A political elite teeming with egos is our big hurdle today

Protestors barricade a section of the road during Anti-Government protests in Nakuru city on July 12,2023. [Kipsang Joseph,Standard]

This country owes Nyeri Archbishop Anthony Muheria a debt of gratitude. He recently dished out some home truths to our political leaders on behalf of an anxious nation.

"We need to recover our humanity. Leadership needs to be humane, empathetic and compassionate. Currently, the leader is arrogant, rough, insulting and imposing. I think we are going to the wrong kind of leadership," he said on national TV.

Sage words. And well-diagnosed. Unbridled ego and loose lips have lately become worrying themes among our vaunted political class. Examples abound. You look in one corner and you find a potty-mouthed CS with nary a kind word for anyone. You look in another and you find an MP brazenly assaulting a KPLC staff for doing his job.

Then a Majority Whip in Parliament boasts ensuring passage of the Finance Act 2023 through bribery, thus giving us another window into the ethical collapse of the National Assembly. These are not isolated incidents. They are of a piece. They paint a picture of a political elite teeming with egos run amok.

This is what Archbishop Muheria was calling attention to. His was a reminder that statecraft is, by design, humbling and character-defining work. Put simply, being clothed in immense power comes freighted with the responsibility to exercise your authority with uncommon wisdom.

That's a key part of the social contract. In the absence of such logic, a nation is a feeble thing. When a crisis (even of a global nature like Covid-19 or cost of living) hits a country enfeebled by internal divisions and misunderstandings, it easily escalates into an existential event.

Sounds familiar?

A national affliction hiding in plain sight. Archbishop Muheria must have been channeling the Sermon on the Mount. "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." Our politics, by all accounts, runs on a different logic. "The loudest, meanest and most downright disrespectful shall rule the roost".

No issue illustrates this better than the furor around the on-again, off-again protests these past few months, popularly called "maandamano".

The world is in the throes of economic tumult. Some experts in geopolitics, point to the war in Ukraine, runaway inflation, the accelerating negative effects of climate change, and the dregs of the Covid-19 pandemic, call it a poly-crisis. Kenyans are feeling it. If the economic squeeze we experienced during the pandemic felt intolerable, this has the feel of damnation itself. A recent opinion poll from TIFA exposed some grim economic realities. It revealed that half of Kenyans have lost trust in ability of President William Ruto's administration to tame the biting cost of living crisis while 56 per cent are unhappy with the nation's direction.

Little wonder then that, unlike in previous years where such protests were mostly concentrated in opposition strongholds in Nairobi and Nyanza, this new wave has seen them in at least 20 counties with some unusual suspects joining the fray, among them Laikipia, Nyeri, Meru and Kirinyaga. It is, by any definition, a groundswell.

Yet, the protests have become something of a political Rorschach test that evokes a love-it or hate-it response reflecting our deeply held political affiliations. Those who support the protests turn a blind eye to destruction of property that often accompany them while those who oppose them are unwilling to grant protesters any quarter. In other words, for those who believe, no proof is necessary, and for those who don't believe, no proof is possible.

The doctrine of hyper partisanship brooks no middle ground. It's a national affliction hiding in plain sight. But its consequences are as clear as the moon in a cloudless sky. They include taking a half-hearted swing at bipartisanship, teargas in schools, markets, and homes, armored water cannon trucks having a busier go of it than fire engines, arrests on trumped-up charges, an angry ex-president vowing to protect his family from the government he once ran, blood in the streets, and (at the time of writing) at least 30 bodies in morgues around the country. These are signs of a country failing a democratic stress test.

The heroes of our First and Second Liberation must be rolling in their graves. It's their sacrifice that is honoured by the freedoms and other lofty ideals enshrined in our Constitution. We should be better stewards of this legacy. As with everything else in life, doing better at nurturing our democracy will involve some learning, unlearning, and taking a deep, unflinching look at ourselves.

A good start could be by accepting results of free and fair elections, abiding by court rulings, respecting the right to protest, not abusing the right to protest by damaging or looting property, not using deadly or disproportionate force against protestors and other fine steps in the realm of good democratic hygiene that we have lately been allergic to.

Of all of these, taking a good, long look in the mirror is what our country needs more. The truth is we are as guilty as our politicians of giving in to our worst impulses. The fact that many of our leaders continue to sacrifice national interest at the altar of ego and self-enrichment is a function of their trust that they won't face any consequences for doing it.

The writer is a host on The Situation Room, Spice FM's popular morning current affairs show