So on New Year’s Eve I was with my extended family having a very nice time until someone popped the question, what do you think of this government. My face quickly changed and I quickly retorted, NO COMMENT.
Kenyans it doesn’t matter which side of the divide you are in or from but the deed is already done. If your daughter gets pregnant in school you can not blame each other for the bad outcome, you can only sit and plan how life will move forward.
Now UDA people are suffering equally since majority of them are hustlers. Unfortunately we all have to carry the cross of whatever this government will do to us. So let’s just accept that blunders have already been done and we are now deep inside the ocean, the currents and tides are getting higher and now is not the time for endless bickering. Let’s support one another coz if the ship called Kenya sinks we will be going down together.
As you are well aware, most if not all social protection programs were scrapped by this regime. Electricity and fuel/kerosene have become unaffordable.
In Kenya majority of the population is poor, some are food poor, education is unaffordable to most Kenyans, 14 million Kenyans are highly educated but unemployed.
Uhuru may not have been many things but he understood why it is in everybody’s best interest to cushion the poor, the elderly, the unemployed youths, women and children, parents of students etc.
Our country may appear to be very stable but with majority of the population being pushed further and further into the fringes of society and human dignity, we are courting a very dangerous situation.
When we have so many people who are extremely poor and hopeless it’s a very dangerous situation to be in. We are leaving behind majority of our population which means that we leave a large reservoir of particularly young people for recruitment into political militant groups and religious extremists.
Right now Alshabab no longer sends Somali operatives to hit Kenya but they recruit from the millions of young indigenous Kenyans disenfranchised by the situation in the country.
The reason why Boko Haram, M17 and many other militia groups have such longevity is because they have plenty of hopeless young people from where they can keep recruiting.
If you want a stable country it’s not a good idea to remove all subsidies to the poor and end all social protection programs especially considering that most of the population is youth, 75% to be precise.
If you look at all these unstable countries, they got that way because the government left them behind. Social protection programs are equity programs to carry marginalised groups with the rest of the country.
The CAR is 92% slums, what was the leadership doing until things got that bad? They were ignoring majority of the population. In Nairobi right now is well on its way to 70% of the population living in slums. This is not a good thing bcz it exposes the remaining 30% to high crime rates. We already know that Kenya is the human and child trafficking hub of the region. We have also been listed recently as a red zone for money laundering and drug trafficking. Indeed awhile back we were also known for kidnap for ransom type crimes.
I don’t know what you expect people to do when they basically can’t afford to live and these people majority of them are young people. We are courting disaster with out realising it. If you look at most failed states particular those plagued with never ending civil strife, this is how they all began. Leaving huge reservoirs of their population behind.
Countries are an ecosystem. We cannot ignore the plight of the majority of Kenyans and expect it will be business as usual. If you look at the most stable countries they are huge on social protection.
If the current government thinks that the poorer people are the easier it is to control them, let them just know that the same way government controls the poor with religion and handouts is the same way they can be controlled by a leader who gets the support of an interested nation by providing arms and food.
If you remember Mungiki and the Sabaot Land Defense, these were hopeless youths who the government had ignored for years. All they needed was a quasi religious leader and they were recruiting majority of the youth in their area of operation.
If you think it is so hard to destroy a city or a country, watch 2007 PEV in less than a day entire towns were razed to the ground. The young men who did this were the poor. Nobody rich or middle class. So there’s nothing pretty about driving young people to despair. NOTHING. At the brink of their despair they will not only run to the church which now no longer has space for the poor anyway. They will be recruited into sects like Mungiki, becoming Islamic fundamentalists, in the event a leader who can be supported by a developed country in arms, militia groups will rise.
Kenyans we are playing with fire. We need to join hands to demand for subsidies that cushion the majority poor return. It’s our tax money and it is in our best interest to have social protection programs.
We don’t want leaders who are greedy for IMF loans because we have now hit our debt ceiling to plunge the country we have built with blood, sweat and tears into civil strife because of tens of millions of Kenyans being pushed to the wall.
Do you think that a young man who can’t afford to eat, can’t afford to educate his kids, his ailing parents have no help from the state has a life he will fear losing? We are playing with fire.
When shit hits the fan, so called government will get shelter in Uganda or USA, what of the rest of us, who only watch war movies on TV and hear about it from refugees?
We are really on a very slippery slope, a very dangerous path that many nations we once knew fell into and never recovered.
At this present moment there’s alot of distress all over the world. Economic distress and distress caused by climatic change. Lake Chad has shrank to 10% leaving 50 million climate refugees. 50 million people who had cars, homes, good lives sustained by the lake.
Kenya’s economy is 60% agricultural. So imagine the kind of precarious situation we are going to be in when the climate change comes knocking which is already happening?
This is why we can’t afford to have a debonair attitude about policies and the leadership we have because we as citizens have power to mobilise and lobby for policy changes. We need a responsible government and an equally responsible citizenry because we are living in bad times already so we cannot afford poor decision making in regards to the majority of the population because its a recipe for civil strife and unrest which is bound to affect we who are living in our comfort zone and a bubble.
Remember that right before and after the election it was people who were middle class who were being slaughtered by thugs as politicians were campaigning and accepting courtesy calls to statehouse. It wasn’t until the public outcry that something was done by the said government.
There’s no way we can accept for tens of millions of Kenyan lives to be destroyed so that a few people can get IMF loans to pocket as they remove all subsidies and tax the few Kenyans paying tax to the last drop.
Kenyans need to think deeply on how to contain the runaway situation in the country because when we get hit by climate change seriously because the drought we say was merely a harbinger… Alot more is coming and we are already on our knees, up to the neck with debt, something will have to give.
I don’t know what the solution is but Kenyans need to come up with something because all these years including during Moi error I never saw such a bleak future. We are not going the right way at all, at all and I don’t say this because I am in Azimio. I say this because I love my country and I want all Kenyans to be considered so that together we can move the country forward for our future generations. This country is a very good country, let us stand against its destruction.