A GOOD READ

Blind support for Kibaki and Raila our undoing.

By barrack muluka

I write what I like and I like what I write. I write from the deepest recesses of my soul. I have never considered that I should write to please President Kibaki or Mr Raila Odinga, or any of the rank and files of their unquestioning followers and assorted multitudes.I am, however, condemned to live in a society that has sold itself to the devil of greed, ethnicity and dishonesty. I do not consider it my primary duty, therefore, to write for any of those categories. Rather, I write foremost for future generations.

One day they will want to know the truth about the ugly things happening among us. They will seek trustworthy and fearless witness accounts. I seek to keep an honest annotated record for them. One of the best things my mother did was to send me to school. And she did not do this so that upon graduation I should enlist in the army of a bloodthirsty crowd. Let us face it, the country is burning and bleeding. It is awash with murder aforethought. Arsonists and allied anarchists and mass killers are everywhere.They are killing here and raping there. They loot, plunder and maim at will. The country is in a free fall, which it might never recover from. There is even suspicion of complicity by a genocidal fugitive from Rwanda. And am supposed to lend them my pen? That I should write through the selective prism of jaundiced eyes?

There are those who have sent me irritating little notes, laced with innuendo. They are disappointed that my writing is "bereft" of hostile partiality that should feed their violent ethnic passions and other wild appetites. Maybe they can be persuaded to be of good conduct and refrain. At any rate, like the man called Daniel, whom I read of in the Christian book, the God whom I serve can save me. He will rescue me from your cruel hand. And even if he should not, I shall not worship the latter-day golden images you have set up. I shall continue to write with robust candour. Meanwhile, our elected "mobus vulgus" are back in town, in ODM and in PNU. You see them in ill-fitting and mismatched attire. They crowd and jostle for photography at rushed press briefings. Fellows who yawn their way through party parliamentary group meetings are suddenly galvanised at the sight of cameras. We have condemned ourselves with uncritical characters for MPs. They process their thoughts in the small intestines. They add absolutely nothing to the national basket of ideas. Their role is to swell numbers. In truth, your average MP is just a statistic, for ODM and for PNU.

Buoyed on with this knowledge, party leaders mistake the whole country for a leashed bulldog under their mandate. Each time they do not agree with you they threaten to unleash the dog. Unquestioning minds I know about this exploitation of the mentality of the crowd. I first read about it in my ‘A’ Level literature class, 30 years ago. It has not changed. The commentator on the anarchy in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies wrote: "Foremost in Golding’s mind when describing mob behaviour was Nazi Germany. Jack (a character in Golding’s story) in many ways echoes (Adolph) Hitler. At first charismatic and seeming to offer easy solutions to difficult situations, both learnt to use the fury of the mob against their enemies. Hitler turned mobs against Communists, Jews, homosexuals and, indeed, many of his own followers to eliminate opponents and terrify everyone else.

Golding went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1983). For our part, we do not learn. Our so-called party leaders are in love with unquestioning minds. They would sooner impose upon us an ochlocracy, complete with the domination of reason by passion. Even in Parliament, they work best with easily movable automatons that only wait to be switched on. What of the contentious election results? I see nothing to argue about. For the elections were hopelessly flawed with fraud. From party nominations to December 27, fraudsters held sway.

Does the situation today reflect the will of the people? How can it when, in the first place, ODM and PNU imposed unpopular candidates on voters in their strongholds? Indeed how can it, when on December 27, ECK officials in PNU and ODM strongholds unashamedly marked and stuffed ballot papers in favour of their party of choice?

Nobody in ODM and in PNU is qualified to glibly talk about such lofty things as "truth and justice" without first seeking forgiveness.
Where do you get the moral high ground? Which justice did you give to those you rigged out of party nominations (I was there and know it)? You stole. You bribed voters and party big guns. You intimidated. The rules of the game were that simple. I do not doubt that the person best placed to steal the ultimate prize may well have run away with it. And why not? ODM and PNU played the card of fraudulence.

Now we need the wisdom of King Solomon. ODM and PNU now claim the baby. We do not know who is right. The solution is to kill the baby. Kibaki should disband the Kivuitu thing. He should dissolve Parliament and pave way for proper UN supervised elections, free from his hand and his crowd and free from Raila and his crowd.

The writer is a publishing editor and a media consultant with Mvule Africa Publishers.