Sunday, January 1, 2012

There’s much to welcome and fear in 2012


Kipkoech Tanui

The road to 2012, the year of our political transition, has been long and tumultuous, but finally we are at its doorstep. The politicians have entertained and depressed us, but in a few months we shall be called upon to pick the Fourth President of the Republic.
We don’t know who it will be, but we can’t argue with the fact that there will be a power shift, which will be determined by so many ill winds, including that blowing towards us from The Hague.
We shall again gather at Uhuru Park, and hope to God it won’t be a messy and desecrating handover like 2002’s.
We shall then probably sing Yote Yawezekana Bila Kibaki — not that we hate the man who has institutionalised tribalism, in full replication of the regimes that came before him, and with as much vigour as he has put into road construction.
The long wait
You see, it is very much a "Kenyan thing" to bury the past with our spit and face the uncertain future, our hearts temporarily anaesthetised by euphoric cheering of the new. But soon we learn the hard way that it takes more than political transition to change a country; in fact, change has to start with us.
But this 2012 ought to know how many Kenyans have waited for long for its arrival, some like me from the time we witnessed Mr Mwai Kibaki being sworn at dusk, surrounded by a few hangers-on, with television stations running the death counts from the flare-up of tribal clashes across the country as a moving caption on the same screen.
At the time, 2012 looked far, so far away like it were a century, moreso for those who told us he was our "Duly Elected President".
Bad memories
However, here we are, in that season when the Constitution gives us the leeway to change or recycle our leaders. It all depends on us to either vote with our stomachs or with conscientious hearts — or pick them from our tribal cesspool.
We walk into the New Year carrying the bad memories of the last presidential election, which was stolen — I will not say by whom because I have enough problems, thanks to our sunken economy, and enemies to last me until January.
We knock on the door of 2012, uncertain about what we achieved with this politically incestuous beast called the Grand Coalition Government, but with the relief that we are there.
Which reminds me of the analogy of the politician, diapers and babies. Problem is each time you change the baby’s nappies, it won’t be long before you have to do it again.
We also stride into the New Year with the millstone of tribalism and tribal alliances hanging from our necks. I long for the day, though I am getting convinced I may never live to see it, when we shall pick our leaders for what they stand for, not where they come from.
I also long to see unpretentious politicians who won’t sit at the negotiating table before elections, and purport to have all of us from his or her tribe in the basket next to his feet. I know we may not get there yet, but there is a chance we shall this coming year wake up to the reality that life is not just about endless campaigns between elections.
That surely must start with realisation that when we let our politicians stuff us in their communal vote baskets, it means we have also let them "think" for us.
And when that happens, we have stopped thinking and are being led by the nose, no matter how dirty the hands of the one tugging us along. Come to think of it, we should actually empty our noses on their hands!
Right choices
We walk into the year of elections, well aware of the burden of living under the new Constitution and its promise of grandeur and fulfillment. You see, we have this Devolution thing, and there will be an all-new House called the Senate, plus County Assemblies, and an expanded Parliament. We are yet to figure out how to make them work, and that begins with the choices we make in 2012.
I dare say here, if it should be like the council of sheep picking the leopard to stand at their guard post, so in the same way shall we risk more by picking the cunning watermelons and noisy ones.
The challenge of the New Year will be anchored onto three things; flogging the dying horse called the economy to start walking again, purifying our politics and renewing our moral values, hopefully to the point that we regard corruption and murder as one and the same because they both kill.
We have to water the tree of the new Constitution so that we can start savouring its fruits, but if we let the chaps who walk around with pruning scissors to do this, then rest assured in 2013 it shall have been massacred to the point we may just be left with the trunk.
We must also be prepared for the fact that even as we dispatch Kibaki to ‘Private Box Othaya’, that alone won’t change Kenya. We must remember what they say about eternal vigilance being the guardian angel of democracy. This is because chances are we shall pick a President from those singing themselves hoarse now, then start regretting in March 2013 when we shall have seen the village and ridgemates they have picked to run the Treasury, Central Bank, Office of the President, and like Kibaki, all institutions of National Security and others.
Dear readers, Happy New Year, but brace for 2012.
The writer is Managing Editor, Daily Editions, at The Standard.
ktanui@standardmedia.co.ke

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