Horror. One might use it to describe the past three weeks, but is that it? No, that’s not it. Horror is the state of our nation. Horror is the sixty years we have been calling ‘Sovereignty’. Horror is watching our society crumble and the honour of fundamental organs of governance dragged to the dogs. Horror is our comfort in the face of contempt by those we elected to lead. Horror is being dragged to the gutter to barrow with rats for droppings of our taxes as the Waheshimiwa drive by in luxury. Horror might as well be the wrapping of our future.
Define Irony. Sorry, for want of a better word, define hypocrisy. On July 3, The Directorate of Criminal Investigations published a collage of images of individuals wanted by the police for their ‘unlawful activities’ during the anti-finance bill 2024 demonstration. Individuals whose only crime was to show up and occupy parliament.
Now, stay with me, the national assembly passed the finance bill despite dissent from the citizenry, whose power is the power of God. Later, allegations came out, confirmed by legislators, of a Ksh 2 million bribe each, paid to the legislators by the executive to pass the bill in its entirety despite the voters being against it. In a nation where children go to school barefoot, sit on stones under trees, and write on their laps. This action desecrated the powers given to the legislature by the people, rendering the August House contemptible.
Where is the justice for extrajudicial killings, where are the mugshots of the corrupt legislators and the orchestrators of scandalous deals? Oh, come on, we understand. Our political class has suffered the lowest moral degradation without a qualm of conscience. Hiring goons to infiltrate otherwise peaceful protests and chest-thumping without remorse at the mess we have descended into as a nation.
How are we to achieve equality and bring back sanity to our country? Equality is to be found only in the spiritual dignity of man. Where is the hand of providence at the current happenings of our life? One may ask. Why has providence hidden its face at the most critical moment, as though voluntarily submitting to the blind, dumb pitiless laws of man?
But verily I say to you, we are the face of providence. Our nation is blessed with a large population of young brilliant individuals, who understand the fundamentals of decency and accountability. And the cherry on top is the progressive 2010 constitution, however mutilated it may have been by those in power.
Let us look at the print for it gives the citizenry unlimited powers, to recall errant representatives and deal with unethical practices in the public office. Our future has been auctioned to pay off loans that benefited the upper one per cent. Our fundamental institutions are bleeding. The Health Sector is a foregone case, and education, the master equalizer is in the throes of death, the police service is corrupt to the core and the judiciary has been captured and turned into a cartels’ dealership. Woe unto you, the tribal leaders.
Now we are either horrified or pretend to be horrified, though we gloat over the spectacle, and love strong and eccentric sensations which tickle our cynical, pampered idleness.
I write to you, heavy at heart yet full of hope at the call to order and shake-up done by our generation. Now is not the time to relent, let us be innovative in our pursuit of accountability. This is our beloved land in which we take pride, let us pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and bring order to our governance.
