Last week on Wednesday, a group of young Kenyan politicians gathered at the Pan Afric Hotel in Nairobi to raise funds (according to organizers) to support the people who have been evicted by the government from the Mau forest.
Majority of them are first timers in parliament, mixed with a few who have been in parliament for the last ten or so years. Many of these politicians came to parliament by virtue of the fact that they appealed to the young people, ostensibly to go parliament and speak for them.
I will not hesitate to say that these are the young Kenyan leaders that Kenya does not need. Why? The fundraiser was organized supposedly to raise money to assist those who are now in camps in Mau complex area.
But the fundraiser turned into a platform to bash one, Prime Minister Raila Odinga. The irony is that even members of the cabinet took the opportunity to bash the Prime Minister and criticize the same government they are serving.
It was a gathering of vultures that had seen a ready meal to devour. If at all these leaders want us to believe that it was for a good cause that they gathered, why didn’t we see the same outpouring of concern when the genuine IDPs who were pushed out of their houses during the post-election violence were out in the cold?
Why is it that some of the leaders gathered here are the ones who do not want the International Criminal Court to deal with the perpetrators of post-election violence and are calling for a local process to deal with it
Up to this point in time, no genuine healing and reconciliation has taken place in the Rift Valley, where the most atrocities took place. The leaders from Rift Valley who are now claiming to be caring for the suffering have made it absolutely difficult for any reconciliation to take place. Just recently when the government settled some of the IDPs in one constituency in the Rift Valley, one Member of Parliament grumbled that it will interfere with the political equation in the constituency to his disadvantage
Are these the people who now want us to believe what they are telling us today? Let them tell it to the birds. I believe that Kenyans are now much wiser and will not allow politicians to use and dump them they way they have done previously.
Some of the people gathered at that place say they have presidential ambitions. Where will these people lead Kenya? If they cannot make hard decisions that leaders have to make, like in the case of the Mau, how will they lead this nation? I shudder to think of the country we will have with these people at the helm.
The Mau issue is a government issue and not the Prime Minister’s issue as these leaders would like Kenyans to believe. They are exposing themselves for their cheap and selfish political games. They are trying to use their tribes to bargain politically.
One sad thing about the speeches that were made is when some of these leaders say, “our people” and yet at the same time they say they want to lead the whole of the Kenyan nation. Why is it that these leaders want us to believe that it is only Kikuyus and the Kalenjins who suffered during the post election violence? There are many Kenyans from other tribes who also suffered and it would be wrong for the leaders who want to rule Kenya to make us believe otherwise.
One of them said that the fundraiser was the future. Do they want to make a party out of a fundraiser? Their agenda was hate against an individual and a hate agenda couched in political terms is what Kenya does not need today. We are still reeling from the effects of the post-election violence. The trauma that we all suffered cannot be imagined.
The young people of Kenya would better beware of this pack of vultures, lest they devour the whole country.
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