Manifesto items that Kenyans should look out for

President Uhuru Kenyatta greets congregants during Christmas Eve Mass at the Holy Ghost Cathedral in Mombasa on December 25, 2016. Next year our leadership should be better. PHOTO | SAMUEL MIRING'U | PSCU

What you need to know:

  • No matter what happens this year at the General Election, we shall take another step into a future ripe with possibilities.
  • In a mature democracy, no political campaigns would be taking place in the setting of a national health crisis.

Happy New Year, dear reader!

We welcome the year with some degree of trepidation, given the divisive General Election scheduled for the second week of August.

However, I have chosen to look for the opportunities that the New Year provides for progressive Kenyans to move forward with the agenda to make Kenya a stable, developed nation within our lifetime.

No matter what happens this year at the General Election, we shall take another step into a future ripe with possibilities.

I am hopeful that the anger at the current political shenanigans will push some of the more politically laid-back middle-class Kenyans to enter the fray in future political contests.

This should raise the quality of engagement and improve accountability by bringing our venerable “keyboard warriors” out of their dour foxholes into the world where real change is needed.

Kenya can only be the winner in this scenario.

To this end, I would like to volunteer a free raft of manifesto items that Kenyans should be looking out for among all the bilge that will be spewed during this campaign period.

In a mature democracy, no political campaigns would be taking place in the setting of a national health crisis.

All politicians would be putting their heads together to find a solution, unlike what we have seen in our country for the better part of December.

KEY AGENDAS

With doctors on strike and the health sector under total lockdown, our top politicians chose to convene a special session of Parliament to discuss election rules.

Anyone campaigning for the highest office in the land must, therefore, latch onto the health agenda, and generate solutions that will guarantee the good health of the population for a generation.

A strategy that includes sustainable health financing, human resource management, and infrastructure development and maintenance would be a winner, seeing as for the vast majority of Kenyans any severe illness is a ticket to poverty and despondency.

A second pillar for a progressive campaign would be education.

Instead of piecemeal education reforms whenever there is a crisis, it is necessary to develop an education policy that justifies taking our children to school in the first place.

Once a rationale is made for schooling, the entire education system would then have to be aligned to this rationale.

As things stand right now, we are not very clear what we are educating our population for, and everyone with an ideology feels the need to tweak the system to suit that ideology.

The third campaign pillar that necessarily builds from the first two is an infrastructure plan that ensures that the healthy, well-educated population is able to move with ease from one point to another within the country.

PEOPLE'S CALL

Those that have something to sell should be able to reach the market with ease, without unnecessary constrictions that cost lots of time and money.

Transport and communication infrastructure, therefore, becomes a key component of any progressive campaign.

Finally, nothing would work without security and a functioning legal justice system.

A candidate who promises to transform the security services so that they are aligned to national aspirations and focused on service to the people should rank very highly, in my view.

A secure population is able to innovate and expand the economy without worrying that their wealth can be wiped out in a moment of insanity arising from some trivial security threat.

In my view, the best indicators for socio-economic growth and satisfaction are not to be found in the numbers produced annually by our economic gurus.

The best indicators of a good economy is the proportion of the population that feels the need to utilise private health services, sends their children to private schools, conducts harambees to create access to their homes and markets, and finally, pays for private security firms to guard their homes and businesses.

Atwoli is associate professor of psychiatry and dean, School of Medicine, Moi University; [email protected]