President Uhuru Kenyatta squandered chance in his State of the Nation speech

By Ababu Namwamba
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Thursday, March 27, 2014 has entered the annals of history as the day Kenya’s fourth President, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, delivered the country’s first-ever State of the Nation Address from the sanctum of the august House. This was in line with Article 132 of the Constitution which requires the President to, inter alia, address a special sitting of Parliament once every year and to “report, in an address to the nation, on all measures taken and the progress achieved in the realisation of the national values in Article 10”.

Those values cover virtually all aspects of statehood and include national unity, sharing and devolution of power, the rule of law, democracy and participation of the people, human dignity, equity, social justice, inclusiveness, equality, human rights, non-discrimination and protection of the marginalised, good governance, integrity, transparency, accountability and sustainable development.

Framers of our Constitution crafted the address as a unique opportunity for the President to not only self-audit the performance of government over the preceding year, but also to rouse the citizenry to aspire even higher in the pursuit of a greater nation and a better life for all. Like many features of our Constitution, the State of the Nation Address is borrowed from the American equivalent, the State of the Union Address, which is a command to the President in Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution of the United States.

By tradition, the US President makes this report annually in late January or early February. Since Franklin Roosevelt, the State of the Union is given typically each January before a joint session of Congress and is held in the House of Representatives chamber of the Capitol. What began as a communication between the President and Congress has become a communication between the President and the people of the United States.

George Washington delivered the first regular annual message before a joint session of Congress on January 8, 1790, in New York City, then the provisional US capital. For many years, the speech was referred to as “the President’s Annual Message to Congress”. The actual term “State of the Union” first emerged in 1934 when Franklin D. Roosevelt used the phrase, and this became its generally accepted name since 1947.  Although much of the pomp and ceremony behind the State of the Union Address is governed by tradition rather than law, the event is now regarded as one of the most important in the US political calendar. It is one of the few instances when all three branches of the US government are assembled under one roof; members of both houses of Congress constituting the Legislature, the President’s Cabinet constituting the Executive, and the Chief Justice and Associate Justices of the Supreme Court constituting the Judiciary.

The military is represented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while foreign governments are represented by the Dean of the Diplomatic Corps.

The address is not just an occasion to read a speech in Parliament. It is a special occasion that indeed many past American presidents have used well to set in motion some of the most momentous policy and legislative revolutions in history.

President James Monroe first stated the Monroe Doctrine during his 7th Address to Congress on December 2, 1823. It became a defining moment in the foreign policy of the United States. In The Four Freedoms speech on January 6, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt articulated four fundamental freedoms that people “everywhere in the world” ought to enjoy; speech and expression, worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. During his address on January 11, 1944, FDR proposed the Second Bill of Rights, because the “political rights” guaranteed by the Constitution had “proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness”.

In his address on January 8, 1964, Lyndon B Johnson introduced legislation that would come to be known as the “War on Poverty”, in response to a national poverty rate of 19 per cent.

 The speech led to the passing of the Economic Opportunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty. In his 2002 address, President George W. Bush outlined the objectives for the War on Terror and identified North Korea, Iran and Iraq as representing significant threats to the United States. He said, “States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world”.

In the afternoon of March 27th, I dutifully sat in my designated seat in the National Assembly and keenly listened to President Uhuru Kenyatta deliver his maiden State of the Nation Address.

 As I walked out of the chamber after the 45-minute ritual, I couldn’t help wondering what exactly the son of Jomo would be remembered for from this one. Even he must look back and surely agree it was such a wasted opportunity...the opportunity to rouse a dispirited nation on the edge of a precipice.