Calls to amend the law to block Raila from 2017 race retrogressive

By Timothy Bosire

We had gotten used to calls in political rallies to block former Prime Minister Raila Odinga from ascending to the presidency. Often we have dismissed such talk as empty rhetoric, ethnic jingoism or wishful thinking. However, the latest move by a new lobby group, National Movement for Democracy Advancement, to campaign for a constitutional amendment to fix the presidential age limit at 70 is now a joke gone too far. 

One may want to dismiss this as one of those ill informed political gymnastics. But in a political environment like ours, where such groupings have backing from powerful political quarters, we need to rebuke and counsel them back to sanity. The world over, leadership has never been an age factor. Leaders have performed either exemplary or disastrously at various levels. One old leader’s failures cannot be used to demonise the rest just like similar failures by one young leader.

From Winston Churchil (Britain), Ronald Reagan (USA), Nelson Mandela (S Africa), Jomo Kenyatta and Mwai Kibaki (Kenya), the Dalai Lama (Indonesia), to Abdullahi Wade in Senegal, the world has had its share of great old men who served and delivered immensely.

To date, this logic has remained the guiding principle for many nations hence no major country in the world has put age limitations on appointment of their political heads.

Besides, the Constitution strictly prohibits discrimination of any kind. Any move to shut out Kenyan elders from the presidency merely due to age and nothing else is a serious affront to the laws and the Bill of Rights. The only handicaps recognised as sufficient to lock somebody out of the presidency are insanity, death, proven incapacitation and convicted bankruptcy, convicted prisoner of longer than six months and one on death row.

Kenyatta and Kibaki took office while in their seventies and they performed well, until their time was due. At his death, Kenyatta left a performing economy almost at par with South Korea and Malaysia, the shilling was strong and the country was united.

When Kibaki took over in 2003, the economy was in shambles, but he was able to catapult it quickly into fast improvement and left remarkable infrastructure development. It is, however, important to note that the development agenda was on the joint manifesto of ODM and PNU parties that formed the coalition government.

From their experience and that of Mandela emerging as a great leader and an icon of leadership in the world for his humility, peace pillar and selflessness and Dr Winston Churchil being the best Prime Minister ever in modern England despite being aged, nobody should fool Kenyans into enacting backward legislations that can only serve to make us the poorer in leadership.

It is also surprising that initiators of this retrogressive law appear to be supporters of the Jubilee side of our political divide. They should recall that when Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe won back his seat, the Jubilee leadership cheered him a lot and President Uhuru Kenyatta invited and hosted him in Nairobi as a key guest during his inauguration as the fourth President of Kenya.

Why did they celebrate and embrace him yet he is in his 90s?

What is clearly at play in this campaign has nothing to do with age and leadership. It is crude ethnicity driven war against Raila that has seen a section of Kenyans spare no effort in demonising him and erecting all manner of road blocks to stop his march to State House. Those who have interacted with Raila know him as a progressive Kenyan, always bubbling with young, great ideas of developing this country, reforming national institutions and politics.

Those fighting this war fear a Raila Presidency will remove the opportunities that make them thrive while the majority suffer. It is sickening to punish all Kenyan wazee just to persecute or get rid of one in pursuit of partisan politics.

The writer is MP for Kitutu Masaba