Yelling slogans and throwing stones bad for party ideology

An important fact about Kenya’s political landscape is that there is no ideological difference whatsoever between the parties.

I see none especially between the ruling party and its main opposition challenger. That is significant because it makes it easier for them to reunite voluntarily, rather than by legal force.

That the two will one day reunite is, however, wishful thinking. That – if you ask me – is the difference between the days of Mama na Baba (of which some politicians still speak with such nostalgia) and the kind of national unity that a poverty-stricken Third World country like Kenya really requires if it is to outgrow the penury and emerge fully into the 21st century.

To be quite sure, the days are long gone when President Moi’s monolithic Kenya African National Union (Kanu) party was the only Mama na Baba and, we truly hope, they are gone for aye.

Yet one question continues to stare at you like Medusa’s face. Exactly what has replaced those days? The answer: A merry-go-round of nursery schoolchildren posing as politicians.

Ever since our self-proclaimed “Second Liberationists” took over from Moi, the political class has treated Kenyans to a never-ending round of the very same fare with which the Moi regime had been treating us for 24 years.

The only difference was that, though forced, the Moi system was at least a semblance of national unity.

However, with the downfall of the Mama na Baba regime, ours became – and remains – a veritable playground of juvenile delinquents. Every Tom, Dick and Harriet now formed his or her own party and, every day that the sun rose above the ocean, Kenyans uttered some of the wildest, rudest and most childish words ever spoken in the name of free speech.

Opposition, you must agree, should be made of sterner stuff. Yet in the days when Anglo-America sponsored “liberation” all over the world, the new parties sponsored nocturnal gatherings in which chang’aa – advertised as the carrier of the most Solomonic of all wisdom – flowed more tumultuously than the Noachian Flood.

HURLING STONES

If the yelling of slogans is your ideology as a party leader and if – like Gor Mahia fans – hurling stones and other weapons is your strategy, then you are in the right country because, if the system were interested in doing away with political hooliganism, oral and “fistical” violence would never have become the characteristic of Kenya’s politics.

We would long ago have witnessed the executive and the judicial arms of our administrative system taking deliberate and decisive actions to rid Kenya once and for all of all this juvenile delinquency in politics, especially concerning what manifests itself as driven by extremely narrow and nationally dangerous ethnic interests.

If the leaders of the political parties associated especially with the big ethnic groups were truly committed to ridding our country of the myriad of ethnic pin-headedness that evidently remains resident in the brains of most of us – especially in politics – here is one field in which we would see them close the ranks.

That is why we can appeal directly by name to the likes of Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto, Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka, Musalia Mudavadi, Gideon Moi and Eugene Wamalwa, who now seem like tribal paramount chiefs, to form at least an unofficial association in which to periodically discuss such issues.

For inter-ethnic, inter-racial, inter-gender and inter-sectarian politeness is essential to our country’s survival and econo-intellectual growth. I do not mean that we should do away with inter-personal, inter-ethnic, inter-gender and inter-confessional disagreement. Even Idi Amin miserably failed to banish it by fiat.

But why can’t we agree to disagree politely?

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