From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste in images
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2012
To be honest with my fellow Kenyans, I like the politics of Narc-Kenya leader Martha Karua. She is determined to go it alone to realise her presidential ambition when other presidential aspirants go it tribal, not learning from political violence which soon took on an ethnic dimension after Kenya’s disputed 2007 elections.
The concern here of course, is no longer the stranglehold of autocrats, but the hijacking of the democratic process by tribal politics despite the fact that Kenya’s 2007-08 post-election violence revealed the extent to which tribal forces could quickly bring a country to the brink of civil war.
As some commentators have argued, the challenge to democracy in Kenya is not the prevalence of ethnic diversity, but the use of identity politics to promote narrow tribal interests. It suggests that every ethnic community should have its own territory, which reinforces ethnic competition.
Kenyan leaders often exploit tribal loyalty to advance personal gain, parochial interests, patronage, and cronyism despite the fact that tribes are not built on democratic ideas but thrive on zero-sum competition.
As a result, they are not only inimical to democratic advancement, but have also played a major role in tribal conflict across Kenya. Against the background that leaders of the different opposition parties are primarily focused on pursuing their tribal interests rather than uniting around a common political programme.
Kenyans have also been made to believe that president can only be elected when tribes unite together. They do not even know the manifesto of political parties they are voting for. This is because the opposition parties were unable to find common ground through coherent party manifestos.
The manifestos are generally issued late because much of the effort goes into building tribal alliances, even though the new constitution of Kenya seeks to address the issue of ethnicity by ensuring that a president needs broad geographical support to be elected, where a winner must receive more than half of all the votes cast in the election and least 25 percent of the votes cast in each of more than half of the country’s counties.
But tribal leaders are clever and calculating.
Party manifestos are fundamentally documents in which parties outline their principles and goals in a manner that goes beyond popular rhetoric. They arise from careful discussion, compromise, and efforts to express the core values and commitments of the party.
That is why building clear party platforms requires effective intellectual input, usually provided through think-tanks and other research institutions. Most Kenyan political parties lack such support and are generally manifestos cobbled together with little consultation.
They are not built on ideologies on a philosophy or set of principles that underlies a political programme. Most political parties in Kenya do not consist of the shared beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions that cause a certain group of people to join together and develop and advocate specific political programmes.
They are not built on such ideologies. That is why they do not aim at the good of the community which should be more important than the interests of individuals. As a result they are not founded on a belief in progress and tolerance of difference, a belief that that society should be unified and stable.
Political party should be a vehicle for citizens sharing a common political agenda in which the members, not the leaders, are the foundation and the reason for the party’s existence and not a “talking shop.” Its mission should be action-oriented: to develop policies, sell them to the electorate, and win power in elections.
Political party that members can demand more accountability from their leaders and even become party leaders themselves- make a contribution to the overall development of responsible citizenship.
Political party which is interested in the welfare of the nation, not the welfare of its own members or supporters only-based on this ideology then it becomes only a political faction whose aim is to advance the restricted interests of its members whether or not such interests promote the common good.
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Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
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Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.
-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002