On Monday 21st June 2010 the star columnist Caroline Mutoko wrote about a war being fought but without warriors. It was about the big talk about a fight against something yet nothing seems to be happening at all. That made me remember how we are calling for accountability and transparency in our leaders. Actually it’s in every politicians manifesto to uphold those two standards.
At some point those holding the most sought offices end up abusing power which is a term mostly used by fellow politians to mean that their colleagues did not adhere to the moral code of conduct. It leads to suspension from office formation numerous commissions of inquiries on tax payer’s money, do say? And as they say Kenyans are very forgetful, before the reports of the commissions are presented to the right audience the suspended are already back in office.
Now with most governments offices held by relatively aged citizens there has been a call for the “young Turks” to take over. This is acceptable bearing in mind that some of us know that the post for the attorney general is reserved for a man called Amos Wako. Can you imagine the time we were kids we thought Moi was a name designated for a president and hence would ask,” who’s the Tanzania’s Moi?” That’s not meant to be joke, Anyway you are bound to know that jokes are a very serious matter.
The argument behind young Turks is that they are able to bring in that vigor in service provision, in a nutshell that much needed change. The aged on their side argue that the young are not experienced enough and some decisions need that. The argument goes on and on and with all said and nothing done the crop of guys we found in office when we were born still hold those positions.
It however seems that these change that we seek most may not come in the way we anticipate it. Change is assumed to mean leaders who will be fresh and corrupt less, so endowed with integrity and wisdom that King Solomon will go green with envy. But hold on, don’t you think that there might be change in personnel but the same behavior. It’s like changing the graphical user interface of a program keeping the system call interface intact. The reason for this is because some of these traits are deeply rooted within our leaders and nurtured from a very young age.
There was a campus election debate. The post for chairman was being vied for by two guys who I will label a highly religious guy and a regular guy. A member of the audience shamelessly on getting a chance to talk simply said,” How can we elect the religious guy when some activities in that office require some bending of the rules”. Can you believe that? Somebody in their right mind thinks its right for the student leaders to confiscate funds or draw up some ghost budget. I mean we are encouraging the same act we cry of everyday. Chances are the same students’ leader by extrapolation might in the future be political figures in the country. How then do we expect them not to be corrupt when the very act has been nurtured from campus?
Its also funny that some politicians will state publicly that they expect universities to be centers of integrity when they are themselves involved in ensuring anomalies in the universities, its ridiculous just a vicious cycle, am going because am going.
Maybe all we need is some form of selective extermination since each one of has an element of corruption in them, so that the human generation can start afresh.