Post by Onyango Oloo on Sept 29, 2005 1:55:26 GMT 3
Politicians Are Not Telling the Truth for Their Hands are Tied
By Okech Kendo, Sunday Standard Deputy Managing Editor
If we expect politicians to tell us the truth, we would be trusting too much. Politicians won’t tell us the truth because their hands are tied.
Their hands are tied by greed, personal insecurities, vested interests and the many tribal lackeys kneeling before them for support for future favours.
There is a war of falsehood, propaganda, and lies. And politicians do not expect the people to find truth. Truth is something that is so clearly true that it hardly needs to be stated. Like it is true that politicians have hijacked the review and the people should not allow this and this is not negotiable.
It is also true that acrimonious quest to retain or acquire power often succeeds where politicians in power and outside believe the people are vulnerable to lies and manipulation.
Kanu did that for 40 years until the people discovered their potential to change a government in 2002, through the ballot. The electorate could do it again and again until they find a government responsible enough to accept the supremacy of the people.
Lying politicians need a massive catchment of the illiterate, poor and ignorant to get their way. For as long as the people are poor and dependent, lying politicians can always get away with betrayal.
Obsessions with ‘read the Proposed New Constitution and understand it’ before voting is a bluff by politicians who realise they have goofed.
Where is it possible to base knowledge on a single source? Single-sourced information cannot lead to knowledge. If citizens were expected to decide on the proposed contract with rulers without compromise, it would be fair to diversify the people’s sources information.
To understand the politics of constitution making, for example, the people would need to know the background to the review and then find out if what is being peddled as a draft constitution truly reflects the expectations of the citizenry.
It is futile then to have printed 4,000,000 copies of the draft constitution and expect that to be the only source of information the people need to make informed choices.
To confine the people to a single source of information is to rig the referendum and to underestimate the people’s capacity to interrogate what they are told, especially by politicians.
Because the truth has meandered over time and disfigured, the people needed a reading list that would include the old Constitution, the preamble to the National Constitutional Conference, the views collected from the people, the actual proceedings of Bomas and the Bomas draft.
At the very least the people needed four documents: The Lancaster Constitution, the current Constitution, the Bomas draft and the ‘proposed Wako constitution’.
The Lancaster Constitution of 1963 is not the current Constitution because it was amended, let’s say corrupted, more than 40 times to give the presidency, especially, more powers.
It was because the people did not want the rule of men, their friends and sycophants that it became necessary to reconfigure the contract between the people and the rulers.
Diverse sources of information are necessary to understanding where we are coming from and going or should go, or ought to go.
But even then make no mistake: Once Kenyans tasted blood during the 2002 General Election, they long discovered the truth for themselves and they do not need Mr Mwai Kibaki, Mr Raila Odinga, Mr Kiraitu Murungi, Mr Otieno Kajwang or Uhuru Kenyatta to blur their perception of reality. The people’s desire to discover the truth and their burning aspiration to reclaim the country from lying politicians is unstoppable.
Now let us establish a few basics: It is a fact that a constitution, in the most rudimentary understanding is a convenant between the people and the rulers. It is about the people telling their rulers and would-be rulers that this is the way we want to be governed. This then means it is wrong for the government, now or those who want to be in government tomorrow, to decide for the people how they will be ruled.
So, it is a lie to tell the people that it is possible to give them a constitution by force that is legitimate theft. It is also wrong to try to force one on the country through copious violence and abuse of public resources.
The feeling that the government wants to give the people a skewed constitution by force, comes out when Mirugi Kariuki, an assistant minister who has tasted power and loves it, threatens the chairman of the Electoral Commission Samuel Kivuitu with sacking if he imposes order.
Well, because you have the power, you can fire Kivuitu, even though he has security of tenure, and replace him, for example, with lawyer Gibson Kamau Kuria. But in public perception, you would have lost the moral authority to govern.
You can force civil servants to campaign for ‘Yes’ even when the government has no role in constitution making. But you will have blundered by trying to force a skewed law on the people.
But if the government side is blundering their rivals are equally conceited, and here again, make no mistake.Even if the draft were rejected, it would be the people to decide how the country would be governed and who would be in charge of government.
To reject this constitution is not to reject this government, and to endorse it is not to give the government the leeway to entrench deception.
Whatever politicians of the ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ do, the people will not allow politicians and a government to insinuate themselves on the electorate. Because the people own the country it is wananchi to decide how they would be governed.