‘Political marriage’ should have waited till pandemic is dealt with

I am certain that, if politics is outlawed in the country, many people, mostly Kenyan men, will lose their power of speech.

I had promised myself not to write on political matters for a while, out of respect for those affected by Covid-19. Many have since died, others are hanging on and many bankrupted by quarantine fees.

Tough luck for me. Kenyan politics, I finally realise, is immune from pandemics and there is nowhere to hide from the vitriol and in-fighting.

Throwing in politics in the middle of a pandemic is sheer insensitivity. We may need to learn to constantly educate our diehard politicians in social etiquette.

There is no better time than now for the country’s leadership to show empathy. The timing for political alliances and brawls has never been worse.

I wondered whether a Kenyan female leadership would have reacted differently. Countries with female leaders, like Germany, Finland and New Zealand, have reportedly excelled in their approach to the pandemic. This is attributed to the leaders’ nurturing instincts taking over when managing Covid-19.

Our politics, on the other hand, is saturated with testosterone and continues to be destructive and divisive. It is macho from the top and down to the TV political panellists.

It suffers from acute toxic masculinity syndrome, hence its deficiency in the basic emotional intelligence to read the public mood during a pandemic before talking mergers.

Jubilee Party could have waited to form political alliances and break the old in the middle of the plague.

But the 2022 political wheel keeps brutally turning despite a failing economy and the threat of the coronavirus.

While mere mortals were ordered into social distancing and curfew, a bunch of politicians and hangers-on felt it convenient to gather like sardines and hatch the next political moves rather than forge a way out of post-pandemic economic hole.

With the latest promise of ‘marriage’ to Kanu, President Uhuru Kenyatta now looks like a serial political dater, who is willing to date but never ready to commit.

Who will he dump next? Beyonce will tell you unless he puts a wedding ring on the finger, there is no bragging about it.

Two years is a long time to wait to find out whether you are ‘The One’ to be walked down the political aisle.

The Uhuru-Raila Odinga-Gideon Moi triangle is unfairly adding to the confusion and anxiety of the coronavirus for ordinary people.

The wedding witnesses (the citizens) are becoming weary too and would also like to know Uhuru’s political life partner sooner rather than later.

On the merger, I saw the Jubilee-Kanu alliance coming. That much I can claim but have no powers to make magic portions lest you think of getting some. This is what I gathered from reading Kenya’s political peaks and troughs.

ODM is about Raila, and (with respect) his energy is waning, and time is not on his side.

Wiper wiped itself out when it chose a dalliance with ODM before buckling at the Raila mock swearing-in ceremony in 2018.

Jubilee, in the meantime, took a laser to itself and separated the Siamese twins that was Uhuru and his deputy, Dr William Ruto — known as ‘UhuRuto’.

While the other parties were losing nuts and bolts in their engines, Kanu was growing tendrils and popularising itself in marginal lands.

Its challenge is whether Kenya can forgive and forget decades of dictatorship and human rights abuses associated with its former leadership.

And where does the merger circus leave Ruto? We wait to see if he will jump or be pushed. Fingers crossed for peaceful ends.

The marriage of ‘dynasties’ will keep happening until the gene pool is completely weakened by inbreeding or a strong opposition. Sadly, Kenya has never had an effective opposition, as the official opposition is also the dynasty and is in government.

All the politics at play is of no use to the ordinary mwananchi, as bourgeoisie and proletariat ethos are still an issue. The political naivety of Kenyans is always outed when they get wrong-footed by dynasties as they chop and change alliances.

Karl Marx could have had Kenya in mind when he wrote his Theory of Class — the bourgeoisie being our ‘dynasties’ and the proletariat the poor voters who turn up periodically to keep the bourgeoisie in power.

In the end, the lowly are left with a trickling of benefits; the lion’s share goes to the ruling class.

Either the line between the government and the opposition has truly blurred or the separation was just a figment of our imagination all along.

Kenya could not be a democracy if opposition and government are one and the same. We may have been turned into a monarch. Let us get the next man for the crown as patriarchal bulwarks will not allow for a queen.

In the meantime, lives and livelihoods are at stake. Whatever the partnerships, let useful unions be formed to help the country rebound from Covid-19 and prosper.