Non-Muslim civil servants camp at the Mandera airstrip as they demanded
to be evacuated in the wake of the terror attack. PHOTO | MANASE OTSIALO
|
NATION MEDIA GROUP
As we end the year 2014 and begin 2015, we must speak to what we
have seen, what we have felt and what the people of this nation have
gone through.
Today, I will limit myself to indicating
what has gone wrong this year and which we must undo in the New Year.
In the next few days, I will spell out specific steps the Opposition
will be taking to close the gaps that in our view have led to the
failures witnessed in 2014.
I wish to make it clear
that for better or worse, Kenya is our only country. We therefore need
to appreciate that while specific methods for addressing our problems
may be different and opinions will no doubt differ, the vision must
remain the same. That is what makes nations stand. It is what separates
great prosperous nations from struggling and failing ones.
Much
as the Opposition has a role in what we will look like at this time in
2015, a lot lies with the government. It is Jubilee Alliance that is
running the country supposedly on the basis of election promises it
made.
Jubilee will certainly be setting out its
resolutions. It is however our concern in opposition that despite past
resolutions and continuing promises; our country appears to be moving on
autopilot without a clear flight plan.
We are made to
try one route after another before abandoning it as a path to nowhere.
It is our hope that in 2015, once we have identified and set our goals,
we will move as a unit towards them and combine our efforts nationally
towards their achievement.
STURBBORN FACTS
I
wish I could paint a rosy picture of the past and offer some quick cure
for the immediate future to the name and image of our nation. Facts are
however stubborn and we must face them as they are. The year 2014 has
been more harsh and cruel than any in our recent history. It has been a
year of tremendous calamity and missed opportunities.
Of
course we had a few bright moments. Our athletes and sports men and
women brought glory against great odds from various competitions across
the globe, as they always do.
We can think of the
sweep of this year’s New York Marathon by Wilson Kipsang and Mary
Keitany on an extremely cold and windy day that troubled even New
Yorkers who are used to the vagaries of weather.
At the
movies, Lupita Nyong’o burst onto the international stage, emerging out
of an unexpected area, Hollywood, to win the first ever Oscar.
In
the middle of the worst health scare manifested in Ebola, our nation,
so far at least, emerged unscathed by the disease that put us on edge,
fearing for the worst. We have to thank our health workers for keeping
us safe and urge them to remain alert and vigilant.
If
we are honest, however, we must agree that our bright moments have been
overshadowed by periods of uncertainty and worry about our future as a
nation. As the sun sets on 2014, the uncertainties and worries are
intact.
Our country witnessed a dramatic decline in
security and in the safety of the lives and property of citizens.
Failure on security has been a permanent companion to the accompanied
Jubilee regime thus far.
From Westgate to Usalama
Watch (Operation Sanitise Eastleigh); to Mpeketoni, to Lamu that remains
under an illegal curfew, to Kapedo where 26 innocent policemen sadly
lost their lives, to the invasion of mosques, further alienating large
sections of the Kenyan population along religious lines; and, most
recently to Mandera. It has been a year of living in the middle of a
slow motion security meltdown.
CORE MANDATES
Insecurity
in Tana River, Garissa, Nairobi, Isiolo, Baringo, Samburu, Turkana,
Mandera, Lamu, Mombasa and Bungoma bear grim testament to the fact that
the government failed to prosecute one of its core mandates: to protect
the lives and property of the Kenyan people.
These
failures have taken place as our country remains at war in Somalia and
at home against an enemy whose true address we do not know and whose
capacity for violence and hatred confounds. That war has left our
country scoured by bloodshed and death, our citizens worried and our
economy in tatters.
In belated response, the
government has mistaken people or personnel for policies, removing this
officer and appointing that officer to tackle insecurity; the familiar
game of musical chairs, a case of lurching from one experiment to
another, uncertain what will work.
In the name of
responding to insecurity, we end the year with our greatest collective
accomplishment in recent years, the Constitution in grave danger of
being reversed and subjected to death by a thousand cuts. There is an
eclipse of the sun on our hard won freedoms.
The
eclipse is promising a grim new year for Kenyans – especially media,
civil society and all progressives through the passage of the much
condemned security laws.
Corruption is not only back;
it is being protected as a core culture again. We need look no further
than the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the
Office of the President and the Kenya National Examinations Council
(KNEC). IEBC officials stand accused of pocketing up to Sh70 million in
bribes before the elections.
But those officials sit
pretty in office, earning salaries and enjoying privileges provided by
taxpayers while in the UK, those who bribed them have been investigated,
prosecuted and found guilty. They are waiting to be sent to prison as
soon as the judge determines for how long.
The “chicken
gate” has caught up with KNEC. The examination council happens to be
the spinal cord of Kenya’s education system. Life in Kenya is built
around examinations. If KNEC is systemically infected with corruption,
the implications are dire. Kenyans will inevitably lose faith in their
system of national examinations.
Recent revelations
accompany persistent and consistent reports of exam papers leaking or
being sold, favourable ranking for schools being done at a fee and
generally being part of an exam system whose integrity has been lost.
For
KNEC, it is a bitter irony that this year 2014 marks the year when the
beneficiaries of the Free Primary Education introduced in 2003 completed
their Form Four examinations. Corruption of the KNEC betrays them,
their families and the country as a whole by toppling a pillar of our
education system. But the Kenya government remains silent on this
affront while the UK acts.
We are yet to get an
explanation for billions lost in the Office of the President that came
to light this year, the same year the government ignored all counsel and
paid for Anglo-leasing projects.
The sugar barons are
back and deep in business, importing tonnes of the commodity illegally
into the country in collusion with senior officials of the national
government thus threatening the local industry and denying farmers their
income.
DRUNKEN SAILORS
Our
nation is wallowing in debt. The debt rose many times over and is set
to rise some more but our leadership has continued to borrow and spend
like drunken sailors. Jubilee government increased our public debt by
Sh860 billion in one year from Sh1.8 trillion to Sh2.6 trillion.
This
is an increase of 50 per cent, the largest annual increase in our
history. When Jubilee came to power, every Kenyan owed Sh44,000. A year
later, each Kenyan owes Sh66,000. This is set to rise more than two fold
with the recent doubling of our debt ceiling. It puts a heavy burden on
all current and future citizens of Kenya.
Devolution,
the centre-piece of our Constitution, has seriously been troubled,
sometimes undermined by the national government. Jubilee has insisted on
retaining the system of provincial administration by another name, thus
undermining elected governors.
As if that is not
enough injury to devolution, the national government continues to sit on
resources that are meant for county governments. It is sitting on at
least Sh120 billion from state departments and parastatals whose
functions were fully or partially devolved. Continuous holding of these
funds is a major source of several crisis affecting the counties.
Little
has been done to ensure equity and inclusivity especially when it comes
to appointments to public positions. After the promise of the last 10
years that saw systematic opening up of once forgotten parts of Kenya,
the pace has slowed or even stalled and regions are back to waiting for
charity from Nairobi. Inclusion remains a pipe dream. Too many of our
citizens continue to feel that they are unwelcome guests in Kenya
despite this being their country by right.
We have been
through skyrocketing cost of living this year, without any specific
measures taken to address the problem. The price of maize flour today is
about three times higher than it was six years ago. The same goes for
milk and sugar. The prices have shot up when supply is disrupted by
drought or other factors but it never comes down when supply is restored
because nobody cares.
IRRIGATION
We
had been told about the irrigation projects taking off across the
country that would bring down prices especially of unga. A year has
passed during which the harvest should have been in but the price of
unga remains unreachable for many. Whatever happened to the irrigation
projects, they have made no difference.
Throughout the
year, however, the people have been fed a steady diet of empty
platitudes, falsehoods and promises. As things have gotten worse, each
day, we went to bed knowing something was wrong, but we have been too
afraid and too divided to confront it. We took refuge in sowing seeds of
negativity, discord; and deliberate misinformation. That is no way to
build a country. No nation was ever built on a foundation of lies and
fear to act.
We lived dangerously in 2014. In 2015,
half way to our magic year 2030, we must resolve to intensify our work
towards a clean, service-oriented and value-based politics and
government. Kenya must rediscover its path towards being a beacon of
democracy, a nation turning economic growth into social progress and
freeing its citizens from poverty. Shortly, we will be laying out
specifics on how to attain these noble goals in 2015.
Raila Odinga is leader of opposition Cord and a former Prime Minister
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