The indignation demonstrated by some politicians, Cabinet Secretaries and busy bodies in the Kenya Kwanza administration about the admonition they received from Catholic bishops this week sadly demonstrates growing intolerance to alternative views.
Governance, they have forgotten, is not about acknowledging only cheerleaders and ‘Yes’ men who do not have the guts to tell the political elite what it needs to hear; it is about cultivating the grace to receive, accept and act on feedback, even when it is delivered in unflattering terms.
That is why it is important to remind those in positions of authority, who are now bristling from the bishops’ criticism, that they are serving at the behest of the citizens. People were not created to serve government, rather, they should always remember that government was created for and by the people with the sole mandate to serve them, not subject them to servitude.
Indeed, though there have been attempts to turn the Government into the sovereign, the Constitution unequivocally states that this privilege belongs exclusively to the people, and when clergymen speak on behalf of the citizenry, political leaders ought to have the wisdom to acknowledge that the voice of the people is also the voice of God.
This is a truth that many in the current administration will have humongous challenges digesting and swallowing given that when they were crisscrossing the country seeking the mandate to govern, the church played a pivotal role in offering them a medium through which to broadcast their message. Indeed, the two were joined at the hip then.
However, because power corrupts, many have turned away from the original straight and narrow path of good governance and are now wandering in a political wilderness of their own making, not knowing where to turn back and examine where they lost their way or why.
Neither do they have the courage to ask themselves what they need to do to find their way back onto the path that they abandoned recklessly with their eyes wide open.
Many in the political elite ought to be reminded of the poem by Ezra Pound, in which he observed that the falcon no longer hears the falconer, the centre is having serious difficulties holding and things are invariably and surely falling apart.
When Catholic bishops lamented that the “culture of lies is swiftly replacing the integrity and respect that Kenyans deserve”, they were not speaking in their private capacities. That is what those who were stung by the criticism ought to acknowledge, painful as that is.
They were speaking for the masses, who can see that all is not well in all the three arms of Government despite the sugar-coating that has gone into sloppy Government messaging.
The bishops were speaking on behalf of the people, who hold sovereign power, and who are reminding those they have delegated their powers to, that they have deviated from the political contract they signed with wananchi in 2022.
For politicians to therefore single out just one of the bishops for a straw man attack is the lowest point that anyone in a position of authority has sunk in living memory.
Such diatribes demonstrate the calamitous failure by some politicians to deploy oblongata at critical times, instead opting to wallow in the morass of unfortunate labelling. This is what is otherwise known as argumentum ad hominem.
Those who stoop this low are often at a point where they are beyond redemption. In the end, their attacks end up demeaning them rather than their target, because they expose one’s lack of character, discernment and ability to read the sour mood in the country.
It would appear, in my view, that politicians would rather that bishops — and other Kenyans who are exercising their capacity to think — should confine themselves to discussing the weather.
It is, after all, the only safe subject under an administration that has forgotten that poor patients are dying because their health insurance scheme has failed.
Ironically, no one wants to admit the monumental failure of replacing a system that worked with one that does not.
They have forgotten that lecturers in public universities are on strike to push for their welfare. Similarly, many students do not even have hope of continuing with their higher education since they cannot afford the fees they are being charged — because they were lumped unceremoniously in the wrong funding bands.
Politicians have also forgotten that crime — including the willy nilly killing of women and girls — is on the rise for the first time in many years, and that the police are not helping much given that scores of youths who have been disappeared on account of their political beliefs cannot be accounted for.
All that Government honchos want citizens to hear is that the price of flour has gone down, and that, based on this, the economy is doing well, and all will be honky dory next year. Next year!
Oh, and because it is raining, wild vegetables will sprout, and the poor — who according to Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale do not generate garbage “because they eat everything” — will now have something to wash down their maize meal as they wait for the economy to grow.
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