Opinion: To lead renaissance, Uhuru and Raila shouldn’t be afraid to fail

Something big – humongous – has happened in Kenya. It’s the March 9, 2017 handshake between NASA leader Raila Odinga and Jubilee’s Uhuru Kenyatta.

The only comparable event in Kenya’s history is the April 11, 1966 resignation of the indomitable Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kenya’s first vice president, from government to form the Kenya People’s Union.

That tectonic shift – the putting asunder of Kenya’s two political giants – irreparably broke the country. Since the Jomo-Jaramogi split, Kenya has teetered from one political crisis to another.

A cancer has since plagued Kenya. In the aftermath, our country was left in the dust by the likes of South Korea as they rushed to First-World status. Will Raila-Uhuru handshake get us back on track?

There’s been opprobrium leveled against Mr Odinga for taking Mr Kenyatta’s hand, or giving Mr Kenyatta his hand. The difference could be important. But this much is clear – Kenya has calmed down the denunciations notwithstanding. An air of normalcy now pervades the country. In other words, we are back to our own mediocrities – our normal.

Can the handshake give us the impetus – the strategic vision – to finally overcome our demons? I think so. But only if the two key antagonists do what their fathers were unable to do – put Kenya first. In fact, Mr Odinga and Mr Kenyatta must lead our elites to a renaissance, a new beginning. That’s a tall order, but they can do it.

This is what Mr Odinga and Mr Kenyatta must do to dig Kenya out of the cellar. First, they need to have a meeting of the minds about a grand bargain. That bargain can’t be about either of them, although they will be the ancillary beneficiaries.

Mr Kenyatta can burnish his legacy and Mr Odinga can solidify his legacy as Kenya’s greatest democrat. The bargain must be about Kenya.

It must define us an idea, a place worth calling home, a family. This requires an understanding of Kenya’s core strategic national interests – domestic and international – and how they can be advanced and safeguarded. This must be clear-eyed and not sentimental. This is what elites of all great nations do. So must they.

Second, it shouldn’t be up to Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga to put together the sinews and meat on the bones of the grand bargain. That job is best left to thinkers and intellectuals – patriots – who have shown time and again that they can selflessly think for Kenya. Kenya may look like an intellectual desert on this front, but I believe there a few good men and women who can stand up. Politicians need not apply.

That’s because it’s politicians that will eventually ratify the grand bargain. In the meantime, the experts must be empowered to think without limitation on what the handshake could mean for Kenya. Let them be the innocent kids in the candy store.

CAST OUT

Third, Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga must be willing to sideline any and all malignant influences in this rediscovery of their better angels. All the demonic whisperers must be shown the door.

All tribalists must be cast out. All the kings and queens of corruption must be put out to pasture.

olitical maggots are our bane. Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga must understand this or they will have duped us and led us down a false garden path. Just as they freed themselves from their handlers to craft the handshake, so they must escape the grip of any Svengalis. In this, they must ask what type of country they want to leave their grandkids. They know the answer.

Fourth, a key plank of their grand bargain must be a consensus about how Kenyans elect their leaders and determine the legitimacy of the state. I am not talking about the IEBC. Rather, I mean what must be done to legitimise the state. They must defang the tribe and remove it from the center of politics. They can do so by crafting a new consensus about 2022.

I am a pragmatist and so I know some political habits and forms of consciousness will die a slow death, if at all. But they must engineer a new state and society based on the values of the 2010 Constitution. Let them jointly agree on a fully national political ticket for 2022.

Finally, Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga must not be afraid to fail. In fact, they must take every risk to succeed. They need to go all the way up to the cliff and peer deeply into it before they can make any key decisions.

They are not messiahs, and nor could they be. But if truth be told, the two of them – with all their many foibles – hold the key to our future. This is a fact we may not like, but it’s an indisputable truth.