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The much touted National Super Alliance, Nasa has not disappointed me. I had been praying and hoping that they will prove me wrong but wapi! They have confirmed that indeed there is nothing ‘national’ or ‘super’ about the alliance.
Harangued by their clueless Jubilee brothers to present an agenda, they felt compelled to do so. The people of Kenya also wanted to know what they stand for apart from telling us what we already know that Jubilee is a tribal, clueless, thieving regime.
The disillusioned people of Kenya are looking for hope, a vision, an indicator that there is something new to look forward to apart from the politics of ethnicity, impunity and mediocrity, which are the hallmarks of Cord/Nasa and Jubilee. With such high expectations, the unveiling of the Nasa’s nine-point plan should have been an earth-shaking event. Unfortunately, it turned out to be what most of us always feared — recycled empty Kanu rhetoric.
Same old guard who have run out of ideas and have nothing to offer a new, modern, generation looking for inspiration and modernization. For those who did not get the nine-point plan here it is. Do not hold your breath: 1. One Nation One People 2. Kenya first. Kenya Kwanza 3. Security for all 4. Better health for all 5. Food for all 6. A better economy for all 7. Education for all 8. Eradicate corruption 9. Promotion of devolution.
For the uninitiated, back in the 80’s and 90’s, these are the same same things Kanu promised to fix by the year 2000. They thought then that the year 2000 was so far away. Let us further interrogate that madness they are calling “One Nation One People” and “Kenya First”. As if it was not enough to mimic the Nasa acronym from elsewhere, they have now stolen the “Kenya first” slogan from Donald Trump’s “America first”.
By “America First” Trump meant that all security and trade decisions that will be made by his administration will put America first. Can a clever person tell me what “Kenya first” means? Are these guys this devoid of original ideas that they have to recycle ideas from foreign media to sound sophisticated?
But what disgusts me is a bunch of tribal kingpins lecturing us about “One Nation One people” and “Kenya first” nonsense. How can a cabal of tribalists claim to unite a nation whereas all of them have made and maintained a political career by dividing the country into tribal cocoons?
Do you remember one of them, who says he is the the best to lead, refusing to answer a question from a journalist because “your name betrays you”? Do you remember them running a 41 vs 1 campaign in 2007? Do you remember one of them recently telling his supporters to turn out in large numbers to vote for him so that he can get “tyranny of numbers”?
Do you remember one of them recently being crowned a tribal kingpin in a public event and telling “his people” to back him so that he can bargain with other tribal warlords? Have you seen them stampeding their tribal backyards begging “their people” from “their strongholds” to register as voters? Don’t they all head tribal political parties that they use as bargaining chips for a seat in the political market place? Are these the people with the audacity to stand in front of Kenyans and promise, “One Nation One People”?
Who is fooling who?
Either Kenyan politicians are irredeemably dumb or they think we are irredeemably dumb. Such a proposition can only come from duplicitous characters. What tragedy can hit us as a people that when we have a young, modern generation that wants to be inspired into a brave new modern world, we have a bunch of tribal kingpins recycling the 30-year-old promises from their Kanu days?
In the 1980s, the people were told that the problem was the single party state. We brought in multi-partyism. The ills of corruption, tribalism and poverty continued. We were then told that the problem was Moi that “yote yawezekana bila Moi”. In 2002, we sent Moi home. The ills of corruption, tribalism and poverty continued. Then we the people were told that the problem is the Constitution.
In 2010 we overwhelmingly voted in a new Constitution. The problem of corruption, tribalism and poverty persists unto this day. Then we were told that Nasa will solve the problem. We asked how? And all we get are the platitudes of yester-years. Having run out of any new ideas, they are offering us the same rhetoric that Kanu fed us for 39 years!
Is this all Nasa can offer to a country that is tired of listening to the same stories for the last 54 years? Isn’t it truly tragic that for a youthful country demanding leadership, vision, inspiration, opportunities, prosperity, innovation and modernisation, all Nasa can offer are the broken dreams of yesterday? Isn’t this a perfect case of a child who asks for fish and is given a snake, a child who asks for bread and is given a stone?
If you doubted that Nasa is “the same monkeys in a different forest”, here is your answer. Tribal warlords offering you that which they can never give and that which their teacher, the professor of politics and Kanu promised us decades ago and never delivered. The promise on corruption is an interesting one.
All these fellows have been mentioned in one scandal or the other, and they all dutifully served in the Kanu regime. They did not find it necessary to speak against corruption then. For so long as they were on the gravy train, they would sing praises dawn to dusk.
The counties have become the new frontier in grand corruption in this country. These guys in Nasa control more than half the counties in Kenya. Have you heard any of them raise concerns over the immense graft going on there? In fact, their close associates, allies and relatives have declared their interests in running for the governors’ positions. They know that election to governor is a license to eat without accountability.
And on their part the kingpins at the head of Nasa are saying they will transfer 50 per cent of national revenue to the counties. For them ‘pesa mashimoni’ is business as usual, provided they get a piece of the action. I have said that the problem that Nasa have with Jubilee is not that the taxpayers’ money is being stolen. Their problem is that it is not them stealing it. Provided the graft in the counties benefits them indirectly or directly, you will not hear them raise their voices against it.
Again, for the umpteenth time, what is needed to modernize this country is something that Cord/Nasa and Jubilee cannot give. We need a compelling new non-ethnic political narrative to inspire the country differently. The “new” Nasa nine-point plan is enough warning that Kenyans are on their own.
