Problem number one is that Kenyans worship riches

Electioneering is a back-breakingly expensive activity.

That is why, if pursuit of justice and mass happiness were the only thing that motivates individual Kenyans into seeking seats in Parliament or in a local council, I would – as with Lewis Carroll – “chortle in [my] joy”.

Yet – come to think of it – the expense always boils down to bribery of the would-be voter – namely, of the mass of uneducated and socio-historically ignorant human beings who, during the campaigns, had received an infinitesimal and thoroughly inconsequential slice of the candidate’s bribe.

The rest – the vast majority – of the money would have gone into the pockets of the candidate’s trusted agents.

ETHICAL ISSUES

That was probably why those who later founded our state were never ashamed to publicly advise the voters that if any rival offered them money, they should grab it with both hands but, nevertheless, “vote for us”.

The trouble is that, as a rule, the president of a country should also be the country’s exemplar number one on all questions of social propriety and goodness.

On all ethical issues, the president of a country should, in the public’s eye, be seen as an individual who cannot be impeached.

That is the question: How many of Kenya’s candidates for State House are morally – and even intellectually – unimpeachable?

How many can stand in the arena to vow that liquid money and raw power over human beings are not their chief interest in pursuing our country’s ultimate office?

NATIONAL DIALOGUE

In Kenya’s legislative House, neither awareness of the nation’s objective suffering and cravings nor commitment to creating a legislative human machine by which to create and help supply those means and thus assuage the pain is ever offered as the chief bridge through which society can cross over – as Egypt’s Israelite refugees used to say – “to Canaan”.

Intellectually and socio-morally speaking, the pages of our print media devoted to national dialogue – including even the ones carrying letters to the editor – are the emptiest in terms of historical knowledge and in terms of awareness of the social exigencies by which a society can cross the Jordan over into its Canaan.

The ethico-intellectual emptiness of our society is faithfully reflected in what goes on in our legislative Houses – including even in the National Assembly.

This dark legislative emptiness is reflected, in turn, in the newspaper pages devoted to personal opinions, especially to the letters to the editor.

MOTIVATES KENYANS

Not any dedication to social service – but only a desperate pursuit after money – is also what chiefly motivates Kenyans into trying to be elected into that increasingly in August House.

The ability to sway the voting mass, especially by means of a socially educated and historically knowledgeable tongue, would, of course, be the other factor.

Kenya’s problem number one, then, is that all of us are on our knees worshipping the currency.

Yet any slight reflection would show even the dimmest of us that neither money nor the bid to sway the mass by means of any oral Niagara will guarantee either good character or an expert hand.

INDIVIDUAL GRABBING

Our educated class – the one that passes as an ethico-intellectual elite and dominates our political echelons – seems committed only to using whatever knowledge and skill it possesses to enriching itself as individuals.

Our elite speaks incessantly of “development”.

But that term is used only as a metaphor for individual grabbing – a fact which revealed itself when a powerful former nationalist leader asked another — a more honest member of that class — what the latter had done for himself ever since that class of black Kenyans had taken over from the European tyrants.

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