By CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO (email the author)
Posted Wednesday, February 23 2011 at 17:06
Posted Wednesday, February 23 2011 at 17:06
When President Kibaki withdrew his four nominations to constitutional offices on Tuesday, there was a mega collective national sigh of relief.
His action ended the standoff with coalition partner Prime Minister Raila Odinga over the issue, and poured cold water on what was turning out to be a very ugly national mood.
If I may play Devil’s Advocate, the jobs controversy, and the many appeals to Kibaki and Raila by various groups to “put the interest of Kenya above personal ones”, revealed something I have always found intriguing:
Despite the Mau Mau rebellion and a very difficult struggle for democracy, Kenyans still hold to a very romantic view of politics and nation building.
After Raila responded in what many saw as a magnanimous fashion to the President’s statement, we started hearing the two principals being praised for putting the “national interest” first.
By yesterday, Wednesday morning, there were discussions about “national healing”. Kenya is not alone. There are a few other countries that have a rosy national psyche and moosey wooshy ideas about nation building.
1. That the “national interest” is greater than selfish interests.
First, there is actually nothing like national interest that does not benefit one group more than others. National interest is meaningful only if it is a collection of narrow selfish interests.
Take the Kibaki nominations; the women want a piece of the action; ODM felt left out; there was no Muslim; some regions felt their sons and daughters had missed out.
Individually, these are narrow selfish interests that become “national” when the people pushing them get a place at the high table. So, national interest is an undemocratic idea, because it seeks to exclude other agendas.
2. The second wrong idea is that politics is supposed to be a win-win game. It is not.
Like every contest, I think the politicians and parties who work hardest, who are smarter, deserve to get a larger slice of the cake than the lazy ones, or those who do nothing.
Citizens must be engaged. Otherwise, they should not “eat” equally from the work of those who put some time fighting or negotiating with power.
3. Contrary to the warm feeling that this stuff about “national healing” brings, the best way to get people involved is to make politics, and conflict over the spoils, very public.
Now imagine Kibaki and Raila had argued quietly over the phone and exchanged hot emails over the jobs, leaving the rest of us in the dark.
Nearly 99 per cent of us would not have learnt about the provisions in the Constitution about how the batch of jobs that have to be filled over the next two years should be handled.
Now we know, many more people are vigilant, and Kenyan democracy is the better off for it. In that sense, then, the best thing President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga did was to fight over the appointments.
4. Finally, there are voices that have been saying that they want to walk out of the Grand Coalition and collapse the current government.
The general view is that they are wrong and reckless. The coalition saved a Kenya that was in its worst violent spasm since independence.
If the Grand Coalition government collapsed today, there could be trouble, and more people would, almost certainly, die.
The Grand Coalition was the result of a draw from the December 2007 election. Draws in politics are terribly inefficient.
Things generally tend to work better if there is someone who has power to break deadlocks, can hit some heads together, and move things forward — and that is a very difficult thing to do in Kenya.
For this reason, the anti-Coalition voices are right when they say it is a dud. The problem with their argument, is that they are not making the next logical heretic argument — that it might have been better for Kenya if the post-election violence of 2008 had continued longer, more people died, and a clear undisputed winner emerged from the chaos.
So ending the coalition is a bright idea. The big problem is that the country simply can’t afford to foot the political bill for that “better” alternative.
cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com
His action ended the standoff with coalition partner Prime Minister Raila Odinga over the issue, and poured cold water on what was turning out to be a very ugly national mood.
If I may play Devil’s Advocate, the jobs controversy, and the many appeals to Kibaki and Raila by various groups to “put the interest of Kenya above personal ones”, revealed something I have always found intriguing:
Despite the Mau Mau rebellion and a very difficult struggle for democracy, Kenyans still hold to a very romantic view of politics and nation building.
After Raila responded in what many saw as a magnanimous fashion to the President’s statement, we started hearing the two principals being praised for putting the “national interest” first.
By yesterday, Wednesday morning, there were discussions about “national healing”. Kenya is not alone. There are a few other countries that have a rosy national psyche and moosey wooshy ideas about nation building.
1. That the “national interest” is greater than selfish interests.
First, there is actually nothing like national interest that does not benefit one group more than others. National interest is meaningful only if it is a collection of narrow selfish interests.
Take the Kibaki nominations; the women want a piece of the action; ODM felt left out; there was no Muslim; some regions felt their sons and daughters had missed out.
Individually, these are narrow selfish interests that become “national” when the people pushing them get a place at the high table. So, national interest is an undemocratic idea, because it seeks to exclude other agendas.
2. The second wrong idea is that politics is supposed to be a win-win game. It is not.
Like every contest, I think the politicians and parties who work hardest, who are smarter, deserve to get a larger slice of the cake than the lazy ones, or those who do nothing.
Citizens must be engaged. Otherwise, they should not “eat” equally from the work of those who put some time fighting or negotiating with power.
3. Contrary to the warm feeling that this stuff about “national healing” brings, the best way to get people involved is to make politics, and conflict over the spoils, very public.
Now imagine Kibaki and Raila had argued quietly over the phone and exchanged hot emails over the jobs, leaving the rest of us in the dark.
Nearly 99 per cent of us would not have learnt about the provisions in the Constitution about how the batch of jobs that have to be filled over the next two years should be handled.
Now we know, many more people are vigilant, and Kenyan democracy is the better off for it. In that sense, then, the best thing President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga did was to fight over the appointments.
4. Finally, there are voices that have been saying that they want to walk out of the Grand Coalition and collapse the current government.
The general view is that they are wrong and reckless. The coalition saved a Kenya that was in its worst violent spasm since independence.
If the Grand Coalition government collapsed today, there could be trouble, and more people would, almost certainly, die.
The Grand Coalition was the result of a draw from the December 2007 election. Draws in politics are terribly inefficient.
Things generally tend to work better if there is someone who has power to break deadlocks, can hit some heads together, and move things forward — and that is a very difficult thing to do in Kenya.
For this reason, the anti-Coalition voices are right when they say it is a dud. The problem with their argument, is that they are not making the next logical heretic argument — that it might have been better for Kenya if the post-election violence of 2008 had continued longer, more people died, and a clear undisputed winner emerged from the chaos.
So ending the coalition is a bright idea. The big problem is that the country simply can’t afford to foot the political bill for that “better” alternative.
cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com
- I remember myself almost insulting Obbo in 2007 for writing about possible violence in Kenya, before the elections. I had commented that Kenya is not Uganda and that we knew how to solve of problems without violence. After the PEV, I came to respect this guy and his views.
- You are right, Sir. This is the first fight where the public read the relevant documents, consulted experts, and went to court. There were still too many distracting insults and character assassinations, but there is hope for improvement.
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