Thursday, May 08, 2014

Let go of baba's hand.

There is no contradiction in the Head of State and Commander-in-Chief being away drumming up business for the republic while remote-detonated improvised explosive devises are going off in buses or grenades are being hurled at the commuting public. None at all. Some US president, perhaps Calvin Coolidge, once declared that the business of America is business or words to that effect. If Kenya is to overcome decades of inequity and iniquity because of the skewed public investment of successive governments, it is with private money, especially private foreign money, that this will be done.

What Kenyans have failed to do for fifty years, they are being called to do in less than two. Kenyans are called upon to hold their government, and their President, Governor, Member of Parliament, Member of the County Assembly, Chief Justice, Inspector-General of Police and Director of Public Prosecutions to account for their acts of commission and omission. Since Independence, the Government of Kenya, in the imperial guises of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, decreed how and when Kenyans would engage with the Government, how the Republic would be governed, and who would do the governing.

Whatever civil society that existed in 1963, Kenyans only remember the assassinations and the grand looting of the national treasury. There are few who can attest to the fairness of the land administration system. There are few who will admit to fairness in the allocation of public funds for teaching, healthcare, roads, piped water or police resources over the past five decades. Uhuru Kenyatta came to office after a decade of trial-and-error in the attempts of his predecessor to reverse forty years of economic sclerosis. He has much to accomplish and this will not be done by staying at home every time a bomb goes of or a grenade is hurled at the innocent; at some point, Cabinet Secretary Ole Lenku and Inspector-General Kimaiyo must let go of baba's hand and get on with the job of keeping Kenyans safe.

Some of the things Uhuru Kenyatta must accomplish will not come cheap; the revenue his government collects on an annual basis is tied up keeping many civil servants in truffles. Therefore, he will need the money that foreigners are willing to part with. In exchange for that money, we wait with bated breath to find out what our President has offered for sale. Is it the mountains of coal and limestone in Kitui? Is it the seas of oil and water in the bowels of the earth in Turkana? We pray that our President breaks with Kenya's pernicious secretive past and reveals what his government has one to make our lives safe and prosperous.

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