By PHILIP OCHIENG
Posted Saturday, January 14 2012 at 16:40
Posted Saturday, January 14 2012 at 16:40
For one completely subjective reason, I quite agree with the newspaper correspondent who pleaded with all our institutions to ensure that all their employees do “recognise” the faces of our “celebrities” and other leaders.
For my “face value” has often benefited me.
People recognise me in such circumstances as a dauntingly long banking-hall queue and sometimes voluntarily surrender their places for me to be served ahead of them.
Even age-mates of my grandchildren often greet me simply as “Philip” – though I have no idea who they are. How can I mind?
On the contrary, such little gestures of camaraderie and good do tug at the heart and frequently inspire sublime thoughts in me at work.
In that way, what seems to be but self-serving pride in being recognised may turn out to be of great social avail.
For modern society is possible only in mass recognition of leadership.
That society is orderliest, healthiest and happiest in which the leaders are generally recognised – and not merely by face (though the face-to-face government which Jean-Jacques Rousseau advocated will add a spice to it) – but, more importantly, by their legitimacy, personability, wisdom, humility and day-to-day practical work for society’s upliftment.
Despite what may (in our “democratic” eyes) look authoritarian, a leader like Matathir Mohammed of Malaysia has cultivated national adoration by building an aura of impersonality around his face into which he has preceeded to lose his own personality just by rolling up his sleeves to mix with the people in their daily providential work.
Effective leadership
No, effective leadership is not necessarily self-effacing. Indeed, a faceless leader is a contradiction in terms.
A certain amount of forcefulness – and even arrogance – is called for if the leader is to impress his or her ideas upon the people.
But I mean forceful (i.e., impressive and inspiring). I do not mean forcible (i.e., demagogic and tyrannical).
In short, public respect presupposes self-respect. A self-respecting leader is one who goes to the people, not with the bludgeon and the whip in hand but with ideas, expressed in strong but measured terms, argued with great cogency and presented humbly and with impersonality.
Of course, people will scurry like squirrels whenever you unsheathe the sword and threatean them with: don’t you know who I am?
But they will never respect you for it. Yes, you should recognise your President whenever you meet him and extend to him every right and privilege due to his office.
But Mwai Kibaki is neither conceited nor unreasonable. He will not demand that you kneel down whenever he is passing.
He never makes himself the exception whenever he announces certain security measures.
Concerning Al-Shabaab, he knows that the state cannot allow Miss Kerubo to exempt anybody on account of his social status.
But, of course, if a person is as big as Mr Kibaki, his mere mbi – the Luo word for any “awesome” presence – may overwhelm Miss Kerubo into letting him in unchecked.
But he cannot demand it because (a) when he ordered those checks, he did not say he was the exception and (b) to exempt anybody is to defeat the whole purpose of the exercise. For status is never a certificate of innocence.
In 1976, a London newspaper reported that some of Kenya’s highest state officials were paid agents of Mossad and the CIA against Kenya.
That is why, concerning a threat like Al-Shabaab, not even the President can legitimately demand any special treatment at the Village Market’s wicket gates.
And a high judicial official should know it better than we.Yes, guards must be trained to handle leaders with special finesse. But to do it at the expense of security provisions is to expose Kenya to the same deadly risks to which such a dereliction of duty once exposed New York City to Osama bin Laden.
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