Uhuru would do well to read up on Machiavelli

President Uhuru Kenyatta (left) and former head of Public Service Francis Muthaura leaving the ICC building in this file picture. The Former head of Civil Service Francis Muthaura was appointed by the President to chair the Lappset project. PHOTO/FILE  NATION MEDIA GROUP

In Summary

• There is a revolting ugliness in our past and present which cannot be called heroic or qualify for national awards, especially in a country bubbling with youthful exuberance and knowledgeable.
• Power without gratitude and generosity is the prerogative of the tyrant. But that is not the task to which Kenyans elected UhuRuto to power.
• According to the President’s detractors, that is the reason the President feels sufficiently beholden to Mr Muthaura’s ilk as to reward them handsomely.

By Philip Ochieng
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If I were Uhuru Kenyatta’s political adviser, I would regularly refer him to Niccolo Machiavelli’s little book The Prince.

To be sure, it is completely amoral. But if pragmatism is Mr Kenyatta’s only cause, Machiavelli is what the doctor ordered for our young leader.

On the way to the top, it advises, the prince must not contract any heavy political debt. Of the many tactical alliances which he needs to make to reach the top, he must avoid any that might, in future, become an embarrassing liability.

Yet, more often than not, such predictive wisdom is completely elusive. In the welter of political marital offers, he may make a perilous choice. Often, the circumstances are such that he really has no choice.

But, whenever he contracts a marriage, he must insist on a clause allowing him to get out of it as soon as the circumstances demand. The idea is to make his instruments of rule as shipshape and as light as possible. Indeed, the shipping business has an appropriate word for it.

Jetsam refers to all those goods which — in stormy maritime conditions — must be thrown out (Jettisoned) into the sea in order to lighten the ship and prevent sinking. In the popular mind — rightly or wrongly — Francis Muthaura symbolises the gerontocracy in charge of the political ship that brought young Kenyatta to power.

According to the President’s detractors, that is the reason the President feels sufficiently beholden to Mr Muthaura’s ilk as to reward them handsomely. No, you do not offend any principle by rewarding those who stood by you during any particularly gruelling struggle. Indeed, it is morally compulsive to express such gratitude.

What may be questionable is only the manner, circumstances and with what kind of resources you are rewarding such individuals.

President Kenyatta’s recent appointments to public offices amount to using public resources to reward individuals in a certain age group, a certain class, certain ethnicities and a certain gender who helped him in a cause which was purely personal.

REVOLTING UGLINESS

Propriety demands that he reward them from his own personal coffers. Moreover, there is a revolting ugliness in our past and present which cannot be called heroic or qualify for national awards, especially in a country bubbling with youthful exuberance and knowledgeable inventiveness, a country brandishing a document called 2030, in which “development” is the singsong from every leader’s mouth.

In a country with a young Parliament, an administration which pledged nip-and-tuck development in the name of youth, gender parity and ethnic equity, a country under two bouncing young executives at the apex — in such a country, how can we explain our present bid to revert to ancient and exhausted minds and bodies as our vanguard in the task of catapulting Kenya to the rank of developed nations?

It is, of course, a question of balance. Old codgers have their uses. And, if UhuRuto want to reward those who helped them to their present redoubt, it only proves their humanity. Power without gratitude and generosity is the prerogative of the tyrant. But that is not the task to which Kenyans elected UhuRuto to power.

The task to which we delegated our collective power to them is to deliver Kenya to the future. It is a task which they can discharge with speed and efficacy only if they perennially seek assistance from all Kenyans, especially those with gifts and training in certain fields. Those gifts and skills are not confined to any single group.

They exist in every age-group, class, gender, race, religion and tribe. That is why you do great disservice to your country by giving jobs to only one group. By doing so, you condemn to total waste all the talent and skill in all other groups. And, with that — as Machiavelli points out — you also condemn yourself to increasing unpopularity among all the other groups.