President Uhuru Kenyatta could feel rightly uplifted that his leadership is taking Kenya in the right direction, given the research findings released by Ipsos on Wednesday, which gave him high ratings.
Yet Mr Kenyatta left the country for Italy early this week to attend the Expo Milan 2015 Fair to promote Kenya's cultural and business opportunities on the day a strike by some 280,000 teachers pressing for a salary raise has paralysed the education system.
No one understands why the President has elected not to cut short his trip.
Even though the matter of teachers' pay has been dragging through the courts for decades, with every indication that the Teachers Service Commission and the teachers' unions might never reach a compromise, the President and the political leadership have seemingly failed to take the initiative and offer guidance on a matter of national importance.
We need to worry that the strike is set to enter week three of Term Three and the ruling class has seemingly buried its head in the sand. What is emboldening the teachers is the assertion that systemic corruption and lethargy that feed off red-tape and bureaucracy, are rampant in public service. And they have a point.
Doctors and nurses have been on strike for months, bringing medical services in many counties to their knees.
Other umbrella workers' unions plan to join in the strike in solidarity with the teachers. That should not be allowed to happen. The risk of a complete shutdown of essential public service should worry Government mandarins.
Put in another way, there is simply a lot going wrong in the country. Economic hardship is taking its toll on the country, with the cost of living set to rise as the dollar rate goes through the roof.
Even though there is huge potential in Kenya, there is so much holding our progress that we must confront in order to move the country forward. Kenya is a land of incredible promise, boundless hope and great opportunity but corruption, ethnicity and nepotism, cynicism, parochialism are holding it back from attaining that promise much faster than it ought to. Government institutions are tainted, sluggish and remain averse to accountability.
When a county government pays a firm millions of shillings to run a Facebook account and another pays Sh100,000 for a wheelbarrow, all is not well. US President Barack Obama observed that a staggering 250,000 jobs are lost each year because of the canker of corruption. That must stop.
If Kenya is expected to move forward speedily, something has to give. The corruption cartels, the business-as-usual approach in the public service, intolerance, negative ethnicity and the politics of attrition have no place in a renewed Kenya. These are the habits we have to get rid of for the country to move forward. Leaders must cultivate a sense of patriotism. Kenyans must feel a sense of belonging.
Yet despite the gloomy outlook, there is a lot to look up for: Our democracy is taking root; elections, though not perfect, are held regularly. It might be long before we appropriate value from our democratic institutions; Devolution is working and bringing about great change in governance and development across the country; the Press, though receiving a fair share of blows from the ruling class, is robust and assertive. It ought to be strengthened. The Judiciary is working. Sadly, it is the politicians who keeping dropping the ball.
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