Forget parties and philosophy, they are greedy leaders’ vehicles

There is an established system — whether legitimate or otherwise — in any one nation that is generally accepted as the driving force behind the political developments and the activities that surround such developments.

Other than government structures, which quite obviously cannot be completely divorced from political considerations, political parties are critical to the delivery of what a politically created government has committed itself to doing for its citizenry.

At the dawn of our independence, two major political parties emerged. One was the Kenya African Democratic Union (Kadu) that seemed to have the support of the colonialists and the other was the Kenya African National Union (Kanu), which was mainly steered by freedom fighters and their supporters.

Each of those two parties had a clear ideology that guided its thinking in terms of how the independent Kenyan nation should look like. Kadu wanted regional governments (Majimbo) while Kanu was keen to see Kenya governed as a united national entity.

We know the history. Kanu won the first elections and therefore got the mandate to run the first government. Within no time, political machinations were orchestrated that saw Kadu MPs cross the floor of the National assembly and in effect we got into a de facto one party state until 1992. We have come a long way since then to where we are now.

STATESMEN

Talking of political parties, what is most exciting in the minds of a lot of people just now is that TNA and URP have indicated that they will now to come together to become one party in the name of the Jubilee Alliance Party.

Interesting news I thought it was. All this is being done in preparation for the next elections. I think that person who said it had a point.

“Statesmen think about the next generation but politicians think about the next election”. Since we got into the multi-party era in 1992, we have seen a lot of parties. Other than Kanu – which is now a shadow of its old self – there came other parties like Ford, DP, Ford-Kenya, Ford-People, Ford-Asili, Kenda, NDP, SDP, LDP, NAK, Narc, Narc-Kenya, PNU, ODM, and many others that have come up since then. This I suppose is political metamorphosis, which one would assume is for the better.

Do we really have serious political parties that are guided by a philosophy that is about the lives of the governed? The answer is NO! Parties in Kenya are vehicles for individuals — from every side of the political divide — to get into power in order to have access to resources and to protect what they already have. It is never about Kenyans.

Father Wamugunda is Dean of Students, University of Nairobi; [email protected]