Kenyans are tired of Jubilee catfights and hollow words

Youth under the National Hygiene Programme wait to be deployed, in Eastleigh, Nairobi, on May 20, 2020. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Kenyans badly need a national leadership that speaks to the enormous challenges we are facing in the battle for daily survival.
  • We want the Health secretary to only come to the media with the news that he has not only fired the Afya House cartels but also forwarded their files to the national prison tailor.


This week, President Uhuru Kenyatta addressed the nation regarding a raft of emerging issues, ranging from his government’s fight against the ravaging coronavirus, and the purge at Jubilee headquarters that is now turning into a circus.

For the first time since Jubilee started cleaning house, the President addressed its opposition wing and told them he is the one who procured the new broom currently sweeping it, to put an end to speculations that he had outsourced the work to political brokers.

Kenyans have no issue with what the President chooses to do with a broom he bought with own money. Indeed, the President can buy as many brooms as he wants – as long as he isn’t asking us to give him money for them.

However, Kenyans are asking why the President hasn’t converted the same energy to the running of government because we will not eat a political party when hunger strikes.

Mr Kenyatta must be reminded that it wasn’t the infighting in the Jubilee Party that started the flattening of Kenya’s economic curve.

DISMAL PERFORMANCE

Before Covid-19 announced its intention to disrupt worldwide economies, the Government of Kenya was already struggling to explain why Kenyans were losing their jobs in droves as they watched from high-end offices as if unemployment was a tourist attraction. 

It might be fashionable to blame the coronavirus for the poor performance of our economy right now, but that’s what happens when you’re dealing with a problem that can’t defend itself in the court of public opinion.

Kenyans aren’t interested in the catfights inside Jubilee House, and even if we were, we are too broke right now to pay attention.

We weren’t consulted when the two principals started dating prior to the 2013 marriage of convenience, and we don’t want to be party to this nasty divorce that is slowly exposing the hypocrisy of political party mergers.

The carnage going on inside the Jubilee Party walls has nothing to do with services to Kenyans. If it did, then we wouldn’t be seeing senators being reappointed to House committees and declining to take up those jobs.

CHRONIC POVERTY

Kenyans aren’t ready to offer themselves as a soft landing for casualties of a war we weren’t part of, and which was waged against our interests.

To see Jubilee play politics when this country is on its knees is the dictionary definition of atrocity. Kenyans badly need a national leadership that speaks to the enormous challenges we are facing in the battle for daily survival.

Politicians exchange words with their party rivals because their stomachs are full and they have the energy to fight. They don’t recognise that for most of Kenyans, every day is a life-and-death affair and the more they fight, the more Kenyans sink deeper into the hole of chronic poverty they might never come out of alive.

We don’t want a leadership that keeps reminding us that Kenyans are resilient people and that we shall overcome the virus together.

Of course we know we are resilient; if we weren’t we would have gone to the streets a long time ago and camped there until the President conclusively addressed our issues.

JAIL THIEVES

We don’t want the Health Cabinet secretary to keep reminding us that there are deep-rooted cartels inside Afya House who are driven by the selfish desire of using public office to reap from where didn’t sow.

Instead of constantly reminding us of what we already know, we want the Health secretary to only come to the media with the news that he has not only fired the Afya House cartels but also forwarded their files to the national prison tailor.

Kenyans are here to inform the government that talk time is over. If you want us to cooperate with you in the implementation of government policy, then the burden of trust squarely rests on your shoulders.

We have constantly shouldered their bit to facilitate the smooth running of government services, often at a backbreaking cost.

We have paid taxes without demur, observed government stay-at-home orders even when it meant losing our income sources, and staring starvation in the face.

PROPER LEADERSHIP

Had our law-abiding index been in question, we wouldn’t have enrolled for Huduma Namba despite not being given assurances on the safety of our personal information.

It’s time for the government to pull its weight in giving Kenyans back what they deserve. We are tired of asking for the government to work for us.

If Jubilee genuinely feels domestic squabbles are more important than the needs of all Kenyans, then we can only make a humble request for them to step aside and let the dogs officially take over the running of this country.

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