Police should provide security to Kenyans and not pamper leaders

A banana republic doesn’t have a set core of principles, or protocols. It’s a government of men, not laws. Everything hinges on the whims of the Big Man. If he smiles, for no reason, all those around him smile, or their heads are decapitated. Kenya is in purgatory – somewhere between a banana republic and a government of men. But it’s closer to the former than the latter. Nothing illustrates this pitiable state of our political culture than the abuse of the police detail for politically exposed persons, also known in common parlance as VIPs. The police detail in Kenya has lost all rhyme and reason. Instead, it’s a cudgel and a status symbol – and completely divorced from security.

Kenya has long been a gangster state. Cartels of evil and malignant men – and women – bestride the country like colossi. They travel together. They steal together. They eat together. They sleep together. They do everything together – until they quarrel. Then they unsheathe their claws and go after each other. But they are not real men because they don’t face each other mano-a-mano. They fight by hiding behind the skirt of the tribe, or the hammer of the state. Most are pot-bellied and cowardly. They routinely humiliate each other. Today, it’s about succession politics and who will be in the inner sanctum after Jubilee’s Uhuru Kenyatta returns to Gatundu in 2022. The police detail is a tool in that war.