Opinion: NASA should heed the President’s Wise Counsel on its Line-Up

NASA leaders at a principals'retreat on campaign strategies.

The big story this past week; from the face of it, was the unveiling of the much-talked-about NASA line-up.

But amid the excitement and endless hours of punditry on television and newspaper pages, something else dawned on me; that great acts of kindness are finally returning to our politics. I have seen the change from a distance and we all need to applaud it.

For the first time in a long time, President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto took time off their busy schedule to give very sound advice to the opposition.

And this happened just moments after NASA made their announcement in the presence of a few Nairobians at Uhuru Park.

That the president and his deputy set aside the political differences they have with the opposition, to offer timely advice on the NASA line-up is indeed stately.

Furthermore, everybody knows that the president has so much to do in just three months that it is extremely magnanimous for him to find time to counsel the ungrateful opposition.

The president has five world-class stadia to build before August, he has laptops to buy for school children all across the country in 90 days and he has one million jobs to create and the cost of living to bring down.

I am sure he is even planning to dramatically bring down the national debt before his date with Wanjiku on August 8th.

Forty winks

So full is his in-tray that I can imagine he hardly has a good night’s sleep. That is why the five dancing men in white shirts should be grateful for the presidential advice on the kind of line-up they should have crafted.

And the president’s wise counsel is not unfounded.

He was there in 2012 when he had to outwit some demons that attempted to mislead him into endorsing Musalia Mudavadi as a presidential candidate.

His quick action saved the country from five years of a demon-infested government. So, NASA should take him extremely seriously when he speaks on line-ups, demons and power sharing. He’s been there!

Secondly, the president’s administration has shown great respect for the 2010 constitution since coming into to power. They have resisted every attempt to change the law to subvert the constitution and they have obeyed every court order in the land.

Even the so-called threat by the Leader of Majority in the National Assembly to censure a Judge turned out to have been a creation of the media. Never in the history of Kenya has there been such fidelity to the written law. That is why everyone should listen when the Jubilee team insists that NASA’s line-up must align itself to the constitution.

In any case why would anyone need to re-invent the wheel when the current administration has created every office that ever needed to be created? As a matter of fact we now even have an office in charge of delivery of government promises.

Who would ask for more? To make it even easier, everything is now condensed into a portal that every villager can quickly log into and get a glimpse of the sea of change that has been witnessed across the country since 2013.

Ethnic arithmetics 

Thirdly, the head of state has a point when he says this is just another ethnic alliance. In 2013, he built a national coalition that had membership from across the entire country. It was only out of sympathy that millions of his supporters decided to vote for the opposition grouping, CORD - just for the sake of national unity.

And four years on, the government is a true reflection of the face of Kenya. That is why the president as a symbol of national unity, has every right – nay, a duty, to condemn ethnicity wherever it rears its ugly head.

I am also extremely happy that the president and his team have focused only on the important things about this NASA line-up.

If he did not have great advisers around him, I am sure he would have veered into such irrelevancies as the track record of the five gentlemen.

If not for the noble counsellors around him, he would have wasted the country’s precious time discussing the national sport that some people shamefully refer to as corruption.

Scandals

Imagine the kind of ridicule the president would have suffered if he started asking irrelevant questions about some cemetery land in Ukambani or the maize scandal during the Grand Coalition government; or the foreign embassies that apparently went for a good international price or even that outrageous claim about some NYS land in Yatta.

Or if he started asking questions about the unfounded claims by the auditor General that some Sh221 million were irregularly spent in Bomet County!

These are the wild allegations that idle people have made about members of the opposition’s Pentagon team.

And the president has to be commended for elevating the debate to a much higher level. That is what every politician must emulate this election season.

Mr Ageyo is the Managing Editor, [email protected]