Since the outcome of the last elections I have taken several positions that have shocked friends and foes alike and it seems not a day will go by without a challenge on why I seem to so effortlessly write ‘good stuff’ about President Uhuru Kenyatta, after having spent close to one year writing only negative hard-hitting things against him before.
To most, I must have changed my position because I am trying to catch his eye after he beat my candidate, for special favors and/or maybe even a job. After my stint in raw politics I know that most Kenyans believe no one does ‘something’ for ‘nothing’, so I take such comments with grace. However I do owe my more genuine ‘friends and foes’ an explanation on the ‘damascus moment’ that has changed Saul into Paul (or vice versa depending on who you are talking to)
First it is important to understand my problem with Candidate Uhuru Kenyatta.
I am a Kikuyu who after the 2007 PEV, spent 3 years meeting various community representatives across the country in a bid to understand why other tribes seemed to have accepted that it was okay to kill Kikuyus, including our babies, in pursuit of what they termed ‘historical justice’. My finding were that the ‘Kikuyu Question’ has a lot to do with how the Kikuyu political elites package their personal ambitions, or cover up their mistakes, by presenting them as ‘GEMA/Kikuyu community’ positions. I then purposed to challenge this habit whenever it came up, within my community.
So when Uhuru Kenyatta started calling for ‘Kikuyu unity’ to support his presidential bid I automatically became his harshest critic. It did not help that I believed that of all those running for national leadership he was the one person with the brand identity, time and resources to run as a ‘Kenyan’ candidate, rather than as a tribal kingpin. I was also quite sacred because the anti-Kikuyu narratives I had encountered across the country meant that were he to succeed in putting all of us in a tribal basket, and then lose in the elections, Kikuyus would be worse off than in 2007. This was what I kept saying about Uhuru, publicly and privately, in my columns.
My experience in the inter-ethnic forums had also created a desire to be an active participant in any national processes that concerned the determination of what was in Kenya’s best interest, moving forward. I became an active campaigner for the new constitution in 2010 and in 2011 raised over a million signatures in support of the ICC. As we moved into the 2013 general elections it was obvious I would get into politics and I started looking at various presidential candidates to choose who I would support.
I did not agree with Uhuru’s politics, and he had been indicted by the ICC, so it could not be him. I looked carefully at the experience and capacities of the other candidates and decided that, between Raila Odinga, Paul Muite, Peter Kenneth, Martha Karua, Mutava Musyimi and James Ole Kiyapi, Raila most closely represented what I was looking for after President Kibaki.
My candidate did not win and Uhuru Kenyatta is Kenya’s 4th President.
In this reality mine was to contemplate what was in Kenya’s best interests in the circumstances we now found ourselves in. I believed we needed to immediately reconcile Kenyans after the terribly divisive campaigns we had just gone through; fully implement Kenya’s constitutions over the next 3 years, which would include entrenching the rights and freedoms that Kenya had enjoyed under Kibaki; and finish reforming our public institutions.
This is when it became clear to me that the ICC was now a complication for Kenya because first there is the natural possibility that some of Uhuru & Ruto’s more zealous lieutenants, especially those now in powerful government positions, could try to compromise some of the processes I mentioned above as they try to help their bosses. It is also quite possible that some of the politicians, especially in CORD, will want to use the ICC as political ammunition against the new government. Then add the fact that international the ICC then becomes the ‘elephant-in-the-room’ in Kenya’s foreign policy.
I then had to admit that the ICC had become the process that could lead to the reversal of all the gains Kenya had made in over 30 years, in addition to taking the bitter divisions of the last elections to another level. I could (and cannot) see how Kenya would win in this situation. This was what I said in the first ‘shocking’ column I wrote immediately after the Supreme Court confirmed the Jubilee win.
President Kenyatta is also delivering on my expectations (so far). I understand a lot more of Kenya's ethnic problems after my time in the campaign, but he has also moved away from the raw tribal agenda I detested during the campaigns. He is also repeatedly speaking about his commitment to reconciling Kenya, has committed to fully implement the constitution, and is supporting the ongoing reforms of our institutions.
It is therefore difficult for me to credibly fight him, and I will not oppose him for the sake of opposing. I have also learnt that political support or resistance must move from personalities, to processes that work for us. If enough of us get this we will achieve Kenya's Vision 2030.
- See more at: http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-124624/my-newfound-support-uhuru-based-principle#sthash.MDVXfRUA.dpuf
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment