A couple of weeks back columnist Wambugu Ngunjiri wrote in the Star that it was too early to ask questions to the leadership of Uhuru Kenyatta. He proferred that instead, Kenyans should join Uhuru in building the nation.
Elsewhere, my friend, columnist and publisher Ahmednassir Abdullahi suggested in two different publications that those critical of the Uhuru Kenyatta electoral victory and leadership are perenial lamenters who ought to be ignored as the Jubillee government forges forward in ‘reigning’ over Kenya.
Granted, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto are being President and Deputy for the first time. However, the government they inherited is working and has been working.
Infact, they have taken longer to alter the Kibaki governing structure than Kibaki did in dismantling the Moi executive outfit. Indeed if one needed proof that the government structure is working and working deliberately, one needs to look at the recent budget process.
Notwithstanding that Uhuru Kenyatta had been in office hardly two months and even less for his Secretary of State for the Treasury, a Sh1.6 Trillion budget was read on time to coincide with the those of Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania, all with continuing governments.
It therefore is not acceptable to forgive the various errors, mistakes and offences happening in government and blaming them on the so called ‘teething problems of new offices’.
The insecurity incidences that are increasingly worrying ought to have been a rallying point for the security outfits to work in a concerted harmonious manner rather than engage the country in the power struggles and sense of self importance. I hope that Mandera, Wajir, Bungoma and Busia are not too distant for them.
The question of excessive spending on local and foreign travel by public officials, the President and Deputy included, has been with us even before the elections.
Yet, no sooner had their election been confirmed than they begun on a series of expensive foreign travels whose benefit to the country rather than self is yet to be explained nor understood.
The extravagant leasing of the ‘Hustler’s’ jet for the Deputy President to Central and Western Africa, specifically since there has been no known diplomatic or commercial intimacy with those countries is a case in point.
The belief that the trip was informed more by the cases pending before the International Criminal Court is far more convincing than any pretence that we were seeking to open new trading opportunities for Kenya.
Then there is the bullish behaviour of the National Assembly that is buoyed by the apparent latent belief that ‘politics is a game of numbers’ whatever the point, logic or rationale of the issue at hand.
The National Assembly ‘went on strike’ in its push for a salary higher than was recommended by the relevant commission. After they got their way, with the helping hand of the Deputy President, it struck at the Senate asking the latter to know who the Big Brother was. In the result, ther are many who feel that the outcome will be the threat to the principle and practice of devolution.
The President took sides with the National Assembly even though he proferred an explanation. The explanation however, does not mitigate the political and legal damage that was dealt on devolution as a principle of governance.
This same National Assemble has routinely made a mockery of the principle of vetting of public officers as we have seen persons’ whose capacity, credibility, integrity and suitability have been questioned pass with the whimsical wave of the political hand.
Of course there is the deliberate humiliation of the former Prime Minister and Former Vice President. Both have repeatedly been denied use of the VIP lounges at our airports as well as their retirement benefits unless they renounce further participation in politics.
Whereas the continued attempt at humiliating them will, through public resentment build them further politically, one cannot escape from the hypocrisy that is portrayed by the government.
While treating the former leaders shabbily, the government is falling over itself to accomodate retired President Kibaki with goodies from public coffers.
The government built him a palatial home with office space in Mweiga. The military feted him with expensive if not opulent gifts. The Judiciary was more modest but in principle joined the queue to donate to him little needed golf clubs.
State House staffers did their bit too. Then came the inexplicable gift of a modern petrol station for a retiring President from the National Oil Corporation. One would expect that Kibaki would retire to the state built farm house and office in Mweiga rather than engage in the lower to middle income business of pumping gas.
As if all these are not enough, the new administration seeks to build the retired President an office block a few millions shy of One Billion shillings! Why treat Kibaki as if he retired destitute is beyond Kenyans comprehension.
We however need to remember that if Kenya keeps to the trend of electing young men and, hopefully, women to State House, within the next 25 years we would have many retired Presidents. Are we going to have to build them offices each?
Of course, there are those who will argue that ‘It is the Law’. That law was not subjected to public debate and participation as the Constitution requires. It is time it was brought back to be re-examined with a view to imbuing it with the public interest and respect the true meaning of retirement.
Meanwhile, while we expect of Uhuru to do all he can to unite the country, we will not tire to remind him that empty political rhetoric won’t wash. Whatever our collective and personal failings, its time we reintroduced morals into our political conversation and governance imperatives. That is how to restore faith in the public and rekindle the hope that Kenya will again raise to be one country.
The false polemics of extinguishing the vanquished and humiliating those that are down can only be fodder for discontent. Numbers without values will be like an army without a purpose. Only too soon it will consume itself.
President Uhuru and Deputy Ruto; Heed this advise. Keep your praise singers and sycophants at pole’s length. Their folly with failed political and social theories will be your fall if you heed them.
Harun Ndubi is the executive director of Haki Focus.
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