You are quick to criticise police, but have you considered your role in this tragedy?

What you need to know:

  • What moral authority does a lawyer have to castigate Kenya’s security machinery? How have the so-called media personalities — whose only claim to journalism is their loud pollution of the airwaves with indecency and sterile jokes — failed society?
  • We also do not have a tradition of selfless service in this country. Like everyone else, most of the people joining the forces do not regard it as a calling; they see it as a career out of which they can make money peacefully and raise children as they wait for pension and quiet retirement.
  • We must also remember that the lawyers, politicians, and members of other elitist groups criticising the police are the same people who pay hefty bribes to influence who is recruited into the forces.

In the face of gross insecurity and murder most foul, I could not believe it when “holy” and “pious” professionals and politicians-cum-comedians took to the airwaves to criticise our security machinery.

To add insult to the national injury, our “celeb” media personalities raise simplistic arguments between questions not designed to help galvanise our nationhood so as to address what is clearly emerging as an existential threat.

But because our youth-dominated social media is full of sterile vitriol, our political class dastardly, religious institutions packed with deceit, and the civil society pathetic, we might never reconstitute our 42 ethnic royalties into a unified nation capable of commanding its energies into collective action to fight the threats facing our country.

We are in some form of national tragicomedy, not of the Shakespearean mould, but of the horrific genre, one that unfolds in time and place, playing itself out whenever our brothers and sisters are murdered in cold blood.

Even without a clue on the true nature of such acts, our odious opinion shapers, heads of religious bodies, politicians, and some media people take the opportunity to express half-baked opinions on how much our security forces have failed the country.

In societies where people strive to be decent, the massacre of innocent people brings everyone together into national outrage that translates into a collective effort to ensure that the dead are buried in dignity. Massacres make people to strive to restore the pride of nationhood as pangs of patriotism burn in their veins while “hotbloods” yearn for an opportunity to defend the defenceless.

It has not been so in our country. From the discourse seen in the mainstream and social media, every time murderous beasts kill Kenyans, rare vocabulary and high-sounding phrases are unearthed from inner recesses of the mind, not to bring us together but to be thrown on fellow Kenyans in uniform and their counterparts in the clandestine outfits.

MORAL AUTHORITY

Have we stopped to look into the mirror to appreciate the situation we are in as a country? What moral authority does a lawyer have to castigate Kenya’s security machinery? How have the so-called media personalities — whose only claim to journalism is their loud pollution of the airwaves with indecency and sterile jokes — failed society? Do the self-proclaimed high priests manning foreign-funded civil society and religious bodies have any business telling a poorly paid police officer to stop taking bribes from matatus?

We need to put a stop to this recklessness and begin to understand our perilous situation as a country. The first thing to do is to understand the enemy. Even as we go after the Al-Shabaab murderers and shadowy killers in Kapedo, we must look behind their backs to see the other face of the enemy.

The time has come for us to stop calling the spade a big spoon. Yes, our policing mechanism is grossly tainted with mediocrity and sleaze, but the best in the force are assigned to protect political mandarins and their families — some of whom are busy castigating the National Police Service.

We also do not have a tradition of selfless service in this country. Like everyone else, most of the people joining the forces do not regard it as a calling; they see it as a career out of which they can make money peacefully and raise children as they wait for pension and quiet retirement.

We must also remember that the lawyers, politicians, and members of other elitist groups criticising the police are the same people who pay hefty bribes to influence who is recruited into the forces. Indeed, many are only there because their parents and relatives could afford to buy the jobs for them.

The poor and those with the burning desire to serve are overlooked. However, when the police blunder big time, the same people who pay bribes to prevent deserving candidates from joining the forces shout the loudest.

We must also see the hypocrisy whenever senators and MPs take to the podium to criticise the security forces. As law makers, they have the mandate to force an overhaul in the training curriculum and fortunes of the men and women in our policing units.

If they cannot do so, let them bite their tongues and leave the bereaved to mourn their dead in peace.

John Mbaria is a freelance journalist. ([email protected])