Kenyatta on the road to political infamy?

It is hard for African political commentators to find a political leadership that inspires in the continent. Remember how we celebrated Magufuli! When elections are announced, we analyze the parties, scan through the campaign brochures in the hope that one candidate would inflate the punctured balloon of hope and break the jinx that Africa is sentenced to geting it wrong.

There’s so much doubt about history that a country like Naija has stopped teaching it. Was it possible that Thomas Sankara would have ended up worse than his murderer Blaise Compaore if he had lived long enough? Would Patrice Lumumba have ended up just like Mobutu Sese Seko? What about Ahmed Ben Bella? Would he have ended up like Abdulazeez Bouteflika? Was there a chance in hell for Murtala Mohammed to end up worse than Sani Abacha given time? Contemporary happenings force these hypotheses on us.

Who told Paul Kagame that Rwanda would go back to the hounds of genocide without him? What benefit is Nkurunziza’s presidency to Burundi’s cohesion? What makes Mugabe better qualified to run Zimbabwe until he turns it into another Somalia at his demise? What convinces\ Yoweri Museveni that the Uganda that outlived Idi Amin and Milton Obote would buckle under without his brand of despotism?

How could Joseph Kabila believe the lie that he had to succeed his father if the DRC was to be spared another fratricidal war? What was in Faure Gnassingbe’s background that inspires the thought that he should succeed his father to save Togo?

In homeland Naija, people who have spent 30 years in the evil service suddenly go into overdrive on the eve of their retirement they want to amass in five months what they failed to do in 30 years! In the process, the false age declaration earns them a death certificate because their falsified age gave anesthesiologists the wrong impression before they were transferred to the operating table.

Since the initial skepticism that followed Uhuru Kenyatta’s entry into Kenya’s political terrain, I have followed his trail. For a while, it was impressive - he spoke appropriately and rallied the people. Which African leader accepts to be tried at The Hague without raising hell? Kenyata and William Ruto stayed the course, the first in Africa. It was quite impressive in the light of crooks like Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and the price paid to get both Charles Taylor and Laurent Gbagbo in.

Good actors quit the stage at the peak of ovation. So, when Uhuru exercised his rights to rerun, in spite of all feelings of strict foreboding, the hope was that after clinching this one, he should implement an exit strategy and not make the position of Prime Minister a ‘till death do us part’ hobby. The feeling of leadership indispensability is a disaster for Africa.

Up until last weekend, Uhuru, (in my jaundiced opinion), conducted himself like a true statesman; while Raila Odinga appeared to have found his late father’s worn-out opposition garment, denigrating the system and crying wolf even before the hunt began. While accepting the results where his candidates won, Odinga rejected the process that cost him the coveted prize insisting that electoral computers were hacked. Odinga mobilized his supporters to the streets while Uhuru’s asked that the polls be challenged in the courts. When the courts ruled last week, Kenyatta’s first sound bite was epic - disappointment at the ruling but adherence to its pronouncements and ordering all Kenyans to remain calm.

Way to go until the next day when the import of the ruling settled in. Suddenly, Kenyatta blamed the judiciary with a subtle threat to fix the institution! Excuse me sir, all over the world; a free judiciary is the last standing pillar of democracy. In Naija, we often say that the judiciary is the last hope of the common man. Until there is evidence that Justice David Maraga and his panelists were compromised to annul the poll results, their pronouncements stand. That is the law and when the law is pronounced, respectable people should respond with the familiar refrain - as the court pleases, not throw temper tantrums like children whose toys have taken from them. The ultimate deciders are Kenyan voters, not six judges.

If there were need to ‘fix’ the judiciary it ought to have been done long before this pronouncement and not because of it. As it stands, if Kenyatta gets the upper hand, he has lost the moral high ground to be the architect of any reform without raising eyebrows. Sometimes, silence is not just golden but a sign of true wisdom.

A man of Kenyatta’s standing ought to know that a $50 million electoral process ends up in the dump when team players make statements that show they cannot be trusted with the outcome except it favours their mindset. In a presidential election, there’s only one winner. Africa looks to President Kenyatta to become the poster-boy of not power by all means. The eggs would be on his face if he lets this ruling or its outcome turn him into a disappointed student who wants to burn down the school because the examinations results fall short of his expectations. I hope the analogy hits home.