By Mohammed Doyo NL via FB
Of all political tacts and strategies I have witnessed, the most absurd, uncalculated and unpragmatic is one where a notable politician in Kenya accuses another of “dishing handouts” and “wheelbarrows, motorbikes, carwash equipment etc.” with an objective of pulling him down, yet this is a country where handouts have literally dictated who gets to office and who doesn’t.
The people have been impoverished for far so long that anything or anyone who gives them a meal for a day, or basically puts food on their table even for a week is resoundingly welcome. For a country where half of the population live below a Ksh. 200 a day, any form of giving offers comfort, ephemerality of it notwithstanding.
Some of us may want to introduce the argument on long term sustainable empowerment, but the people on ground shall tell you such are just mere textbook theories. They have seen a politician after another, take office with the same promise and nothing much changes; election after another. Their cynicism is understandable.
If you think this is a lie, try running for an MCA seat in your village and talk of values, manifesto and principles. Even with a PhD and decades of technocratic experience, you shall be lucky if the votes you garner, shall out compete the spoilt ones. A hungry stomach is a bad decision maker. Utakumbushwa pia mkono mtupu haulambwi.
Uhuru and Raila may have to go back to the basics and devise new strategies to fight Ruto. Castigating his philanthropic activities shall badly backfire on him. The more he accuses Ruto of giving, the more it endears people to him and on a flipside, the masses begin questioning Raila’s philanthropy, or lack of it.
Blessed Sunday folks.
Comments:
Mwangi Khimani: You are right, our problems are immediate, even if the devil brought us food, we will still worship him. Ruto has surely learnt something from Sonko.
But where did you get that statistic that 80% of kenyans survive on less than a 100 bob.
Kevin Omwanza: What you are propounding is pragmatic politics.
But in the ultimate, we are slaves of the system if, and only if, we do not emancipate ourselves from ‘ rugged pragmatism.’
The argument that ‘it should happen thus, coz it has always happened thus’ only serves to bind us faster to a traditional, and probably harmful, way of doing things.
I always tell my friend Kidi that pragmatism needs to be tempered with idealism; pragmatism without idealism makes savages; idealism without pragmatism makes dreamers.
Bob James Kioko: : Obama spoke of the world as it is vis a vis the world as it ought to be. Visionary leaders do pursue an ultimate ideal society for posterity and I believe that’s what RAO has manifested in his long political journey. Expecting him to bend his principles to go the handouts route just to beat Ruto is lowering the bar way too low. RAO’s stolen victories since 2007 were won because a critical mass believed in his ideals and they still do. Ruto handouts philosophy rests on the KANU old order that must never be exhumed from the dustbin of history.
Prince Lawrence Ngahu: In advanced democracies, citizens donate to their favourite politicians like trump or biden. In poverty stricken Africa & narco States in South America, politicians dish out hand outs to their supporters. And those who don’t play by this rule are branded stingy or mkono gamu
Morgan Ochieng Dante: The 2019 Human Development Index indicates that at least 16 million Kenyans, representing a population of 34 per cent of the 47.9 million people in the country, live below the poverty line
Mamo Godana: The ultimate truth in Kenya.All of them give handouts during elections to win.I don’t know why they are out castigating their peers for availing goodies to wananchi.
Huge long-term development plans has never worked in this country.They all die natural death before delivering a single benefit to the intended beneficiaries.
Source: KENYAGIST.COM
