HON. WILLIAM RUTO MUST ANCHOR CAMPAIGN ON DRAFT CONSTITUTION IN THE BREAST OF HONESTY.

If the words of Mario Vargas Llosa (1936- ) are anything to go by, then real politics has indeed very little to do with ideas, values, and imagination. It has everything to do with maneuvers, intrigues, plots, paranoia’s, betrayals and a great deal of calculation. It has no little cynicism. In sum it is a kind of con game. In Kenya, one only needs to confirm the truth of this assertion by just paying a little attention to the goings on in the current constitutional making exercise. The referendum campaign is so crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions. In fact, it would be an understatement to say that there is a certain class of politicians whose mendacity is simply unparalleled. Take for instance Honorable William Ruto`s rhetoric that the electorate can reject the draft constitution in the 2010 August 4th plebiscite and enact another one in a span of three months. Ruto knows too well that he is perpetuating a blatant falsehood. Perhaps it would do Ruto a lot of good were he to stretch his memory a little bit further to 2002. The NARC government then promised the people of Kenya that it would promulgate a new constitution in 90 days. It took the NARC government three solid years to come up with a draft constitution and even then vested interests saw the draft rejected at the referendum. When the Wako draft was rejected at the plebiscite, the government did not invite people to gloss over the rejected draft constitution with a view to removing the clauses that they disagreed upon so that another referendum could be held immediately thereafter. The entire process had to begin afresh. It has taken another five solid years (two of which are under the grand coalition government) not forgetting that the process has consumed not less than 9 billion of the hard earned tax payers` money for the government to go through another constitutional making process. Like 2005, the country will have to wait for at least two years for political temperatures to subside before taking another stab at the process. And even after that we have to wait for a complete economic recovery before embarking on the process again. This obviously mean that the country will have to head into the 2012 general elections under the current flawed constitution that led to the 2007 post election violence. Honestly speaking, many Kenyans of goodwill shudder at the prospects of the country heading into another election without a constitution that has proper checks and balances. It is because of this that I beseech him for once to anchor his campaign in the breast of honesty. For the sake of the citizenry of this country, let him think for once that he could be wrong. Currently, we are at the brink of enacting a new constitution and it were better if those who feel that there certain clauses they disagree with were to wait for its promulgation then immediately after embark on amendments. TOME FRANCIS, BUMULA. http://twitter/tomefrancis.com