Take caution! The people will eat you up if you don’t address their plight

The Government seems to have a massive appetite for self-inflicted injury. It rarely cares to do anything with a sense of forethought and purpose. It is not bothered about direction, method or public perception.

Here is a government that can change its mind on a presidential trip to the United States, two hours after takeoff. The presidential plane does a U-turn in mid air.

The party returns home and pretends nothing happened. They sit well with their conscience. They move on without a single word to the nation. Months later, it is a forgotten affair. They owe nobody any explanation. Did they even return the allowances they had drawn?

They may follow up the aborted American trip with the announcement of another presidential trip, this time to Nigeria. They will again abort it without considering that citizens need to know why another presidential trip has miscarried. Either they don’t know how to be in harmony with the public, or they simply don’t care – or both.

Could that explain the comedy of errors this week? The separation of Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Grace Kaindi from the police, the ill-advised presidential rooting for the Jubilee Alliance Party (JAP) at the Coast, the cancer machine crisis at Kenyatta National Hospital and – of course – the poor handling of the teachers’ strike; these blunders have stolen the thunder from the triumphal return of Kenya’s athletes from China.

The charm offensive at the Coast is itself a wise thing to do. After the next three months, we will talk of the next elections in terms of “next year” rather than “2017.” You can only expect people to begin gearing up for that season. Yet, could President Kenyatta’s campaign for dissolution of Jubilee Alliance’s constituent parties in favour of the fabled JAP return to haunt him?

This top-to-bottom campaign is already encountering resistance in the alliance’s strongholds. Should the President perhaps have left this assignment to influence peddlers and sundry political functionaries and operatives? That way, when it eventually flops – as it must – he would remain dignified. It will be interesting to see how President Kenyatta wangles out of this voluntary impossible mission.

Meanwhile, a star-crossed government squandered a golden opportunity to milk rewards of sterling performance by Kenya’s athletes in China. It instead flung itself into controversy with the removal of DIG Kaindi from the Kenya Police, purporting to make her an ambassador. It would appear that when they don’t know what to do with you, they make you an ambassador, or something like that in the Foreign Service. They can then parachute you to some safe landing in Siberia. That is how much premium we attach to our missions abroad. They are dumping grounds.

But has the government opened up the Pandora box? State House should know many months in advance that it will want to remove Ms Kaindi from office at some point. You would imagine that they would have the capacity to remove her in tandem with the law.

They would have the sense to make her departure appear lawful – even if it was not – and her replacement constitutional. They would not seem to be sacking her, as appears to be the case. And there would be a raft of competent women each ready to step into her shoes, in accord with the Constitution and the National Police Act.

As things stand, they have failed both tests. Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery and Chair of the Police Commission, Johnston Kavuludi, have brazenly looked Kenyans in the eye and told them there is no senior policewoman to replace Kaindi. So why the eager impatience to remove her?

They say she had reached her retirement age. So they never knew until now that her retirement date was coming? Knowing what the law says about gender balance in these cadres, don’t they have a succession plan? I will refrain from echoing the MP for Lugari in 1975, Burudi Nabwera, when he said of the Kanu Government, “What kind of government is this” with no succession plan in strategic offices?

Yet, don’t we have people well past their retirement age, serving on special contracts in the same government? Can’t Kaindi enjoy the same arrangement, if it is true that she has reached the retirement age? Both the sensitivity of her office and the gender issue in the law would justify this. If she can be parachuted to Siberia even after reaching the retirement age, why can’t she be retained as DIG? Which is more urgent, finding an ambassador or a DIG with the know how and who fulfills the legal requirements?

It is also instructive that 33 County Police Commanders and County Commissioners have be shuffled around the country. Out of 33 commissioners, only six are women. And of the 33 police commanders, only five are women.

This is way below the constitutional bar of one third. President Kenyatta needs to reflect on his often-professed commitment to the women of this country. Here is a clear case of culpable failure to balance the equation. The only challenge here is intent and willpower. Clearly, there is no intent and no will.

Elsewhere, the teachers’ strike is now on in earnest. The government’s attitude has been one of haughty insouciance. The teachers have won the legal battle for their pay rise at every stage. The joke of it is that what they are asking for is a pittance. The top brass on public sector payrolls has the character of a plutocratic oligarchy – that is to say a tiny class of wealthy people is in charge. It is not bothered about anybody else.

A commissioner in the Teachers Service Commission therefore earns Sh685,232 a month. The lowest paid teacher earns about Sh15,000 over the same period. The commissioner’s salary can pay up to 45 teachers. Such is the enormity of inequality.

History teaches us that this kind of inequality has set countries on fire. The people in Government need to know teachers – and other poorly paid professionals – have the capacity to lead the people to eat up the Government.

That was how the Haile Selassie Government was eaten up in Ethiopia in 1974. In the same way, the people ate up intransigent governments in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. With the kind of arrogant people at the helm in education, finance and health, a tragedy of this kind is only a matter of time.

To echo Wole Soyinka, take caution our masters, the people will eat you up if you don’t concurrently check your runaway appetites and address their plight.