Monday, June 23, 2014

How can your conscience be clear?

They can quote all the numbers they want, and they can hint heavily and persistently about all they have done to keep us safe, but whether they will do it now or in a year's time, it is clear that "my conscience is clear" is not the standard by which we will judge the men and women who failed to anticipate and stop the raiders of Mpeketoni. If they had simply attacked once and withdrawn to their redoubts, Kenyans would only be slightly less outraged. But the fact that the brigands struck twice and in both attacks the security forces were dancing the night away at cabaret shows in Malindi or Mombasa brings the bile to our mouths and stiffens our hand against them.

Why do Kenyan public failures find it difficult to resign when it is clear that they are ineffective at their jobs? It is not that they do not know that when comparisons are made with their peers or some of their predecessors they come out poorer. Cabinet Secretary Ole Lenku has been compared in an extremely unflattering light to the frighteningly effective John Michuki, while Inspector -General Kimaiyo's command of the National Police Service has led to ever vocal demands to "Bring back Ali", the super-effective former Commissioner of Police, Hussein Ali. Perhaps the late John Michuki and Hussein Ali set the bar higher than is the norm in Kenya's shambolic national security infrastructure, but it is not enough - NOT ENOUGH - to claim that "my conscience is clear" as if that will reverse the blood flowing in the streets.

Uncle Moody, the affable former Vice-President set the stage with the my-conscience-is-clear mantra when he was asked to resign over the multi-billion shilling Anglo Leasing scams. Since then it has been the reliable fall back for every incompetent public servant - so long as their consciences are clear, they will not resign. So long as the numbers point to a slight improvement since they day they became the people in charge, they will not resign. So long as the President thinks the sun shines out of their asses, they will not resign. Even when bodies are strewn in the streets for the carrion-eaters to feast on, filmed and broadcast for the world to see - they will not resign.

If you had a conscience and because of your style of management - let us be honest: because of your incompetence - the only honourable thing to do is to resign. It is to remove your incompetent ass from the scene of the crime and repair to whatever sinecure you have established for yourself as far from the prying eyes of the world as you can get. It is not honourable, not in the least, to remind people that you are God-fearing, that you have done your best, that your conscience is clear. These are not justifications for your continued employment at the people's expense.

As a people we have inhered to some dark habits. We no longer bat an eyelid when a policeman casually demands a bribe. We do not blink when a nurse watches a woman go into labour without even the humanity to provide a towel. We accept and move on every single time school-going children, their parents and school administrators conspire to cheat in national examinations. After the tenth, fiftieth, hundredth, nth revelation of a love triangle involving a man of the cloth, we are no longer outraged that what we give in the name of Christ and tithe in the name of the Church has gone on to fund the increasingly decadently lavish lifestyles of the mtumishi and mchungaji. But we will have given up completely on everything we once believed in if the man in charge when over two hundred Kenyans have been murdered by terrorists blithely declares that he will not resign because his conscience is clear and that he has done the best he could in the circumstances. We will have given up on hope that we could ever be a better people.

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