That President Uhuru Kenyatta is angry is now not a subject of contention. He is.
Last Sunday the Head of State seemed to give away a few of the factors that make him so irritable. And the fury was too obvious to second guess.
It is nothing personal though.
The Commander-In-Chief used a religious occasion to complain that there were so many noise makers in his backyard he finds it difficult to focus on the right mission.
For a very long time the President has appealed to politicians to stop succession politics and concentrate more on identifying and seeking solutions to challenges facing the people they represent. It seems this plea has always fallen on the proverbial deaf ears and this is getting on the chief executive’s nerves.
There have been various reactions since, with the targeted “noisemakers” trying to find fault in the call-to-order while their perceived opponents argue the presidential reprimand was long overdue.
Because the President chose to express his anger in his mother tongue, the Kikuyu language, there are those who argue that he was targeting political leaders from the Mt Kenya region. That is probably true, but it doesn’t make it wrong.
This group contends the President is being too hard on the people of the region since he doesn’t portray the same anger whenever he addresses gatherings in other regions despite leaders from those areas behaving in a similar manner.
This group argues that the President has no reason to complain because there is no contradiction between political campaigns and development as one proponent put it early this week “it is not the role of MPs to implement development projects” and that the main job description of a politician is to politic.
According to this school of thought, the country is a democracy and leaders should be let free to tour the country and communicate with people as they enjoy their freedom of expression and association.
There is a catch though. The President’s edict was actually targeted at Members of Parliament and other leaders elected on a party he leads. As the party leader, President Uhuru takes responsibility for everything that goes wrong and right in Jubilee and has both moral and legal duty to shepherd it the best way he knows how. When he says turn right, it is only in order that all party members turn right and ask questions when there.
But then there is the other school of thought that contend there is indeed too much noise coming from the proponents of what has come to be popularly known as Tanga Tanga politics for any meaningful development to be achieved.
To them, the argument is that though MPs are indeed not the implementers of projects, there oversight role is overshadowed by the numerous trips they make in regions and places well outside their jurisdictions. This group also agrees with their Tanga Tanga counterparts that the people on the ground are not happy but argue that the unhappiness is more because their representatives are not doing what they are supposed to do, of course preferring to move around the country seeking votes for a presidential election some three years away.
The unfortunate result, however, is both groups, Tanga Tanga and their opposite Kieleweke number, have ended up doing the same thing for different reasons. But both are wasting the country’s time campaigning, one for a particular presidential aspirant and the other against that aspirant. They have both forgotten the person who gave them a job and whose interest they should be advancing: the Kenyan voter.
All said and done, in this particular case, it is clear that the President means well for both his mother-tongue community which he was addressing and the entire nation he leads. It is not just right for the country to be in an endless electoral campaign mode.
Let’s just for once indulge those arguing that it is not an MP’s role to implement development project, though we all know that sooner or later they will be telling us how they initiated this and that development in the constituency that their competitor did not. An MP has three main roles, ideally; legislation, representation and oversight. To effectively deliver on these, one needs to research and interact more with their principal subjects than moving from one corner of the country to the other drumming up support for another person who does not have a competitor yet.
It is time our political leaders put aside electoral campaigns and focused more in addressing the most immediate national needs which include the ever growing cost of living, the dicey food insecurity and the not so healthy health sector.
