By PHILIP OCHIENG
Posted Saturday, December 15 2012 at 19:16
Posted Saturday, December 15 2012 at 19:16
Where a person can jump from one party to another in the squeezing of a lemon – and without the slightest shame – there, we can see the tip of the iceberg of a deeply rotten society.
Charity Ngilu epitomises the idea-less-ness – the total absence of moral and intellectual thought – characteristic of our political class. If, in the space one week, she has successively belonged to three separate parties or coalitions – and if all those parties have welcomed her as a godsend – that is the proof that both she and they are completely bankrupt in terms of moral and intellectual thought.
In the lead-up to the General Election, this appalling lack of principle – this utter absence of decorum and self-respect in public conduct; this vile opportunism in self-pursuit; this refusal to drum up even a little concern for the objective interests of one’s society – all will increasingly assault our ears.
Undignified fashion
It will be ugly and disgusting in adjecto. No matter how fair a nomination system may be, candidates who fail to be nominated to run for this and that position at State House, in the two Houses of Parliament, in the county headquarters, etc, will storm out of their parties in the most undignified fashion.
They will either form their own parties – or join others – where nomination is assured. And these other parties will swallow them as greedily as the piranha in Brazil’s sweet waters. Austrian social critic Ernst Fischer would condemn them as “… a hideous uniformity of minds …”
At that stage of the political process, then, nomination – not ideas or issues – is the only principle that our politicians know. At another stage, if elected, they will, of course, be governed by another principle – the principle that has transformed the tummies of our cabinet ministers into “patriotic fronts”.
Thus, as vehicles of ideas – as instruments for catalysing our country’s rise from an extremely low level of culture and thought to another as rapidly as possible – all our political parties are totally useless. Indeed, concerning one instance, all of them are positively perilous.
Vote-catching machines
Being nothing but vote-catching machines in the hands of individuals impelled merely by “vaulting ambition” – as Shakespeare condemns it (in Macbeth) – and, by pinning their hopes on tribal support, they necessarily dredge all kinds of wedges between our various ethnic communities.
How, then, can you describe such purely ethnic war-machines as “Kenyan”? Isn’t it much more accurate to describe our major political associations as Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Luhya and Luo (in alphabetical order)?
And isn’t it obvious that, in this way, they unjustly and illegally make it impossible for an Elmolo ever to become our president?
That is why – if I were Nzamba Kitonga and Atsango Chesoni and were spearheading a new constitution for Kenya – I would struggle to find a way of justifying (a) a ban on all tribal parties and (b) proof by any party seeking registration that it truly differs, ideologically, from another that has been registered.
But I don’t mean to belittle the work that Nzamba, Atsango and other sons and daughters of Kenya have done for the nation. I readily recognise their work as heroic. What I mean is merely that, to move forward, we don’t have to wait for another constitutional task force like theirs.
If our MPs were not so preoccupied with their collective self-interest in fleecing the voter and with the narrow tribal political interests that so debilitate the national effort, an MP or several would by now have moved an amendment motion to the effect that I suggest.
But there must exist other kinds of social sanction by which to put paid to dangerously anti-social activities like the party hopping we are now seeing. How can we introduce ostracism, say, against those who offend our objective national interests in this way?
ochiengotani@gmail.com
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