Time ripe to amend this document
Story by PHILIP OCHIENG Publication Date: 2/24/2008
Why do I respect the Jesus of gospel? Because of his practical wisdom. He serves the spirit of the law, not the letter of it. Thus he often deliberately breaks the law so as to make its spirit more manifest. He thus exposes the hypocrisy of the Pharisees time and again.
Take a familiar Jewish law. If Yahweh loves Israel, it was for Israel that he sanctified the seventh day. It follows that an Israelite’s life is more important than the Sabbath’s holiness. So, if that is what is necessary to save a life, then we must readily violate the Sabbath.
One gospel gives an example. If a child falls into a deep hole on the Sabbath, its parent must obviously try to retrieve it on that very day. The summary is succinct: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
The constitution is exactly like that. It was made for Kenyans, not Kenyans for it. Constitutions are guides to political action. But if — like ours — it is a very bad constitution, it will frequently guide us to appalling actions.
Protracted official refusal to revamp that document — imposed on us by an imperialist power in its own interests — is, indeed, the immediate cause of our present crisis. That is why Kenya’s Pharisees are now insisting on the letter of it.
Not long ago, during Daniel Moi’s presidency, Amos Kimunya, Danson Mungatana, John Michuki and Martha Karua made a great deal of noise about the need to overhaul the Lancaster House constitution or to write a new one.
YET TODAY — A VERITABLE SABBATH — WHEN THE child has fallen into the Black Hole of Calcutta, the Pharisees are telling us that we must not try to redeem that child because of the Sabbath! We should not try to solve this crisis because the solution would violate the constitution!
Although during Moi, when circumstantial self-interest demanded it, the Pharisees poured much bilge water on that constitution, today — because the circumstances have changed while the self-interest remains — that constitution has suddenly become sacrosanct.
Rightly or wrongly, many Kenyans see the actions of the Electoral Commission of Kenya which brought Joseph Caiaphas, Jonathan Annas and others to the Sanhedrin that we call Cabinet as a deliberate and vile manipulation of the constitution to serve these extreme self-interests.
Yet the accused — now acting as judge and rapporteur — turns round to declare that to try to set things right is what would flout that constitution! Because our constitutional law is so bad, those accused of trampling it underfoot can suddenly pose as the defenders of that constitution and as apostles of the rule of law.
Because logical thinking is not easy, even the lawyers involved in this vile hypocrisy have no idea that, by doing so, they are exposing themselves as champions of a set of laws which have for decades been widely condemned as a national liability.
In this way, they unwittingly give us the reason why they have so effectively blocked all attempts to revamp that constitution or to write a new one. According to Wetangula, Karua and Kilonzo, our constitution is now a humdinger.
ACCORDING TO THIS ASTONISHINGLY CROOKED THINKing, you just cannot pull your child out of the hole on the Sabbath. Nothing at all can be done at the constitution’s expense. Having been imposed on us by a god called Whitehall, the constitution simply cannot be impugned.
Yet everybody who thinks straight knows that the constitution is the problem. It was what led to December 27-28. To help lift the Kenyan child out of the abyss into which the ECK has plunged it, you must take extraordinarily bold steps.
The circumstances require actions that may include deliberately ignoring and even flouting the letter of that constitution. If Kalonzo Musyoka, Wetangula, Karua, Kilonzo, Kimunya, Mungatana and Alfred Mutua do not understand it, this is what Kofi Annan has been trying to tell them for weeks.
It is that December 27-28 may now be irrelevant. What is relevant and urgent is to remove from the system all the long-term economic, political, human rights and constitutional injustices which led to the pent-up anger that the follies of Samuel Kivuitu released on December 28.
What we require is the spice of public action to remove these painful long-term thorns from our body politic. We can be seen to do so only if we tackle it together. That is the meaning of the power-sharing demand.
If — like Wetangula — you say that a solution “?must not break the law?” you are being unwise because this colonial law is precisely what we must break loose from to get anywhere.
http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=25&newsid=117540
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