For peace, democrats must retreat to advance

For peace, democrats must retreat to advance

http://www.eastandard.net/news/?id=1143981855&cid=15

Published on February 14, 2008, 12:00 am
By Okech Kendo

A politician who has the humility to shout, "my country" should also have the courage to look Kenyans in the face, without disdain and vindictiveness.
Those who proclaim "my country" should truly work to make it the haven they think it is, or it was intended to be. For there can be no haven where more than 1,000 people are killed, 500,000 dispossessed and the economy vandalised as politicians haggle about positions.
This country cannot be a haven, at least not now, where children or families are burnt alive, without the atrocities shaming those who make such crimes possible.
Wielding of raw power without moral restraint is the seedbed for impunity, and this explains the deluge of atrocities over the past six weeks.
But it has also been said some of those leaders cannot empathise with dying and destitute wananchi because they imagine the world begins and ends with them.
Some do not know the pain of parenting because they adopted children, who were past the age of nursing. Or have exported their children to Australia, Europe and the US.
Some have too much money they did not work for, so they do not care shedding some of the baggage to perpetuate class interests, impunity and corruption.
For the poor Kenyan fisherman displaced in Naivasha, or the peasant dispossessed in Burnt Forest, or a hawker robbed of a livelihood in Narok, the monstrosity of political greed has shattered their hopes.

Sadly, some of our politicians do not mean what they say and do not say what they mean. They are usually good at doublespeak, double standards, double-dealing and astounding duplicity. This is why parliamentary sessions to discuss reconstruction should be broadcast live to shame the greedy and opportunists who would sabotage change.
When Dr Kofi Annan tells the politicians about peace and justice, they think he is from another planet. Not here where power gives exclusive rights to its abusers to trample on the majority.
When Annan tells them: "We want a Kenya where every citizen believes the cloth of the Government is big enough to cover everyone," they think he is not speaking about Kenya.
But many Kenyans want justice today; they want it now. They wanted it yesterday. They have always wanted justice.
They do not want business as usual, in which a select few live in cosy mansions when the majority launder in excruciating poverty, even though they work many times as hard.
Some of those who enjoy do so largely because they know someone who knows someone who wields power. This is a world where merit grows in a particular clime; a world where connections open and keep doors ajar for the chosen few.
A world where the majority shudder when the connected thunder, "Do you know who I’m? Do you know who I’ll be meeting this evening for coffee?"
Such is the world that engenders bitterness when peace without justice becomes anaesthesia for exploitation.
The past six dark weeks should show those who enjoy the power of patronage the pain the majority suffer in their struggle to survive. The tragedy should show what happens when a few monopolise the cloth of Government.
If the pain of exclusion cannot show the wielders of power the necessity for accommodation and tolerance, then the past six weeks have not taught them anything.
There are those who believe that the thousands of young people wielding rungus and machetes on the Kericho-Kisii border are criminals. If by chance some could be, then it is only an eighth of it. Largely, it is a revolt against exclusion, and a cry for justice that diverts aggression to weaker targets.
It is an indictment of a system that perpetuates the winner-loser grab it all anomaly and locking everyone else out to "provide a strong opposition".
Opposition makes sense in well-governed societies where the cloth of Government is felt equitably across the board, but here it is by-word for exclusion.
Annan’s mediation must lead to accommodation and a constitutional order that make it possible for everyone to feel the cloth of Government.
Saboteurs of this ideal have no place in this defiled haven. Perhaps they do in Slobodan Milosevic’s former cubicle in The Hague.

kendo@eastandard.net
The writer is The Standard Managing Editor, Quality and Production