Be Part of the Change You Want

There is a general consensus; the process of learning for humans is gradual developing through various stages of trial and error before success is finally achieved. In many years of trials and error, Kenyans have failed to learn a single lesson from their past political mistakes. In fact, instead of showing some progress for their many years of experiments, they failed terribly in 2007/8 when they turned against each other in senseless killings, mayhem that came to be known as post-election violence.

Kenya's Political leaders have repeatedly duped the nation with phony plans to ascend to the throne only to leave the stage without meaningful achievements or progress to show for their tenure of leadership. Yet people have always had the power to make informed decisions, to scrutinize the manifesto of leaders and to separate genuine plans from the real scam. But what has happened in the past and likely to recur again, is the corruption of the democratic process of elections, where political merchants are left unregulated, free to trade their political goods and services. The result is, people’s conscience is overridden by distortion proliferated by these con-men.

I want to say here that Kenyans have suffered what you may call fraud at the inception as these political demagogues consistently deceive people to achieve their objectives, to lead them for all the wrong reasons – Corruption, Nepotism, and tribalism. They have remained champions, proved their acumen in withholding their true intentions, motives to seek power.

But what is going to change the situation? The answer squarely lies with the people and for them to go ballistics, obviously we need the right charge to fuel the rod, to get the projectile flying on the right trajectory.

The people of Kenya are in serious need of information. I have realized it is the main reason why they continue to fail in their exams every elections season. The penetration of Mass media, the internet, and information technology resources application is yet to be fully tapped for optimal use. Also, the few who are connected at present have shown limitation in scope to fully exploit the powerful capabilities of the arsenal in the digital world. We must therefore reshape our thinking and reach out to Kenyans in a fully serviced, well packaged fashion to make them think and act as one unit in order to take Kenya to the next level.

I know many of you are sincere about the well-being of Kenya and will give it a serious thought to consider these points. It is evident we have an acute shortage of brave people because there are plenty of creative individuals out there but who are not willing to step up and lead these efforts in a genuine manner. You all know the strategy leading to the outbreak of the Arab spring is not applicable in Kenya because of our peculiar demographic and cultural diversity. The only option available to overcome the present political challenges therefore is to operate above the prejudices of ethnicity and historical malpractices.

It would be great to be part of a process to inform the nation, to make the people of Kenya pass their exams come next year as they elect their representatives.

By Mohamed Adan Wato, Major (Rtd.). Mohamed is the author of the book "Walking a Tight Rope Amidst Kenya Post Election Violence".
 

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