Future is beyond us, but chaos must not decide our president

Policemen and residents help a young schoolgirl that inhaled tear gas as the police were trying to hold off a group of supporters of opposition leader while protesting in Kawangware on October 30, 2017 in Nairobi. [File, Standard]

Ceteris paribus, some things will happen. Ceteris paribus; everything being equal, holding everything constant. That is part of the Latinism that they taught you in high school.

They said if you held everything constant, you could draw accurate conclusions concerning the future. But you soon learned that ceteris paribus was a philosophical fallacy. For nothing is constant, except change; nothing certain, except uncertainty.

The person who is cocksure about tomorrow is dangerous. What seem to be regular patterns in life may take on the guise of intuition. Yet, intuition itself will ultimately fail the test of time.

Unpredictability seems to be the only predictable thing. The only certain prediction is easily constant movement towards chaos, or entropy. We cannot even define the character of the chaos. Beyond a split second, we know nothing about the future. We cannot even tell what will happen in the next two seconds. Will we still be where we are now, doing what we are doing? Or will something happen within the second, to stop us – sometimes forever? 

Disorder affects every aspect of our daily lives. If it is not checked, disorder will increase with time. Try to lock your house and go away for five years. When you get back everything will be in a pretty mess.

Disorder is, hence, the tax of nature. You repay this debt by trying to organise. But, no matter how well you organise, some things will go wrong. Yet nobody knows what will go wrong. Even risk mitigators cannot, ultimately, manage the future. 

Forget, therefore, what some people are telling you about who will be Kenya’s fifth president. Who told them that? We don’t even know whether there will be a fifth president. But, of course, ceteris paribus, Kenyans will elect their fifth president on August 9 next year. President Uhuru Kenyatta will retire soon after.

But who told you that things always work that way? Cotu Secretary General Francis Atwoli, says he knows “who will become the president and who will not.”

Mr Atwoli does not even talk in terms of “who will be elected” and “who will not be elected.” He talks in terms of “who will become.”

In this world, people have become presidents even when they were not elected. Is Mr Atwoli telling us the next president will not be elected? What does he know that other Kenyans do not know? He puts this message across with worrying confidence. “I am telling you that such and such will not become the president. Those who think that he will are daydreaming.”

What is this gentleman telling the world? People go to elections to choose their leaders. One person wins, while the rest lose. In the case of the presidency, the winner becomes the president.

Mr Atwoli seems to be saying no matter how people vote, someone will not become president. He is not telling us that someone will not be elected. That seems to be the least of his concerns. He is more concerned with the “becoming” of it. It has a sinister ring.

I believe ODM leader Raila Odinga, has been elected President at least once. But I also know he has never become the President. I could be wrong. However, I am not alone. The less moderate in my corner have torched our country, whenever we have believed Mr Odinga was elected, but he did not become President.  Just like now, there were those who told us in advance that Mr Odinga “should not be allowed to become the president of Kenya.”

Ahead of the 2007 polls, Mr Musikari Kombo, then leader of Ford Kenya, described Mr Odinga as “one dangerous man.” ODM, he said. 

That year Kenya moved from free fall to organised chaos. She has never recovered. Mr Atwoli glows with hubris about tomorrow. His messaging about who “will not be allowed to become the president, and who will” is sinister. Do we seem to be fomenting a fresh wave of disorder?

 -Dr Muluka is a strategic communications advisor.

www.barrackmuluka.co.ke