Cord’s Uhuru Park assault on Kenyatta reveals the venerability of kenya’s democracy to indiscipline

In a symbolic way, on September 24, 2015, President Uhuru Kenyatta travelled to New York to join other world leaders in commemorating the 70th anniversary of humanity’s best experiment ever in democratic governance on a global scale—the formation of the United Nations in 1945.

But at home, Kenyatta left a democracy facing severe bout of indiscipline by segments of Kenya’s political elite.

Humanly, the President left home greatly anguished by the smouldering indiscipline that now rocks the country’s democracy and puts its national cohesion to serious test.

During a rally called at Uhuru Park to ostensibly express solidarity with teachers seeking salary increase, Coalition for Reforms and Democracy's (Cord) luminaries launched one of the most brutal and brazen verbal assaults on the person of the President, his family, some members of his cabinet and the public at large.

In its wake, the barefaced use of threatening, banal, abusive and insulting language particularly by the Machakos Senator, Johnstone Muthama, risk deepening the polarization of Kenya’s ethnically divided society.

BOORISH ANTICS

More importantly, the attack reveals the lingering vulnerability of our embryonic democracy to the vagaries of indiscipline and unethical styles and strategies of the opposition stalwarts.

In view of this, the British Premier, Winston S. Churchill, might have been right in characterizing democracy as “the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

Even as the world celebrates ‘crowd power’—the ‘demos’ (crowd) and ‘curacy’ (power)—as the enduring legacy of ancient Greek civilization to humanity, the Uhuru Park fiasco is our sobering reminder of the heavy cost of indiscipline, ignorance and mediocrity as democracy’s ugly underbelly.

Like Kenyans, who are justifiably appalled by the opposition’s frenzied indiscipline, one of Athen’s best minds, Plato, rightly dismissed democracy as “the divine right of the ignorant people to rule ignorantly.”

Today, elite indiscipline has turned democracy into its own worst enemy—a snake eating its own self.

It needs no gainsaying that discipline is the life-blood of democracy. Without discipline, democracy is a body without soul.

When indiscipline takes over a country, democracy decays into a monocracy—a government by an unruly and hare-brained mob.

CHEQUE OF LIBERTIES
By enthroning the free will of the people as the supreme sovereign, Kenya’s new constitution has given every citizen a blank cheque.

This is where discipline comes in. If the cheque of liberties is overdrawn, it will obviously, bounce, thus leading to either anarchy or tyranny—the two evils democracy was invented to put under check.

Democracy does not grant absolute liberty to the people. Every right has a corresponding duty.

We need discipline to distinguish between liberties and responsibilities and to help us steer clear of the misguided view of rights and freedoms as absolutes.

Discipline transforms democracy into a civilized competition an enlightened citizenry in a democratic form of government where the people enjoy the freedom elect those to govern over them for a limited time.

Here lies the lesson of democracy as a game where there will always be winners and losers. The plight of democracy in Kenya, as elsewhere in Africa, is that losers oftentimes refuse to accept defeat.

A CALL TO DISCIPLINE
Instead, they weave divisive theories ‘rigged’ polls and of collective victimhood of their ethnic groups to contest power.

This has not only turned electoral seasons into moments of great fragility and bloodletting, but also turned the fruits of democracy into the proverbial poisoned chalice.

Undeniably, there will always be genuine grievances in a polity. However, discipline requires that the people express their grievances with civility and decorum, and through existing constitutional avenues.

History is replete with skeletons of nations where invocation of ‘people’s power’ by political demagogues and charlatans has led to the breakdown of public order and discipline as part of the citizenry resort to violent means of expressing grievance.

This has torpedoed democracy, replacing it with anarchy or despotism and exacerbating poverty and under-development.

The call to discipline is hardly a whistling in the wind. Only countries with disciplined and hardworking citizens have joined the pantheon of the world’s great nations.

'SWITZERLAND OF AFRICA'
Because of their disciplined and hardworking citizens, Japan, Germany and China rose from the ashes of global wars and revolutionary upheavals and made great strides in science, technology and industry to become global powerhouses.

The inverse is also true. Countries with undisciplined citizens are doomed to fail and fall into dictatorships, chaos and anarchy.

This leads to the loss of freedom and the enjoyment of the fruits democracy.

Post-2010 Kenya stands on the threshold of becoming the ‘Switzerland of Africa’, owing to its strategic position and having one of Africa’s most enlightened skilled and hardworking citizens, a rich heritage of culture, fauna and flora, newly discovered wealth of natural resources and the continent’s few genuinely democratic dispensations.

Like all countries, Switzerland had its own share of populists, firebrands and their ilk. But its hardworking people doggedly stayed the course of discipline and democracy.

PAYOFF OF DISCIPLINE
As a result, a tiny, isolated mountainous country with one of Europe’s most diverse populations has become synonymous with law and order, which now underpins its iconic image as the destination of choice for holiday-makers, investors, private banking and haven of conference goers.

The payoff of discipline and order is the unprecedented national prestige and prosperity.

Beyond the cascades of senselessness, lures of indiscipline and blinds of ignorance, the Uhuru Park farce is our clearest reminder that only the spirit of discipline and hard work will propel our democracy to greater heights and guarantee our people freedom, democracy and prosperity.