These Kenyans know that in Kenya, some people feed their dogs with expensive dog meal from the supermarket. Some of them remember the unusual speed with which government business was conducted when, for example, President Kibaki, in just a few minutes, was sworn in at dusk, or how quickly MPs resolved to raise their pay above that of the members of England's House of Lords; one understands voter impatience and their unga slogans when they are asked by bellicose ministers to give the government more time (after squandering 6 years) to effect changes meaningful to ordinary folk. Many regularly have to strip wild trees of unpalatably bitter wild berries and boil them on an inefficient wood fire to feed their hungry children who will never go beyond the now impotent (“free” primary school) standard eight class.

Mutui Museo, or “good neighbour” is the narrow tribal initiative to plead with wealthy and relatively rich members of a certain tribe and their friends to finance the purchase and free distribution of seed, and install irrigation infrastructure in the arid part of Kenya inhabited mainly by that tribe; its intention is to ensure a continuity of subsistence food even during famines.

This knee jerk philanthropy is commendable but reactionary: it relies on mercy rather than deliberate government policy to ensure the survival of marginalized Kenyans. Mercy is not a constant; pro-poor budgetary policy can be. The only reason why every citizen ceded his or her individual right to a central or local government is so that that they would not have to wait for a guilt-stricken MP to massage his tribe’s reluctant upper class into ceding a meagre portion of their (often ill- gotten) fortune to buy food or seed for hungry peasants in the countryside. Caroline Mutoko of Kiss100, who has caught the attention of Kofi Annan as a voice of the masses, has often done the same thing, but decidedly asks help from and benefits all Kenyans.

As solutions to perennial hunger, disease and poverty gather dust in Government cabinets, one asks why there is a permanent disconnect between radical reforms in resource distribution and the Government’s willingness to execute those reforms? In December 2007, the people of Kenya thought that replacing 80% of their elected representatives with younger and progressive-sounding members of parliament would re-link reform ideology, and the government’s ability to execute the reforms. They were wrong.

Executing popular reforms would strike at the heart of vested interests; hence the inability and reluctance of the current Government to execute meaningful reforms. Nearly all the power to reform is vested in just one office, the Presidency. If its occupant and the vested interests that influence his presidential thinking do not fancy reform, kwisha, it will not happen.

Is it possible then, to propel one from the middle class to the executive presidency, immunizing him or her from the intoxicating influence of big capital? Where such a presidency allows revenue from national resources and tax from the middle class to be applied to resource-poor regions of the country? Is there a person in Kenya with real moral (not tribal or regional) courage and fire in his belly to ignore and withstand the tempest of exclusivist posturing of big capital? One who can deliberately slant budgetary distribution in favour of arid and marginalised areas, one who can apply an unusual quantum of national income to pro-poor social amenities and opportunity creating initiatives? Is there?

Doing this would undermine or destroy the grand capitalist state and its patron-in-chief -- the executive president -- and this is the reason for the inability and reluctance of the current Government (a mongrel of big anti-reform ministers, there to protect and entrench old money, new capital and a smattering of pro-reform but impotent ministers without the power to even purchase a manual typewriter without the head of civil service's approval). I request anybody reading this to enrich and distil this idea, hone its rough edges -- in the short term, to identify alternative national leadership, and in the long term to guarantee socio-economic and trans-generational equity.

My personal bias is a 46-year-old bearded chap whose name (BAS) I hope you will all temporarily withhold from the political sharks. He is top of my list for Interim President in 2012-2014; if it should come to pass, during his term, he must consciously, amongst many other reforms, dismantle the executive presidency and recede into a nominal presidency within a year, and hand over within two to a new power matrix based on a new constitution that will have dispersed power to constitutional institutions other than the presidency.

Over 25 years, I have seen enough of this man and his woman to confirm that both are resistant to the smell of cheap opportunity (he has several times declined to be appointed to public office) he will tirelessly repel bad friends and their odious influence from his circle (ask me), and his nervous system does not react to -- indeed is immune -- to the exciting effects of creature comforts (I laughed him out of town before he reluctantly, and quite recently agreed to buy a television set, which features only 4 free channels ); he saw no reason to change the rustic and well worn (only) sofa set he inherited from his retired father at Woodley until the other day when he gave it away. He and his wife lost a child very early in marriage and they have known and processed grief in its extreme form. The couple have confronted and reconciled with the limits of their humanness in their respective families.

His service greater than self interest is documented in his Quaker (Friends) Church roots, and in his non denominational fellowship where he has endlessly served as elder, and at Rotary, and other thankless theatres of philanthropy. He paid his taxes so well that he now chairs the local tax committee. Let the interrogation begin and let’s have other names and reasons opening them up to the ruthless interrogation necessary to come to a wise destination. Meanwhile, ignore the lynch mob.

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