In the Church are to be found Kenya’s real politicians

Anyone seeking answers as to why our politics is rotten need not look at MPs — they are a lost cause — but at the Church.

When Eliud Wabukala was elected Anglican Archbishop, this column was alarmed that the Church’s Electoral College — ideally shepherds of the flock — ignored to be guided by the Holy Spirit and instead voted along tribal lines.

Mercifully, Wabukala turned out to be a well-schooled and balanced voice with an uncanny resemblance to the highly respected, and now departed, Archbishop Otunga of the Catholic Church.

Now the election of his successor at his former Bungoma Dioceses has turned into an all-too-familiar political circus with the losers crying bloody murder.

Fair elections

According to them, the elevation of George Mechumo to Bishop of Bungoma was flawed. Reason? Mechumo invoked Wabukala’s name during the campaigns. Their second grouse is that armed police at the election venue somehow interfered with the conduct of free and fair elections. Again, what the hell were armed cops doing at the election of a venerable and holy bishop?

If church faithful — presumably all ‘born again’ men and women — need to be watched over by armed military personnel to conduct the election of their bishop, how are we common drunks, drug addicts, thieves, vagabonds, murderers, fornicators and rabid sinners expected to conduct a free, fair and peaceful election?

Mechumo, the losers thundered, also employed agents who had benefitted from donor funds and who were let into the election venue to lobby even though they are not members of the Electoral College.

Lobbying? Election agents? Voter bribery and rigging? Did you threaten to split from the dioceses — in politics we call it defect — if your concerns are not met, brethren? Don’t the shenanigans in this election remind you of the circus that is Kenyan politics?

Do you clowns therefore have any moral authority to tell us how to conduct our political affairs when you can’t elect your bishop fairly, peacefully and with respect to God and your own rules?

As you say when casting demons from sinners, shindwe!