This careless talk by politicians is a danger to peace and stability

International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. The realisation that nobody no perpetrator of the post-election carnage has so far been punished by the ICC, may be what is encouraging some to talk about inevitable deaths in 2017 unless their favourite politicians win. PHOTO | AFP 

In Summary

• The pity of it is that the majority of Kenyans never actually partake of whatever is in the gravy train so intensely fought for.
• The realisation that nobody has so far been punished by the ICC fomenting, planning and financing the post-election carnage may be what is encouraging some to talk about inevitable deaths in 2017 unless their favourite politicians win.

By MAGESHA NGWIRI
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Some things in politics are really stranger than fiction.

In the recent past, politicians have been running off at the mouth, saying whatever came into their heads at public meetings, with nary a thought as to the implications of whatever bilge they emit, or the possible effect their zealotry may have on their audience.

This is possibly because they are confident that they may never be held to account for their utterances.

This is a disease that has afflicted our politicians for the longest time, but there was always hope that after the gruesome experience of the 2007/2008 post-election violence when Kenyans turned on one another in unprecedented murderous rage, the men and women responsible for the incitement would learn a useful lesson. But this did not happen.

We are still at war on every front, especially on social media and on the political podium.

Our so-called leaders are still hurling insults every which way at their perceived enemies, and by the look of things, unless some drastic change occurs in the mindset of these folks, things will very soon get out of hand in the run-up to the 2017 elections.

This, in essence, means that eight years after the cataclysm that shook the whole country, our so-called leaders are still at it with renewed vigour, and we common wananchi seem to be once more readying ourselves to kill and die for them.

It seems the pursuit of power, especially the power to “eat”, always gets the better of Kenyan leaders and they switch off their brains when they open their mouths.

NO ONE PUNISHED
The pity of it is that the majority of Kenyans never actually partake of whatever is in the gravy train so intensely fought for.

What is it about politics that turns normal human beings into willing victims of acute myopia even when they know their self-induced affliction will always have a grievous effect on their compatriots?

Right from those hilarious days of weka taya, gari iende, to more recent days when somebody was pointedly told that the money he was agitating for to be sent to the counties did not belong to his mother, insults, public insolence and incitement have always been with us.

Things are obviously worse in social media where the cowardly hide under anonymity, while others who have already gained a reputation for obstinacy brazenly attack whole communities in the guise of attacking those they regard as political foes.

Some people have always argued that the vitriol poured during the campaigns for and against the 2005 constitutional referendum was what gave birth to the violence that rocked parts of this country in 2008.

Nobody was punished for criminal utterances during political rallies, and so the same players were encouraged to continue in this vein, culminating in the quite distracting cases at the International Criminal Court.

ELECTORAL MAYHEM

Indeed, the realisation that nobody has so far been punished by the ICC fomenting, planning and financing the post-election carnage may be what is encouraging some to talk about inevitable deaths in 2017 unless their favourite politicians win.

It is also instructive that when such politicians are actually recorded saying things that would land lesser mortals like you and me in jail, their superiors promptly come to their defence with arguments that smack of cloying cynicism.

How do you sanitise statements that could lead to electoral mayhem by saying they were taken out of context?

These matters of hate speech and incitement to violence are in court and therefore it is too early for anyone to say that one player’s utterances are more inflammatory than another’s or to claim that one coalition is trying to intimidate the other.

However, ordinary Kenyans are not as stupid as they are deemed to be; they have ears as well as eyes.

We must all acknowledge that the post-election violence was not spontaneous in any sense; some could have been, but most of the slaughter was premeditated. It could happen again.

**
Talking of thoughtless utterances, some political speeches remind me of an episode in my youth when, during a minor tiff, a female acquaintance heatedly said she would no longer be taken for an idiot.

“I have guts in my head,” she declared. I was startled, but then readily conceded the point. Seems like the gutsy woman’s beau had told her that and she had taken it as a compliment.