What is needed is a set of ideas to unite us at election time

An ideology is any systematic set of religious or political ideals. Ideally, then, every political party should be identifiable by distinct ideological thought. But, if so, what is the ideological difference between Kenya’s ruling and opposition parties? Every thinking voter ought to pose that question concerning Kenya’s massive switching of parties every time the General Election looms.

Because the next such polls are nigh, Kenya’s politicians now dash from party to party. The political migration will reach its apogee upon party nominations, when certain candidates have failed to be licensed to vie for civic and parliamentary seats.

But if a party is a bastion of discrete ideals, how can pre-election “party-hopping” be the chief characteristic of Kenya’s alleged “multi-party democracy”?

The answer is that none of Kenya’s plethora of parties ­­­is a truly ideological movement. All our political associations are practically identical by their emptiness of social thought.

However, if all the candidates carry the same socio-intellectual price-tag, by what criterion do Kenyans vote? How would you vote if ideology were the criterion, if the candidates did not preach practically the same socially empty ideological twaddle filched from parochial Anglo-American liberalism?

Yet, more often than not, North Atlantic liberalism is couched in correct language. A good part of the reason is that the language – English – is its own mother tongue.

It is only because we have adopted that language but do not bother to master its nuances that our moral and intellectual vacuity looks so much more spectacular than the Anglo-Saxon world’s.

In all former European colonies, we do not even know how to pretend about it. We vote not for the social beauty of ideas – not for ideologies – but for something else. To call a spade by its name, Kenya’s big tribes vote only for the presidential candidate identifiable with their cluster of tribes. It is a deeply embarrassing manifestation of our backwardness in social ideals.

DELIVER THE GOODS

What is the measure of our classroom education if – even this far into history – we remain convinced that only our tribesman (leave alone woman) can deliver the goods to the nation in qualitative and equitable abundance? What exactly has our ruling class learned from the tragedies – including two holocaustic global wars – into which tribalism has plunged the same Europe that we so humbly worship?

How is it that, internally and worldwide, Euro-North America – a racial continuum which has scored wonderful techno-scientific victories – does not even attempt to translate those victories into equitable local and universal human benefits?

Kenya’s tragedy is that our ruling class is much more adept at copying the Caucasian world’s ethno-racial puny-mindedness than at copying its techno-scientific greatness.

So far, our parties are nothing but vehicles by which ethnic individuals seek to ride roughshod over national and local domination bodies. That is why you cannot claim that the massive party switching phenomenon common in Kenya’s pre-election times is a manifestation of democracy.

It was thus redeeming to hear the leaders of Jubilee and Cord speaking out against that heinous practice, although MPs ultimately shot down the effort. First, the sudden switching of political sides shows clearly that none of our politicians – none of our parties – represents or systematically expresses any socio-national ideals.

That is why it is so easy for those who fail to be nominated for parliamentary and civic seats to hop to defect. Encouraged by the party chiefs themselves, they show just how uncommitted we are to any definite set of ideas – any ideal – for building Kenya into greatness.

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