Alight I had promised one of my “Ma-fans” a blog entry which has been years in coming. Ok... not a fan, more like a dear friend but everyone is entitled to their delusions of grandeur.
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| Not quite how the request happened |
I had an interesting conversation a while back where I argued that Kenyans need to be less political and more focused on the economy. I also argued partly one of the reasons we’re so political is we’re idle. Of course those statements had me feeling like a goat at Christmas but i still see them as true. What I meant by this that firstly we’re not all that involved in politics, we’re at best “observer participants” who feel that voting once every 5 years makes us patriotic and doing something for national good. I argue that is the formula for bad politics (and we’ve seen the evidence). I think democracy is like a child, in that it requires a great deal of attention when it young and as it grows it requires less attention. We still have a very young democracy, and to expect good leadership by merely showing up on Election Day is a bit like expecting a child who hasn’t bee socialized properly to behave well. This demonstrates that we forget that we have a large legacy of bad leadership to overcome which won’t be done by being “active” for a day. The legacy and the infancy of the democracy demands more action on our collective part such that the leadership is truly held accountable on regular basis, no only after a few years when they have amassed enough resources to buy themselves out of any gaffes and indiscretions. Our expectations and standards must be at a level we accept responsibility for ensuring that day to day the leaders are held to account by those who chose them. Showing up on Election Day after 5 years of reading the newspaper and watching news isn’t patriotic, it isn’t even noble instead its lazy and counterproductive. Most of us wouldn’t give birt/sire a child and leave it to its own devices only to show up one day every few years, so why do we do this if we really care about our democracy? We’re at an interesting cross-roads in our country but if we don’t start saying now, the elite political are going to consolidate and tell us who among them we shall “chose.”
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| will this really secure our future? |
Science tells us that planets are created when clouds of particles and dust orbiting around a star begin to pull together with larger objects attracting smaller objects until there a planet is formed. I tend to presidential elections in this way. Where larger and more “attractive objects” are able to pull smaller object in to their gravitational pull thus making a viable challenge (planet) Some parties are inherently unstable and are susceptible to collapse, as is the case with the asteroid belt in our own solar system. Its interesting in this political cycle that what we would have expected is the strongest candidates pulling together other players to make a strong case for candidacy. Opinion polls aside we’re seeing instead is a super nova in progress where everything is falling apart. I’m curious as to why nobody currently seems able to build at the moment. It makes me wonder if we’re really at the point of seismic shift in our politics where we may witness wholesale changes in the elite political landscape. If so what does this mean for us as we move forward?
Tangent!
On another tangent, I saw that the UK is developing a kit to get kids to start coding as early as standard 2 or 3. As we try to “push” this Sillicon Savannah concept, we have to get on the ball early you can see what the competition is doing, trying to get a big head start, and if they succeed it will make our foray in to developing a substantive IT sector all the more difficult. I appreciate what the leadership is trying to do with the Konza idea, but I insist there needs to be a parallel program ensuring that interested Kenyans at any age, have access for software and hardware development tools. Remember that some of the most successful people in IT have done it by starting in their parents’ home trying to do things with little training. Surely we can borrow a leaf and give our innovators the tools they need to innovate.
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| Those who are charged with policy implementation |
