The US elections are now well behind us and the unthinkable has happened.
Donald Trump is the next Commander in Chief of the ‘free world’ and this is so notwithstanding the vulgarity of his campaign rhetoric and public speaking skills. Mr Trump’s resounding victory should spin the Jubilee into seriously rethinking their re-election strategy.
Trump is a man who throughout his campaign never shied away from controversy. Think about the allegations of sexual misbehaviour and disregard for women, intolerance over immigrants and other religions, war-mongering, abusive jokes and demeaning opponents, chest-thumping over personal tax returns, disdain for the coloured and black communities, threat of mass deportations and so on. Yet irrespective of all these shortcomings, the American electorate gave Trump a resounding victory over democrat Hillary Clinton, who has over 30 years’ experience.
But this is not about Donald Trump the person. This is about how political players manipulate the thinking of the electorate to gain power. This is something that we are experiencing in Kenya today. Every agenda for development associated with Jubilee is demonised by the Opposition as just another conduit to fleece the public of taxpayers’ money. Jubilee should be wary of this. When a lie is repeated over and over again it gradually starts to sound like gospel truth.
The Jubilee administration has been conducting periodic high-profile summits to highlight its achievements and to assess what remains to be done in achieving the regime’s election manifesto. The latest one was on land. This is good as is manifests transparency. However, it is not the path to re-election as past experience has shown. Former President Mwai Kibaki stood for re-election on the platform of success in economic revival and development in 2007 and while the rest is history, it is common knowledge that political propaganda took the centre-stage at the time. We dare not travel this road 10 years later.
This is why Jubilee should re-read with caution Trump’s election victory. While Clinton rode on the path of experience in leadership, Trump trounced her at the ballot box on the basis of unreliability because of handling sensitive communication of government matters via a private server. What most people even in Government will not admit is that this is not unique. It happens all the time in Government.
After all, what is the difference between one’s private server and personal cellphone, IPad or a tablet relaying official communication from leaders’ bedrooms and other places and conducting other sensitive official business in the presence of questionable characters?
What is surprising is how Clinton’s handling of emails became so politicised to the extent that the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations wrote to the Republican-led Congress Committee over unsubstantiated newly discovered emails traced to the ex-spouse of a former Clinton aide 11 days to the elections. By a mere stroke of the pen, the FBI director confirmed what Trump was telling Americans all the time — Clinton could not be trusted. This is the same rhetoric that the Opposition has propagated with sustained endurance that Jubilee is corrupt. It has not helped matters that for the first time in the history of this country concrete action against corruption has been taken.
The declaration by the President as a threat to national security was a step in the right direction because corruption undermines development by weakening the foundations upon which economic growth depends.
