I’m realising now that censureship is real. A few years prior I’d forgotten what it’s like to be afraid to speak your mind. Back in MOI days disagreement with anything the government did meant you were equivalent to a terrorist or a traitor.
Slowly but surely we are going back to those days. Where citizens were exiled and persecuted for dissent.
If you were born in to it you don’t feel it like a person born in the era of free speech like post 2002. You can never be in agreement with everyone but free speech guarantees everyone a right to their opinion so that the day your opinion is not in line with the government of the day bcz governments change regimes change and when it’ll be someone from other tribes not yours your bias towards their shortcomings will end. At that point you will appreciate the sanctity of personal freedoms as afforded by the constitution.
Dissent is important for change, the end of slavery, independence from colonialism, women’s rights to vote .All came from dissent. Nothing changes, no society grows when status quo remains and dissent is criminalised , if there’s no opposition if there’s no civil society and a freedom of press then there are no checks and balances for those in power be they govt or religiousleaders , then power becomes absolute and corrupts absolutely.
Happy Easter folks don’t forget that Jesus is the reason for the season.
Kenyans abused the absolute freedoms they were enjoying.
Towards, the last general elections, any mad person could get into whichever media space they fancied and hurl all manner of vitriol towards real and imagined enemies and the presidency bore the thrust of this.
Something he had to give, Kenyans can’t ask for the same freedoms like more established democracies then exercise them in an irresponsible manner.
No,it can’t work like that.
Wakenya inabidi wafinywe makende ndio waache ujinga.You are the freest of people in Africa but instead of engaging in productive ventures every day you wake up to this or that group protesting this or that nonsense.
Next on the government agenda should be to dismantle the trade unions and their leadership which have formed the stupid habit of calling for strikes at every turn for very flimsy reasons.
Kenyans have a very poor comand of civics education.
They believe “the government” is “an individual”
They believe the government is the “enemy”
They believe a politician is the “lexicon of civics education” and every gibberish a politician utters is pure truth and nothing but the truth.
They believe the Judiciary is part of the political opposition
They believe, laws of the land = to government laws and thus it is a citizens duty to break them.
They believe, yelling at a government official is “maendeleo”
They believe “someone else” and not them is the government.
And the list goes on and on and on…
The ones that come to mind are Cambridge Analytica which was working for the incumbent to enemify the opponent Raila Odinga, it was basically a smear campaign. Is this what you mean? If not please provide exact examples - I would think that if ‘government’ leads in exercising the freedom of speech in an irresponsible manner then it can not be asking for better stewardship of free speech. I believe there are institutions that prosecute abuse of freedom of speech such as NCIC and Cybercrimes division of the CID , what I am talking about is gagging media, violence towards journalists, exile and persecution of non establishment proponents.