Why am mad at both Raila and Kenyatta!

Its self-defeating to keep fighting each other!

Just what on earth is happening in our country? It is nearly a year before the next elections and the ominous drumbeats are sounding loud.

Listening to all the hullaballoo about the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), one gets the feeling that it is all that matters to us.

That you fix IEBC and our entire problem will be gone. But is that the real problem? What lingers in my mind is whether 70 per cent of us got it all wrong in 2010.

Did we pass (by majority) a faulty document? Constitutions the world over are negotiated documents. It is a formal expression of the common good, the protector of our common interests.

Yet what I see now is that lingering threat of the elite taking over and imprinting their elitist interests over those of the entire citizenry. By that I mean both Jubilee and CORD.

Let me ask you, who do you think will run away with the common good? Come to think of it, the Committee of Experts, the team that drafted the 2010 Constitution, did very well.

It refused to be persuaded that the political class, the Church, civil society or even some of the most vocal commentators should have the last word on the nature and content of our Constitution.

Indeed, there was an agreement that our individual interests must yield to the greater collective interests of the 40 million Kenyans.

And that is why I must express my outrage at the attempt by politicians and their cohorts driving the debate about reforming the IEBC towards the highway of ethnic bigotry characterised by obstinacy.

Forget about the so-called Jubilee or CORD positions. I’ll tell you what; a mishandled electoral process can be too costly, as seen in 2007/08.
In fact, one of the lessons learnt after the 2007 elections is that despite regular elections, wretched injustices are routinely perpetuated by a corrupt and cruel elite who have constantly obstructed the search for a new political dispensation by disenfranchising the citizenry.

In their unbridled quest to retain (or capture) power at whatever cost, the ruling elite are aware that a pliant electoral body offers the best option.

Why steal the election when the results can be fixed for you (of course at a little cost? The answer to that was the incorporation of the electoral body in the Constitution.

The wisdom then was that this would act as a bulwark against interference from (obviously) the politicians.

And so we were happy. In fact, even their terms would, we thought, run concurrently with the electoral cycle. How clever? Matters got complicated with the July 2012 ruling that elections would be held in March and not August as had been assumed when constituting the IEBC.

So really, we know how we got it all wrong and instead of addressing that, we are busy chasing shadows.

I am not a prisoner of conspiracy theories, but I seem to think that at the centre of the tussle over the IEBC is the need to decide the outcome of next year’s election.

I cannot begrudge those feeling that the playing field is not level.
I learnt recently that racial domination is probably more tolerable than tribal domination.
Wars have been fought across Africa whenever it was felt that one tribal group was lording it over the other.

The 1994 Rwandan genocide pitting the Hutus against the Tutsi is a classical example. It is disheartening to witness the legal bumps erected so as not to create a consensus around the fate of the IEBC.

Or is this one of those convenient arguments put forward simply to fight off unpopular views?

Or the incessant push to have the legally-constituted body given the boot? Put another way, is it really that bad?

None of us could possibly answer that. And for that I suggest that we all look President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga in the eye and ask them to come clean and lead from the front.

Mr Kenyatta avers he swore to protect the Constitution and cannot therefore be the one to rip it apart. Mr Odinga swears he will bring people on the streets to secure his side’s interests. Who will blink first? Evidently, we (including them) are in a political quagmire.

They must take responsibility. The central objective of accountability is to remain faithful to the common good. Of what good is Mr Kenyatta’s insistence on fidelity to the Constitution or Mr Odinga’s intransigence?

Both must step forward with real effort and commitment to end the political turmoil that is staring at us. Those two must act quickly and courageously.

Every part of this nation is reeling from pain and hurt inflicted by ethnic chauvinists who stoke the embers of ethnic bigotry.

So Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga must take greater responsibility for our democracy. They have to sweep aside the old, divisive ideologies and stand up for Kenya.

This is their moment. They have the opportunity, the urgency, and the responsibility.

It is theirs to lose; if they prevaricate; if they equivocate, this opportunity may slip through their fingers. And our collective outrage will forever be with them.