As I said last week I am still withholding congratulations for President-elect Uhuru Kenyatta and his designated deputy William Ruto. But if the Supreme Court upholds their victory in round one tomorrow then I will dash to the nearest post office with two letters of congratulation.
I know they are ‘digital’ and would probably prefer e-mails or SMSes but I have my own reasons why I will use ‘analogue’ technology to get my message to them.
Now let me render my profuse apologies to those who either scolded or gave me the thumbs-up because they missed the satirical load in my column last week.
Some UhuRutoists saw in me a conceited compatriot beckoned into the Jubilee by KK (Kikuyu-Kalenjin) genie. And so they heartily congratulated me.
Then there are the impatient Railaists, who in just a few paragraphs concluded I had gone down as a tribal bigot using a national newspaper to declare he was with Uhuru because Uhuru is with Ruto, who like me is Kalenjin.
I will now thank the hundreds who mailed me directly or sent their comments to either our KTN or Standard Online platform where the piece was as usual run.
Even if you insulted me, that is the nature of columns. I would be more worried if everyone agrees with what I write.
But I am not encouraging you to call me names today please.
To do that on Good Friday would be to encourage you to sin and burn in hell in your hereafter. So that I won’t do, I need you to keep reading me and giving me contrary opinion to that which I have.
At same time I wouldn’t gag you from sharing your views with me, that would be cowardly and unprofessional, and I don’t consider myself either of that. After seven years of writing columns, now headed to 400 pieces, I have developed a thick skin, and take it all in my stride.
Now let us come to this week.
No doubt the Supreme Court ruling will go either way.
Those making predictions are probably using their analysis bereft of all facts before the judges, or are simply engaging in what our ancestors used to do with cowrie shells.
Before you wildly urge me on till I get myself summoned by Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, let me now veer off the road to sub judice, and take the hypothetical case that Uhuru’s victory is upheld.
These two gentlemen have the numbers in Parliament and the Senate. They are also by no means paupers. Now I have not talked about Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s land. That is just in your head!
But seriously, I know there is always temptation in politics to deploy numbers and money against opponents, meaning the Opposition.
That is why today we must, even as we wish UhuRuto well especially over that haemorrhaging case at The Hague, remind them of an incident that made the President-elect dismissively snap thus of retiring Mzee Kibaki: ‘He is hands off, ears off, everything off’!’
President Kibaki had incensed Uhuru, then the Leader of Official Opposition — that is before he folded up the only check against the Executive and walked into Kibaki’s alliance — by picking ministers from his Kanu. In Kibaki’s cunning scheme, he called it Government of National Unity!
There is a parallel between this and what UhuRuto are doing with small parties; it is what under Kanu we called defections, after Ugali sessions but which Kibaki perfected by calling it ‘GNU’.
I am worried of one thing; if the tyranny of numbers is deployed in the two Houses, if Uhuru cripples Opposition even if it is under the spirit of free will on the other side, we would slowly be going back to dictatorship of the majority.
I smell a rat
Ironic isn’t it? Yes, it would not have mattered if these overtures were confined to the peripheral parties but when Uhuru started calling on Coalition for Reforms and Democracy’s MPs to also ‘co-operate’ with his side, I smelled a rat. Don’t you? If you are not then you are either blinded by anxiety of what ruling comes tomorrow, or you have started your celebrations too early.
Before you admonish me, let me remind you why Kanu was able to remove the infamous Section 2(a), in 1982 making itself the only party for Kenyans. It was a question of numbers. Not clear?
Kanu couldn’t simply vote against itself. Now if we mutilate the Opposition, whether we hate Raila or not, we shall soon realise the actual meaning of tyranny.
To put all these in perspective, look at how the new MPs want to make its first assignment the ‘murder’ of Sarah Serem’s Salaries & Remuneration Commission.
See how there were threats to bundle out some foreign journalists the other day.
If it does not bother you, think again of how we have embraced a country like China whose citizens do not access Google as you and me do, because they can get naughty ideas about that animal called Democracy.
I could go on and on, but the point is if Uhuru and Ruto are endorsed, they must be gracious to those they defeated, appreciate half the voters didn’t vote for them, and understand they are Kenya’s and not just Jubilee leaders.
Above all, they must draw the boundaries between whipping democracy using their numbers, or nurturing that which we have always wanted to see thrive; a government with checks and balances.
But if they go for the shorter route of killing opposition so that they would have it easy in pushing their agenda through Parliament, by removing all checks against their government, then we can as well start looking out of the window from this house called Kenya.
The writer is Managing Editor, Daily Editions, at The Standard.
ktanui@standardmedia.co.ke
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