Politicians in Kenya joining Jubilee party are only doing ‘Politics of the Stomach’

Dear President Uhuru Kenyatta, I want to congratulate you for your exceptional leadership since you entered the office till now. Your presidency has displayed magnificent level of rationality in all the political choices you have made. I regard you for this. I also want to commend your leadership for generosity, both at political and personal level. Especially for the receipt of new people that have disbanded their political parties to join Jubilee Alliance Party.

However, Mr. President the people breaking down their political parties to join your political bandwagon are not socially valuable in any way whatsoever. They are only doing politics of the stomach with a strong focus on winning their targets come the next general election. They believe they will gain by winning an elective position because of your influence. Mr. President, this is technically wrong, any person doing politics because he wants to use political socialization as a source of his food and cheap success is an enemy of democracy. And hence the politicians and quasi-politicians that have massively dissolved their political parties to join the party of President Uhuru Kenyatta are the key enemies of Kenya and its posterity. They are supposed to know that President Kenyatta does not need a company of unsecure politicians; he already has support of the people of Kenya both within and in the diaspora for his consistency in giving a political chance to the voice of reason. In contrast, the politicians switching from one party to another are only expressing their avarice by hastily moving from one political party to another so that they don’t miss a chance for their turn to eat come the next general election.

Mr. President, with all due respect to your sense of political professionalism as a social virtue, you are aware that the Kenya Constitution is a pluralist constitution recognizing multi-party democracy as a basic ingredient in the political culture of Kenya’s political socialization. This is the constitution you sworn to protect and it is the constitution that the people of Kenya are ready to defend in spirit and in law. The chance for the Kenyans to achieve constitutional pluralism was not hatched nor harvested on a silver platter. It is a social achievement that was earned after a lot of self-immolation by those that were patriotic to Kenya as a country and a state. Thus, it looks uncouth and very shaming to see public leaders now foregoing a duty to defend multi-party democracy by irrationally dissolving their political parties for nothing else but outright sycophancy to self-adulation fueled by political laziness and strong rapacity motivated by the idea of being in a position to win an elective post as a gateway to ‘eating’. Mr. President, I urge you to discourage this vice.

Politics is a public duty, but not social gymnastic to quick riches. It is not a must that when you are a politician you must be part of the incumbent government, the way all Kenyan politicians tend to think. Contrastingly, Practice of politics is all about defending democracy, the rule of law, human-rights, inclusivity, media-freedom, inter-cultural respect, fair competition through election and basically self-sacrifice for the common good of the nation. What the politicians in Kenya have done is not anywhere near to any of the above, instead, they have taken their personal stomachs to be official political institutions to be maintained through misuse of the electorates, a vice which Achile Mbembe condemned as an ornament of power among other baroque of injustices expressing banality of power of the post-colony.