What, pray, do these politicians mean when they say ‘the people’

The priceless phrasing of the United Nations Charter was crafted by Jan Christiaan Smuts, a distinguished Commonwealth statesman from Africa. The UN charter encased as the Covenant of the League of Nations begins with the words “We the People” in reference to a global citizenry collectively intent on living within the dictates of purist civility and reciprocal commonality. Indeed, the very essence of patriotism and nationhood rests on functional harmonisation of the quintessential will of a people.

Some weeks ago, my daughter and I were watching news the other day when an opposition chief appeared on-screen and declared that the people would not go to work on Monday and will instead take to the streets to remonstrate against injustice. She turned to me and asked what I would be doing on that Monday now that people would not be working. When I retorted without hesitation that I would indeed be going to work, she posted an immediate inquisitive rejoinder seeking to confirm if I am still Kenyan because in her virgin mind, the people that the opposition doyen was making reference to are Kenyans. 

Each new day as I listen to Kenyan politicos make reference to the people, I always cringe in wonder if they actually know what they are saying. In their disdainful reflections on the Supreme Court ruling of September 1, Jubilee politicians have constantly waved the accusatory wand that the ruling “subverted the will of the people.” In anticipatory contrast, the Opposition honchos have claimed that the same ruling upheld the will of the people. In typical contumacious manner, the Jubilee politicians have barraged the Supreme Court Judges with the accusation that they conspired to obliterate the collective expression of the people of Kenya. On their part, the NASA politicos have contumeliously rebutted that the judges did justice to the people of Kenya.

Therefore fellow citizens, who are the people? Let us briefly contextualise the people in light of the presidential elections presently on our table as Kenyans. The main reason I shudder each time the protagonists make reference to the people is because to them, the people is a weapon to be used against the opponent. The opposition in particular has been waving the people at the incumbency as if there are no people in support of the incumbency. In fact lately, the opposition has been making reference to the people and Kenyans interchangeably as if to intone that they are in complete control of the total citizenry.

Allow me to indulge you in a little math fellow countrymen. Forty-five million persons make up the nation of Kenya. Of these, say sixteen million are below eighteen and hence even if they hold political opinions, it matters not because legality negates their ability to express it meaningfully. Let’s presume another four million to be in the ageing bracket and hence may wish to meaningfully express their political orientations but are disenfranchised by frailty or senility. That leaves twenty-five million Kenyans able to make their political inclinations be felt via active participatory indulgence in the electoral and spectator arena.

If we pretend that one million such Kenyans belong to the apolitical category either by sheer ignorance, illiteracy or by religious and cultural aloofness then we are left with the twenty-four million Kenyans on the IEBC rota of voters legally eligible to take sides in the ongoing electoral contest. By voter apportionment, eight million of these people voted in favour of the incumbency whilst six million voted for the opposition. So again I ask; who are the people? For argument’s sake, let us reverse these figures and assume that the opposition actually won by eight million votes against the incumbency’s six million.

One may then ask what is running in the minds of the opposition politicians when they repeatedly take to the podium to proclaim that the people will do this, the people will not allow that, the people will never again be disenfranchised, the people bluh bluh. Such are the times one wonders why the opposition in Kenya pretends to be such dilettantes in their political discourse. It is an open secret that Kenya like most other nations is politically dichotomous. Why then would a politician contemptuously pedestal his followers as the only people at the vituperative expense of the others across the political valley?

Reading Nani Palkhivala’s famous book titled We the People, one is immediately impressed by how Nani craftily uses economics to peel off the political skin of India’s elite and expose them to ridicule by the masses that make up the world’s largest democracy. In Kenya, every politician, even those who eventually receive only a handful of votes, will tell you he ventured into politics because the people wanted him. When the Budget Statement is read, Opposition legislators will always tag it in nugatory fashion as being bad for the people even as the ruling party legislators hail it as being for the people.

Every year for over a decade, after India’s Finance Minister had read his budget, Indians would wait for Nani Palkhivala’s simplified re-reading of the same budget. This is how his annual spectacle qualified as the people’s budget. At one point, Palkhivala advised politicians in jest to identify their people and refer to them thus, leaving the other people in peace. Me thinks Kenyan politicians need to ingest this advisory masterpiece and be more specific when they refer to ‘The People’. 

Mr Ouko is a Senior Sociologist at the University of Nairobi