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Because There is Life After The Referendum....
#45 - 0--clubafrika--Because There is Life After The Referendum....--2005-11-24 08:56:57
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.....Kenyans must ask President Kibaki and Raila Odinga to restore sanity on the political landscape:
Yes, we have fought the good fight for whatever reason. We have called each other names and maligned one another in the name of the constitution.
The referendum debate has been ugly, vicious and even lethal. Stones, pangas and sticks have been thrown at one another in reckless abundance. The police in their characteristic brutality have not been left out of the action either. They have used sticks and guns to clobber, maim and murder innocent civilians at will. It has been a free-for-all affair. At the end of it all, the theatre of the absurd has left death and destruction in its wake. The wailing mothers and relatives of the untimely departed have rent the air with their dirges and flowing tears.
Yes, our children, those innocent faces that lost their comrades sent us to more tears with their heartbreaking poems and songs as they escorted their friends to their early graves. And in the process, they asked us many questions that put us to shame. They asked us why we killed them for the things they never understood. They told us in simple terms that they had never understood the constitution, never participated in the process and most of all never ever reached voting age! They asked us to allow them to grow and enjoy their lives as we had done. They pleaded, pleaded and pleaded for us to spare them the agony of dying so young for a cause they never understood! - With just two weeks to go, there is a need to revisit the whole saga. Yes we have taken positions for or against the banana and orange team. And we have had good reasons to do so. And that is the way it should be in competitive politics.
But, having talked to Maina Kiai of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and his counterpart from another Human Rights NGO, I got another dimension I had always suspected but never knew was shared by many Kenyans of good will.
Looking me in the eye, Maina told me that this referendum fight is not bout the constitution. Rather, it was about the control of power and state resources. It was about inter ethnic rivalry for some and where possible it was a fight between bloated egos within communities.
Yes, now that there will be a vote on Monday, November 21, 2005, Kenyan leaders, who care for this country must come back to earth and design a fall back position whether they lose or win to safe guard this country from disintegrating. We have to avoid our national disintegration at all costs because if we don't, this country will be consumed by the fire of hate. Brother will fight brother, son will fight father and mother will tear her daughter's loin cloth to threads.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge. A lot of milk has been spilt. We cannot recover the fluid that is slowly sipping and disappearing into the ground.
It is lost and lost for ever. But we can do one thing; stop more water flowing under the bridge; stop more milk from spilling on to the ground.
Yes, Raila Odinga and his team joined NAK and gave Kibaki the presidency. Yes, there was an MoU that NAK and LDP signed to share power equitably and equally. Yes, the NARC coalition won the elections, thanks to Raila and Co. who campaigned vigorously when Kibaki and Walamwa were in London for medical treatment. And yes, after the elections, the Summit was disbanded and the MoU was tossed aside.
These are glaring mistakes on the part of those who initiated these machinations.
But, they are not unusual in the world of politics that is littered with political treachery and even eliminations at the best of times. All we can plead is that whatever it was that happened has to be used as a lesson in history.
The acrimony that has dogged the NARC government in the last three years has not helped to make things any better. Too much bad blood has taken place. Mistrust, naked hate, jealousy and malice have been dished out generously in equal measure from both sides. To make it worse, in the process, spoilers and political tourists who have joined the government in the process have not made things any better. Since they were losers in the last election, they have come to the government to bring it down from within, pretending to be friends of the Kibaki government.
Now that the same opportunists have wasted no time in defining the duel as between Kibaki and Raila, common sense dictates us to ask the two national leaders to take a break from their tilted advisers, sit down together and chat the way for the morning after.
The only way they can do this and bring this country back to sanity before the D-Day is to immediately embark on the path of reconciliation. Let them meet publicly to condemn hooliganism, sycophancy and inflammatory pronouncements by their leughtenants and supporters. Let them promote dialogue, let them promote issue oriented politics and condemn violence from any quota whether civilian or police initiated.
Another way of averting the crisis is for the president to renounce his stand on the referendum. Let his ministers and other players do the politicking so that whatever the outcome, he will continue to run this country.
As it is, the 100 days the NARC promised Kenyans a new constitution came and went. We never died from the ravages of the old constitution. If it fails, we can still do with the old constitution. If it passes, let the opponents be assured that it passed through a democratic process and not through rigging. If that be the case then the Orange team should rise up as men and women who love this country and accept the people's verdict and tell their massive supporters as much.
The biggest headache we have in this country is that there are so many leaders who masquerade as national leaders yet they are nothing more than tribal despots. They never miss any opportunity to capitalize on for their own benefits.
Some of them are so unpopular even in their own villages that were they to face an election in a local council; they would probably lose to a local councilor. Yet in front of television cameras, they sing their voices horse to be heard and seen as the biggest supporters of this and that camp.
As we struggle to settle for a middle ground in readiness for the morning after, let us separate the chaff from the grain. Let us recall the troops that advised the president before he got to State House to let him know that this country is tired and bleeding. Let them tell him that he was not elected to preside over a burning house. Least of all let him not allow arsonists to light to the house while he is inside.
When all is over, irrespective of the outcome, let the president do the only honorable thing. Dissolve the present cabinet together with the top civil service and reconstitute it with an eye on reconstruction and reconciliation so that this country can heal again; so that we can move on again with our lives.
It has been a long night; the night of the long knives.
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