Beware of CORD’s appetite to manufacture crises

The weeks leading to President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Cabinet reshuffle will easily be remembered as the noisiest in Kenya’s history of Opposition politics. Interestingly, even after the anti-corruption crusade got new players followed closely by the nomination of new Cabinet and Principal Secretaries, the Opposition continued its unrelenting tirade on the President’s sweeping but assertive action.

What is now clear is that the noise was not about impropriety in Government or the supposedly under-performing economy. The noise was no more than the predatory shrieking and bellowing of people jostling for political space.

The permanent prayer of a scavenger is that calamity befalls you so that you become a meal. It has become increasingly clear that CORD’s foremost longing is that Jubilee encounters one crisis after another. And where no crisis presents itself, CORD will gladly create one. Such is the vicious scavenging the party of “reforms” and “democracy” has resorted to.

You hardly ever hear any articulation of a reformist agenda from CORD. Instead, they have perfected the art of blame and causing anxiety. Nothing unsettles human beings like the feeling of uncertainty and self-doubt. Cheating Kenyans that they are wandering in the wilderness is reckless and counter-productive. CORD must remember that the same Kenyans they are lying to and casting a spell on are the very ones they are relying on to reform Kenya.

Turning Kenyans against themselves is the same as a hyena stalking a walking man in the hope that the normal swaying of the hands will lead to detachment.

Before someone accuses me of burying my head in the sand, let me state that I cannot defend corruption whether the persons behind it are in government or in the Opposition. The abomination of misappropriation of public cash at NYS, if proven, hurts me as much as the loss of money in the Kazi kwa Vijana scandal of yesteryear.

The same goes for the massive mishandling, improprieties and cover-ups in the Lands and Immigrations Departments that took place under the watch of the Grand Coalition Government where Raila Odinga was a principal.

Corruption is corruption regardless of when it occurs. Instead of fighting corruption selectively or using it as a weapon to unleash on political enemies, leaders worth their salt should forge ways of dealing with the vice conclusively. While at it, we should remind the pot not to call the kettle black before carefully taking a second look.

Calling attention to a speck in your friend’s eye while ignoring the log in yours is not the attitude Kenyans want in choking the demons of corruption, past or present.

Encountering any vice that undermines the goals and vision of our collective future as Kenyans is for all of us whether in government today or not. In this regard, CORD will do a great service to Kenyans to table proposals on how best to decapitate corruption once and for all.

No other leader in Kenya’s history thus far has done more in striking a blow against corruption than President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Kenyans can count on President Kenyatta when the situation demands. What has the Opposition done now and in the past on matters corruption?

Still, a lot has been said about the challenges facing our economy. But most of what CORD is telling us about this subject is never put in context. No one, for instance, is telling Kenyans that mineral and oil economies like Zambia, South Africa and Nigeria are doing worse in confronting the winds of economic difficulty currently sweeping across the globe.

Indeed, CORD is preying on the ignorance of Kenyans to foment panic and make them feel as if their fate is tottering precariously on a precipice. Politics of alarm is like a bushfire – wild and hazardous. It spares nothing. The grass and shrubs succumb to the embers of a wild fire as hedgehogs, mice, insects and other life get cornered. At the end of the ecological disaster caused by mammoth infernos, only scavengers benefit.

They feast on whole-roasted wildlife without a care over how lost life would be replenished. That is the hallmark and folly of living for the here-and-now. And that is precisely where CORD, unfortunately, is.

Whatever the reason, Kenyans ought to be careful not to swallow the ranting of CORD hook, line and sinker.