleaguering Kenyans. When its flame was incandescent and at its time of intense luminosity NARC would have shown itself as a timely magic wand if it set out to complete the constitution review process; if it made decisions based on its council system (summit) and subjected each decision to public scrutiny and if it favoured institution building rather than personality cults. By its very composition NARC could have done better in appointing people who can manage the state; just what sort of ideas in God’s good name can Matere Kereri or Murungaru bring to statecraft? Even if Kibaki needed a new ADC wasn’t there a better way to handle this? Say meet with all the security chiefs and discuss a strategy and principles of not only presidential security but also general security and allow those mandarins to make ‘independent’ announcements of changes even if he had his preferred people. Kibaki is choking institutions just like his predecessor did. For Kenya what would have been important is the professional integrity of the intelligence and appropriate structures to protect that integrity. When Kiraitu Murungi a one time fervent IPPG programme campaigner, was named the Justice Minister to take charge of among other things the review process the spanner was set forth to work. This is a man for whom survival politics is the name of the game, opportunism to be exact for that is what IPPG was about. The danger with this kind of politician is that there will be no ethics of survival in his programme at the ministry and one could also speak of non-existence of the survival of ethics. So we risk the possibility that there will be no constitution after all. I wasn’t surprised when Kiraitu unilaterally changed NARC’s election pledge on the constitution from 100 days to six months and later even noted that it was not urgent. What hypocrisy! Have these people forgotten that this is a coalition government? People don’t matter! Is this the maxim of Kibaki’s government? I know many Kenyans who cannot read or write their names; many more are hungry and thirsty; so many have no access to primary health care: but how shall we help them if the culture of the NARC government is a culture of violence and death? A culture of hatred, cynicism, violence, and exclusion. A slaughterhouse culture, in which we are silent in the face of large-scale and flagrant abuses of workers rights in the EPZs, massacres nay genocide by the mungiki sect, hawker invasion of the city of Nairobi and massive corruption in mayoral elections countrywide that even the local government minister is a part. What I am saying here is simple; Kibaki and his ministers cannot go about their business on the facile assumption that they know what is best for the people, and that the institution of the Presidency embodies the popular will. We voted for them overwhelmingly which does not justify their alluring temptation to bask in the sunshine of this illusion, the fact remains that democracy entails treating people with dignity and respect in that they are the source of sovereign power in a democratic state. This, then, means consulting the people and seeking their participation in the shaping of a country’s destiny. We were voting Moi out, we were also voting for a broad based NARC coalition not a cabal of power men around Kibaki. My position is that there are conditions under which democratisation and de-bureaucratisation can occur and we need both processes to take place in Kenya. This is how most Kenyans perceived the new government-an attempt at democratising the State apparatus but also embarking on its de-legislation. But to paraphrase one scholar the NARC government came as water and went like wind. We thought we were voting for a whole loaf of bread not half loaf, we voted for a new way of doing things not some tinkering business. A snake sloughs off the entire old skin and not halfway; the latter is the way Kibaki has approached his business at state house, a course of action, which is very much a milk-and-water affair. This thing about Kibaki having the prerogative to make his own decisions is but a sieve with large holes allowing some very questionable characters to get into public office. But the words of Santayana are appropriate here “ Those who cannot remember history are doomed to repeat it” For me the brouhaha is over. The first reality with this new government is its dyed-in-the wool antipathy, against constitutional reforms. The second reality is that all the fellows in Kibaki’s government are right wing adherents of excessive marketism. They are excited about resumption of the WB/IMF negotiations and facilities, when the infantile trade minister goes to Cancun in September I can bet on my nose that he will commit us to the expanded mandate of WTO which is keen to trade in services like water, public education etc without the slightest idea what the consequences would be. When will imperial presidency end in this country? This tendency to pin the future of a whole country on one person-now Mwai Kibaki after Daniel Moi is perilous. It is autocracy not democracy. It is alright to dream at the top of mountains, but it is always advisable to come down when it is time for concrete action. Having nice-sounding phrases will not do, and this is one of the problems with the new ministers-the difference between fiction and reality is quite thin if I may add. Hear this statement from Local government minister Maitha “it will now be a dream for women and men to be flogged by council askaris, bundled in trucks or sandwiched in the back streets to be extorted by council askaris”. In the same vein his counterpart in the trade ministry was telling sacked workers to reapply for their jobs and to channel their grievances in a more civilised way if they expect to be taken seriously. Are these people serious? What Kenyans need to know is that you cannot force people to be democratic, to be civilized or refined in their dealings with the people. However, we can use a most effective antidote against the fight against the people by the officialdom. We must shed off the culture of silence, which is the direct product of the whole situation of economic, social, and political domination-and of paternalism-of, which the ordinary people are victims. This is the language of the internationally known educator from Brazil, Paulo Freire. According to Freire, it is essential for the oppressed to realize that when they accept the struggle for humanization they also accept, from that moment, their total responsibility for the struggle. They must realize that they are fighting not merely for freedom from hunger, but for “… freedom to create and to construct, to wonder and to venture. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible, not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine… It is not enough that men are not slaves; if social conditions further the existence of automatons, the result will not be love of life but love of death”. |
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