PUTTING
PEOPLE’S NEEDS FIRST
By
Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted November 22, 2017)
Now that the
Supreme Court has confirmed the election of the Uhuru-Ruto ticket and the
country is experiencing a state of calm for the first time in many months,
there are a few things that have to change about the way the incumbents run
this country. Or at least how the two Big Men operate.
First among
them must be their curb on frivolous spending. In the Business Daily of
November 22, we read front page news that ‘Uhuru, Ruto top State Sh5.7bn
leisure spenders.’ This report is shameful, especially when poverty rocks the
land and the bulk of the Opposition consists of jobless men and women who’d
probably not be on the street burning tires and playing hide and seek with
police if they had employment to keep them occupied and salaried. An empty
stomach is an intense incentive to demand a major change in the political
scene.
Those hungry
mouths are filled with even more ire and outrage when they see how the newly-elected
are living leisurely and luxurious lifestyles while they scramble to satisfy
basic needs for food, clothing, shelter and even basic sanitation such as
running water and public (not flying) toilets.
One must ask
whether either the President or his Deputy ever spend time with people in the
slums, other than when they do drive-throughs during pre-election days. This I doubt.
But this is one reason why the Opposition has such a huge following among
slum-dwellers. They know the impoverished are disgruntled and prepared to
demand ‘Change at all costs!’ Savvy politicians like James Orengo know that, as
the Nobel-prize winning poet-lyricist Bob Dylan used to sing, “When you ain’t
got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose.” And so our hungry and angry
slum-dwellers are ripe for revolutionary action. They are easily mobilized as
the Opposition has so effectively proved in these past few months when the Big
Men have largely been silent and less than eloquent in defense of their
positions.
What’s
worse, when we read that President Uhuru and his Deputy have recently received
salary hikes, and then also find they use tax-payer-fueled funds to entertain
themselves and their friends more extensively than even our profligate Congressmen
who get some of the fattest salaries (compared to other MPs and Senators) in
the world, we have to ask, have we really elected individuals who put the
interests of their people first?
This is all we
want to see in Kenya, Africa and everywhere in the world. We are crying to see
authentic statesmen and women who run for office wanting to put the basic
concerns of their people first. After that, they may have visions of how to be
leading peacemakers out to reconcile feuding clans and countries. They might
even want to wean their people off of fossil fuels and steer them towards using
renewable, environmentally-friendly energy-sources.
But
politicians do not have time to be planning to fulfill such people-friendly
priorities if they are busy spending other people’s hard-earned taxes on
frivolous events such as cocktail parties and nyama-choma dinners (requiring
the slaughter of countless cows, goats and sheep all of whose waste sends out
heaps of methane gas to pollute the air).
All the
helicopter and private jet travel are also meaningless if they save time for
the elites while leaving the rest of us looking on from our hovels and homeless
shelters.
Yet we’d still
love to applaud you as leaders we can look up to. You make that difficult,
however.
Thus, it
should be obvious to the newly re-seated politicians that the uproar and unrest
that Kenyans have experienced in the last few months requires that they
self-reflect and change their ways to become better representatives of all the
Kenyan people, not just in theory, not just in bombastic or rhetorical terms,
but in deeds that we can see and appreciate for their doing the right thing and
putting the people’s needs first.
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