To Laugh or Cry Over Kuria's Letter To Raila?

Wednesday, 06 April 2011 00:05 BY SARAH ELDERKIN

I DIDN’T know whether to laugh or cry when I read Moses Kuria’s open letter to PM Raila Odinga (The Star, Monday, April 4). Laugh because the writer and some of his colleagues are as jumpy as a box of frogs and their desperation is so obvious; cry because our political class and our political maturity, which should be benefiting from everything people have struggled for over decades, have been horribly degraded by the abysmal level of debate – if one can even call it debate – prevailing among some so-called leaders and their acolytes.
We can’t even say that these much-touted youthful pretenders have taken us backwards, because past leaders, for all their faults, were nothing like this. Today’s children of privilege are a breed apart, and they are taking us somewhere we have never been before. Contrary to all the hope for the future we had when they were elected, the tribalism and personal hatred they preach are marching us relentlessly into a stinking garbage heap that threatens to destroy us all.
And what utter nonsense Mr Kuria writes! He blames the PM for the Ocampo Six’s Hague tribulations – has he forgotten how hard the PM campaigned for the (then unknown) post-election violence suspects to face a local tribunal? Some people, worried that they might be on the list, resisted this with every fibre of their being, and went about boasting that the preferred Hague option would take 90 years to come to fruition. It was only after this proved somewhat inaccurate that the suspects did a U-turn. The PM had nothing to do with it.
Mr Kuria also naively imagines the PM and his supporters greeting with celebrations the start of the Hague process and the potential removal of the suspects from the political equation. Doesn’t Mr Kuria realise that, if the PM were only interested in his personal political chances (rather than justice for 1,300 dead and many more injured and displaced), it would be deeply advantageous for him to have the two so-called “presidential frontrunners” on the ballot? What with Kalonzo, Saitoti, Karua and Kenneth also there, along with Wamalwa, Wetangula, Balala and whoever else wants to pitch in – the larger the number of ways the vote is split, the better Mr Odinga’s chances of winning.
And incidentally, a question the media is not asking, but should, is – how are all these aspirants going to choose among themselves when push comes to shove? Make no mistake about it: there are going to be some major and bitter fall-outs, and the whole so-called unity thing is likely to end up in complete disarray.
In any case, what kind of ‘unity’ are we talking about? If what is on offer is so amazingly good, why aren’t displaced non-Kalenjins returning to their homes in the Rift Valley? What are they afraid of?
Among Mr Kuria’s other non-points and outright lies are that the PM admitted plotting to overthrow the government in 1982 (he did no such thing, and there was no evidence against him, much as the authorities would have liked it otherwise); he wrote a thesis on making nail bombs (a complete myth); he “meted untold violence on Kijana Wamalwa” (when and where? This never happened).
Mr Kuria tries to fault Mr Odinga over evictions from the Mau forest. Isn’t everyone by now aware that this prime water tower must be restored for the benefit of the nation? History will vindicate the PM’s foresight. But while we are on the subject, what happened to the millions of shillings raised by the young pretenders for the evictees? Anyone know? Another question for the media to ask?
Finally (space is limited), Mr Kuria criticises Mr Odinga for joining Kanu. Mr Kuria doesn’t recognise political strategy when it stares him in the face. If Mr Odinga had not destroyed this then-powerful monolith from within, we would still be in Kanu’s thrall. Though according to some, this would apparently be no bad thing. In fact, those who enjoyed the fruits of dictatorship seem quite keen to return to those days. The glorification of Kanu’s past has become a disturbingly recurrent theme. Have the media noticed?
Why aren’t newspapers asking some of these questions? The Star is busy congratulating itself on appointing a ‘public editor’. What use is that, skimming over the surface with a few politically correct platitudes about accountability to readers – while the same newspaper simultaneously publishes such spiels of dishonesty and libel (indeed, hate speech if ever it existed) as that spewed out by Moses Kuria?
In doing so, The Star joins sections of all our media in engaging in what three-time UK prime minister Stanley Baldwin (quoting his cousin, Nobel literature laureate Rudyard Kipling) described as “power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot through the ages”.
Sadly for my own profession, there is no other word for it. Sections of our media are prostituting themselves. There is no shortage of clients and it’s a seller’s market. And even if the clients are only members of the public whom the media would like to entice to buy their products, the principle is no different.
Veteran journalist Philip Ochieng had it eloquently right in the Sunday Nation this week, when he criticised the press for its commercial eagerness to publish “the shameless lie, the false witness against the rival, the ethnic hate speech ….. no matter how irresponsible, how reckless, how provocative, how mindless”.
Will The Star continue participating in this headlong rush towards catastrophic conflict? There is a choice for newspapers when they place their bets, and there was never a more precious jewel at stake than this nation’s future. Publishing blatant lies and distortions is not a service to the public.

The author is a freelance journalist