The ODM leader Raila Odinga is a famous man for his many talents. Foremost among these are his organising and rousing skills. It is true that few politicians in the history of Kenya have had as much ability to provoke their followers to action as has the ODM's captain.
So it is that many Kenyans hoped in earnest that he would be able to quell the violent passion in his supporters, that he would be able to save Kenyan lives by asking that his people restrain themselves, take to the courts and settle disputes particularly those over land in a civilised and non-violent manner. He has pointedly refused to do that, famously insisting to the foreign media that he would not anaesthetize the Kenyan people as they were being raped, and then also shocking the international media by crudely comparing the post-election tragedy with mere post-match skirmishes between the supporters of rival football clubs.
But what is guaranteed to forever tie the opposition leader to the vicious outbreaks of violence against the GEMA ( Gikuyu, Meru, Embu) and the Kamba, is his announcement in Kisumu that, "We should have seven of the 10 parliamentary seats in Kisii, but Kibaki men stole the votes and we only got four. The Kisii are our people. We must not touch them." I understand that all well-meaning people are unlikely to believe that a national politician would so tacitly endorse violence against sections of the population, but here is the evidence from a newspaper that operates on a similar platform and which quite clearly endorses similar views. The ODM leader is in these fighting words endorsing violence against those who did not support his party, exonerating those who he has decided voted for him and as a result condemning the others, those non-Kenyans to whatever the wananchi class will decide is their fate. Whereas the Kisii should not be touched, the GEMA and the Akamba who have been the other main victims of this violence, may be touched. This, is the humble pronouncement of a national leader at a rally where he had a great opportunity to take on a reconciliatory stance, to play president and promote an end to the violence. Instead he took to the stage and taking advantage of the people's emotional state, urged the crowds to come out and fight in the streets.
I am not sure that the people of Kisii would be happy to have their lives saved by these kind words, and we should perhaps not be surprised by Raila's statement, he is after all the first national politician in Kenyan history to declare an entire fifth of the country's population 'adui'. He also bears the great distinction of being the first national politician (in Meru during the campaigns) to promise tears to those who would not vote for him. I do not know how those Luhya and Kisii families who lost their people in the Rift Valley will take to the ODM candidate's attempt to appropriate for his altar the lives of all those who died in the Rift Valley. I am not sure what they will make of his failure to lament the bows and arrows, he did not lament the burned church, or the doors marked with the ODM 41 slogan he has lived this past year. He has if he was ever uninvolved in the violence and the punishment of dissent, now come out boldly to endorse it. So it is that we now meet the ODM's mischevious claim of ethnic cleansing against the government, which move it is promoting at the International Criminal Court. Again the ODM side are told that the state is out to finish them, thus ensuring that they come out again now ready to fight, the already selected enemy, to the death. Paying absolutely no attention to the reports from the Rift Valley, and with a media and civil society missing in action, the ODM Secretary General declares that the State action in Kisumu (which incidentally many local business owners are calling delayed and not firm enough) was both premeditated and designed to kill as many as possible. And Anyang' Nyong'o is not without inspiration, in his only comment on the Rift Valley attacks to date, the ODM leader Raila Odinga attempted to justify them first by constructing a narrative in which these attacks were a revenge mission, and then declaring that the perpetrators were unaware that those they chasing after had hidden themselves among women and children. So again, we find an endorement of the violence, except perhaps Kikuyu women ought perhaps to be grateful that they are deemed unworthy of the sword and the flame, destiny's which must now be the left, by the process of elimination to the males of the GEMA and Akamba people. The Langata MP as I said is famous for his organisational aptitude, and his violent ways, but he is also famous for putting his foot into his mouth. In the same week that it finally dawned on even the most stubborn that the Rift Valley massacres were premeditated, planned and disciplined, his endorsement in Kisumu will make the case for his innocence so much harder to prove. |
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emocracy is a process that institutionalises fair, general rules that risk a loss of power. If a government , after an initial breakthrough resorts to force or fraud and does not play by the new democratic rules...then at the popular level, the power holders will seem illegitimate and a violent anti-democratic opposition can seem legitimate" (Edward Freidman, Democratisation:Generalising the East Asian Experience, 1994, p 22) 
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Your pain is understandable under the circumstances. I think Kenyans need to start thinking beyond the politicians and we must now start preaching a one Kenya amongst Kenyans since the politicians seem bent to have us kill one another. We need to reach out the other individual whom the politician does not want us to talk to.
Frankly, the stories I hear of revenge gall me, and I keep thinking that the tit for tat we see will only hurt and eliminate the poor!