ORIANG': Moi may be gone, but his ‘wisdom’ is still amazing

THERE WAS A TIME I WOULD get high blood pressure every time former President Daniel arap Moi appeared in the news with his holier-than-thou homilies. Things were no better when he spoke out earlier this week on the Mau saga.

As usual, his inflated sense of wisdom got the better of him and he ended up defending the indefensible. If Mr Moi must speak out on national issues, he might try to get his facts right.

The evidence has been put out there over and over again, and it is unbecoming for an elder of his stature to persist on a line of argument that can only confuse issues more.

The facts are simple and straightforward: The Mau forest is a catchment area for most rivers in Kenya and Tanzania.

The effects of human encroachment in that water tower are already being felt in the region. The government has a responsibility to halt the destruction while it still can. You take care of tomorrow by acting decisively and wisely today.

But this reaction is vintage Moi. He is the same man, after all, who would park by the roadside and throw money at frenetic crowds even as he presided over a government that tortured and detained those who dared to have a contrary outlook on politics and life.

Is there no one close to this man who can tell him to thank his God that he is still a free man, and that he is better advised to stick to philanthropic pursuits?

That way, at least, it might be easier for those who lived through his 24 years in power to forgive and forget.

Mine is, I freely confess, an irrational reaction. The man may not be in State House, but he is still a citizen and, thus, entitled to freedom of speech. He has the liberty to express an opinion on all that goes on within these borders.

We will respect and even protect that right even though he himself had little time for opposing views and spent the best part of his presidency snuffing them out in the most crude and cruel manner possible.

Logic does not, however, make him tolerable in the love-ability stakes, more so when he makes statements suggesting that the developments in the Mau have nothing to do with the phenomenon of drying rivers in Kenya and Tanzania.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH MUST BE TEMPERED with honesty and caution, however, and citizen Moi can expect to be taken to task when he wades in with both feet. He is tolerated only because it is just easier to let bygones be bygones, after all, and it would be nice if he reciprocated.

But his attitude on the Mau is not even the worst of my beef with the man. Mr Moi must be reminded that he is the root cause of the problem in the Mau.

It is during his tenure that his accomplices received huge tracts of land in that forest as a reward for their loyalty to a short-sighted and destructive political agenda.

It could be said, of course, that he only perfected an art that began with the Kenyatta regime. But all men and women are born with a free will, and no excuses should be entertained on that front.

That he seizes every opportunity to come out of retirement to preach his “I told you so” messages is at best laughable and at worst sadistic. It is not just an environmental crisis that can be laid at his doorstep. It is the total distortion of the very idea of leadership.

If the Rift Valley Mafia are trying their best to hold this country by the throat, it is because they learnt it at the feet of a master of manipulation.

The Moi legacy will continue to haunt this country unless someone grows horns big enough to break the cycle.

At some point, it became fashionable to sing a chorus about youthful leadership. The scales have fallen from my eyes lately. Age really is just a number and no safeguard against folly.

Getting Mr Moi out of State House was the easy part. Getting rid of the Moi school of thought will take more than a generational change. Do not destroy the Bado Mapambano tape just yet.

His lieutenants persist in the belief that national resources belong to no one in particular and are, therefore, up for grabs.

If they do not have their way, they fall back on the master plan – which is to threaten to rain destruction on anyone who stands in their way.

The rest of Kenya has a choice to make: It can roll over and play dead or stare the presumed untouchables in the eye and tell them to go to hell.

oriang.lucy@gmail.com