'AFFIRMATIVE ACTION SHOULD BE BASED ON ECONOMIC FACTORS

Barrack Obama argues that instead Afro Americans being beneficiaries of affirmative action on the basis of race, more sense is significant if affirmative action is applied on the basis of economic indices of affluence both in politics and employment regardless of colour.i find this argument as an answer to daily debates in some developing countries like Kenya and most of its African counterparts, whereby we need to cease advocating affirmative action on the basis of gender or age. After colonialism, a number of families placed themselves as the heirs to the property and the political power previously held by colonialists. They created Kenya as a society of the poor and the rich with a wide gap in between the former and the later and due to a political and economic environment that favours those who already obtained wealth, this gap has always widened with time. That therefore makes me to believe that Obama’s argument is even more practical in the third world whose corrupt indices top the world. Since the 1990s, the debate about affirmative action has been so loud on the national platform, advanced by politicians in most cases advancing their quest to attain democratic majority on their side. The most prominent subject has always been affirmative action for women and of late, we are talking about the youth. However, even as some politicians go to a level of attempting to walk the talk as far as affirmative action is concerned, those steps have never significantly reflected at the grassroots to the people who are purportedly represented by the beneficiaries of affirmative action. Whenever positions come up, it is still the trick of a certain economic class to advance the affirmative action equation to create positions for their relatives, cronies and loyalists. Whenever such opportunities arise, they are only shared amongst people based on nepotism or bribery. When senior politicians talk about affirmative action for women, they do it for their wives, daughters or mistresses or their cronies, when they talk about opportunities for the youth they mean their children, not chosen necessarily on the basis of merit but on the basis of the relation ships with whoever would be advancing this. I don’t know why the media never pronounces this loudly. Kenya is going a wrong trend and affirmative action is only but one of these aspects. job opportunities both in the government, private sector and the civil society are no different. if Kenyans were to have an opportunity to dig behind a number of the activities of some civil society activities they will be surprised at the kind of corrupt activities and fiscal impropriety they will discover. Just like in government, many civil society organizations have a record in corruption, nepotism, tribalism and hypocrisy .it is so unfortunate that some members to claim to be agents of fighting corruption and yet when you get to their organizations they can not be able to account for the donor funds they get because of corruption. Soon we are going to have the unending debate of constitutional review and Kenyans should refuse to be duped by advocates of affirmative action with personal selfish motives. if entrenched in our constitution Kenyans must only accept it in the constitution when it is well defined what it is and what qualifies one to be a beneficiary. it should not be an opportunity for the already affluent to get free positions for themselves and their families. it must define properly who should qualify for a position under this law whether its youth or women or disabled. It’s all about economic class and fair distribution of wealth and justice not about gender or age. FWAMBA NC FWAMBA BOX 41046, 00100, NAIROBI +254721779445