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By Cdooh
Hey everyone!! Missed me? It’s been a while since I posted on here, even though I can see that the last post here was mine. I like to think that I’m one of the founders of this blog (things that may one day land in my resume somewhere) I do have what was once described as the most popular post here, Why a Kenyan Revolution will Never Happen. I’m afraid what I said then is even more true today than ever before.
Today, I’d like to put to you something that you may have noticed, or not. Whenever you watch news these days and the government is mentioned it is referred to as “The Jubilee Government” which is very accurate as they control both the executive, the legislature (both houses) and, depending on whom you ask, the judiciary too. I can’t really fault the media for reporting something that is an obvious fact but I think it’s time we stopped referring to them as “the Jubilee Government” and just call them “The Government”
There are two main reasons for this.
One is so that we can get out of the election mind-set; the presidential elections have been over for over 3 months and so have the court cases associated with them. No matter what your feelings are on the matter there’s nothing you can do about it until we have our next elections which are in 2017, so it’s time we put them out of our minds and get back to the business of building our nation with single-minded focus. Vision 2030 is not going to happen if we keep this perpetual election mindset.
Second and perhaps more important in the nearer term, is for the sake of unity. I’ve noticed recently that whenever people in my house talk of the government they say “This Jubilee government this…” and “This Jubilee government that…” Whenever this happens I get the feeling that they don’t really feel like a part of the government, there is an “us and them” mentality.
It’s true that this government was mostly elected by two communities, a tyranny of numbers it has been described as by a political scientist more learned in such matters than me (side note: the phrase ‘tyranny of numbers’ has become a part of our national vocabulary if you’re just hearing those words now you need to leave the rock you’ve been hiding under more often) in my house we mostly voted for the main loser, I voted Martha Karua because I’m rebellious like that. Anyway it doesn’t help the feeling of loss when the government that is supposed to serve you is constantly named by the team that defeated you. I think it subconsciously reminds people who voted that this government may just serve the numbers that voted them in and that’s not a good thing.
I’d like to point out at this point that I don’t know how the government will rule and divide resources, but I’d like to think they’ll be fair with it. Also that the President, Uhuru Kenyatta, is an alumnus of my old school St Mary’s Nairobi – greatness by association.
My mum and other members of the household have begun to refer to certain members of certain tribes as ‘waJubilee’ or just ‘Jubilee’ despite my best efforts to stop them, especially in front of my ten-year old sister who I don’t want to get tribal before she’s even experienced life.
This us versus them thing we have going is not good for the stability of our country. There’s a lot of latent anger out there and I feel that the media’s insistence on calling the government ‘Jubilee’ is only adding to it. We didn’t see post-election coming, except those whose job is to look out for such things like the NSIS (though looking back I should have known there was a clear sign). I think we’re at a very fragile time in our history and we can’t afford to stoke the fire any more than it is now.
I’ll be posting this to my own blog soon. I’d like to hear what you think, feel free to comment below and/or hit me up on twitter (@cdooh).Peace!!!
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