Ban on demos will not create confidence in integrity of polls

Kenya Police officers and Government spokespersons are not paid to read philosophy. They don’t read people like David Henry Thoreau, Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon and the like. If they did, police bosses would not say the appalling things they are known to say. They would know that public protest against state driven injustice is real. They would also know protest against bad government is a civil right and a duty – a primary responsibility for every citizen. In 1849, Thoreau, the celebrated American political thinker, famously stated that individuals should never allow governments to overrule, or atrophy, their consciences. A person who surrenders his conscience to the dictates of an unjust government becomes an accomplice in the crime of bad government, he said. It is everyone’s duty to make sure government does not make him or her an agent of injustice.

From ancient antiquity right into our own times, unjust government orders have filled up oppressed persons with powerful death wishes. Such surrender to fate has traumatised whole societies, through avoidable social convulsions. Government spokesmen should know this. Yet, I don’t know whether they teach world history to police and military commanders who go on to speak for governments. If they do, then it should confound us to hear the police sending out sinister messages ahead of a General Election. For, the Kenya Police has this week warned Kenyans ahead of the August 8 General Election. They have said, “Anybody who rejects the election results will be arrested.” They have outlawed protest against election results, even before we go to the polls. In their messaging, they echo President Uhuru Kenyatta, who has been consistent in telling Kenyans that election results must be accepted.