To get my vote, give me a reason beyond ‘youth’

A catchword is called so because, as it were, a resemblance of truth juts out of it and catches your attention.

But what laces the word “youth” that bewitches you so? Why does every political yuppie hope to bag your vote simply by flaunting his chronological “youth”?

The answer: In general, the younger you are, the more energetic you are likely to be, both physically and mentally. That is why we speak of injecting “new blood” — that is to say, younger blood — into this and that activity.

Yet the statement is remarkable by the silences that Mark Twain once called “silent-assertion lies”.

These refer to lies, prevarications and other untruths perpetrated without uttering a single word.

The ruling class — especially political and priestly — tells such untruths smoothly every time members open their mouths. Take what Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto told Kenyans the other day about “youth”.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, they said, should retire with President Mwai Kibaki and leave the political arena to “the youth”.

They should leave it ­— that is — for Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto.

Sure, it is at least debatable that the Odinga-Musyoka confederates are chronologically older than the Kenyatta-Ruto ones.

But the importance of the statement is the unspoken untruth in it. There is, first, the bid to play the electorate against the PM and the VP by identifying them with the socio-political failings of the Kibaki regime and attributing those failings to old age.

Indeed, gerontocracy — rule by old codgers — may be to blame for our government’s many sins of omission.

But are Mr Ruto and Mr Kenyatta aware that, by blurting it out, the two confederates are insulting only Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki, to whom they owe their own fortunes near the pinnacle of power?

Sure, Mr Odinga and Mr Musyoka are not vestal virgins. They played central roles both during Mr Moi’s venal tyranny and during the political “do-nothing-ism” by which its Kibaki successor has dealt with financial looters.

But the point — about which the confederates are studiously silent in their present utterances — is that they themselves played central roles in the two regimes.

Forgetful lot

Kenyans are a forgetful lot. Practically all have forgotten the bellicose Big-Brotherly boasting with which Mr William Ruto, Mr Isaac Ruto and Mr Julius Sunkuli rode roughshod over Kenyans when the three served as Cabinet ministers during Mr Moi’s last years at State House.

If Kenyans do not recall that, in 2002, somebody allowed Mr Moi to use him as a “project” against the very same Mr Kibaki, Mr Odinga and Mr Musyoka, how will they remember that, much earlier — during the multi-party merry-go-round — a certain William Ruto was the moving spirit in the deployment of a deadly weapon against Kenya called Youth for Kanu ’92?

To say so is not to absolve Mr Kibaki, Mr Musyoka and Mr Odinga. The first two were insiders as Mr Moi systematically transformed Kanu from a party of national consensus to a party of voluptuaries and despots.

You need no ghost to tell you Mr Odinga joined the fray only in its last years. Thus none of the present alliances should deceive you that its aim is to liberate you.

All are instruments by which certain individuals from the big ethnic communities pursue personal power with which to protect the lucrative filth in which they wallow.

Everything else — including the claim that “youth” is a measure of personal virtue — is subterfuge and pretence. If you wish for my vote, you had better tell me a more interesting one than the cock-and-bull story about “youth”.