My Simplistic Governance Roadmap!

I believe the President and his deputy ("dynamic duo" à la Ubako) have a God-sent opportunity to not only reshape the destiny of this nation but to change the perspective that the international community, their detractors and the civil society have about them. If I had the chance to be either of them I would focus on a number of issues.

One of the areas that I would focus on is National Healing and Cohesion. The country underwent a very divisive campaign and electoral period and in some quarters the emotions are still very high after they lost out in the plebiscite and the subsequent petition. The nation has also since the colonial time undergone some very difficult times during which a lot of injustices were committed by the ruling elite and their cohorts. Urgent national healing is required so that the supporters of those that lost out can feel that indeed they are still part of this great Nation. I would thus recommend a Peace, Healing and Cohesion Initiative to be undertaken by the current constitutional bodies that we have in place such as NCIC, TJRC, KHREC, CAJ and NGEC. I would also ensure that the TJRC commission report is speedily received (this has already happened), released to the public in its entirety (thanks to the commission we don’t have to wait for the president to do so) and recommendations of the report put into action of course through public involvement and participation (with main political players across the divide adversely mentioned I await to see delivery of justice and reconciliation). I would also ensure that other reports by commissions of inquiry are released for public consumption and recommendations adequately addressed. As a way of addressing historical injustices and bringing about national healing, I would also embark on speedy resettlement of all genuine IDPs and ensure they are appropriately and adequately compensated for their losses.

A NATION OF MISPLACED PRIORITIES

While our MPs are at the Hague singing patriotic songs to show solidarity with the Ocampo6, IDPs still sleep in tents three years after they were displaced from their homes, yet none of those MPs has gone to the camps to sing patriotic songs with them. As church leaders fell over one another to organize prayer meetings for the O6, IDPs still whiled away time in camps with no one to share a word of prayer with.  The six will arrive back and we will be so engrossed in holding homecoming parties and prayer meeting yet no one is thinking of how the IDPs will finally get to their homes. Talk of a country of misdirected priorities.

Those that accompanied the six to the Hague claim to have gone there to in a show of solidarity and patriotism but to me that was a show of solidarity with impunity. Our politicians have turned the ICC process into a mudslinging and name calling contest with there biggest spectators being the media house that are too quick to turn our sitting rooms into arenas for the same. Much attention is given to politicians yet the more deserving cases of displaced persons and other victims of the PEV are left out. The utterances that we are hearing from our politicians now are similar to those that we heard in 2007 which culminated in the violence of 2011. Kenya a thriving economy and democracy has reduced itself in the eyes of the international community into a failed state. The governement which is meant to be protecting its citizens and ensuring that the rights of the everyone and especially the minority has abdicated this role. It has become more interested in fighting for the rights of the suspects than for the rights of the victims. So who then will protect the ordinary wanainchi?

BAD POLITICS WILL LEAD US TO A PATH OF DESTRUCTION ONCE MORE

Writing in a local daily immediately after the post-elections violence that had engulfed the nation, a renowned political scientist argued that the National Accord had come a bit too early. When I read the article I was a little bit apprehensive; I could not understand how one would advocate for the violence to go on even for a minute longer. Fast forward two years to the current ICC debacle as well as the games being played out in parliament and I could be more in agreement with the author. For a country like Rwanda, they learnt their lesson the hard way. Hundreds of thousands of innocent lives were lost before they came to the realization of what was happening to them. As country we are lucky to have come out united, but we are very fast at forgetting the price we had to pay for our mistakes. The blood of the innocent men, women and children who lost their lives in a battle that did not deserve to be fought should not be in vain. We should honor their memories by uniting; by shunning negative ethnicity; by engaging in activities to foster peace and unity amongst our communities.