Post by Onyango Oloo on Oct 1, 2005 0:52:58 GMT 3
Clergy lost the moral authority to comment on reform circus
By Barrack Muluka, The East African Standard
Reverend Mutava Musyimi of the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) is one of the very few people I can think of, who are capable of grafting an orange on to a banana, to produce a peculiar plant we may wish to refer to a "banorange" or "banora", in short form.
I know that Musyimi and the Christian high and mighty around him are a select few who can embrace the myth of neutrality in the face of a burning national issue that requires everyone to stand up to be counted.
For not so long ago, Musyimi and his team advised Christians to face the raging Constitutional issues in the country on the platform of their individual conscience.
On account of this, it must confound all and sundry to suddenly witness this team lecturing the Government on whether or not it should use State funds in pushing for a Yes vote in the impending referendum.
The Church must leave it to the conscience of the Government to decide on whether or not to use public funds in pushing its agenda, and equally important for each Kenyan to exercise his or her conscience in determining whether or not Minister Kiraitu Murungi is right or wrong in mobilising an "earth shaking amount of money" to ensure that the Government sponsored Yes project wins.
The Church carried its sacrifice past the crossroads when it abandoned its flock to individual conscience.
It must now only look on silently, with the detachment of an irrelevant outsider.
But is the media also capable of growing a "banorange" like the Church?
The No vote crusaders who assembled in my twin home towns of Kakamega and Kisumu last weekend would have the world believe that the media should maintain "banorange" neutrality in this Constitutional matter.
Piqued at the way some media houses have handled the debate so far, these Wako-Skeptics almost lynched some of my fellows-in-suffering in Kakamega, last Saturday.
Then on Sunday, they went on to outlaw some media houses altogether, declaring that never again would they be allowed to cover Wako-Skeptic functions. Now this is worse than absurd, to say the very least.
First, the Wako-Skeptics would want us to believe that they are the new democratic kids on the block, after the Kibaki-led and Mega leaning Yes troupe seems to have aborted our national democratic dreams at the alter of narrower group concerns. It beats all logic that the No team is capable of mouthing democratic slogans, while also behaving in the most undemocratic fashion. Who will save us?
But beyond this, it is mythical to believe that media houses and individual journalists should woodenly maintain neutrality in the face of burning national issues.
Nothing could be more naÔve. The media will always inform and set agenda through the kind on news angles and slants they take, as well as the kinds of editorials they write.
Some will do so from positions of principle, while others will do so because they have been paid, or because they want to protect and promote sectional interests, including commercial, class and even regional and ethnic interests.
To imagine anything else is to engage in futile wishful thinking.
I am a Wako-Skeptic myself.
I believe, as a matter of principle, that the Wako Constitutional Bill is fatally flawed. It is a slap in the face of the power management issues that drove us to this process in the first place.
To the extent that the Government now says that they are not open to further dialogue on it, and to the extent that the democrats of yesteryear now strut around with unbridled arrogance, calling us names and boasting about unleashing tones of our own money to defeat our democracy, I cannot hesitate to tell Kenyans that they should reject this bad law.
But nobody has a right to ask a supercharged mob to lynch me.
As Musyimi would say, it is a question of conscience.
Elsewhere, Hon Soita Shitanda of Malava was on public radio on Wednesday, telling his tribesmen that although Ford K MPs recognise that the Wako Bill is terribly flawed, they think that it is a shortcut for his tribe’s "grand match" to State House. Shitanda brazenly told the world that having looked at the power matrix in the Banana Movement vis-‡-vis that in the Orange camp, they concluded that they were closer to grabbing power through the banana.
The number two banana man is one of their own, while they also have Musikari Kombo waiting in the banana wings, "just in case".
Shitanda went on to state that it is not a question of whether the Wako Bill is good or bad, but a question of how the Abaluyha can produce the next President. Casting their lot with the banana is their hope, he said.
Now if anything could be incongruous, this is it. So Shitanda and Ford K are not interested in the merits and demerits of the Wako Bill?
Their goal is raw power, period. First, this is a betrayal of the larger national democratic dream.
Secondly, the banana leaders are not particularly famous for keeping pre-electoral promises — ask MOU adherents from LDP.
More significantly, President Kibaki is set to rule for three terms, given the amorphous nature of the Wako Bill.
So when will Musikari Kombo and Uncle Moody take over from President Kibaki — after 20 years?
And a word of advice to the banana leaders from Mt Kenya — the Musikari Kombo led banana campaign in Luyhaland is a stillborn baby.
Kombo is accused of festooning himself with a tiny band of selfish and elitist Bukusu individuals.
He cannot even be trusted to secure the Bukusu vote for the banana, leave alone the wider Luyha vote.
His nemesis, Mukhisa Kituyi, is like Kombo accused of becoming what the Bukusu call Nasikoko — of no fixed abode — besides thinking that the word "Bukusu" is synonymous to "Luyha" Then there are those who are asking what Mukhisa has eaten these past two years, to the extent that he has turned his back to the principles that saw the Kanu regime expel him from the University of Nairobi in October 1979.
It is a treacherously slippery road, this "banorange" thing.
Many will surely fall by the wayside.
The writer is a Nairobi-based publisher
By Barrack Muluka, The East African Standard
Reverend Mutava Musyimi of the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) is one of the very few people I can think of, who are capable of grafting an orange on to a banana, to produce a peculiar plant we may wish to refer to a "banorange" or "banora", in short form.
I know that Musyimi and the Christian high and mighty around him are a select few who can embrace the myth of neutrality in the face of a burning national issue that requires everyone to stand up to be counted.
For not so long ago, Musyimi and his team advised Christians to face the raging Constitutional issues in the country on the platform of their individual conscience.
On account of this, it must confound all and sundry to suddenly witness this team lecturing the Government on whether or not it should use State funds in pushing for a Yes vote in the impending referendum.
The Church must leave it to the conscience of the Government to decide on whether or not to use public funds in pushing its agenda, and equally important for each Kenyan to exercise his or her conscience in determining whether or not Minister Kiraitu Murungi is right or wrong in mobilising an "earth shaking amount of money" to ensure that the Government sponsored Yes project wins.
The Church carried its sacrifice past the crossroads when it abandoned its flock to individual conscience.
It must now only look on silently, with the detachment of an irrelevant outsider.
But is the media also capable of growing a "banorange" like the Church?
The No vote crusaders who assembled in my twin home towns of Kakamega and Kisumu last weekend would have the world believe that the media should maintain "banorange" neutrality in this Constitutional matter.
Piqued at the way some media houses have handled the debate so far, these Wako-Skeptics almost lynched some of my fellows-in-suffering in Kakamega, last Saturday.
Then on Sunday, they went on to outlaw some media houses altogether, declaring that never again would they be allowed to cover Wako-Skeptic functions. Now this is worse than absurd, to say the very least.
First, the Wako-Skeptics would want us to believe that they are the new democratic kids on the block, after the Kibaki-led and Mega leaning Yes troupe seems to have aborted our national democratic dreams at the alter of narrower group concerns. It beats all logic that the No team is capable of mouthing democratic slogans, while also behaving in the most undemocratic fashion. Who will save us?
But beyond this, it is mythical to believe that media houses and individual journalists should woodenly maintain neutrality in the face of burning national issues.
Nothing could be more naÔve. The media will always inform and set agenda through the kind on news angles and slants they take, as well as the kinds of editorials they write.
Some will do so from positions of principle, while others will do so because they have been paid, or because they want to protect and promote sectional interests, including commercial, class and even regional and ethnic interests.
To imagine anything else is to engage in futile wishful thinking.
I am a Wako-Skeptic myself.
I believe, as a matter of principle, that the Wako Constitutional Bill is fatally flawed. It is a slap in the face of the power management issues that drove us to this process in the first place.
To the extent that the Government now says that they are not open to further dialogue on it, and to the extent that the democrats of yesteryear now strut around with unbridled arrogance, calling us names and boasting about unleashing tones of our own money to defeat our democracy, I cannot hesitate to tell Kenyans that they should reject this bad law.
But nobody has a right to ask a supercharged mob to lynch me.
As Musyimi would say, it is a question of conscience.
Elsewhere, Hon Soita Shitanda of Malava was on public radio on Wednesday, telling his tribesmen that although Ford K MPs recognise that the Wako Bill is terribly flawed, they think that it is a shortcut for his tribe’s "grand match" to State House. Shitanda brazenly told the world that having looked at the power matrix in the Banana Movement vis-‡-vis that in the Orange camp, they concluded that they were closer to grabbing power through the banana.
The number two banana man is one of their own, while they also have Musikari Kombo waiting in the banana wings, "just in case".
Shitanda went on to state that it is not a question of whether the Wako Bill is good or bad, but a question of how the Abaluyha can produce the next President. Casting their lot with the banana is their hope, he said.
Now if anything could be incongruous, this is it. So Shitanda and Ford K are not interested in the merits and demerits of the Wako Bill?
Their goal is raw power, period. First, this is a betrayal of the larger national democratic dream.
Secondly, the banana leaders are not particularly famous for keeping pre-electoral promises — ask MOU adherents from LDP.
More significantly, President Kibaki is set to rule for three terms, given the amorphous nature of the Wako Bill.
So when will Musikari Kombo and Uncle Moody take over from President Kibaki — after 20 years?
And a word of advice to the banana leaders from Mt Kenya — the Musikari Kombo led banana campaign in Luyhaland is a stillborn baby.
Kombo is accused of festooning himself with a tiny band of selfish and elitist Bukusu individuals.
He cannot even be trusted to secure the Bukusu vote for the banana, leave alone the wider Luyha vote.
His nemesis, Mukhisa Kituyi, is like Kombo accused of becoming what the Bukusu call Nasikoko — of no fixed abode — besides thinking that the word "Bukusu" is synonymous to "Luyha" Then there are those who are asking what Mukhisa has eaten these past two years, to the extent that he has turned his back to the principles that saw the Kanu regime expel him from the University of Nairobi in October 1979.
It is a treacherously slippery road, this "banorange" thing.
Many will surely fall by the wayside.
The writer is a Nairobi-based publisher
