When ODM roosters come to roost, don't blame Ababu but its grizzled, old guard

I totally concur with Opposition party ODM that Budalang'i MP, Pius Tawfiq Ababu Namwamba, is a Jubilee mole.

After all, how can one say what Ababu said about his party unless he is paid by ODM detractors to wreck the party from within?

By questioning the morality of ODM's quest for a national referendum when it cannot conduct credible party polls, Ababu was reminding what his party boss, former PM Tinga, likes to say, albeit a little crudely: nyani haoni kundule. A monkey cannot see its ugly backside, so it keeps on laughing at its other relatives' backsides.

That kind of insult surely could not go unchallenged and, unsurprisingly, ODM rank and file rallied to Tinga's defence quite quickly, urging Ababu to join Jubilee where he truly belongs.
But if he opted to stay on, ODM stalwarts reminded, Ababu would have to sit patiently and wait for his turn at the top.

But let's separate the wheat from the chaff. This is not about Ababu; it is about Tinga and his older lieutenants who are deluded that the party will crumble if Ababu and his younger comrades take charge.

Ababu is 40; Tinga is 69, a milestone that current party secretary general Peter Anyang Nyong'o is expected to achieve in two months. So the top ODM leadership is nearly twice as old as Ababu.

Yet, the question of age is hardly a political one; it is a societal affliction. Judges were in court recently seeking an extension of their tenure from 70 to 74 years; teachers who have reached 60 want to remain in class for two more years, even professors who retire after 70 are still marking time in campuses because they have nothing else to do with their time.

Well, apart from mark-timing, let's review the implications of these professionals' reluctance to go home.

A typical career trajectory for an appellate judge is that he will have put in some 45 years to get where they are, assuming the average age at which lawyers are admitted to the Bar is 25. So what would one presumably achieve in four years that they have not in 45?

The excuse often heard from the ivory tower is that there isn't adequate expertise, hence the need to retain those old hands.

If a professor has been teaching for 40-something years without adequately preparing his successors, isn't that the evidence of his incompetence, and what his employers should have used earlier to get rid of him?

Employable age

In any case, by remaining in the business, such teachers stand in the way of their juniors' promotion by unnecessarily holding slots they cannot fully occupy since they have surpassed employable age.

Our politicians, as well as some of the professions listed here are driven in their acts by a fallacy that their institutions will collapse in their absence.

Quite the contrary, it is their extended stay that occasion eventual collapse, for the lifeblood of any organisation is an injection of fresh ideas that they continue to stifle and frustrate.

And if there is any lesson to be picked from our recent history, preparing successors is not something one grants another; it is something they do for themselves to perpetuate their ideas, that is, if they have ideas worth carrying forward.

From the evidence in hand, the ODM ideas about leadership say pretty much where the party is destined: it all starts and ends with Tinga. His best years lie behind, not ahead.