Kenyans are eager to be eaten by either a fox or wolf in 2022

Christmas signifies nothing if we are not able to confront the uncomfortable truths in our lives. Great souls and minds in history place the truth at the pinnacle of virtues.

It is the mother of all values. Celebrating Christmas is vain, if the wheels we roll on in life are the wheels of falsehood. The Christian faithful will be familiar with the proclamation, “I am the way, the truth and the life [John 14:6].”

To celebrate Christ as signified by Christmas is to rejoice about the truth as the Christian way. Yet, does the Kenyan nation, as a hugely Christian community, seem to thrive on lies and sundry propaganda?

During ODM Raila Odinga’s launch of his Azimio la Umoja election campaign recently Jubilee national Vice Chairman, Mr David Murathe, told the world that his party told terrible lies about Mr Odinga during past election campaigns. “We will now return to the same people. We will tell them how we deliberately lied to them about you,” he said, “We will now tell them the truth.”

The great Socrates said about honour, “The greatest way to live with honour in this world is to be what we pretend to be.” In other words, pursuit for the truth.

And for governments, the principle of the greatest good is that they should be judged by the results of their policies and whether those policies are beneficial to the majority.

It is the kind of goodness that St Thomas Aquinas, easily the greatest Christian philosopher of all time, recognises. Aquinas goes on to venerate Aristotle, the Greek thinker, as “the Philosopher.”

Throughout the great work titled Summa Theologica, Aquinas acknowledges Aristotle and attempts to synthesise Aristotle’s philosophy with Christian principles. 

The most active ingredient in all this is the truth. The truth cannot be relativistic. Things cannot be true or false, just depending on who has said or done them. They can’t be good or bad, just because a particular individual is behind them.

This is the shame of the Kenyan nation today. As a nation, Kenyans seem unable to agree on whether it is better to be eaten by a fox, or by a wolf.

When you listen to the political class carefully, and when you observe its conduct, you hear an echo of these words, “In whose hands are we safe; the fox, or the wolf?”

The nation has decided that it wants to be eaten up, only that it cannot seem to agree on which of these two canines should eat it. Hence politicians will say, “I am still listening to the ground. I will go by what the ground is saying.”

It is a hopelessly inept political class, a caricature of leadership. People are unable to think of a higher virtue, on whose basis they seek to be elected to various offices in next year’s polls.

The most important consideration is to be in government, or to win a seat. It does not seem to matter if it is the wolf, or the fox, that will form the next government. 

We will follow whoever is likely to be the next president. The mantra is, “Oh, when the foxes, go marching in; oh God! I want to be among the number, oh when the wolves go marching in!” The most important thing is not to be left out. If it is the fox, fine.

If the wolf, well and good.  In the words of Dr Martin Luther King, and which I have previously cited in my writings, “Most people can’t stand for their convictions, because the majority are not doing it.”

This is the proverbial listening to the ground. “And since everybody is doing it, it must be right. So it’s a sort of numerical interpretation of what is right.” 

Between ODM leader, Mr Odinga and deputy president, Dr William Ruto, it would seem that Kenya is ready to be eaten – either by a fox, or a wolf.

We are only not agreed on which, but we will settle this on August 9, next year. Have a Merry Christmas.

The writer is a strategic communications advisor. www.barrackmuluka.co.ke