By G Oguda
There is this band of rusty wagons dancing all over about the need to have a third political ‘force’ in this country. They say the government is dead, and the opposition is also digging their graves.
The only option, they say, is for all Kenyans to come together and form an alternative political outfit outside jubilee and cord.
Let me tell them something.
I voted for Peter Kenneth in 2013. He packaged himself as the localised Barack Obama, the deliverer of the Kenyan dream. Ladies say he was handsome and gentle, some men say they wanted to be as charismatic as his son, Andrew. Prior to 2013, Peter Kenneth had been hailed as the best manager of CDF funds, in his home constituency of Gatanga.
For a group whose greed for (dirty) money has been equated with that of wild swines, Peter Kenneth represented a new breed of MPs with clean hands, and big hearts. He was not entangled into the convoluted tribal mess that Jomo, Toroitich, and Mwai had used to whip those from the wrong tribe back into line. For a man younger than the Nairobi City Council’s fire trucks I saw yesterday coughing mud instead of water, Peter Kenneth was to be the alternative for the Kenyatta-Odinga-Moi octogenarian politics that, critics say, has been the reason Kenya cannot move in one piece.
Turns out he was an Obama counterfeit, and voting him was the worst political decision I have ever made. With the benefit of hindsight, Kenyans should never have even entertained the thought of having Third Forces, or Horses, in the general elections. There is a reason Americans split hairs between Republicans and Democrats, even if you are faced with the choice of an arrogant hairless buffoon on one hand, and an incoherent boring matriarch on the other. Kenya needs only two political parties, whether the Jubilee group of looters is led by an intoxicated mafia don or the Cord infantry division has an ugly voodoo doll as it’s figure head.
As I go back to the pruned list of serious presidential aspirants in 2013, I am realising that those who came forth as technocratic firm hands neither got the technical leadership credentials to sustain an ideology nor had hands to raise against the incumbency excesses.
The price of democracy is eternal vigilance. Kenneth, Kiyiapi, Dida, and Mudavadi want their names chiseled on the same marble slab as Dedan Kimathi, or Tom Mboya, or Wangari Maathai, but have no balls to join Kenyans in putting this recklessly arrogant government in check. In the village, during the long rains, we knew things were bad when our parents told us to take the cardboard out of the glassless windows and use it for our inner soles.
Peter Kenneth has refused to let us hear his opinion on whether we should let this El Nino government destroy the cardboards on the open windows or let the water sink the mud-house but use the cardboards to help hungry Kenyans swim to school.
Of the 2013 presidential aspirants, only Raila Odinga has remained standing as he struggles to make himself heard above the noise of organised heckling by those 36 air headed bloggers deriving pay from the people who are looting our economy dry. You ask where the Third Force of Peter Kenneth is to lend his voice to this struggle. Prof. James Kiyiapi has not even sent a thank you sms to his 10 voters since 2013.
The last time we heard of Dida, he was appointed to a State Corporation and was still consulting his conscience on whether to take up the job or continue with his comical lecturers. Many cannot even remember who Musalia Mudavadi’s running mate was – an excuse of a man who, to describe him as a political infidel, would be modest.
I have always been told that I have no talent for disguising my feelings. The problem I have with those who claim to be politically objective is that they are too preoccupied defending their objectivity that they cant notice their tribal bigotry showing.
Show Peter Kenneth a sparrow and he will describe it as either an eagle or a vulture, if at all he gets to open his mouth. Yet these are the Third Forces were are being told to begin considering.
The office of the opposition, if ever there was one, is a bed of nails. Peter Kenneth and his gang of ‘too cool to fight in the political trenches’ Third Force wannabes must be reminded that the wages of political sin is death, not promotion.
Kenya is not a Facebook Album to wow us with your pancake makeup and bleached eyes. And this message also goes to all those we entrusted with leadership in this country – whether you are that Miwani Ward MCA who cant construct a sentence in English or the President of this country hoping from one Formula One race to the next as Kenyans sink deeper into poverty.
Never Again!.
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