Farewell parties are case study in discriminationSHARE THIS STORY Updated Friday, April 12 2013 at 00:00 GMT+3 By Adrian Onyando I am not a fan of anybody or group, but my sense of fairness is very acute, exercising itself even at the risk of being politically incorrect. In the past one year, I've seen one person, Mwai Kibaki, take all the credit for the achievements we have made in the past one decade or so. I've also seen one person, Raila Odinga, take all the blame for our failures of the past one decade or so. Paradoxically, Raila Odinga is accredited with destroying autocratic dispensation that had put Kenya in a social and economic coma for over two decades. For me, however, the fact remains that Raila single-mindedly fought and achieved the democratic space that we now enjoy. In the last five years, I have seen him represent the face of government in its policies and implementation; he has been the initiator and implementer, the mobiliser and activist for the New Constitution. (It was the height of hypocrisy for the judiciary to host a luncheon for the outgoing president, and never for the outgoing prime minister.) Above all, Raila has been the co-principal of the government. We are conveniently forgetting that he held the 'half loaf'; we are revising history to read that he had no loaf at all. Why? The reasons are not far to seek. He's not politically correct; his values do not resonate with the powers that underlie the Kenya government since independence. No doubt, the humiliating treatment of Raila Odinga is a testimony to the deeply entrenched tribalism in our social and moral fibres. But it goes even deeper than that: it shows the corruption that has eroded our values and the deformation of heroism so that it looks like anathema to many. Historically, it shows that the collaborators have won, and freedom fighters are being told to pack up and go. Nothing shows this better than the farewell parties we are witnessing at the moment. At the end of any term, an institution says farewell to those who have served it well. A farewell is not an obituary, but simply a symbol of appreciation. Indeed, the Kenya government as an institution is saying farewell to Emilio Mwai Kibaki in a great way – that is as it should be – but why not to his co-principal? We are pretending he is not there and his spirit is fighting back. |
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