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Why Kenya’s democracy is so
awfully fragile and brittle
Story by MARK EVANS ONDARI, USA.
9. Feb. 2008
There is something disconcerting about Kenya’s democracy, although
it has nothing to do with the misconception that it is the best
tool for the attainment of equality and social justice.
Rather, it is the tool’s inherent brittleness - strong and
effective against social and economic tyranny when in the hands of
people seeking emancipation, and yet fragile enough to be broken
by a single element with fascist disposition.
And the recent elections confirm the exact nature of this frailty.
We should not pretend to be surprised just how brittle and
vulnerable our representative democracy is, for we have done
precious little to secure it - by way of solid constitutional
powers built around institutions - from despots who could very
well plunge the country into civil strife.
It is for this reason that Robert Hutchins contends that, “the
death of democracy is not likely to be from assassination by
ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference,
and undernourishment.” Only rarely does the despot sneak through
the backdoor and murder democracy in the living room; more often
than not, having learnt the deficiencies of the security system (the
electorate), he’ll saunter in through the front door singing
salvation songs to ignorant and apathetic subjects.
It’s the latter type of despot that Kenyans ought to be extremely
afraid of, for he’s ubiquitous and far more dangerous. Democracy,
as prescribed through electoral processes, has been made to sound,
at least in the country, more like an affair of the poor and the
semi-literate.
They are the pawns of political expediency games, the guinea-pigs
of Kuresoi, Molo and Mt Elgon that fight and die for politicians;
they are the down trodden of Kawangware, Kibera, Mathare and
Mukuru that follow the delusional war for democracy through the
ballot box. This is easy to understand. Of course, there’s no
question that the rich have interest in real representative
democracy either, perhaps because they’re part of a corporate
propaganda whose agenda is, to borrow Alex Carey’s words, “to
protect corporate power against democracy.”
Their contribution is in the funding of regimes, however hideous,
just so that their business interest could receive state
protection and favourable contracts. That’s easy to understand,
too. What’s appalling and difficult to comprehend is the stunning
mediocrity of the youth, the thinly veiled indifference of the
educated, and the general apathy of the middle class of this
country towards the democratic process. It is made all the more
astonishing when we are told that the youth, the educated and the
middle class ought to be democracy’s strongest props. How could it
be when the youth lack a common voice and have disparate agendas?
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