Political opposition should never mean personal hatred

Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta is a charming young Kenyan with many ideas in his head for his country. That is one reason many Kenyans admire him as ‘our leader”. For the same reason, however, I know no positive minded Kenyan who sees Raila Amolo Odinga as a negative opponent of Mr Kenyatta. Indeed, many Kenyans see Mr Odinga only as the President’s adviser. 

ATTACHMENTS

Please note. However, that I use the word “adviser” only because, in today’s world — civilised as it is — political opposition need not mean active personal enmity. Responsible minded political opposition should mean only commitment to helping whomever is the government to follow and remain on a path that is objectively good for all citizens whatever their ethnic, professional, racial and religious attachments may be.

In other words, the purpose of every Kenyan who calls himself or herself a politician should be only to ensure that Kenya has a government which follows an objectively and effectively good path. In other words, for opposition to be effective, it need mean no more than to help whomever the government is to follow a path genuinely intended to lead the whole population to material and cultural success if success has been defined.

That alone is why I say that political opposition need never mean personal or ethnic or racial or religious hatred. The ideal is to conduct your opposition in a manner which would please you whenever you are the government. Mine is only a call on all Kenyans to strive to achieve their objective common national goals in the friendliest and most effective way.

That is why it so enthuses me whenever Kenyans of different ethnic backgrounds and usually unfriendly political attitudes announce a joint political activity. For what that suggests to me is that the chief mission of any true opposition party should be only to help ensure that whoever is the government embarks upon a path most likely to help him or her to achieve excellent results for all the people of Kenya. 

OBJECTIVELY

To my mind, that is the ideal duty of any political party if its true purpose is to help the government to follow the best path towards the nation’s objective goals as soon as possible. One problem, however, is that we are not in one accord about the definition of our “objective goals”.

By that term, I mean those goals which are good for all Kenyans whether or not any Kenyan is now already aware of their goodness. However, please do ensure that awareness of such goals is the ideal duty of every would-be leader because the future of Kenya lies only in whether the people of Kenya of all ethnic and racial backgrounds will join hands to achieve together their jointly defined community of goals.

I say so against the tendency by many leaders of all our big ethnic communities to assume that an appeal to negative ethnicity is the only way they can garner enough numbers to be elected to important national positions. No. Please organise a one-person conference with yourself so as to be able to rise to the occasion.

It is the only way for you to rise to your duty of objectively helping all the people of this country to unite all their minds and all their efforts so as to achieve one great common goal — the goal of exemplary nationhood, a goal where we have only one yardstick for judging all our would-be national political and other leaders

Kenyans must consider themselves lucky that they already have an ideal young leader called Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta. His ideas and activities should inspire all of us into working together as one people in order to achieve our ideal and material goals at the earliest possible opportunity. Only bad upbringing an bad “education” encourage us into taking negative ethnic and racial lines.

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