Time to put our house in order

• The conference to be held in the US this week discusses whether Kenya has made any progress on the unity front after chaos.

A team of MPs led by Speaker Kenneth Marende leaves for the United States on Tuesday for a series of Congressional meetings but, most crucially, to attend an important conference on Kenya.

The meeting, hosted by the National Endowment for Democracy — the biggest democracy promotion agency in the US and which is funded by the Congress — comes at a time when the international spotlight is on Kenya.

This follows Kofi Annan’s handing over of the Waki List of suspected masterminds of last year’s post-election violence to the International Criminal Court.

Top US diplomat for Africa Johnny Carson, also President Obama’s adviser, is expected to be among the key speakers at the forum.

The Speaker and members of his panel, Gitobu Imanyara, Margaret Kamar, Jeremiah Kioni and John Lekuton, will join participants to examine whether Kenya has risen from the ashes or is still smouldering almost a year-and-a-half since the post-election shame.

“Kenya on the Brink: Democratic Renewal or Deepening Conflict?” is the question that the forum will seek to answer.

The conference is also expected to focus on whether Kenyan leaders have the political will to unite the country and prevent it from heading back down the path of self-destruction.

Though there have not been serious cases of political and ethnically fed violence, there is growing restlessness in the country.

This is informed by the fear that the conduct of the political elite and pattern of chauvinism could re-ignite similar hostilities.

Mr Marende and his team will also be asked to shed light on the role of the 10th Parliament in addressing the aftermath of the election violence with the aim of returning the country to sanity.

Essentially, this meeting appears to be part of the international effort to put pressure on Kenya to act on impunity.

Though the one-day meeting is well meaning, it magnifies what has become a disturbing trend in which Kenya has become the focal point of debates at international fora because it has taken too long to put its house in order.

With the handover of Kenyan suspects to an international court — from a country which purports to have a functional judiciary — such foreign driven discussions and forums where we are lectured on our bad manners raise concerns as to whether Kenya is fast degenerating into a failed state.

A major debate on this is currently taking place on www.nation.co.ke, triggered by the latest rankings of failed States by the US-based Fund for Peace, which puts Kenya at position 14 next to Burma.

The debate centres on whether the peace deal that brought an end to the elections mayhem marked the country’s turn back to normalcy or for worse.