Mr. Mutua (not his real name) is a miserable man. Not that life has always been like this for him. Actually, up until late last year, he was manager of a leading restaurant in the city. But towards last year’s election, he got roped in political campaigns of a leading politician who was seeking the presidency. As a result it was impossible for him to, as it were, continue serving two masters. He was summarily dismissed from his restaurant position for negligence of duty. Asked about why he preferred to join the politician’s campaign rather than concentrate on his job, he boasted about his closeness to the politician and that he had been promised a ‘better’ job since according to him the politician will be the next president. To prove just how close he was to the politician, he demonstrated his family’s linealogy and how it was linked to the politician’s. He would boast whenever he received direct instructions from the politician or his aides to run this or that errand. He never missed any fund raising meeting, even though he wasn’t contributing anything. To be associated with anything related to the politician was all he needed. Of course the promised ‘better’ job never materialized. And the politician stopped picking his calls immediately after the elections.
This story is perhaps replicated all over the political landscape. The cycle is often repeated every five years. But just what is it that makes right thinking Kenyans to forsake their everything for the politicians is a riddle with few takers. The adage that a politician is never to be trusted most often than not falls on deaf ears. Meanwhile the politicians have gone ahead and exploited this sycophancy to the maximum. The targets are used and then dumped once they become irrelevant to the politician’s ‘strategy’.
Looked at in a wider scale, these are the same tactics our politicians have fine tuned to rob us of our votes. Every five years they go to the electorate with new promises without accounting for how far they have accomplished the earlier ones promised. Once they invoke the ‘this is our time’ cliché then everybody goes into a stupor until after the elections when they realize they were robbed dry in broad daylight.
What normally amazes me is our collective willingness to be lied to, misused and forgotten. Then we go ahead and treat the same politicians like deity. Whenever we see them driving around in the constituency (when they feel like an outing) in their fuel guzzlers while we can ill afford any meal of the day, we still form columns along the road to welcome them in ululating frenzy. We are then dazed at their smooth words promising heaven while at the same time castigating real and imagined enemies of ‘development’. Try to voice any form of disapproval of the politician and you will be lynched by the ‘supporters’.
It is this kind of behavior that has made the politicians take us for granted. They do not have to account for their term in office and yet we will be willing to listen and applaud to whatever they say to us. In some extremes we have cases where we have cultivated cult personalities of some of our leaders, on whose behalf we are even willing to kill or die in their defense. In this quest we fail to question their conduct in both public and personal affairs. And we are ready to defend them whenever accusations of misconduct or corruption are leveled against them. Then many a political careers are nipped in the bud because we are so blind as to accept alternative leadership.
We surely deserve the leaders we get.
