A large public meeting has been called in Bungoma this Sunday, the 31^st of January. The rally has been called by Saboti MP Eugene Wamalwa and his confederates in the Simama Kenya political action group. It is not clear that the event will go ahead, following threats, made in public by local politicians, to stop the rally taking place.

These threats are the sort of, 'come if you dare' challenges that history promises will deliver great bloodshed and destruction of property. It is a naked effort at political incitement and intimidation, an attempt at corralling sections of the country off of what are deemed ‘external influences,' an effort at the kind of ethnic balkanisation that has led to the exclusion of certain ethnicities from national political groupings and led to the exclusion and resentments that bore the pre and post-election violence in 2008.

The Saboti MP, young and open to offers of association and allegiance, has made clear that he is willing to work with the Simama Kenya outfit, created by President Kibaki's son Jimmy and fronted as a movement to finally change the destiny of Kenya's youth.

A few interesting facts first. The first is that Eugene, or Engine as he is now known in parts of the wider Bukusu districts, is also running for the chairmanship of Ford-Kenya, a formerly powerful party in the region and one which was once led by his brother, the late Vice President Michael Wamalwa. The second is that Eugene is not the local MP; indeed he is not even an MP in the same province. Kenyan MPs often take offence at public engagements of any sort being held in their constituency without their permission and involvement. The third is that Jimmy Kibaki is seen to be a representative of powerful forces from Central Kenya, which region, a rival political grouping succeeded in persuading Kenyans is responsible for much of their economic and political deprivation.

I'll be the last one to hold brief for the Simama group. It is unclear what its intentions are, and its public face does not inspire any confidence that it has either the intention or the spirit to deliver to the country's youth. ‘Raundi hii' does look like being as ‘mchezo' as previous attempts.

Still, it is clear though that powerful forces, working with the tacit approval of the security apparatus, mainstream media, and with the silent acquiescence of the human rights groups have decided that Eugene ought not to be given that stage. His Simama Kenya movement has been branded a malicious political import, and efforts have been made to associate it with the KKK alliance, a slur the mainstream media and the ODM employ to slander the mooted political alliance between the Vice President, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, the Minister for Agriculture, the Minister for Tourism and their respective allies in Parliament.

This ought to interest every Kenyan, not merely for the anarchy that it pledges to deliver should neither side choose to withdraw before the weekend, but more for the fact that it shows that more needs to be done to instil in all of us the lessons of the 2008 violence.

It is most desirable that each political party or grouping be allowed entry into, and space to compete in each part of the country, in every ethnicity and province. The most optimal path towards depriving our politics of the fear of marginalisation and detriment should your political grouping or ethnic alliance lose an election - and therefore to diminishing the potential for violence in our politics- is to ensure that each grouping has such a national outlook that every part of the country can take pride in some representation of it in whatever group triumphs. This would necessarily lead to a de-ethnicisation of our politics, and to its transformation into a competition on the desirability of political ideas and solutions. Politicians will no longer be able to threaten doom should ‘our tribe lose the election.'

It is true that even under such a liberal understanding, certain political groups will be very unpopular in parts of the country, but that is a decision that the free people need to make for themselves.

Fundamentally, and this is uncontroversial in the writing of the new constitution, we ought to guarantee each and every Kenyan, freedom of speech and political association. These two are the very foundation on which a political culture beneficial to the Kenyan people can be built up.

The people of Bungoma, and anywhere else that Simama Kenya takes its message must be allowed to listen to what Eugene and his partners have to offer them. They must be allowed to applaud the ambitious young politicians, to heckle them, and if need be to boycott their rallies. Eugene Wamalwa, if his detractors are right, must be allowed to suffer the rude awakening that a sparse audience will deliver.