Gado’s cartoon on Wednesday March 20, 2013 was yet another gem! What looks like a scene straight out of the 2007/8 post-election battleground suddenly assaults you as he depicts “Scenes from Kenya’s social media”. We, depressingly, are at it again; never a people to lose sight of one another’s jugulars, we have proceeded with characteristic primitive energy to engage full-fisted in social media. It’s a crying shame.
Equally shameful is the poisonous drivel slushing through the radioactive caves and catacombs of Kenya’s social media. There is a full-blooded attempt to delegitimise free expression, free association and the legitimate engagement of the judicial process in the name of protecting Kenya’s “sovereignty”; all in very rascally fashion.
Under this project those who, using the constitution, question the constitutional integrity of the March 4, 2013 elections are besmirched as “evil society”. Although a petition challenging the validity of presidential elections is provided for under Article 140, it tarnishes as an attack on Kenya’s sovereignty the constitutional question whether the management of these elections by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) passed muster as required by Articles 81 and 86 of the constitution.
Has the constitution been overthrown barely two years since its promulgation? It would seem so, if this campaign to criminalise hard-won freedoms is allowed to go unchallenged. This campaign is clothed in the garb of nationalism and patriotism: that those who speak out and demand transparency and accountability are really stooges of the West and out to overturn Kenya’s sovereignty.
This is hogwash of premier league proportions. It is clear that dissent is part of protected expression and action under the Bill of Rights; provided for in chapter 4 of the 2010 constitution. These rights are not borrowed from the leadership: past, present or future; neither are they enjoyed at the behest or pleasure of those who are in power. They are inherent, inalienable, indivisible, interrelated and universal. Only by carefully crafted legal provisions that strictly conform to the constitution can human rights be limited or abrogated.
Knowing this, the attempt is then not to undermine our rights through the use of known legal device: rather, it is to whip up antipathy against those who dare think or dream differently from those wielding power - using nationalistic jingoism, or “patriotism”. However, if care is not taken, this will seriously boomerang; “for patriotism, is indeed, a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.” And which successful nation has ever been built using narrow minds or mind-sets?
The consequence of ceding Kenyans’ rights to this carefully choreographed political maneuvering is dangerously grave: Kenya’s nascent democracy will swiftly revert to the paleontological era of dynastic rule. It will be back to the oppressive, repressive and regressive democratically pre-historic age of the rule of the mighty, by the mighty, and for the mighty. The rest of us will surely be damned!
The warning from the past about this form of rule is stark: it consumes not just those of us who wish to hold it to account, but also its own defenders, offspring and children. The story is told of the late Achieng Oneko, as Minister for Information and Broadcasting in post-independent Kenya but formerly one of the Kapenguria Six that included Bildad Kaggia, Kung’u Karumba, Fred Kubai, Paul Ngei and Jomo Kenyatta. Irked by a question from journalist Alastair Matheson, Oneko responded: “Matheson, you must never forget we never closed the detention camps after independence.” (Matheson had been key to organising the April 1961 international press conference for Jomo Kenyatta during his detention in Maralal). Oneko was to later be detained by Jomo Kenyatta for six years using the pretext of cracking down on the political activities of the Kenya Peoples Union (KPU).
Even closer in history, who will forget the late John Michuki stating soon after the NARC takeover of power from Moi-Kanu in 2003 that there was no need any more for constitutional overhaul and reform since President Kibaki was now in power? The lack of adequate and unequivocal constitutional protection would be used by Michuki some years later to, in early 2006, preside over the raid at the Standard Media Group’s offices.
The point being made here is this: we cannot allow our leaders however popular, charismatic and friendly to wield over us such powers that they can do with us as they whimsically and arbitrarily desire or wish. It was Thomas Paine who warned that freedom is like a forest; chop it down and you will then be hopelessly vulnerable to all the elements.
We will also quickly discover that, although methods may vary and have varied through the ages, the content of dictatorship, totalitarianism or autocracy is consistent. This virulent vituperation of civil society is coming from a notorious supporter of Uhuru Kenyatta; and only a single Supreme Court ruling away from a new dispensation where President-elect Uhuru Kenyatta may be handed the reins of power.
Is it reading too much to recall Uhuru’s call to obedience: “All of us should follow our muthamaki (great leader) Kibaki...I want to tell all the leaders here that if any one of them fails to toe the line, they should know that their politics is over. If Kibaki tells us to go to the left, we should do so, just like Ruto tells his people to go one way and they all do so.”
How uncannily similar is this from the sentiments of founding President Jomo Kenyatta who at the zenith of his powers in November 1969 warned dissenters, “We will crush you like flour. Anyone who toys with our progress will be crushed like locusts.”
Clearly the trick is not in whether the system is Jurassic, Analogue or Digital. It is whether embedded into is an operating system that observes and respects human rights and justice, and fulfils and promotes the rule of law and accountability. Any one telling you different is selling you a constitutional doughnut: hollow on the inside, fluffy on the outside. Be warned!
Mugambi Kiai is the Kenya Program Manager at the Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa (OSIEA). The views expressed in this column are entirely his and not OSIEA’s
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