When the State blames everyone but itself

The gaslighting continues.  After the opposition, the church, the international community and dark forces from the other world, now it’s parents to blame for public protests. It is parents who “take their children to the police” who deal with “criminals, not parenting”. Meanwhile, terrorism charges are the latest weapon in this administration’s anti-protest arsenal of “lawfare”. 

On the ground, the “operationally independent” police now have three different instructions in three weeks – shoot to kill, shoot the legs (and “shoot and kill”) and shoot in self-defence. In our deliberately dystopian State, the hierarchy of public order reads politicians – police - people.  

Why do you think we have a police to politician ratio up to 2,000 times greater than the police to population one?  Are our political VIPs and VVIPs lives worth 2,000 times the everyday Kenyan?  What does this say about a colonised mindset where police ring-fence politicians from the people? 

There are places where the police are viewed as a justice, even human rights, institution; as a critical link, even partner, in the chain of justice. Here it’s all guns and goons as law and order. 

If you want a baseline for police reform, start there.  It isn’t police as a noun that needs fixing, it’s policing as a verb.  Apply the verb to preventing, combating, investigating and detecting crime in public places and private spaces, and you tease out the police profile we need for real policing.  Apply it more hopefully to safety and security and you have a society freed of danger and fear. 

When will we see that the state of policing is the state of the nation – politics, economy, society?  That a violent approach to public order management reflects our official problem solving psyche? 

The pattern is eerily familiar. Mostly peaceful protests. Violent goon infestations sponsored by politicians as the police watch. Injury to persons and damage to property with a dose of police shootings. Deaths. Arrests. Blame games all round. Zero accountability. Rinse and repeat. 

When the Article 37 book is written about public protests in 2023, 2024 and 2025, as well as protests in earlier years, the underlying storyline will not be politics or policies, but policing.  With stray bullets flying all over, we are gaslit that “the police are protecting us from ourselves”, before we get to arbitrary arrests, forceful abductions, deaths in custody and extra-judicial killings. 

Policing is one place to start when we look at the state of the nation with 2027 in mind.  But it’s part of a wider point as we finally admit that campaigns have already begun. As candidates declare their interest in challenging the incumbent administration, the emerging question two years to the election is if it is about “the next leader as a politician” or “a new Kenya for a statesman”. 

In a country which “does evolution, not revolution” as the NARC administration stated unequivocally in its early days, most current politicos will not admit to this “Project Kenya” moment.  In that sense, former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s proposal for dialogue through an “Intergenerational Conclave” is probably more interesting than many might think at the moment. 

Initial response to this conclave has been mixed, but it is decidedly more unpopular than popular. Going by Odinga’s televised interview on Sunday, this proposal has lukewarm support at the top levels of the regime, despite positive noises from politicos and party functionaries when they are not blaming everyone and everything under the sun for the loud state of our current politics. 

Just a “band aid”

The non-broad-based side of the political divide is far more skeptical, drawing on past lessons.  It is easy to see this dialogue as a “band aid” to get the ruling regime to the end of its term.  Among Kenyans at large, especially young Kenyans, the feeling is it’s now time for action, not more talk. 

Remember, in the coming two years, we also have electoral preparations and maybe a boundaries review before we think about a referendum that seems to be one objective of this dialogue. We could also mix it up with the fact that there’s the National Dialogue Committee (Nadco) report and UDA-ODM MoU to implement as well. Before we get to the regime’s mad rush to deliver as much as it can on Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA). 

In that interview, Odinga laid out a “bottom-up” process to the dialogue – polling stations, wards, constituencies and sub-counties, then counties culminating in a (Bomas-style?) national dialogue. It is difficult to see how this process would align with the other political-governance timelines mentioned above, as well as actual election campaigns. But it is easy to see how, as mentioned last week, there is an opportunity here to create and institutionalise our national dialogue process around, say, a review of constitutional implementation, a review of Vision 2030 and a social vision. 

It is also easy to see how either side of the political divide could piggy-back this process to engage with the public and secure buy-in to their 2027 campaign agendas. The ruling administration can use this for direct public feedback on BETA successes, challenges and lessons. Prospective candidates can test their alternative views with the self-same public. In the long-run, institutionalised dialogue could even improve the national conversation around Project Kenya.  

Even without this dialogue, we are pretty much already into electoral mode. With the growing feeling that this will not be a “business as usual” election – reforms, projects among others – there is as much interest in candidates’ “why” (ideology, interests) as there is in their “what” (issues, ideas) and “whom” (identity, individuals). 

So here is a final thought that might link the dialogue with the campaign. Governance, rule of law and accountability will be on the table, but at the end it’s the economy that will likely matter most in a county struggling with high levels of poverty and inequality. Consider ongoing BETA and four levels around the badly-needed “new Kenya” economic model beginning from the bottom-up.  

At the individual (“nano”) level of 52 million Kenyans where dignity and justice matters – jobs, food, cost of living, shelter and security. At the household (“micro”) level of 13 million families – food, basic rights (education, healthcare, shelter, water), jobs, income opportunities and access to assets, civic participation between and during elections and safety, security and accessible justice.

At the inequality (“meso”) level across Kenya – the four opportunity inequalities (gender, geography, intergenerational and social exclusion) as they apply to individuals and households. At the resources/capital (“macro”) level – the resources (land, physical, economic, financial, human, social, knowledge/innovation) we translate into wealth. What if this was our dialogue into 2027?

Not a gross domestic product or macro prices dialogue, but one about poverty and inequality, about resources and wealth creation. Because, back to our police at the beginning, “poverty is the mother of revolution and crime” as Aristotle told us. No amount of official gaslighting will change this truth.