Post by Onyango Oloo on Sept 7, 2017 20:26:01 GMT 3
A Commentary by Onyango Oloo
When I visited Facebook yesterday, I saw a notification that 94 people who had visited Jukwaa had not heard from me lately. The social media robot advised me there advised me to “write a post.” This one of those rare moments where I will do what a computer robot tells me. So in responding to my regular Jukwaa readers, the 2,784 people who follow me on Twitter, the 1,157 folks I follow there and the hundreds I correspond with on Kenyans for Peace, Truth and Justice and the many more who I communicate with on Google+ and email I will say something.
Today I want to talk about Moses Kuria-the controversial MP who inherited Uhuru Kenyatta’s parliamentary seat. He has just grabbed headlines with another unsavoury remark. Some have accused him of hate speech and inviting attacks on the thousands of people in his neighbourhood who voted for Raila Odinga. I do not need to regurgitate what is all over the media. I invite my readers to renew their friendship with Google and other search engines.
I will kick off this digital essay with a frank admission.
Moses Kuria sent me 1,000 Kenya shillings via M-PESA a couple of years ago.
Which means that he had my phone number. Kuria was once a vibrant member of Jukwaa ,the site that I founded in August 2005 and administer to this day.
This is to underscore the fact that Onyango Oloo has nothing personal against Moses Kuria.
What follows is a political critique of his right wing, tribal and backward political positions.
I am not going to waste band width denouncing Kuria.
This is not the first, second, third or fourth time that Kuria has grabbed the headlines for all the wrong reasons. The man has been captured on television exhorting his followers to slash and maim Jubilee’s opponents. There was an audio which went viral with Kuria among a small group threatening to kill a popular blogger. He has been dragged to court to answer hate speech charges.
What I am concerned about is the climate of impunity that Moses Kuria shared with his Gatundu South predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta.
There is a direct connection between what inspired Kuria to incite goons to harass innocents in Githurai and Thika Superhighway and Uhuru Kenyatta’s drunken diatribe against the Supreme Court in an open air market last week. Neither can it be separated from the gall of Anne Waiguru in vying for the Kirinyaga gubernatorial seat despite the serious concerns about her involvement with grievous scandals.
Up to quite recently I was a resident of Kasarani in Nairobi. I lived near the police station, a few metres from the pedestrian bridge next to the matatu stage called “Car Wash”, on the way to the Githurai shopping centre. I used to walk every week to Githurai and even buy some mtumba second hand clothes at Roysambu. What I am trying to underscore is that Onyango Oloo could have been one of the victims of Kuria’s tribal hate mobs a few days ago.
What happened in Githurai could not have happened in Sagana, Kirinyaga County where I moved to a few months ago. From my humble apartment right in downtown Sagana and where a lot of people know that I don’t speak Gikuyu, I have not experienced any animosity-tribal, personal, political or otherwise. Generally, Kenyans- whether they live in Central, Nyanza, the Coast or elsewhere do not have this pent up hatred for people who come from cultures other than their own.
The fact that there are tens of thousands of Kenyans who voted for NASA in the August 8th elections and many more thousands across the country who voted Jubilee is a demonstration that ordinary people are accommodating of diversity testifies that it takes a vengeful member of the political elite-who may have close personal ties to the very people they fulminate against on social media, the radio, television and the newspapers.
2017 is the second time Kenyans voted under the auspices of the 2010 Constitution. But in these two elections we have seen people who were accused of committing crimes against humanity; people charges with stealing playgrounds from school children; bureaucrats and politicians accused of major graft run and be elected as Presidents, Deputy Presidents, Governors, Senators, Members of Parliament and Members of County Assemblies. We have seen police kill innocent people and county security harass hawkers and ban rightful dissent.
This speaks volumes of how the political class-across the partisan divides-show blatant disrespect of the Constitution.
That is why I think that those who look the other way where injustices happen in their counties, infact their villages take place are a bit hypocritical where they rage when Maraga and his Supreme Court colleagues are derided by Uhuruto, Jubilee and right wing members of the Christian clergy.
We must reaffirm our support and defence of the Constitution-the supreme law of the land.
When I visited Facebook yesterday, I saw a notification that 94 people who had visited Jukwaa had not heard from me lately. The social media robot advised me there advised me to “write a post.” This one of those rare moments where I will do what a computer robot tells me. So in responding to my regular Jukwaa readers, the 2,784 people who follow me on Twitter, the 1,157 folks I follow there and the hundreds I correspond with on Kenyans for Peace, Truth and Justice and the many more who I communicate with on Google+ and email I will say something.
Today I want to talk about Moses Kuria-the controversial MP who inherited Uhuru Kenyatta’s parliamentary seat. He has just grabbed headlines with another unsavoury remark. Some have accused him of hate speech and inviting attacks on the thousands of people in his neighbourhood who voted for Raila Odinga. I do not need to regurgitate what is all over the media. I invite my readers to renew their friendship with Google and other search engines.
I will kick off this digital essay with a frank admission.
Moses Kuria sent me 1,000 Kenya shillings via M-PESA a couple of years ago.
Which means that he had my phone number. Kuria was once a vibrant member of Jukwaa ,the site that I founded in August 2005 and administer to this day.
This is to underscore the fact that Onyango Oloo has nothing personal against Moses Kuria.
What follows is a political critique of his right wing, tribal and backward political positions.
I am not going to waste band width denouncing Kuria.
This is not the first, second, third or fourth time that Kuria has grabbed the headlines for all the wrong reasons. The man has been captured on television exhorting his followers to slash and maim Jubilee’s opponents. There was an audio which went viral with Kuria among a small group threatening to kill a popular blogger. He has been dragged to court to answer hate speech charges.
What I am concerned about is the climate of impunity that Moses Kuria shared with his Gatundu South predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta.
There is a direct connection between what inspired Kuria to incite goons to harass innocents in Githurai and Thika Superhighway and Uhuru Kenyatta’s drunken diatribe against the Supreme Court in an open air market last week. Neither can it be separated from the gall of Anne Waiguru in vying for the Kirinyaga gubernatorial seat despite the serious concerns about her involvement with grievous scandals.
Up to quite recently I was a resident of Kasarani in Nairobi. I lived near the police station, a few metres from the pedestrian bridge next to the matatu stage called “Car Wash”, on the way to the Githurai shopping centre. I used to walk every week to Githurai and even buy some mtumba second hand clothes at Roysambu. What I am trying to underscore is that Onyango Oloo could have been one of the victims of Kuria’s tribal hate mobs a few days ago.
What happened in Githurai could not have happened in Sagana, Kirinyaga County where I moved to a few months ago. From my humble apartment right in downtown Sagana and where a lot of people know that I don’t speak Gikuyu, I have not experienced any animosity-tribal, personal, political or otherwise. Generally, Kenyans- whether they live in Central, Nyanza, the Coast or elsewhere do not have this pent up hatred for people who come from cultures other than their own.
The fact that there are tens of thousands of Kenyans who voted for NASA in the August 8th elections and many more thousands across the country who voted Jubilee is a demonstration that ordinary people are accommodating of diversity testifies that it takes a vengeful member of the political elite-who may have close personal ties to the very people they fulminate against on social media, the radio, television and the newspapers.
2017 is the second time Kenyans voted under the auspices of the 2010 Constitution. But in these two elections we have seen people who were accused of committing crimes against humanity; people charges with stealing playgrounds from school children; bureaucrats and politicians accused of major graft run and be elected as Presidents, Deputy Presidents, Governors, Senators, Members of Parliament and Members of County Assemblies. We have seen police kill innocent people and county security harass hawkers and ban rightful dissent.
This speaks volumes of how the political class-across the partisan divides-show blatant disrespect of the Constitution.
That is why I think that those who look the other way where injustices happen in their counties, infact their villages take place are a bit hypocritical where they rage when Maraga and his Supreme Court colleagues are derided by Uhuruto, Jubilee and right wing members of the Christian clergy.
We must reaffirm our support and defence of the Constitution-the supreme law of the land.
