SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 2014

Why I'm convinced that Kenyans need to talk to one another

Cord leader Raila Odinga (centre) addresses supporters at the 64 stadium in Eldoret, Uasin Gishu County on June 27, 2014. With him is co-principal Moses Wetang'ula second (right) and Siaya Senator James Orengo. PHOTO | ISAAC WALE

Cord leader Raila Odinga (centre) addresses supporters at the 64 stadium in Eldoret, Uasin Gishu County on June 27, 2014. With him is co-principal Moses Wetang'ula second (right) and Siaya Senator James Orengo. PHOTO | ISAAC WALE  NATION MEDIA GROUP

In Summary

  • If we are to build a united and homogeneous nation materially and spiritually satisfied, we must enter into a permanent dialogue with one another
  • For a discussion to qualify as a "dialogue", it would have to slam the door on almost all our MPs, senators and members of county assemblies until they have learned the ABC of good manners
By Philip Ochieng
More by this Author

Why does the ruling party in every Third World semblance of Western liberalism react with such contempt to every opposition call for a "dialogue" with it? The answer lies in the very question: Ours are ashen copies of Western liberalism.

No matter how thin the victory – as when John Kennedy's Democrats pipped Richard Nixon's Republicans in the US in 1959 – sharing Cabinet seats is out of the question. In Britain, the Western regime most admired by Kenya's intelligentsia, the polls winner takes everything.

That is why Kenya's Jubilee has reacted with such contempt to an opposition call for a national "dialogue" of all parties. Any mere idea of a multi-party dialogue suggests to those in power that the ruling party should relinquish to other parties some of its constitutionally given monopoly on policy-making and administration.

Thus, being the beneficiary of a winner-take-all policy imposed on Kenya by London's Westminster at independence and recently reaffirmed by a new constitution, Jubilee may feel unjustly affronted by any suggestion that it should share power with parties it defeated in the last polls.

That the 2013 victory took place in circumstances that remain controversial is neither here nor there for the nonce. The point is that a court of law has ruled that Jubilee bested Cord in all fairness.

For me, however, there is a point even more important than the subsequent judicial affirmation of UhuRuto's legitimacy.

Sure, their government has not tackled with enough vigour such perennial national scourges as corruption, crime, tribalism, gentile hate, insecurity, poverty, the traffic holocaust.

But, equally disturbing, I have not seen in the manifesto of any opposition party anything to convince me that, if it takes over from Jubilee, it will tackle those evils differently.

PERMANENT DIALOGUE

Yet I do agree with Cord. If we are to build a united and homogeneous nation materially and spiritually satisfied, we must enter into a permanent dialogue with one another. A British publishing magnate once declared: "A free newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself." I depart from Cord only on the question why such dialogue must be formal.

Wouldn't it qualify as dialogue if you used the newspaper columns, radio waves, TV screens, chalkboards and pulpits to talk to and teach one another? What would matter, I think, are only (a) if the themes were substantive and relevant and (b) if the exchanges were knowledgeable, pedagogical, civil and respectful.

That is the question. If Cord has special proposals on how to tackle effectively any of the problems that beset our country, why hasn't it tabled those proposals through a mass medium for every Wanjiku to examine? Why does it insist only on a formal round table at which, in the nature of things, only a handful of our usually hotheaded politicians can sit?

Do you call it "dialogue" whenever a Duale, Kajwang, Khalwale, Mbuvi, Midiwo or Shebesh is in full oral flight on the floor of Parliament? And the only reason their respective parties attach values to them is that, through this devil-may-care speed, they divert attention away from the false and extraordinarily shaky social premises on which every one of our parties stands.

For a discussion to qualify as a "dialogue", it would have to slam the door on almost all our MPs, senators and members of county assemblies until they have learned the ABC of good manners.

So I throw a raspberry at politics as a means merely of taking power, rather than politics as an instrument of effecting real changes when in power.

But the fact is that Kenyans need to talk to one another as desperately as a desert sapling needs rainwater – dialogues on real issues, spearheaded by knowledgeable and level minds – those with Kenya's long-term interests at heart – not by the scatterbrains who now represent our parties on all podiums.

ochiengotani@gmail.com