THE MAU ULTIMATUM: THE CITIZENRY MUST DENOUNCE ETHNO-POLITICAL SHENANIGANS.

Dear Sir/Madam, “Conscience ought to be a mirror before which one pinches himself.” Today, this aphorism would mesh well in any other society but Kenya. Majority of our politicians are made of a different mettle. To them “conscience” at the very least, must be expunged from the Kenyan political dictionary. This is what Taban Lo Liyong would term as “lexicographicide”. Our politicians are very comfortable purveying untruths; they seek to obfuscate Kenya`s legitimate rights to a conducive socio-economic and political environment. I keep on hoping that there will be a small secret voice that will just whisper in their conscience, “You are a fraud”. How they spin lies ad infinitum without butting their eyelids is just amazing! But that is not all. Any conscientious person seen to be an obstacle in their quest to advance their selfish interests must also be thoroughly slandered. In the words of Lillian Hellman “truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.” Her words lend a sharp poignancy and insight in the Kenyan political landscape. Admittedly, our politicians have robbed off politics any decency. Deceit is the new buzzword. For instance, after the KTN expose’, no one can believe the claptrap being bandied around about the Prime Minister having issued a directive to purge the evictees off the fringes of the Mau Complex in the ungodly hours of the night. This is another of the so many and not so well crafted lies that keep on flying- apart before the right thinking public. The unfortunate thing about lying is that you have to tenaciously, viscerally and perhaps unflinchingly, manufacture in quick succession, three times the lies you spewed yesterday to give them some semblance of truth today. In their desperation to lie they pay no attention to the rules of logic that would otherwise guard them against pitfalls. It is precisely at this unguarded moment that the “liar” in them shines as bright as the equatorial midday. Political corruption, patronage and impunity are instruments that perfect their political con game. That is why even with the melodrama that ranged from the sublime of the legislators` crocodile tears to the ridiculous personality-slandering, the public has finally learnt to spot their shenanigans. The bitter truth is that the illegal Mau settlers are only but mere pawns for the peers of the realm in the Mau Complex saga. This is because after annexing huge chunks of land in the Mau complex, they came up with ethnic mischief which sought to literally “import” gullible Kenyans from Kericho, Bomet and Baringo and put them in the Mau to act as an ethnic shield against any future threats of evictions from successive regimes. Anytime eviction talk is rife, the “Real landlords” of the Mau Complex troop en masse to their ethnic enclave. We must, as a peace loving nation, denounce these political shenanigans. They have brought nothing but dishonor and disrepute to our country. There must be no room for this political perfidy. It is not lost to all that the combined acreage of the illegal settlers is a trifling compared to the over 50,000 acres of land in the hands of the “real encroachers” whose names are in the” who is who” list of Kenyan politics. With this fact in mind you can then begin to appreciate the real fear behind the façade of the Mau aristocrats if perchance this human shield was to be removed. It is time that these plunderers faced the consequences of their sins of commission and omission. That is why I find their “Two Weeks Ultimatum Talk” quite unpalatable. This melodrama is a stark testament to political irrationality. The country can no longer afford to expose Kenyans to this inanity and ethno-political overtones. Unless they issued this ultimatum against themselves then they have no moral authority to purport to speak for a people they themselves have subjected to deceit for decades. TOME FRANCIS, BUMULA CONSTITUENCY.