BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR; YOU MIGHT LIVE TO REGRET IT!

DAILY NATION
NAIROBI, KENYA
By LUCY ORIANG'
March 19 2009

The two million signature campaign launched this week by the National Council of Churches of Kenya will no doubt appeal immensely to a people disillusioned with the political leadership.

But we should be careful what we ask for. We might just get it, and then what? An election is not in itself a solution to our myriad problems.

We are now between a rock and a hard place because we turned out for an election that would ultimately be decided irrespective of the vote.

As Johann Kriegler so delicately put it, there was no known winner of the 2007 poll. We have a manufactured presidency and government.

And the worst part of it is that we have to live with this mongrel, for the time being at least, if we want to ride the storm.

The NCCK can demand a fresh election, but the question springs to mind: What has happened lately that will guarantee that the result will reflect the will of Kenyans any more than it did last year but one?

It is easy to appreciate where the clergymen are coming from. The coalition government may have been a necessary evil, but the competing forces within it have made its reign such a bumpy ride that NCCK can be forgiven for wanting to get out at the next stop.

The house that President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga built is a miserable, rickety thing.

The structure is bad enough, but those who inhabit it make things even more sickening with their bickering, wheeling and dealing and general nuisance value. Living with constant tension is soul-destroying.

Let us not lose perspective, though. Even at its very best, a fresh election is unlikely to be a quick fix to our problems.

We will still have to contend with voting along ethnic lines, vote rigging, shameless manipulation of the process and the results, the same old bunch of cowboys in charge and a grumbling populace that revels in the victim mentality.

Contrary as it may sound, the ceaseless noise in the political arena has served some purpose. It has opened our eyes to the reality that we are on our own.

The current crop of politicians will do business as usual rather than strike out courageously in new and democratic directions. Young and old, they are self-absorbed and will cut deals with the devil if it serves their purposes.

THESE PEOPLE ARE OBSESSED WITH self-preservation, hence the desperate angling for successors that they can control and manipulate to protect their interests and cover their backs should Kenyans manage to rouse themselves long enough to demand justice.

This is where the NCCK campaign becomes interesting. The churchmen must be alive to the fact that the succession battle is in full play.

They must surely be aware of the behind-the-scenes deals and very public rallies where people from this region and that region are encouraged to form alliances and rally behind so-and-so if they are to capture power and keep it ad nauseum.

If they are as smart as their orientation would suggest, they must surely be conscious of the scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours mentality that is all over the political arena. An election at this stage will not serve Kenya’s genuine interests.

We cannot afford a return to the tensions of 2007. We have not even cleaned up after the last mess. And now we also have to contend with new tensions caused by the power struggle — or is it power vacuum? — that the coalition government has created.
NCCK should resist the temptation to join the melee. Placebo solutions offer only a short-lived emotional high. Then we have to come back to earth and face the harsh reality that we may not be ready and willing to embrace true democracy.

Instead of revving up people’s fears and fury with a bundle of signatures, NCCK should help plug the holes left in the aftermath of the discredited poll. It ought to help direct Kenya into a path of justice and fairness and out of harm’s way.

A snap election without solid and secure governance structures, even if the political class could live with the possibility of being thrown into the wilderness, is hardly practical or sensible given the realities of our times.

Peace and reconciliation should be top of the agenda for anyone who wants to bring this country back in line, not a strategy that has the potential to polarise it further. And we do not even need politicians or the clergy to negotiate these two things.

Could it be that NCCK is in the throes of a mid-life crisis and it is just trying to become relevant again at a time when the Church can barely hold its head up, given its own complicity in the events that led to the post-election crisis?