To stop politicians from interfering with our day to day lives, and using Kenya's hordes of unemployed, embittered and disillusioned youth as canon fodder in their power struggles, we have offered them plum jobs. We have a negotiated solution that will see the cost of government go up in a country which, already, "devotes a disproportionate shares of its taxes on administration and wages at the expense of provision of services."

In an interview in the UK's Financial Times, Raila Odinga, the biggest winner in the negotiated settlement, comes across as a thoughtful politician with a rational agenda for the future of the Kenyan nation. He takes his proposed new role as Prime Minister head on, stating that government policy will emerge through consensus in the cabinet and his duty will be, beyond trying to influence that consensus, to oversee and coordinate its implementation. Raila paints this new deal as heralding an era where, the 'disconnect', seen in the past between 'rhetoric and practice', will cease to exist in government policy. Beyond the politics, however, he takes on the thorny issue of Internally Displaced People and that perpetual blotch on the fabric of this Nation called Ethnic Clashes. He proposes the establishment of dialogue between the leaders of various ethnic communities to rally for peaceful inter-ethnic coexistence. This, he proposes, will be achieved through the formation of a national ethnic conference. The ethnic crisis, he says, stems from different roots: "'You have for example the Kikuyu-Kalenjin, which is purely land. Then you have Kisii-Kalenjin, which is a boundary dispute. There's Maasai-Kisii, Masai-Kikuyu, which is about land and water. Luo-Kikuyu is more economic because they don't have a common border. It's more marginalisation, and it's the same thing with the Kikuyu-Luhya."

At that point he begins to lose me.

First, I would like to point out that nowhere in the interview does he talk about reparations and restitution. What happened to the rhetoric of 'no peace without justice?' Or was the justice about ODM gaining power rather than the resolution of long-standing social and economic injustices against the mwananchi? Where and when, Mr. Prime Minister, can we, and I believe this to be a fundamental part of our healing process, hang us some criminals? (Metaphorically speaking of course.) Is the Prime Minister's silence on this matter an attempt at protecting an emergent status quo that has brought genocidaires from opposite sides of the political divide into the same government? This silence worries me, especially when I hear others - politicians from the Rift Valley, for instance - speak of amnesty for those accused of inciting or perpetrating ethnic violence.

But returning to Raila's view of where the ethnic crisis stems from, how is the rift between the Agikuyu and the Luo and the Agikuyu and the Luhya about economics and marginalisation? How can my family and I be responsible, in virtue of our Gikuyuness, for the marginalisation of a family in Bungoma or Rarieda that we do not know of? We might have our inherited prejudices against those whom I was raised to refer to as the Beasts From The West but we neither make government policy nor are consulted on it. When regions in this country lack roads or access to clean water, do not blame me - I am just a private citizen. Blame successive governments. Governments that, whether or not they were headed by an ethnic Gikuyu or Kalenjin, had in them Luos, Gusiis, Kambas: a motley crew of tribal chiefs.

The problem with Kenya is that the political elite has always used the tribe as a bargaining chip. In the war for political power and attendant economic might, the Kenyan politician always marshals his/her tribes people as cannon fodder. It is no wonder then that those politicians who find themselves bundled out of the scramble for the national cake bring 'their people' down with them. Luo Nyanza, for instance, is one of the poorest and least-developed areas in Kenya, yet it has more PhDs and Hummer-driving elites per capita than any other province in this country. The ethnic-Luo individual has done well for himself, walking the corridoors of political power on two continents. But what has she or he done for 'the people'? Let us take one Luo individual: Oginga Odinga. At the birth of the Kenyan nation, with divide et impera deeply ingrained in us, our biggest challenge was the big tribes versus the small tribes. The Agikuyu and the Luo were on one side - they not only had the distinct advantage of sheer numbers but, also because of these numbers, they had more of their own who were educated and economically empowered. The small tribes sought majimbo as a way of countering this. The big tribes said no. The small tribes, or their tribal leaders at least, were co-opted as soon as Uhuru arrived. KADU had lost the General Election in 1963, but it didn't mean that they lost in the looting of the young nation. They brought their tribes with them as a bargaining chip but not for sharing of the loot. Soon after Kenya became a republic under a centralised system of government. A nation called Kenya had been founded on the principles of equal justice and the right of every one of its citizens to own - through legal means, of course - land and property anywhere in the country. But the tribal leaders went and got themselves all the land in Kenya. There is one Kikuyu who went on to get himself a corner of State House, a thousand acres here, one hundred thousand acres there and almost an entire district in coast province. (Have you asked Ronald Ngala, the champion of the small tribes of the Coast and everywhere who he was representing in Government when this happened?) That Kikuyu wasn't my father or my relative and he never took that land for me or my relatives. So why should my people, who bought a measly acre of land from a Nandi out in Eldoret be evicted? Where can a Luo, whose grandfather went to Limuru to work for a pittance in a shoe factory, return to?

As the boat that was young Kenya proceeded to cruise steadily, tribe became a non-issue in national politics. With a Kikuyu - Jomo Kenyatta - as president, and the son of Ramogi as his deputy, the Luo and the Agikuyu could not accuse each other of economic this and marginalisation that. Then Kenyatta and Odinga had a falling out. One day, in his political base of Kisumu, Odinga and Kenyatta traded insults in public and by the time they were done, 11 Kenyans lay dead. From then until the death of Kenyatta, Odinga's political star was thrust into oblivion. The ker went down with his tribe.That was the last time, Muiguithania would be seen in Luo Nyanza. That was the last time 'development' would go to Luo Nyanza. Kenyatta - the 'leader' of the Kikuyu had a fight with the leader of the Luo. Unfortunately, Mzee was the president and 'developer' number one. One Kikuyu marginalised the Luo. But that Kikuyu, just like the other who took all the land, was not my father, and he didn't divert the money for building schools and roads into my home district; no, he sent it to a numbered account in Switzerland or bought himself an acre in Monaco. Who knows? Do not ask me, all I know is that me and mine never saw that money. One other thing that I know is that, even though there are hundreds of thousands more poor people in Luo Nyanza than in my home district, the poor in my home district remain poor. The poor, in Kenyatta's home district of Kiambu, where I come from, still die of the same preventable diseases as yours do; they are victims, too, of the plunder of this country that, when the recycled faces of our new portmanteau government are analysed, doesn't were a tribal but aristocratic face.

It is no wonder, then, that when the Prime Minister-designate claims identifies the cause of the Luo-Kikuyu ethnic crisis as economic marginalisation, I gag. I dare him to look at any Kikuyu member of his government: the only way the term 'economic marginalisation' can be applied is to refer to what they have done to the rest of the citizenry.