The Leadership Crisis in Kenya

The quality and quantity of leaders that exists in Kenya will determine the extent of corruption that will prevail in the Kenyan society. Despite politicians claims that they are fully committed to promoting democracy and human rights, many Kenyans are still denied an opportunity to participate meaningfully in policy formulation and other important activities that directly affect their lives. Leaders are the elites- the best select of a group who should have unquestionable integrity and unadultered conscience. When Kenyan politics is riddled with hate speech and empty rhetoric as it has always been, Kenyans are the worst affected because they have a tough choice of choosing between two similar thorny paths championed by a mammoth crowd of tribal chiefs.  Some Kenyans of goodwill end up not voting because they fear being counted by history as having been part of the problem. It is better to suffer without having ignited the problem in the first place.

Most of the politicians in the current political arena of this country have been in politics for more than twenty years and despite the best intention of the best of them, they can no longer deliver this great country to the next level in 2012 and Kenyans cannot see the desirable Eldorado- the land of free ‘honey’ and water that they have desired for since independence. They cannot be able to get out of the mud they have swum in for ages. That’s why the Lodwar-Kitale highway-the only road connecting Kenya to the Republic of South Sudan will always remain the way it is until God knows when. Kenya is experiencing an incapacitating leadership crisis that will have an impact on its endeavor to enlist in the map of the developed world. The power of the vote has lost the aboriginal meaning which the initiators of the principle of universal suffrage had in mind. One even wonders whether there is any prudence in exercising the right to vote and choosing leaders if a voter can be manipulated through handouts and cheap promises and to compromise the ideals that define their humanity and their very existence. There is rampant violation of democratic norms than there were in colonial and pre-colonial Kenya.

When the coalition government (although I prefer to call it ‘collision government’) deal was brokered in early 2008, every Kenyan was optimistic that the two leaders would enthusiastically and innovatively use the country’s vast resources to embark on a thorough reform, transformation and national cleansing. However, “the two governments in one nation“ invented new ways of corruption while trying to outdo each other and the concomitant underdevelopment has affected this nation in levels the world has never seen. The current composition of political parties in Kenya is symptomatic of the leadership dearth that exists in Kenya and the lack of a meaningful agenda for the nation. Kenyans should challenge and oppose undesirable tendencies such as political intolerance, leader’s reluctance to finding solutions to problems and hate speech during campaigns.

The scourge of leadership should be addressed as a matter of urgency because this situation makes democracy, which is a necessary condition for Kenya’s desire to move forward a mirage. Sitting on the fence and watching while we head to the wrong direction won’t help. Perfecting the art of lamentation without anything more is not helpful either. There is no one to fill the presently existing lacuna of the next president of the republic of Kenya. With the coming of the new constitution, we need new wines in these new wine skins. There is no wisdom in recycling tested-and-proven-to-be-incompetent leaders. Kenya needs men and women who can deliver.

Despite of all this adversity, we take confidence in the fact that no one country becomes perfect in  a short span of time and being the only country in the solar system that has dedicated a whole chapter in their constitution to provisions on leadership and integrity, we have hope. We must learn how Lee Kuan Yew, a paternalistic prime minister of Singapore, who is recorded as one of the most successful policy makers, imposed benevolent authoritarianism which resulted in discipline and catapulted  the country to a high and enviable level of economic prosperity. Lee Kuan Yew believed that a country needs to develop discipline before it can achieve demo kratia. He reasoned that attempts to introduce democracy in an undisciplined population often results in indisciplined and disorderly conduct which is inimical to development. That is not the Kenya we all want.