By Koigi wa wamwere

Recently, President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila said they would sack ministers who do not perform.

This is as it should be. But their right to sack ministers should translate into people’s right to sack them if they too fail to perform.

The two have, however, said no to this and blasted the National Council of Churches of Kenya for demanding fresh elections.

To determine whether Kibaki’s rejection of fresh elections has merit or not, we must put his failures and successes as president on the scales. If failures win, he should concede elections. If successes win, he can stay in power.

The President says because he is busy solving people’s problems, elections should not distract him. Kenyans should, however, not exempt, especially the president, from seeking a fresh mandate when their problems are increasing and worsening.

Kibaki may be a good person. As president, however, he must be accountable to his employers — the people. To hold him accountable, we must, most respectfully and fearlessly, demystify the presidency and scrutinise his history.

He came to power ill. Notwithstanding, he scored some undeniable achievements. He restored our hope from despair and desperation. He stopped our accelerated decline to economic death. And he has put the country’s infrastructures on the road to recovery.

Unfortunately, these achievements have not taken the country from Third to First World or disapproved failures of Kibaki’s fabled economic brilliance by giving poor people food and other necessities.

Economic meltdown

Instead, the cold of the economic meltdown has given Kenya’s economy pneumonia, thanks to the president allowing our economy to be largely foreign owned. Hungry faces of ten million Kenyans are testimony of Kibaki’s failure. IDPs’ landlessness speaks of the greed of those, like the President, who own immense tracts of uncultivated land. Only the rich and corrupt call Kibaki a great economist.

Outside the economy, Kibaki has other failures.

He is the anti-thesis of change. He helped kill multiparty democracy. Then he derided heroes of a second liberation as madmen cutting a fig tree with a razor blade but became one of the first beneficiaries of that change.

By failing to implement his MoU with Raila Odinga, he invited ethnic hate to divide the country into two, politically.

With the Coalition Government, Kibaki and Raila have killed democracy a third time.

American Ambassador Michael Ranneberger fights corruption harder than Kibaki and Raila.

By failing to understand that in fighting corruption, family and friends are his worst enemies, Kibaki has lost the war against graft. Hence the country laments with Jeremiah (5, 26-28):

"Evil men live among my people; they lie in wait like men who spread nets to catch birds, but they have set their traps to catch men. Just as a hunter fills his cage with birds, they have filled their houses with loot. That is why they are powerful and rich, why they are fat and well fed. There is no limit to their evil deeds. They do not give orphans their rights or show justice to the oppressed."

In December 2007, Kibaki’s and Raila’s ethnic politics ignited a genocidal conflagration that cost the country dearly. For this, both should not hold public office.

Kibaki failed to protect Kenyans from post-election violence. By failing to stem extra-judicial and criminal executions, the rule of law has been exchanged with King Herod-ism.

The country’s lack of moral leadership brought about pyramid schemes, unabashed corruption and immorality that gnaw away our moral fabric. Hence:

"Justice is driven away, and right cannot come near. Truth stumbles in the public square, and honesty finds no place there. There is so little honesty that any one who stops doing evil makes himself a prey." — Isaiah 59:14-15.

Like the former presidents, Kibaki has never demanded justice for the downtrodden, the Mau Mau, assassinated heroes or anybody. For his antipathy to Wangari Maathai, Kibaki has thrown Kenya’s environment to the dogs.

Coming to power as Joshua but failing to lead us to Canaan, where is Kibaki taking us? His vision 2030 is not a roadmap to the Promised Land. It inspires none. It tastes like ashes and feels stillborn. I have tried to own this foreign-conceived dream but I cannot. It feels like yet another contrivance to entrap the country in poverty forever.

Lesser leaders

The charges against Kibaki’s rule are legion. In a democracy, he would long have resigned. But in Kenya, he hangs on because Kenyans believe they are lesser people who deserve lesser leaders. Nevertheless, God’s hand has written:

"God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.

You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

[Already] Your kingdom is divided and given to others." — Daniel 5:26.

Having succeeded to restore our despair and desperation, as Chamberlain abdicated government to Churchill to lead Britain through Second World War, Kibaki should let someone else lead the country to the First World.

Kibaki’s full term will at best, stagnate and at worst, accelerate this nation’s collapse. If he will not resign, Kenyans should not allow him to self-perpetuate by picking Uhuru as his successor.

The writer is chair of Chama cha Mwananchi and author of Towards Genocide In Kenya: The Curse of Negative Ethnicity.