Challenges point to nation’s dire need for leadership

Kenya: The Democrats, said P.J O’Rourke, are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected, and prove it.

Nothing captures the Kenyan scenario better than this quip from one of America’s top journalists. 

All we need do is substitute the Democrats and Republicans with the CORD and Jubilee and you have the true picture.

Charles de Gaulle, the French general and statesman further contextualises the situation thus: “I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”

Teams allied to President Uhuru Kenyatta of Jubilee and Raila Odinga of Cord planned to hold parallel rallies in Nairobi on Saturday 30 May to flex their muscles and determine who between them is mightier.

The police have since cancelled these rallies citing security reasons.

It would have been foolhardy to stage rallies in a period of heightened insecurity and terror threats from the Al Shabaab militia.

Yet more than ever before, the country is calling out for leadership: Kenya faces an economic meltdown as tourism and agriculture, two of the key economic pillars, face a downside. 

If the terror threats and an impending drought are not handled carefully, the gains under former President Mwai Kabaki will be wiped out.

Marshalling political support therefore, should be the least of worries, least of all for the Jubilee coalition who have four years before their contract runs out.

But if what has gone before is anything to go by, then Kenyans have cause for worry.

Our leaders have not provided solutions to life’s basic problems. The high-minded campaign rhetoric has been replaced by scoring-off against each other at every turn.

It would appear that “mere anarchy has been loosed upon” the country, to allude to poet WB Yates’ poem.

A sluggish economy, paying off Anglo Leasing’s Sh1.4 billion and the delay in issuing laptops to primary schools is drawing away Jubilee’s goodwill reservoir.

The Opposition on the other hand, has failed to build bridges and put national interest first.

All we see and hear from them is the refrain that they and not Jubilee, should be governing, yet they do not demonstrate what they would do differently if they were in power for Kenya’s sake.

There is growing disquiet and helplessness as the two protagonists lock horns.

In truth, the methods of our leaders far from addressing the issues at hand, gradually driving the country to a grinding the country to a worrying. 

The manner in which the Jubilee coalition has run Government so far portrays a team that is all at sea, earning the moniker “Bungling Jubilee”.

The Opposition has looked somewhat befuddled and seems to have resigned to its fate as a bunch of backbenchers without alternatives.

Cord, while banking on the shortcomings of Jubilee to upstage it, will promise to make us smarter, taller and richer. Jubilee wanted to prove how to smartly run government.

Yet something seems eerily amiss with the country.

It sorely needs leadership.