We are victims of poor choices we make at the polls

A look through Kenyan history, reveals divisive populist ideas in times of anxiety.

During their frequent visits to media houses, politicians’ make the same appelas; promising we followers solutions to all our problems by providing someone to blame, forgetting that, they were once holding those posts and never resolved the problems.

No wonder my teacher could state, ‘why do people forget themselves to that extent?’

Ours is not the first time, the paranoid style in Kenyan politics has reared its head. It is 100 per cent incontestable that we have seen these faces and forces long before.

The politicians thump their chests for having consumed a number of granaries in politics and much experienced in it. This is only but proofing my analysis that the best politician is the worst leader.

During the time of renaissance and reconstruction, they coin the ‘lunatic fringe’ of poverty to describe the violent anarchists. During the great depression, same divisive demagogues, opposition on the extreme left and Government on the extreme right get hugely popular.

The Opposition will express anger at the corrupt in Government who acted like gangsters, breaking into the offices and squandering the citizens money.

Each group is influential at such time and capable of intimidation. They shrink back into their shadows when confronted by the common sense and common decency of the moderate few of the Kenyan people.

They air emotional grievances, articulate anxiety without ever posing practical solutions. Ethnic divisions are often exploited, as well allowing people to blame the other for their inability to get job, identifying a group of persons as a symbol of change they are even afraid of and seems to be taking their idealized Kenya that has never come to be, from them.

Here is the good news; we have faced the forces of demagoguery before. The damage they do can be limited by our determination to call them out, stopping their politics before it results to something ugly and indelible and voting the right people into office.

{Timothy Masinde, Kenyatta University}

I have been thinking about the August elections and what I stand to lose if I don’t vote and the answer is the same, none; I already lost.

Actually voting is not the issue, accountability is. Across the board, we have political hyenas no matter how sweet they appear to us through speech and tribal inclination; they are scheming to prey on us.

If they really care for us, look at the major problem we have at hand; hospitals are malfunctioning, yet they have taken voter registration as a matter of life and death for them, even while we as voters continue to die for their sins of omission and commission.

No amount of voting and changing leadership will ever change the status quo until we Kenyans begin to bring leaders to account for their privileged positions.

{Boniface Mouti, via mail}

 

I laud the recent move by President Uhuru Kenyatta to sign the 2016 Universities Amendment Act to limit the term of university leaders to one year and be eligible for re–election only once.

This also disqualifies a person who has served as a member of the student council of a university for two terms from being elected to the same position at any other university in Kenya.

In Nyeri, farmers want the introduction of age and term limits for tea factory directors to only three-year term to enhance service delivery and streamline operations.

{Paul Maina, Nyeri}