OPEN LETTER TO RAILA ODINGA AND UHURU KENYATTA

By Mukurima Muriuki

Monday, December 31, 2012

Gentleman,

I believe you had a wonderful Christmas, at least to make up for a year full of political goings on. I know that at this time of the year Christmas may not have made so much sense to you given the proximity it was to the forging of alliances for each of you. Perhaps it is a sign of good things that each of you officially got endorsed as a presidential flag bearer in your respective parties in the same month we celebrate the birth of Christ, born to redeem us for we are sinful.

Just like any Kenyan out there, my prediction is that the two of you will ultimately be the candidates to beat. Win or lose, there is so much at stake. Kenyans are optimistic but at the same time there is an untold fear of what our Kenya will be after the elections. The two of you have fanatical followers. You have done a good job to whip a good percentage of the population to be on your side. My request is that leadership must at the same time be able to tame such followers into being respectful citizens who are willing to be your co-workers as we seek to take the magical Kenya into the heights it ought to be.

I have no doubt about what each of you stands for. You have wonderful families. Each one of you is a great husband. You are good dads to your children. You have both succeeded in businesses. You have contributed to the development of Kenya through creation of jobs. At the same time, I am aware none of you is perfect. You see, in the first place you are human beings. Being politicians come second. There must be an allowance to make mistakes. But a true leader must admit to such mistakes.

I am happy that each of you, at different times in the last couple of months have been humble enough to admit mistakes and sought forgiveness from Kenyans. I do not merit passing a judgment as to whether this was done for political survival but for the time being I will take it as a sign of humility. However, I will fault each one of you. Raila, you should not have apologized to the people of Rift Valley. As Isaac Ruto said, we needed to know why you were apologizing in the first place. If there was something you did to the people of the Rift Valley, that apology should have been addressed to Kenyans because we are a country woven by a single garment of oneness. E pluribus Unum-out of many we are one. Uhuru, as you apologized to your TNA supporters for allowing some dark forces to interference with your judgment; you forgot that there are people who support you outside of TNA and URP. Besides, we would have liked to know if these dark forces have names or what shape and form they come in. that way, all of us would keep away!

My bible talks about a ''broken spirit''; an understanding that we must have God's help to be the person that we want to be; a willingness to give the very forgiveness we seek; a renunciation of the pride and the anger which cloud judgment, which leads people to excuse and compare and to blame and complain. This is what I humbly appeal of you to be. We want to be sure we are electing leaders who will own up. 

I love leaders who have a sense of humour. And you both do! Sometimes I wonder what makes us, your followers turn against each other, pour vitriol on each other, just for the sake of you! Stupid as it may sound, that is who we have been sometimes. 
The bad news though is that most of us do not trust the alliances you two have created. These are short term means to power and are not based on any principle or a deep rooted belief in your alliance partners. 

The alliances we have witnessed will get one of you to power. But what will be next? There is a country to build, an economy to grow, children to educate, a crumbling healthcare system to take care of, a public service to remunerate and so many things that need to be straightened. However, we are yet to see any of you address how this will be done. This is what the country is waiting to debate. How I wish the social sites would trend on arguments, loaded with facts, about which candidate’s policies will take care of Wanjiku. If that were to be, this letter would not even make sense!

One very important thing that I cannot forget to mention is that Kenyans are now an educated population. There are so many people with diplomas from polytechnics. There are another lot with undergraduate degrees. Many are graduates while there is a rising number with Phds. There are skills in the labour market. However, we do not have jobs that remunerate all these skills the way they should. It does not make sense to have an undergraduate earning less than Ksh 75,000. A Kenya of 21st century must be willing to change with changing times. I hope this will form part of what your government will address.

Finally, I also wish the best of success to your running mates; Kalonzo Musyoka and William Ruto. They have a history of service to Kenya and I know in them you shall have wonderful deputies. 

To my fellow Kenyans, The Bible teaches that when lions and lambs lie down together, none will be afraid, and there will be peace in the valley. It sounds impossible. Lions eat lambs. Lambs sensibly flee from lions. Yet even lions and lambs find common ground. Why? Because neither lions nor lambs want the forest to catch fire. Neither lions nor lambs want acid rain to fall. If lions and lambs can find common ground, surely we can as well -as civilized Kenyans. We must unite and love each other no matter the party or tribal affiliation