Ken Ouko
30 March 2008
opinion
Nairobi — Kenneth Boulding authored these famous words back in 1970 in reference to a Europe stuck at the crossroads. He cautioned that what Europe required most was progress but that the feeling of progress had to seep through to the public, be felt by the public and, by subsequence, endorsed by the public. This is the point our two crest-wave leaders are missing.
The Kenyan public needs to be imbued with a sense of progress. The Kenyan public needs to feel a part of this progress. We need to indulge in the renewal of hope clad in the attire of progress.
Oxford Concise offers a variety of definitions of the word public, the most relevant of which is "of or engaged in the affairs or service of the people." The immediate implication here is that whatever leaders do, it ought to be for the good of the people they serve. In Kenya it seems to be the opposite. What the leaders do seems to be for their own good and for the good of their advisers.
Sociologists, on the other hand, define the public as "a large collectivity of persons with effective inter-member communication regarding an ongoing issue, event or person." The public plays a critical role in determining who governs them and the pursuant quality of such governance.
Recent Kenyan history has revealed that it doesn't matter what the declared outcome of an election is until there is public consensus about the mandate to govern. It has also revealed that public sentiment can easily rubbish procedurally endorsed legitimacy given to a leader by existing institutionalised methods.
Global history also teaches that leaders who undermine the need for public goodwill do so at their fatalistic peril. Sadly, this appears to be the precipice President Kibaki and PM-Designate Odinga seem to be dangling their fortunes on.
For, as long as our country has a leadership that seems insensitive to public sentiment, we will never experience change in the true form of the concept.
A sociologist's take on change is that it must entail two prime components -- progress and an evolved mindset.
The benefits of such progress must be appreciated by the governed public while the transformation of mindset must be exhibited by the leadership. This is the current mouse-trap fix we, as a country, find ourselves in.
The Kenyan public is increasingly becoming disenchanted with its leadership while the leadership is unflinchingly exhibiting a rigidity of mindset that is almost pathological.
Our leaders cannot pretend to have inhaled fresh breath and exhaled steamy hope from the Kofi Annan-led mediation process when their mindsets remain collectively sandwiched between political rigmarole and rhetorical gerrymandering.
What our leaders are putting us through is not very different from inviting the whole world to witness the spectacle of a serial rapist graduate with an exemplary PhD in Gynaecology.
The PNU outfit in particular does not seem to care much for public perception or sentiment.
To even suggest a bloated cabinet at this point in our history is to deliberately stir negative public perception.
Of particular wonder is how a president who has recently been on the mend with the Kenyan public as a man with the interests of the nation at heart can succumb to the avaricious interests of those surrounding him by suggesting the creation of absurdly christened ministries for their comfort.
From the onset of the coalition agreement, observers immediately became aware of the president's dilemma especially in regard to the incorporation of ODM-K into the PNU side of the bread.
The President needs to realise that ODM is not necessarily composed of angels but his PNU side is suddenly making the ODM brigade look heavenly, which is bad for business. For as long as our leaders remain caught in the spinney-web of combative mindsets and the tiring rhetoric of reductionism, this country will simply never experience meaningful change.
It is hard to name any Kenyan leader in all 44 years of independence with the ideological originality of Napoleon Bonaparte, the pragmatism of Muammar Gaddafi, the fieriness of Fidel Castro or the charisma of Nelson Mandela.
Such is the dearth of leadership quality in Kenya that one has to scratch his head trying to locate a leader who could have or who will lead us into the new Kenya we all thirst for.
A revolution need not be a bloody and violent affair. Modern revolutions simply imply a complete overhaul of the political and economic structures of a nation complete with the transformative social existence that follows such overhaul by natural subsequence.
Only last week, I was cheering the constructive symbolism hidden in Minister Amos Kimunya's proclamation of goodwill from Mr Odinga. Days later, Mr Odinga contemptuously dismissed Mr Kimunya as unqualified to speak on his behalf.
Meanwhile, as Mr Kimunya is dismissing Prof Anyang' Nyong'o's concerns as the whimpering of a misguided individual, ODM MPs are giving ultimatums to Education Minister Sam Ongeri to nullify the KCSE examination results. When did the new-found spirit of joint leadership evaporate?
Ken Ouko is a sociology lecturer at the University of Nairobi
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