From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2013
I said many times on this blog and I repeat again that insecurity in Kenya will still be worse unless political leadership is changed to focus on the interest of citizens and the development of the nation like poverty eradication and unemployment crisis. Poverty and unemployment leads to thuggery and murders.
Unless the tendency of manipulating ethnic identities for private interest changes, the government would have no time to put in place the strategies that can address these crucial and urgent problems. Their political base is largely ethnic and their clout is derived from money.
Unless Kenyans think twice and change their attitude of making political choices based on a number of considerations, the issue of insecurity will still be a great problem. This will only be solved the day Kenyans thought beyond their tribes and regions and vote in leaders not tribes.
We see elements of this in the recent elections in Kenya where the West’s threats of “grave consequences” if Kenyans elected those indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) served to mobilise voters in favor of the Uhuru-Ruto ticket.
As seen in the recent election, over 90 percent of Luos voted for Odinga. Over 90 percent of Kalenjin, who had voted Raila by a similar margin in 2007 changed sides and voted for Uhuru.
The Kikuyu overwhelmingly voted Uhuru, a factor that may explain why with a small addition of votes from a few other communities, the Jubilee coalition won. Raila’s Luo allied with the Kamba and other coastal groups had no enough number to win.
The tendency of Kenyans to vote in ethnic blocks explains why the democratic process tends to sustain elite privilege even at the expense of public policies that are supposed to serve the ordinary citizen.
This is because in building a winning electoral coalition, Kenyan politicians need not appeal directly to the masses that vote. Rather they need to negotiate with powerful ethnic intermediaries that represent the masses. These powerful men and women then act as a bridge between the presidential candidate or political party and their co-ethnics.
You may ask how ethnic identity is related to the conflict of loyalties and interests. This is because Kenya being a multi-ethnic society, communities that feel they have been left out in eating national cake will be aggressive to the communities they assume benefit from the cake.
It explains why many ethnic groups always supported the armed struggle for independence in hope that they could regain their grabbed powers. This situation has fomented anger, resentment, lust for revenge, and aggressive competitiveness.
That is why when violent reactions emerge under the influence of ethno-political ideologies tends to take the form of ethnocentrism, the ideology that animates the competition between ethnic groups.
That is also why a section of the population was unhappy about the outcome of the election of December 2007. When they felt their power had been stolen from them, so was the conflict.
The political crisis, under the influence of ethnic rivalry and violence, has recently killed hundreds of people and destroyed property, including burning of houses in some regions.
These conflicts cannot be contained since they are ethnically a deliberate political strategy by desperate groups intended to effect change in the political system that marginalizes them.
The situation has emerged because of unequal distribution of land and other resources, unabated corruption at the national level, extreme poverty in urban slums and squatters, unemployment, and irresponsible leadership.
Unless this changed ethnic identities in Kenya will always act as a pole around which group members are mobilized and compete effectively for state-controlled power and economic resources.
Under the leadership of the predatory elite, members of the ethnic group are urged to form an organized political action-group in order to maximize their corporate political, economic, and social interests.
Since the tendency of manipulating ethnic identities prevails also in Christian churches in Kenya, this situation has robbed churches of the ability to promote social justice for all. Religious leaders would tend to side with their ethnically anointed kings even if they cannot perform.
That is why to some religious leaders Jubilee government was right to pull out of Rome Statute because their anointed ethnic kings are implicated at the ICC. These leaders do not mind about fighting against impunity, what they see is our king is targeted.
When President Uhuru Kenyatta said more than 39 people had been killed, among them close members of his own family, this can send a signal why negative ethnicity is a big threat in Kenya. Why would Al Shabaan target members of his own family, and how did they know that those were members of his family by the way?
Westgate shopping mall may have been the target of choice because its clientele are the filthy rich class of Kenyans together with their equally opulent expatriate counterparts.
Al Shabaab, which has links to al Qaeda and is battling Kenyan and other African peacekeepers in Somalia, had repeatedly threatened attacks on Kenyan soil if Nairobi did not pull its troops out of the Horn of Africa country.
The raid presents Kenyatta with his first major security challenge since a March election victory. The assault has been the biggest single attack in Kenya since al Qaeda’s East Africa cell bombed the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi in 1998, killing more than 200 people.
Kenya sent its troops into Somalia in October 2011 to pursue the militants it blamed for kidnapping tourists and attacking its security forces.
To stop the terrorist attacks, Al Shabaab wants Kenya to pull out of Somalia where the government has been spending billions of tax payer’s money when more than 10 million Kenyans are faced with starvation.
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
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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