OPINION: The buck stops with Uhuru and Raila

No matter what way you look at it the country is at war. People are being chased from their homes, properties are being burnt and looted, roads are being closed... People are dying!! Call it peaceful protests, "people protecting their businesses", retaliatory attacks, protests against police brutality… Or whatever you want. The reality is that it is war, ethnic cleansing, and political intolerance at its best.

"The police started it", some claim. The police don't light bonfires on our roads. Don't get me wrong, there's no defense for excessive and lethal use of force by the police... but sincerely, can it be true that an officer, a person like you and me, woke up early in the morning, prepared for work, took breakfast (or didn't owing to their poor salaries) and maybe bid farewell to their families then walked into the streets with his colleagues and started beating up innocent, harmless civilians? And just how did the government manage to convince the entire police force to turn against the civilian population? The same civilian population that makes up the society, the same society they came from?

The buck has to ultimately stop at someone, and this time the buck stops with both Raila and Uhuru as the leaders of the warring sides. It's time we see them preach real peace, not giving hollow speeches on TV, it's time we see them on the ground talking to warring groups, defusing situations... Like the situation in Kawangware on October 27. And no one should claim their security comes first, what about the security of the common mwananchi at risk because of them? The one who doesn't sleep for fear of his life, the one who sleeps in the cold because his house was burnt down, the one currently under his bed praying the police arrive before the mob finds him.

When the opposition chief goes to Kibera and claims the government hired goons to vandalize a school does he expect his fanatic followers to stay peacefully at home as instructed? And when all those in the government do is chest-thump and sit on the sidelines waiting to see how the situation unfolds, what do they expect?

Mr. Kenyatta who do you expect to lead when everybody is dead? And is it that dead bodies are more cooperative in boycotting stuff Mr. Odinga?

No politician is worth dying for my country people.

#PeaceKE