Some of these people in the country side now suffering, hunger, disease, and abject deprivation remember the unusual speed with which government business is conducted when for example, President Kibaki was sworn in at dusk in just a few minutes or how in a few minutes MPs voted to raise their pay higher than that of the House of Lords in England; One understands peasants’ impatience and unga-slogans when they are asked by bellicose ministers to give the government more time (after squandering 6 years) to effect changes that are meaningful to ordinary folk who regularly have to strip wild trees of its unpalatable bitter wild berries and boil it on an inefficient wood fire to feed their hungry children who will never go beyond the now impotent (“free” primary school) standard eight class.
This philanthropy is commendable but knee jerk and reactionary and it depends on mercy rather than deliberate government policy to ensure survival of the marginalized lot in Kenya. Mercy is not a constant but pro-poor budgetary policy can be caste into policy as a constant in socio-economic dynamics The only reason why every citizen ceded his or her individual right to a central or local government is so that that one does not have to wait for a guilty conscious member of parliament to massage his tribe’s reluctant Upper class into ceding a meagre portion of their (often ill- gotten) fortune to buy food or seed for hungry peasants in the countryside. Caroline Mutoko of Kiss100, who has caught the attention of Kofi Annan as a voice of the masses, has often done the same thing but decidedly asks of and benefits all Kenyans.
In December 2007, the people of Kenya thought that by replacing 80% of their elected representatives by new and progressive members of parliament, the problem would be solved.
Is it possible to propel one from the middle class to be of executive presidency, and immunize him or her from the intoxicating influence of big capital? Has Africa seen this happen, where such a presidency takes revenue from big Capital and tax from the middle class and applies it to resource poor regions of the country ?
To do this, such a person has to have real moral (and not tribal or regional) courage and wind in his sail to ignore and withstand the tempest of exclusivist posturing of big capital. only then can one slant budgetary distribution in favour of arid and marginalised areas, and apply unusual quantum of national income to pro- poor social amenities and opportunity creating initiatives. Doing this would undermine or destroy the grand capitalist state and its patron-in-chief, an executive presidency and this is the reason for the inability and reluctance of the current Government (composed of a mongrel of big anti-reform ministers there to protect and entrench old money and new capital and a smattering of pro-reform but impotent ministers without even the power to purchase a manual typewriter without the head of civil service approval) I request anybody reading this to enrich and distil this idea, hone its rough edges, all but for one purpose...in the short term, to identify alternative national leadership and in the long term to guarantee socio-economic and trans-generational equity.
Over 25 years, I have seen enough of this man and his woman to confirm that both are resistant to the smell of cheap opportunity, (declined to be appointed to public office several times) he will tirelessly repel bad friends and their odious influence from his circle, (ask me) and his nervous system does not react to and is immune to the exciting effects of creature comforts; ( I laughed him out of town before he reluctantly, and quite recently agreed to buy a television set, which features only 4 free channels ), he saw no reason to change the rustic and well worn (only) sofa set he inherited from his retired father at Woodley only until the other day when he gave it away. He and his wife lost a child very early in marriage and they have known and processed grief in its extreme form. The couple have confronted and reconciled with the limits of their humanness in their respective families.
His service greater than self interest is documented in his Quaker (Friends) Church roots, and in his non denominational fellowship where he has endlessly served as elder, and at Rotary, and other thankless theatres of philanthropy. He paid his taxes so well that he now chairs the local tax committee. Let the interrogation begin and let’s have other names and reasons before we open them up to the ruthless interrogation necessary to come to a wise destination. Ignore the lynch mob.
If the next election of a president will be determined by votes cast for a reformist for the person who has put public interest before self, Raila Odinga will be the next president of Kenya by large margins.
ReplyDeleteOf course the dynamics are not that smooth; take a look: The Diaspora of a certain populous tribe in Kenya form 33.8% of all registered voters and they are now torn between backing a reformist nationalist like one famous Mau forest crusader and the need to do a political deal with the dominant community in Rift Valley so that those amongst them that lost farmland and property in Rift valley may go back and do business and farming as usual.
If that deal works out, the Land Policy in the harmonised draft Constitution will be deleted by vested interest; If the deal works out, it will require centrality of power in a presidency to sustain status quo of economic resources. You know, certain choice government tenders, appointments and other goodies can only be accessed when presidential fiat is largely unchecked. Large chunks of the harmonised draft threaten this very expectation between the Kalenjin elite and the Kikuyu elite; so it’s understandable that an executive presidency with largely unfettered presidential authority is being championed by certain quarters of the pro status quo crowd.
Nzamba Kitonga’s gang of expatriates, parliament and the civil society are shackled by the above economic and political strictures so they are compelled to shape constitutional issues around those specific expectations. Generational equity of national resources for posterity? what the heck ! to hell with it if that means a constitutional clause that allows a 100 acre tea factory located in former Mau Forest being demolished and acquired by the state. If that means the thousands of acres of land one got in the Mau through a mere stroke of a presidential pen have to be given back to the Forestry Department even if it means that one had already subdivided the land and sold it to 500 supporters and their families from a neighbouring district where one’s political support rests.
If a constitution means that an Insurance Company can no longer issue Bonds for imported goods that never leave the Country , or that imports of maize will get a closer look by the regulator , then that Constitution cannot be good at all and all who represent the change promised in the constitution must be vilified and projected as enemies of the people.
The choice of Kenya is between moving to the next level of our collective good and retaining a relative status quo for the benefit of a few who occupy the tip of the triangle of material comfort.
Henry Wasilwa
hmwasilw@gmail.com
The human mind has three components of storage, and no content can be erased. 1st part and most important is the subconscious- it is the permanent warehouse of all perceptions, impressions and experiences..its a memory bank but is not accessed at will by the conscious part of the mind. the storage is not in any order of chronology nor type or category its like beans in a sack. during hypnosis, a skilled psycho analyst can cause the human mind to access and draw content from the vault of subconscious thoughts ....even right from childhood. That is how therapy is conducted . the 2nd part of the mind is the conscious compartment. It receives from external stimuli, retrieves from the subconscious, and processes with zip speed human thought, memories, data and other neurological traffic in an ORDERLY fashion. during insanity this function is severely compromised. When the human body is sleep mode, the conscious part of the mind is decommissioned and the subconscious takes over- PROBLEM is the flow of data from the subconscious into the neuroligical junction between Conscious and subconscious may take various forms and take oon varying degrees of order. For a sleep walker, the neurological content takes quite a while in the junction giving the impression of orderly human conduct but impelled only by the subconscious...one may go to the fridge, pop out a drink, sip it return it and go back to sleep, even switching off the lights in the process without ever the conscious mind capturing the event. DREAMS, Trish Barasa are about FEAR or HOPE; Dreams are the human mind's tendency to transfer neurological traffic between the two compartments...if the stop over at the junction takes a while during rapid eye movement phase of sleep, there will be very crisp and clear capture of the content of that DREAM when one becomes lucid. what this bride had was the traveling of fearful neurological experiences from her subconscious to the junction. ..and it took a while......if you ask her she will confirm to you that in the sequencing of the events in her dreams and some of the items in her dreams dont belong to the present, the dream will have parts relating to her child hood, or people who do not belong to the present or scenes wholly un related to the context of the wedding...proof that the subconscious doe not store content or release teh same in any chronological or typical order....so its pretty simple...she is NOT SURE if she is marrying the right guy....my take? she got into this thing in a hurry, impelled more with subtexts that have nothing to do with the bonding of her and the man.
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