I digress; but it is now clear that Kenyans are today presented with a choice, a most exigent and defining choice, one which we will have to make here and now and whose postponement only emboldens the foes of the nation, postpones a true settlement and makes more catastrophic the final outcome of the present stalemate. Let's discard the idea of a grand coalition, we know it will not work. We are a nation under siege, some courage would not be out of place; we need to have elections now to end the blockade of the Rift Valley.

We are not just referring to the presidential election, not just to the parliamentary one, we need a General Election now, and we need to decide whether we want to remain Kenyans or whether we will allow people to carve out states for themselves in our midst.  Are we all Kenyans? Are there Kenyans who may be touched, and others who we should treat as brothers?

We need to give the executive the ammunition to smash those signposts welcoming people to the Republic of the Rift Valley, we need to give officers of government the power to authorise the disarming of the entire Rift Valley, the annihilation of every soul that is willing to raise arms against its neighbour. Such campaigns are crucial if we are to save lives, the enemies arranged against us are many and are organised, but a head of state, any head of state whose legitimacy is not beyond question, whoever he is, cannot order such measures without running the risk of a mutiny in the security forces and a total civil war.

We cannot ignore that there are citizens from our country arranged in tents and shacks at police stations. We cannot permit that families have been moved from their sources of income in Naivasha and been thrust on relatives they were likely supporting in Homa Bay. There must now be a national campaign to re-arm these refugees with their votes, all those who have been expelled from their homes.  If the bigots among us thought that they could disenfranchise Kenyans by chasing them from their homes, we must work to give those Kenyans their votes. Our national emblems demand it, that we affirm to the criminal gangs, to the politicians behind them and to the victims of the violence that there is only one Kenya; indivisible.

If the IDPs cannot return to their homes for fear of violence, let us have them vote from the refugee camps, after all it is only the law as confirmed through this election that can regain their paradise for them. Let them vote as Limuru residents, even if they are now resident in Busia. A president whose legitimacy is in question cannot order the annihilation of the arsonists, he cannot quell the thirst for revenge, he cannot order the prosecution of those who fill the airwaves with bile, or the incarceration of those who finance and inspire these brigades of anarchy. A president whose legitimacy is uncertain cannot call on the support of donor aid or the business class to help rebuild the country. He cannot risk the urgent rebuilding of Kisumu; he cannot assure tourists that the country has been pacified and that a holiday in Kenya would be a treat.

We need to confer legitimacy on our national institutions; we need to turn a page. We cannot any longer suffer the sticky present, where we cannot make plans, where doctors are kept away from their hospitals, where HIV-AIDS drugs cannot get to patients, where univerisities and national schools are half empty and where fuel is absent from our third largest city. This is Kenya, it is not Zimbabwe. A famine is looming with the North Rift idle and supply lines interrupted, urgent work fertiliser application, weeding and sowing needs to be done. Children are losing out as schools are burned and armed mobs threaten school heads with murder.

We need to affirm our sovereignty. We cannot any longer listen to patronising lectures from on high about how to run our country. However, irritating as those lectures are our present predicament declares that we need them, it declares we cannot govern ourselves, that we deserve to be told how, and that the haughtier the voice, the more arrogant the attitude, the more likely its chances of success with us; for we do not listen to reason.

With every day of violence, with every day of uncertainty we are shedding millions of dollars in national revenue and haemorrhaging the world's goodwill.  Stickers marked ethnic cleansing do not come off easily, and we cannot even start healing while we are engaged in a stalemate with politicians talking peace in Nairobi and preaching hate over the weekend.

We are precluding long term investment and compelling even our neighbours to seek alternative routes for their cargo. Every single day that the Luo farm workers from Central Kenya spend in Nyanza questions the validity of the Kenyan state. Every single day that Kisumu lies in ruins entrenches the feeling of exclusion and marginalisation. Yes, I know, they did it to themselves. But that is no excuse when we are one family, and those sufferering are our brothers and sisters. The fact that milk farmers in the North Rift are suffering the consequences of having destroyed their KCC dairy is no cause for Schadenfreude. We  may not see the links now, in our comfy offices, behind our high gates and our bulky guards, in the safety of our regions, in the isolation offered by being surrounded by people we share an ethnicity with but the destruction in one part of Kenya, the empty hotels at the coast, the interruption to tea exports, the silly campaigns and boycotts, and the total mess that is the Kenyan media and civil society portend an even greater implosion if we do not pull our fingers out.

Those against elections argue that we are likely to face violent campaigns. True, but the alternative is still more violence, there are armed groups being organised even now.  These groups threaten to burn the Rift Valley up unless their man is made president. Latest reports from Nairobi indicate that the politicians want to review the election. What then? What if the review decides that Mwai Kibaki ought to remain in State House? What if it determines that Raila Odinga should be the new President? What chance that the opposing side will accept that?  Elections are the only way out.

We can ask the international community to send troops, we can even pay them out of our national coffers. The business class would be only too happy to have this issue settled once and for all. Two months, one month for the campaign and another for the post election settlement. Then we can truly move on. 

While our opponent and its cohort insist on difference, we must insist on sameness, on fraternity. We must embrace our Kikuyu brothers and dismiss the evil crusade against them. We must insist that every last Kenyan, across racial lines and across ethnic lines has a right, not just to settle anywhere, but to work there, to run for political office and to take on whatever political stance.  This is no binary politics, this is no good versus evil; this is the very survival of our country.