Saturday, November 03, 2012

A reckoning is coming.

Some whack-job is suggesting that we "beef up" the security of all presidential contenders because if one of them is killed before the general election, the country will become unstable or some such rubbish. This is fast becoming the theme of the general election. Our perfidious political ruling class makes a grab for the last cent in our pocket, we stand idly by, and some idiot supports the money-grab through the feckless media. It is increasingly looking like the political ruling class dimply does not care that Kenyans have had enough of its avarice. They simply refuse to acknowledge that while the role they play in mediating the relationships of the peoples of Kenya, politically, economically, socially or even religiously, they are not as indispensable as we have led them to believe. Some, like Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto and Raila Odinga, are truly popular among their vast constituencies. Make no mistake, though: they are not indispensable.

Even a casual examination of the hundreds of millions of shillings they are collectively expending on their presidential campaigns will tell you that much of it is spent on the wrong messages and for the wrong reasons. If they were to set aside a smidgeon of their campaign war-chests for their protection, hiring the army of armed guards that someone claims they require, then our national treasury can remain for the solution of some of our most urgent problems. We were silent when our government spent upwards of 1 billion shillings buying and retrofitting an office for the Prime Minister. It never occurred to them that the position of Prime Minister would not last the life of the coalition or perhaps, they did not care. We have spent 500 million shillings building a mansion for the Vice-President which he may never get to use as the general election is just round the corner. Why he needed a mansion in the first place has never been adequately addressed. These two wish to succeed the President in 2013. They have singularly failed to explain why they should live lives of opulence and luxury to rival those of Russian oil oligarchs and Las Vegas casino moguls while millions of Kenyans barely survive day-to-day and hundreds of thousands of children make do with "elementary" instruction at school while dodging bullets, mosquitoes and pederasts.

Wealth honestly acquired is not a bad thing; it is something that all Kenyans must admire and emulate. It is in the pursuit of our happiness that we determine what wealth is enough for our needs or our greed. Such pursuit, however, must be honest. It cannot be based on the cutting of regulatory corners or the merciless exploitation of the less intelligent, the less strong. Our ruling class has demonstrated a singular passion for the amassing of wealth and it has been wildly successful. Bar a handful of relatively honest entrepreneurs, the vast majority is made up of buccaneers, profiteers, robber-barons and mass-murderers. But it is the cohort that sits in the National Assembly and in the Executive branch that has demonstrated the basest of passions. Blind to the suffering of the peoples they claim to represent, they have single-mindedly raided the national Treasury for their own personal gain, and gain they have. It is not enough that they earn several million shillings over the course of their terms as Members of Parliament or as Ministers and Assistant Ministers, they insist that we must "loan" them, collectively, billions more more housing, cars and foreign travel. We pay for their medical and life insurance and we have generously funded their pensions once they "retire" from the National Assembly. WE have led them to believe that these privileges - for they are privileges - are theirs as of right.

And now as their leading lights helicopter from one corner of the country to another, and the spread their messages of hate and animosity, they demand that we must place even greater national resources to keeping them safe from us. The irony completely escapes them. The commit great crime against us. They steal from us. They ask us to re-elect them or even promote them. And they ask that we must pay them for this privilege. A reckoning is coming. It is not the death of one politician that will set this nation on fire. A final straw is yet to be added that will break our collective camel's back. It will either be a child too many who has died of a preventable disease or has suffered at the hands of a pederast. It will be the village that witnesses one death too many from starvation  or banditry. It will be one community "relocated" one time too many to assuage the "feelings" of their "host" community. A reckoning is coming.

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