Pass the constitution and get on with life

By Eric Latiff

Kenyans, we are truly one comical lot. We are full of excuses – blaming anything under the sun for our problems and never accepting any part that we may have played in it.

In the early 90s, Kenneth Matiba, Charles Rubia, Martin Shikuku and Oginga Odinga among others gallantly dedicated themselves to fight for the liberation of this nation from the yokes of a single-party State to multi-party democracy.

Mzee Moi protested, saying many parties would split the nation and champion ethnicity. But Kenyans did not care; they wanted multi-partyism. In those days, many in the country swiftly took to blaming the KANU rule for the ills bedeviling them. Anything, including teenage pregnancy, was blamed on Section 2A of the Constitution.

And so in 1991, Section 2A was repealed. Kenya was no longer a de jure one party State. Other parties could be registered and participate in elections. The agitators were sure KANU would be trounced in the next elections.

When that did not happen in the 1992 polls, Kenyans picked the next available excuse to blame for the country’s stagnation. This man, Moi, had to go!

Moi was accused of taking up our daily lives. Everywhere you turned, there was Moi or Nyayo, and this was surely bad for the nation as Kenyans told themselves then. We needed to get rid of this Moi phenomenon and the next decade was spent strategising on how to remove Moi from power. Even talk of a new Constitution was coined with the biggest goal being how to fix this man and make sure he did not rule alone.

Fortunately for us, a constitutional amendment had ensured that Moi would exit the scene come 2002. And he did.

And so, we needed a new excuse to keep us going. John Githongo’s expose of the Anglo Leasing scandal fitted the bill just fine. Corruption was now to blame for everything in Kenya. Even when someone was fired by their employer, corruption was squeezed into the story. Failed marriages were attributed to graft. We had to fight this scoundrel called corruption, fast!

A new Constitution, providing for strong institutions, checks and balances, was identified as the best solution to this.

And so, here we are. Kenyans need to jump over this hurdle called Constitution review in order for us to move to our next excuse. It is therefore important for the national psyche that the forthcoming referendum produces an affirmative result.

For if we don’t pass the constitution this time round, we would be holding ourselves back, unfairly. We need to move on and start blaming tribalism for our problems. Even tribalism is getting impatient for its turn. Look, it almost imposed itself on us in 2008.

So, I urge you; let us pass this constitution thing before tribalism stages a coup d’etat on the national fabric. We need a peaceful transition from one excuse to another.

Source: Capital FM