The philosophy behind a consociational charter for dynastic tribal chiefs is dangerous for the peace, stability and prosperity of the Kenyan nation in myriad ways. As earlier shown, the political economy of ethnic consociation is resolutely regressive: violence is indispensable to the political framework and corruption is the lifeblood of its economic framework.
Basically, it proposes a forum for the arbitration of competing ethnic claims, and a formula for appeasing tribal chiefs by locating them at the apex of patronage networks, then channelling all state resources through them.
Typically, patronage networks are not your nirvanas of meritocracy, transparency or accountability.
On the contrary, they are webs of parochial conspiracy and racketeering aimed at optimising the ethnic chief’s control of the political system, by hook and crook.
The corruption in this environment is monopolistic; not everyone is welcome to partake.
Indeed, under the model, the presidency – having the instruments of state policy to keep the chiefs in line – would be the general secretariat of the consociation, with the president as the CEO of the attendant patronage networks.
Anyone accessing state largesse in competition with, or without the blessings of the chiefs, would risk deterrent retaliation.
Indeed, the licensure of patronage under consociation would create a bizarre dichotomy of licit and illicit corruption, hence the dissonance in the ‘war on corruption’, where similar facts do not guarantee identical outcomes.
Depending on the perpetrator’s allegiances, outrageous incidents of wastage and embezzlement attract indulgent silence or complicit inaction, while milder cases invite swift and punitive official action.
Chiefs’ comfort zone
Understanding the character of thinking behind it also explains the supercilious, condescending attitude of its proponents as well as their haughty impatience, nay, stampeding violence in canvassing it.
Chiefs-in-the-making needed to display their ‘chiefliness’ to merit elevation to the high table, and the “natives” simply had to be taught their place.
With the reggae stopped, would-be chiefs now seem to have been addled into a vehement, chest-thumping collective rage, the like of which has not been seen since the age of the draconian settler bwana.
To add insult to injury, the irreverent hoi polloi had the effrontery to promulgate a political platform that concentrates public discourse on the economy and focuses governance on the welfare of millions of ordinary wananchi.
The notion that the little mwananchi deserves anything more than meagre morsels trickling down the patronage pyramid defies their understanding of how the world works. In the old order of things, the chiefs ate for and on behalf of the mwananchi, and anything the mwananchi got was purely incidental.
A happy chief equalled a nation of wananchi “contented” in desperate poverty. The prospect of the forthcoming political contest being waged over economic discourse threatens to dislocate these chiefs from their comfort zone.
An impending shift from mobilisation through tribal rhetoric and soulless pledges of patronage-affiliated infrastructural bonanzas is positively unnerving.
Boastful entitlement
The resurgent national mood – the tide of expectation and aspiration unlocked by a people-driven spirit of change – has the ethnic chiefs cornered.
Their entire political make-up comprises ethnic mobilisation and patronage.
Their DNA is trickle-down. Their reflex is top-down.
A people-driven, citizen-centred, bottom-up approach to national governance and economic management is a veritable extinction phenomenon for veteran ethnic entrepreneurs. To the very last person, they are losing their composure.
Despite warnings aplenty, they didn’t see it coming. Decades of predatory impunity rendered them complacent and oblivious.
Thus, they failed to pick up the collective rejection by all Kenyans of the vexatious attitude of boastful entitlement and arrogant parasitism of our elite.
They also did not see that the demise of their plan signalled the instinctive mobilisation of a popular egalitarian reflex against our self-appointed landlords of orthodoxy.
Screeching histrionics
The top-down imposition was championed by the same intolerant and proud crew that has been reduced to delirious, screeching histrionics over the bottom-up platform.
They do not approve discourse on the economy in general, and especially as a principal agenda in political mobilisation.
They especially disapprove of any proposition that dethrones them and their top-down ideologies from privilege.
Their contempt for the common mwananchi, the majority of citizens really, makes them recoil at the idea that economic governance and democracy should be by the people, or for the people.
According to the top-down club, the Great Unwashed have no business anywhere near meaningful ideas.
Let us welcome the bottom-up extinction phenomenon as an overdue movement to reinvigorate political engagement and revitalise democracy.
It is evidence that Kenyans are ready to open a new bale of leaders, installed with a different ideology. BY DAILY NATION
