campaigning for the elections of 2017 but for 2022 . If that is what you call forward planning then in the Kenyan situation it has gone to ridiculous levels .
Ochieng has yet to be aware of any other country that exhausts itself to such a degree on matters that have little to do with current affairs and challenges . Aren ’ t we supposed to be evaluating the performance of the incumbents to decide if they qualify for another term ?
In that evaluation we need to grapple with what seems to have become an endemic malady in Kenya , the runaway corruption . Have Kenyans suddenly become more corrupt or are there underlying issues that has sent us to that unenviable position .
Making us look even worse is the escapades of one Magufuli across the border who seems to have taken the corruption bull by the horns and seems to be succeeding in taming it so much so that he has even taken pot shots at our moral loop holes and warning us not to export them .
A closer examination indicates that while Magufuli is slaying the corruption dragon in Tanzania with a whole country cheering on our president is hamstrung by a constitution that we gleefully announced to the world to be the best since the invention of ice cream and soda .
The ability to steal from the national coffers and be protected by the constitution makes Kenya a gangster paradise and no wonder that everyone wants to join the gravy train by seeking positions of power by whatever means to be in the game .
Judging by the frustrations of the president in his high profile
‘‘ All that Kenya has seen in the past year was an attempt to create an electorate based on tribal groupings . All tribal chiefs are deep into night meetings trying to craft a coalition that would propel them to power or secure them influential positions .’’
impotent position one wonders why anybody would be vying for the presidency in Kenya , even past presidential aspirants have realised that gubernatorial positions are more lucrative and endowed with real power .
In the meantime the opposition is having a field day taunting the president on presiding over the most corrupt government since independence and asking him nearly on a daily basis to resign and hand over the reins to more competent leaders , meaning themselves .
If as a country we do not find ways of dealing with official corruption then the country is doomed to stagnate and we are at risk of acquiring an even worse international reputation as a corrupt country where we are already mentioned unfavourably .
What is more damaging is our apparent inability to bring any of the well publicized corruption cases into a conclusion with the perpetrators either jailed or made to refund the stolen loot .
It would be more beneficial to the country if what was stolen , be it land or money , is returned .
Since the era of grand corruption which started in Kenya with the Goldenberg saga there has never been any high profile conviction only endless courtroom dramas and no wonder the president was unable to hide his chagrin and blamed the courts of abetting corruption . As vigorously as the opposition seem to point out at real and imagined corrupt dealings in government they seem unable or unwilling to set in motion mechanisms to stamp out the vice . They come across as a group left out of the ‘ eating ’ rather than a group abhorrent to corruption Oddly the opposition seems to subscribe to a leftist ideology best exemplified by the late Fidel Castro , who by the way has a road in Kenya but not named after him .
We are forever being told to start a people ’ s revolution to oust our leadership but have not heard the opposition eschewing capitalism .
It is strange that some Kenyans do not see the irony of espousing the ideals of a lifelong revolutionary and oft quoting him yet in practice doing nothing in support of those ideals and even helped adopt a constitution that negates those same ideals .
And talking of ideology , do Kenyans have any ? Political parties are supposed to articulate the type of leadership they would provide and to differentiate their political stand with well crafted manifestoes that would help the citizenry identify with their cause .
All that Kenya has seen in the past year was an attempt to create an electorate based on tribal groupings . All tribal chiefs are deep into night meetings trying to craft a coalition