Tragedy of leaders who are so cheap they’ll lie, cheat and kill

A long time ago, when Kanu’s power was at its zenith and Daniel arap Moi’s word was still law, a journalist I came to know later, was sacked.

He had fallen afoul of the tough climate of the newsroom.

He was given to a hedonistic lifestyle, which involved working hard and drinking even harder.

But then, in those days, that was routine. It was not unusual for journalists to have a “liquid lunch” and abuse alcohol in a lifestyle that largely survives only in the advertising agencies.

When I knew this journalist, he kept a rather erratic schedule that involved not coming to work all the time.

When he was sober and available, you would never guess he was the party animal who gambled and blew away large sums of money.

He was a brilliant worker and a rather cheerful soul.

Unfortunately, in fits of drunken madness he was also not beyond assigning these fantastic tabs from five-star hotels and casinos to his boss.

BIWOTT'S INFLUENCE

So he would blow away astounding amounts of money and ask that the bill be sent to the office, where he had no facilities to cover his excessive hobby.

So he was sacked, one of many times.

At that time, Mr Nicholas Biwott was a powerful and widely feared man.

He was rich, he was ruthless and he had a brand of viciousness that was truly rare.

Very few people would dare incur Mr Biwott’s displeasure.

In those days, life – and the economy – were strange. There was no Internet, there were no mobile phones and no M-Pesa.

If you were sacked from your job, even finding out where other vacancies were was not an easy thing.

So this journalist went to cry to Mr Biwott how he had been unfairly dismissed.

TORTURE

He whined and whined and cried, possibly hoping that Mr Biwott would dispatch a carload of hitmen in dark glasses to torture his bosses and force them, at gunpoint, to take him back and offer him a generous alcohol, gambling and women allowance.

Instead, Mr Biwott, the story goes, looked him steadily in the eye and told him: “Teg it lig a man.”

Last week, I was watching an action movie, the kind I like where there is a violent, dominant baddie who shoots lots and lots of people before he is cornered and also wasted.

In this eminently forgettable movie, the baddie was a post-Soviet thug, whose viciousness was a thing of terror.

So he had shot this guy and was torturing him for info.

The fellow was screaming, begging for mercy and entreating him to leave him alone and get out.

So the baddie pours him a full glass of whisky and says: “For courage.”

ELECTION VIOLENCE
The injured man drains the glass and the baddie proceeds to blow his head off.

It’s shameful, mindless violence, but it makes a point, just like Mr Biwott.

This week, I was speaking to a young author, who commented about the picture of the signing of the national peace accord in 2008, which I had hung on my wall but have since removed.

“You removed it to make way for the next one,” he told me.

“How so?” I asked. For those with the information, he told, there is certain to be violence in the next elections.

Foreign NGOs are skittish and advisories are being issued by foreign missions.

So, are we going to have post-election violence? Let me answer that question this way.

The rigging of elections and the fomenting of violence is caused by fear, the desire for undeserved benefit and an absence of manly pride in our leaders.

They are so cheap they will lie, cheat and kill to get what they don’t deserve.

ACCEPT DEFEAT
An election ought to be a simple matter, not a question of life and death.

If you have a desire to serve, you have a marketeable programme, you have the skills to sell that programme and the talent to mobilise the people, then you should win power fair and square and be given an opportunity to govern and implement your plan.

But if you don’t have a plan, or you have no confidence in your ability to mobilise the people around your plan, then you begin fishing around for a way of short-circuiting the process.

On the other hand, if you don’t have the courage and dignity to face failure, so you whine and whine and claim you have been robbed even if you have lost fair and square, and then incite people to go and kill one another, just to feed your insecure ego. What leadership is that?

What is the point of shedding blood to get what you don’t deserve?

Our politicians should take Mr Biwott’s advice: Face the election with courage. Even if you lose, it is still a small matter in the larger scheme of things.

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