“What has happened today is a travesty of justice and we shall not relent until we, the bonafide officials of KANU, are recognized; it [Kibaki’s government] wants to manipulate and appoint opposition leaders so that there is no criticism from anybody.” The Associated Press (AP) quoted President Kenyatta in December of 2006 when he served as the opposition leader.
This quote is important because it shows how our politics is dynamic. Politicians in opposition are more than likely to end up in government at some point just like President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy William Ruto were both once in the opposition but have been at the helm of power since 2013.
Politicians seem to understand this and therefore never create permanent enemies or friends because of their political ambitions or greed. However, the tragedy of this reality is that Kenyans seem to never grasp this and adopt very rigid approaches to political situations that often end up hurting them.
For instance, President Kenyatta and his Deputy Ruto were on opposite sides in the 2007 elections that degenerated into violence that saw their respective communities butcher each other. First-forward to 2013 and the two leaders buried the hatchet to work together.
As expected their respective communities also agreed to cooperate with each other out of this single act of unity. Whether the reasons that ignited the fight in the first place were resolved or not, became secondary, their leaders were now united and that magically solved everything.
What this pattern reveals, albeit sadly is the fact that we have a country where majority have delegated their thinking to their respective political leaders. Their sense of right and wrong is not based on the rule of law but what their political gods make it.
Take the government’s decision to switch off the three main media houses for instance. The shutdown of the media houses in the country has sparked off a heated debate on the right to access to information; respect for the rule of law and media biases among others.
To nobody’s surprise, whichever subject you pick majority Kenyans are divided on two major lines: pro-opposition and pro-government. Those from Jubilee mainly hold the view that the media deserves what’s befallen them for what they feel was undermining a legitimate government. Those in NASA are obviously against the shutdown but simply because they feel this time the media was on ‘their side’. Interestingly, there’s a group from the opposition that remains unsympathetic to the shutdown, bragging that they expected it owing to what they claim as media’s going to bed with the Jubilee government.
This is the crux of the matter that this blog hopes to tackle; the culture of victim blaming to score cheap points and missing out the bigger picture. It’s ridiculous that a country where people overwhelmingly voted for a progressive constitution only seven years ago would be okay, even attempt to justify extreme violation of the same sacred document
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