To cast socio-moral stones, opposition must clean up its act

Cord leader Raila Odinga addressing rally at Shianda, Vihiga County on July 22, 2016. He asked Kenyans to give him time and chance to reform the country. PHOTO | ISAAC WALE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Members of Kenya’s civic and parliamentary councils represent the interests, not of their respective people’s, but only of the national leaders of certain political parties.
  • The duty of any genuine opposition movement is to serve as the watchdog on the nation’s needs and on how the ruling party purports to be meeting those needs.
  • As the country sinks deeper and deeper into the quagmire of economic corruption and political hanky-panky, the opposition needs to think again, about its whole role in the urgent task of putting the country on a much better path to achieving its goals.

Did the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) “botch” the last General Election? Here, the more interesting question is: How can anybody deny it when Raila Odinga, the opposition party’s own paramount chief, not merely affirms the charge but even apologises for it? I have this on the authority of a Nairobi daily.

The importance of Mr Odinga’s statement – given “splash” treatment on page 6 of the Daily Nation’s Thursday (July 21) number – is that it exemplifies the habit by the chiefs of all of Kenya’s political parties to impose on the voters the leaders’ own preferences for parliamentary and other legislative positions.

In this way, members of Kenya’s civic and parliamentary councils represent the interests, not of their respective people’s, but only of the national leaders of certain political parties. In this way, the leaders reduce to a laughing matter every aspect of the vaunted “democracy” that colonial Britain purported to have bequeathed to us.

No, Mr Odinga’s party is not the only culprit. The ruling alliance is equally guilty of it. There is only one essential difference between the two parties. It is that the essential responsibility of a ruling party is to lead and the essential responsibility of an opposition party is to caution it whenever necessary.

The duty of any genuine opposition movement is to serve as the watchdog on the nation’s needs and on how the ruling party purports to be meeting those needs.

That exactly is the question for the ODM. How can it serve the people in this highly important way when the opposition does exactly the same things of which it accuses the ruling confederates?

When the ODM commits exactly the same crimes of which it daily accuses the Government, exactly what socio-moral stones can it throw at the Government? How can the opposition party justify not only its existence but also the fierceness with which it competes with the ruling clique for the consumption of the nation’s resources?

ECONOMIC CRIMES

That is why it refreshes me whenever Mr Odinga admits publicly that members and leaders of his own party are involved in certain economic crimes.

But the point is that to admit a crime is not the same thing as to promise never to repeat it. For – on both sides of the political divide – such a promise is what official Kenya direly needs from all of its cadres.

As the country sinks deeper and deeper into the quagmire of economic corruption and political hanky-panky, the opposition direly needs to think again, much more deeply and with a much clearer mind about its whole role in the urgent task of putting the country on a much better path to achieving its goals, including social cohesion, political justice and material wealth.

Both as individuals and as groups – including the political parties, ethnic associations and religious sects – we must closely examine our separate contributions to the country’s past and present difficulties and the country’s official offences, only actively and genuinely apologising for them. I say genuinely and actively because, in apologising, mere words will not do.

The point is: Do not apologise unless you have genuinely revolutionised your attitude and conduct towards Kenyans of other age-groups, other classes, other ethnicities, other races and other religions. Do not apologise until you have decided to wholeheartedly embrace all other Kenyans in the extremely difficult task of building a single and united nation.

Only when all our politicians are seen to be struggling to equip all Kenyans with that knowledge and with the skills necessary to sustain it throughout can we say that Kenya is rapidly developing towards a single wholly contented and peaceful nation.