Have you seen a King Cobra and Python duel? It's a fascinating scene, one in which there can only be one winner and one loser who dies a miserable death, usually ending up in the champion’s menu. The two snakes are both dangerous in their own right, and you are best advised to steer clear. The cobra has a lethal bite because of its poison while the python, which has no poison, kills by constricting its enemy in a paralysing grip. Both snakes wrap their bodies around each other. While the python tries to squeeze its enemy to death, the cobra fights to get the python's head and deliver the killer bite. It can be a lengthy affair, gripping to watch and often verging on a stalemate.
This is the situation Kenya finds itself in today, where the government has turned on its own people who are fighting to hold on to whatever little they've got left in their lives. In scenes only resembling a nightmare drama in a fast-paced novel, the government is in a senseless looting spree, waging war against its own people and tearing apart its election promises to deliver social and economic emancipation. US statesman Thomas Jefferson’s words must come as a chilling reminder at this time. Despite a government that came to power in his day through a resounding popular will, Jefferson warned that the price of liberty so dearly gained was the maintenance of ‘eternal vigilance’ against the government because even one chosen by the people, can easily slide into tyranny thus becoming the oppressor and the people's worst foe.
The Jubilee government prides itself as a government with the ‘tyranny of numbers’ but even the fondest dreams of its staunchest supporters are quickly turning into horror. No day passes without con artists in government emerging with their latest work of genius, running rackets in government in which they supply everything from stationary to condom dispensers at insane prices that defy every economic sense.
To achieve this feat, the government has taxed and borrowed its way to the ceiling and promptly emptied the granary. Not content with this, it has now turned to unleashing a new round of taxes across the land in search of more funds to pilfer, making the lives of its people even harder. Deaf to their cries, the government is choking its people, like a python tightly hooked around them in a death embrace.
It is an insatiable beast lusting and hungering after their blood and flesh. This is a fight to the death with no rest for the combatants. For now, the government seems to be holding the upper end, virtually holding citizens hostage but it's anyone’s guess what will happen tomorrow. Citizen power once unleashed can have devastating consequences on their oppressors.
Will the government change course and if not, who will emerge winner?
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