Insolence of power only spells doom for UhuRuto

By Ababu Namwamba
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In one of his simple yet striking fables, Leo Tolstoy tells of two cockerels that fought on a dungheap. One cockerel vanquished the other and drove him from the dungheap. All the hens gathered around the cockerel, and began to laud him.

The cockerel wanted his strength and glory to be known in the next yard. He flew on top of the barn, flapped his wings, and crowed in a loud voice: “look at me, all of you. I am a victorious cockerel. No other cockerel in the world has strength such as I.”

The cockerel had not finished, when an eagle killed him, seized him in his claws and carried him to his nest. Robert Green, in his 48 Laws of Power, cautions: “the moment of victory is often the moment of greatest peril. In the heat of victory, arrogance and overconfidence can push you past the goal you had aimed for, and by going too far, you make more enemies than you defeat. Do not allow success to go to your head…”

Green illustrates this with the tragic Greek tale of Icarus and his father Daedalus, who fashioned wings of wax that allowed them to fly out of the labyrinth and escape the Minotaur.

Elated by the triumphant escape and the feeling of flight, Icarus soars higher and higher, until the sun melts the wings and he hurtles to his death.

And Niccolo Machiavelli, in The Prince, advises rulers thus: “…the use of insulting language toward an enemy arises from insolence of victory, or from the false hope of victory, which later misleads men as often in their actions as in their deeds; for when this false hope takes possession of the mind, it makes men go beyond the mark, and causes them to sacrifice a certain good for an uncertain better.”

Power arrogance is not new in Kenya. Remember the 2003 sassiness of one Kiraitu Murungi? After Narc vanquished a rookie Uhuru Kenyatta at the 2002 polls, scattering the Nyayo state to the four winds (apparently only momentarily!), the good attorney, then a powerful Justice Minister in Team Kibaki, insolently advised Moi to go tend his goats in Kabartonjo and “watch how government should run”. Of course Narc would soon implode spectacularly, amid the brouhaha of dishonoured MoUs, botched constitution making and grand larceny of the Anglo Leasing fame that left Kiraitu himself politically blemished. The Ameru King Wannabe has never recovered his mojo since.

But it is the Jubilee armada that has taken insolence to absolutely dizzying heights. The ruling coalition has time and time again exhibited sickening snootiness and disregard for even the most basic courtesies. It all started with a deliberate, ill-advised official effort to embarrass, belittle and harass opposition leaders.

No sooner had the dust settled on the controversy-riddled 2013 General Election than CORD leaders Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka were subjected to the ignominy of having their security and vehicles withdrawn with neither notice nor decorum. The former Prime Minister of the Republic was even prevented from using the VIP lounges at the country’s airports, shameful impudence that caught attention beyond our borders.

The crowing has now escalated to the stone-age Nyayosque chest-thumping by President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto: that they will “rule” Kenya for a minimum of twenty years between them. What cheek!

On one hand, Uhuru is in fact sending a not-so-veiled warning to his ambitious deputy that he dare not even contemplate challenging him for the Jubilee ticket in 2017. On the other hand, the ndramatic duo is actually telling Kenyans that they already know the outcome of the next three general elections.

So we could as well keep away from the polling booths and just let the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission declare the obvious, then accept and move on! It is not lost on Kenyans that in the run up to the yet again bungled last polls, the two repeatedly implored CORD to accept the still “unknown” outcome.

Did they already know that outcome? Do they know something about 2017 and beyond the rest of us do not? Telling. Very Telling.