How Churchill would have taken BBI verdict

The Supreme Court this week delt the last blow to Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga's attempt to change the Constitution. [David Njaaga, Standard]

It will be difficult for anyone other than President Uhuru Kenyatta and ODM leader Raila Odinga to know exactly why they wanted the much-lauded 2010 Constitution overhauled through the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) Bill.

The Supreme Court this week delt the last blow to the duo’s attempt to change the Constitution and majority of Kenyans will have many questions on the annulled process.

It will remain ‘a riddle, wrapped up in a mystery inside an enigma,’ to use Winston Churchill’s expression. Let us look at other statements he would have used about BBI were he around.

I believe he would have said that ‘politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.’

If you had told him that BBI had a majority following, he would most probably have told you that ‘you cannot cure cancer by a majority.’

And if you argued that you were trying to be generous with the many positions you were going to give regional leaders, he would have retorted that ‘One ought to be just before one is generous.’

If you had told him that the country was behind you and supportive of the BBI, he would have said: ‘Politicians occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.’

If you put up the case of trying to appease those regional leaders, he would reply that ‘an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last.’

If you told him that you are trying to legislate because of distrust, he would tell you, he objected ‘on principle to doing by legislation what properly belongs to human good feeling and charity.’

If you told him that this is your legacy project, he would have advised, ‘It is not in our power to anticipate our destiny. The true guide of life is to do what is right.’

If you said that all you were doing is to make it more democratic, he would tell you that ‘the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with an average voter.’

If you said, but look, I was only trying to make it easy for people, he would shoot back that ‘there is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and to endure.’

“I tried to be nice in the past, shall I be tough with them now?”

He will tell you, ‘If we open a quarrel with the past, we shall find that we have lost the future.’

‘For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else. The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.’

“I have made some promises which are difficult to keep. What do you say?” ‘Well, we are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.’

‘Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. And that I think I have achieved.’

“What is the greatest lesson you learnt in life?”

‘The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.’

“Any parting words?”

‘Yes. The price of greatness is responsibility, and all wisdom is not new wisdom. Every man should ask himself every morning whether he is not too readily accepting negative solutions. Remember, if you destroy a free market you create a black market. Never, never, never give up.’

-The writer is a lawyer in Nairobi County.