Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Oloo’s article on Luo Nation hollow and misleading


By Ken Opande

After reading lawyer Onyango Oloo’s article on Thursday, December 29 in The Standard advising the Luo community to stop voting as a bloc, I felt it important to reply to this misleading piece.
From the outset, I wish to state that Oloo, much as he is entitled to exercise his freedom of expression, should not use the media to bandy his hollow, derisive and, worst of all, quasi-dialectic prejudices against a community that has people intelligent enough to think for themselves.
It is true that the Luo vote as a bloc. But what has this to do with poverty? It is even true past leadership have used this trend to punish the community. But would the community have fared better if it had voted for these past repressive regimes?
Imaginary goodies
Oloo should know that during the Kanu era, we had the likes of the late Okiki Amayo and Odongo Omamo whose loyalty and sycophancy had not only helped nurture and water the regime’s oppression of the people, but also catalysed its plunder of the state coffers.
In the article, Oloo clueless and clumsily brands the Luo as a hostile and intolerant community that would hardly stand any ideas other than Raila’s.
Oloo should be told that it is just the other day that William Ruto, prime minister’s harshest critic, in the company of a corterie of his cheerleader MPs, was warmly received in Kisumu town and its environs where he was ironically crowned a Luo elder.
Now if Ruto, who has widely differed with Raila on virtually everything and even controversially "ditched" the Orange Democratic Party could be received and cheered in the streets of Kisumu, what other disintegration of the Luo populace is Oloo talking about?
Mr Oloo further illogically insinuates that the community only voted for Mwai Kibaki in 2002 in anticipation of the imaginary goodies Raila Amollo Odinga was expected to deliver to the community. What a hollow and barren line of analysis!
It appears Oloo was not living in this country then and had been unaware of the Kanu’s rapacious whiz that had devoured the country’s wealth leaving it a mere shell.
As of his interpretation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) accusations facing Uhuru Kenyatta and Ruto, Oloo overtrumpets his duplicity when he overstretches anti-Raila propagandist schemes that have been fashioned to imply the premier as the ultimate beneficiary of the duo’s debacle.
Indeed, Oloo is a lawyer and should know better. That ICC does not and will never run our local politics. It will never dictate what we do with our politics.
But what will become a heavy hill to climb is whether or not criminal accusations against the duo contravene Chapter Six of our new Constitution with regard to integrity.
But Oloo does not stop there. He goes a step further and delves into the issue of poverty. Unfortunately, his whimsical analysis lays bare his incompetence of this subject.
By claiming that the Luo community expects to grow rich and wealthy only once Raila has become president is not only impish but also Darwinian.
Poverty in this country is a very complex matter. The problem compounds even those communities that have produced presidents before.
Bigger than Raila
Isn’t a jigger menace a problem in Central, a province that has produced this country’s two presidents? Aren’t Turkana and Pokot perpetually suffering hunger in a province associated with a former president?
Unless again Oloo has just come from another planet and is not aware of these facts, he needs to understand that poverty in any society is always a multifaceted and multi-dimensional issue.
And, therefore to solve it, a society needs a holistic perspective that explores both the social, political, economic and cultural aspects of this problem.
Perhaps because he is a politician, he can only afford to view poverty through the prism of politics. But the truth of the matter is that poverty always bears many varied factors that contribute to its perpetuation.
Worst of all, Oloo mocks the Luo community in a way which suggests that their woes can only be solved once Raila has become president.
First, the Luo community is bigger than Raila. The premier is only a member of this Luo Nation. And whether or not he becomes president will not stop the community from experiencing the kind of problems they do.
Second, the Luo have a right to support the premier in his quest for presidency. If that is a crime, then the people need to be told what law of the land they have broken.
Third, no presidential contender should use the Luo community as a punching bag for parochial and colourless blackmail.
Oloo’s glum advice to the Luo is akin to the dimwitted and puerile comments usually levelled against Kikuyu community that it has never voted for any community in this country, and that come 2012 General Election, they should vote for a non-Kikuyu.
Each community has a right to vote in whichever way they like as long as their action does not injure the other.
-Writer is a Business Executive with the Standard Group, Kisumu Bureau.

kopande@standardmedia.co.ke

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