Criticising Uhuru and Jubilee is ignoring self-evident facts

Many arguments have been made about the President’s performance that are not worth either the paper they are printed on or the breath they are uttered in.

Indeed, the criticism targeted at President Uhuru Kenyatta by the Opposition in recent months and weeks has been laced with spite.

Even where his and his team’s achievements are towering, tangible, explicit and beyond argument, the Opposition’s strategists and point-men pretend nothing has happened. They claim the credit for the blueprint and dismiss the implementation.

This level of denial and malice is unprecedented in our politics and national discourse. It is ugly. It insults the intelligence, it is in Wanjiku’s face, telling her that the evidence of her eyes, the good things that have happened to her on Jubilee’s watch, are tricks and sleights of the hand.

In fact, this calculated denial and rudeness could and should backfire seriously on the Opposition’s leadership. If they can be this deceitful when they wield no power, what would they not deny if they took over the State?

Wanjiku is seeing right through this charade. Where she is being told today that President Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto have achieved nothing, that the SGR is a white elephant, that the Last Mile Connectivity Project is not the greatest electrification effort since independence, that free maternity has not worked outside Rift Valley and Central, and many other lies, she will be forced to imagine the Opposition’s achievements if it were in power.

BEYOND DOUBT

She would be shown empty spaces and told they were wonderful works in progress and be required to acknowledge them.

It is beyond doubt that great and good things have happened on Jubilee’s first-term watch and much more outstanding things will happen throughout Kenya in the second.

The Opposition naysaying that is so determined to deny and discredit everything is a futile but toxic exercise in the worst kind of futility – nihilism.

Non-constructive criticism, barefaced lying and a headlong flight from civility are never good signs.

It will not kill anyone to acknowledge UhuRuto’s achievements, especially the long list of unprecedented deliverables in a truncated first term (shorter than all the other presidents’ full five-year inaugural terms by eight months).

What opposition leaders Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka, Moses Wetang’ula and Musalia Mudavadi, their think tanks, spin doctors and other assorted cheerleaders fail to appreciate is that Jubilee is building on years of achievement by the first three presidents of Kenya.

And these are achievements whose foundations everywhere were laid by Kenyans long before Cord and Nasa arrived on the scene and started the willed blindness against Jubilee.

ANTI-DEVOLUTION PRESIDENCY

One big lie peddled by the Opposition is that the Presidency is anti-devolution. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jubilee has given devolution a flying start and deep roots.

In education and health services, despite national strikes, Kenya has made great strides since 2013.

The leased medical equipment has taken state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment to all the counties. If the politics of denial and dismissal had not reared its head, these would have been some of the happiest and most fulfilling years for a great many Kenyans.

During Jubilee’s forthcoming and full second term at the national helm, Kenyans will almost certainly recoil from the politics of negativity for negativity’s sake. Our national political discourse will begin to gain the contours of civil and constructive criticism that genuinely seeks to find solutions and to improve lives.

One antidote of the politics of insult, calumny, denial and willful blindness will be Jubilee’s victory on August 8. When all the votes are in, it will be discovered not long thereafter that many of them came from voters who refused to be browbeaten into becoming doubting Thomases.

Martha Wangari is a nominated senator.