RE: A HAPPY JAMHURI DAY??

--- al-amin kimathi wrote:

Countrymen,

When I joined Wafula Buke at his house to spend election day 2002 indoors as an admission we had long lost the election, many who knew this called us radicals without a cause. I stood my ground that candidate Kibaki had never symbolised the struggle we had been in and that cobbling up an electoral vehicle called NARC to defeat Moi's project could only be a stop gap measure, but one fraught with perils of the many hangers on digging in and eventually swallowing us all.

i remebered that as a young journalist covering VP Mwai Kibaki in Nyeri and priviledged to watch him up close as he and his coterie downed a few after the weekend Harambee in Nyeri during the "Political Tourist" days and learning how much disdain they all shared for the then massing up reformist movement; juxtaposing the Kibaki corner with that spearheaded by JJ Kamotho as Moi's sword in the region, I had so little to expect from the Kibaki who Raila Odinga had told Kenyans - in the throes of An-end-of-Moi-Reign euphoria - that he was Tosha! That rang some alarm bells for those of us who had been watching things a bit more closer even before 1991 when his monied anti-reform brigade pushed Kibaki to cobble up his DP and start tearing FORD asunder. We were the pessimists and if you may "The radicals without a cause" who had rankled with frustration when the No Reforms No Elections1 clarion call gave way to the IPPG "gentleman's" agreements that gave Moi his lifeboat till 2002 when all we needed was to stay the cause. Again Gentleman Kibaki was at the head of the negotiations that stalled the people's quest for a new constitution.

Other negotiations had began in ernest; a coalition of the gentlemen to succeed Moi as he wound up his brutal tenure, with the extension bequeathed him by the IPPG. The radicals without a cause rallied around Muungano Wa Mageuzi. Here too we saw the "gentlemen" trying to get in as it appeared this new movement had some chance. Raila could have none of these, neither the coalition of the "Big Three" nor "The radicals without a cause" at Muungano. he trooped to Moi seeing his best chances there.

When Moi stuck to his project we were given the Tosha cue. Voila. A grand coalition to rid us of all the messes of our days as a Jamhuri had been born! The rest is history as the whole ball game was one big load of joy riders, opportunists, conmen, thieves, permanent party goers all making the gentlemen I had watched from up close in VP Kibaki's entourage belch without much sweat, "We did it again," they reminisced, recalling the many times opportunism had carried the day for them and their ilk since the dawn of independence.

It is Jamhuri Day again and I am tempted to seek out Wafula Buke. However, today I want to persuade him that, since after all this Jamhuri Day is much happier than that one 5 year's ago in many ways, thanks to his full seven years at Kamiti, Naivasha and Kodiaga -although the "gentlemen" will have none of that and credit themselves instead - let us not give December 27th a miss for the simple reason that we have a duty to halt the entrenchment of the misrule we have seen in the last 5 years , an official fashioning out of a ruling class against a permanently-to-be ruled proletariat. We have to weaken their bases, the tribal hegemony, the money clubs and the corruption networks by upping the struggle. I do believe I have a duty to choose the lesser evil for I see very little on offer across the divide in terms of what our forebearers set out to achieve before that declaration in 1963 threw us into false comfort zones, save for the much maligned "radicals without a cause", to whom we owe the space we all enjoy today. I see very little we are set to achieve in what i have read of the people's manifestoes. We together created the space to reclaim that we lost and realize the quest for true nationhood. I cannot allow the Gentlemen some more 5 years to completely take over that space. Nor Can I afford to allow the successors of the said gentlemen time beyond the next 5 to settle into the bad manners that our awful system grants any occupant of State House and Parliament. It is this system I have to labour to dismantle in the coming years even when many comrades and former comrades are wont to join the upcoming partying

I see some 5 years where we have to work double hard outside of that political class which is surely hell bent on perpetrating the status quo, courtesy of ethnic chauvinism, corruption, thievery, disguised dynastic rule and promotion of inequality. Whither those institutions to see to this? I rest my case and wait for the flak.

Happy Jamhuri Day.

Al-Amin Kimathi