This is a new year address to the President. Sir, I beg leave not to greet you. No offence meant. I will go straight to the point now.
Mr President, do we have a nation? And as my little daughter asks me: is Kenya still there? Maybe this is a stupid question to you. But at the core of us, this is the ‘mother question’. Forget the economy, the roads and this Mau ‘thing’. If we have no nation, these are useless projects.
And to quote your Excellency in your eloquent moments: these are nothing but “…bure kabisa kumbafu projects”. Or are they? Sir, your good reign has brought us a four per cent economic growth. To this we say: Praise God! Similarly, the horrible roads of the ‘Nyayo’ era are now smooth and smooth.
We rejoice in your birth, sir! But is this all? I am afraid you have missed the point. When we write history, this is what the record will reflect. The First Lady will be a historical highlight. Her national razzmatazz and Walhalla aside, she is real; maybe even an accidental feminist.
As for you, sir, this is the record we will pass to our children: “…during the reign of President Mwai Kibaki, there was no reign. And because of this, blood was shed. Lots of blood. It was during his reign that a church full of women, children and men was burnt. The location was Eldoret.
Then the offended tribe retaliated. At dawn, they attacked the homes of the opposite tribe. They hacked the men, raped the women and burnt the children while they slept. It was a reign of hate. Tribal hatred. And at the end of it, the country collapsed in 2012. But as it did, the economy grew by 30 per cent and all roads, including the one to my grandmother’s toilet, had been tarmacked. In sum, the economy revived, but the country collapsed.” The question to you sir therefore is this: what is your point?
My hypothesis is that you are an escapist. In fact, your friend Mr Odinga is also an escapist. And I say so respectfully and fearfully. Instead of looking the devil in the eye and calling him the devil, you prefer to wait. And maybe you wait in the hope that the ‘devil’ will go away.
In the meantime, you have buried your head in ‘tarmac’ and Mr Odinga’s head is buried in this ‘Mau thing’. And yes, both the Mau and your ‘tarmacked roads’ are important. However, none is urgent. Two years after we fought, we need answers. And this is urgent. Did we fight because of Mau? No. Did we fight because of a bad constitution or lack of reforms? Zero! Or maybe we fought because the economy had refused to grow? Big joke! To focus on roads, reforms and Mau, therefore, is to be escapist.
These are long-term, not foundational concerns. What is foundational is this: do we have a nation? And the answer to this is a resounding No! What we have is a chaotic aggregate; a messy assemblage of restless tribes. On the surface we seem okay, underground we are sharpening our knives and arrows. We are getting ready for 2012.
But as we do so, you are talking about ‘water towers’ (whatever that means) and four per cent economic growth! Sir, you and your ‘Odinga buddy’ are living on the moon. You need to come to the trenches with us. Bring your traditional bows and arrows. Get ‘primitive’ with us. Come and experience the raw spirit of the nation. And if you do so, we will heal the nation. But more fundamentally, you will become the midwife of the Second Republic; the New Kenya. But can you? Here are your three tests.
One, you must abandon the Kofi Annan reforms. They are sloppy, amateurish and nonsensical. Disbanding the Electoral Commission of Kenya was for instance a sheer fiasco. Currently, we do not have a voters register. Should you find yourself in a position where you are unable to discharge your duties, Sir, we would be in crisis. In your absence, we would not be able to hold a presidential election in the 90 days stipulated by the Constitution.
Similarly, a looming crisis over who should take over would emerge. Your vice-president, Kalonzo Musyoka is entitled to succeed you in your unlikely demise. However, the National Accord is supreme. In fact, it supercedes the Constitution. This way, Mr Odinga can argue compellingly for a takeover. Either way, we would be in a constitutionally reckless place.
And this is only one of the sloppy aspects of the Annan Peace Architecture. To regain our nationhood and to birth the Second Republic, you must trash this half-baked solution. In the alternative, you can choose to be escapist and hide in its sloppiness. Which one will you choose?
The second test is equally controversial. Sir, we do not need a new constitution. And on this, I am probably a lone voice. A new constitution will not create a new Kenya; the Second Republic. Instead, the Second Republic should create a corresponding new constitution. If a new Kenya has not emerged, a new constitution will be nothing but political nonsense.
In fact, and to repeat myself, we cannot write a new constitution in the absence of a crisis. And if we try to, we will precipitate a crisis. This is what happened in the 2005 referendum and it will happen again this year. In sum, we must first re-create the nation and then constitutionalise the new national will. But can you be the agent?
The third is a personal test. Sir, I have submitted in the past that a banana plantation cannot give you bananas one year and oranges the next. Your record on elections is not good. First, you trashed the MoU with Mr Odinga in 2003, then you were sworn in at night in 2008. If this is your record, we should not expect anything better in 2012. My question to you therefore is this: do you plan to extend Parliament in 2012? And is this why your focus is on escapist projects and not the Second Republic? Sir, I am suspicious!
mutahi@myself.com
Daily Nation
