President Kibaki is a
mysterious, inscrutable old man. That in a nutshell is why the opposition for
all its boasts about its political prowess has found it impossible to beat him;
resorting instead to smashing the chessboard and the pieces.
It is difficult to
beat an old man whose core strategy is to ignore you.
For Kenya at large, much accustomed as it is to an over-bearing
head of state and government, Mwai Kibaki's presidency -for all the calls for a
reduction in presidential powers- has proved to be a most introverted one.
Apart from a brief series of outings in the campaign period, gone was the
constancy of the powerful, omniscient, hectoring, itinerant patriarch. Instead,
all that filtered down from the presidency are genially broadcasted progress
reports on the growth of the economy, achievements in healthcare and in
governance -much of them relayed by the Government Spokesman or the Presidential
Press Service.
Given our history, there were
as a result frequent rumours of sloth and even infirmity, rumours which ought
to have been laid to rest by among other things the president's vigorous
defence of his legacy in the campaign period and in particular his 3-kilometres
walk in the sweltering coastal heat.
It must be confessed that his good
judgment in permitting officers of government free rein of their departments
and his retiring demeanour seem to have worked much better for national
development than did the preceding years of omnipresence, constant involvement
and interference. Even outside of the immediate economic and governance reasons
for permitting leadership at levels subsidiary to the presidency, it has been a
giant step in Kenya's political development towards true pluralist democracy that the
national political space is not consumed in the activity of a single
personality.
But back to the economic and
social progress of which there has been much. The economy has picked up,
farm-gate prices have risen across the board and in a reflection of wider
prosperity banks and the mobile phone companies are making windfall profits.
The campaign to reduce rural-urban migration by making rural life more
attractive is underway with extensive investments in agriculture and in the
provision of vital services like electricity and water to the rural areas.
That is not to say there is
nothing on which the Kibaki government can be justly excoriated. The Anglo-Leasing
scandals and the case of the shady Armenian duo prove stubborn and will always be a part of Kibaki's legacy. Some of his appointments in addition should have paid greater attention to the ethnic sensitivities of the Kenyan people. It is also clear that in the expulsion of the then LDP brigade from
government, President Kibaki inadvertently opened the door to accusations that he had alienated a large part of
the country, which alienation was subsequently exacerbated when the ODM late
last year managed to persuade a sizeable number of Kenyans that the President
was working for exclusive benefit of the Kikuyu. So Kibaki found himself, in
seeking to give the Kenyan people a more harmonious and effective government, in
a situation where he was depicted as an uncaring and tribal head of state.
And it is these cards, which
fell fortuitously on the ODM's lap, i.e. the idea that the people of the
president's ethnicity enjoyed greater social and economic prosperity than other
Kenyan ethnicities. To this end, Equity Bank, one of the most successful
indigenous banks, and one which predated Kibaki's government both in its
success and in its innovations, was cited as a beneficiary of
the fruits of patronage, just as was every other GEMA-owned or dominated business
(whether in reality or in perception) from Kameme, to Citizen, the pollsters
Steadman Group, the property market and even the stock market.
What the ODM and the pliant
media neglected to mention of course was the little fact that businesses thrive
in stable growing economies. They refused to show the coastal people that those
hotels long idle at the coast were now filled with tourists, that new hotels
were coming up and that the whole economy was benefiting as the tourists demanded entertainment, accomodation, food and local artefacts.
Against all decency,
they refused to see the benefits to farmers of tea, coffee, milk, maize, sugar
and wheat. They refused to acknowledge the massive effect that the
resuscitation of farmers' marketing organisations and the invigoration of the
cooperative movement was having around the country. They refused to acknowledge
the fact that the low interest rates regime had created a Kenya where almost anyone could approach a lending
organisation for a loan towards a business start-up, a Kenya where there were public funds aimed at the provision of financial resources for start-ups.
And it was not just in
business and the economy that the Kibaki government's successes were ignored
and again not just by the ODM, but from global reporting, by many across the
world. HIV-AIDs, Malaria, schools, universities, media, provision of services;
the success even alongside the failure has been massive.
To crown it all, the Kenyan
people were told that Kibaki had signed a pact with Uhuru Kenyatta and that the
Kikuyu would rule Kenya forever. They were sold the idea that the Kikuyu were adui, "our enemy" who, if allowed to
rule for the next five years would steal all that was left- this I am reporting
from what I heard a voter say on the polling day. Even the very public sale of Safaricom
was opposed on such grounds as we still hear the ODM pushing today, that it
would lead to the "these people" getting loans from Equity Bank and owning all
"our" assets. By election day hate
for "these people" grew and was extended to the President, providing a solution
to the puzzle of why there was such widespread violence against the Kikuyu when
the President was announced to have won the election.
There were mistakes made, and
there was and is great room for improvement, but to reduce the campaign as the
ODM did to an ethnic one, where the single greatest accusation against the
Kibaki government was that the Kikuyu were the exclusive beneficiaries of state
resources, was not just calculatedly malevolent, it invited and ignited the strife we see today.
For the President and those who advise him, it also presents an accusation. How can a government achieve so much success and yet not reflect this at the election? Why did it permit the ethnic-baiting, why did it not show the Kenyan people that the ODM's propaganda was untrue, that it had actually delivered for the entire country?
It is time now to change tactics, it is not just the ODM that Kibaki should be grapling with, but public opinion as well. Just as that long walk at the Coast answered those who made out that the president was incapacitated, so will facts laid out serve to destruct the myth the ODM has so carefully nurtured and reunite Kenya again.
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I revere your openness though.