The other day Mutemi Wa Kiama braved a harrowing experience that started with his arrest and subsequent arraignment in Court over a mundane post on his social media account that ticked off the government for its appetite for odious debt. If this was bad, the decisions of Senior Resident Magistrate Jane Kamau made Mutemi’s incarceration even worse. She slapped an impossibly exorbitant bail amount in addition to a gag order, the clearest signal that the dead hand of authority was lurking behind this attack on free society.
It is now possible to appreciate that the Head of State could have been miffed personally by the mock poster and for making no bones about it informally, his ‘dogs’ had no choice but to act swiftly to sound a warning that would tame any attempts at poking ridicule at the imperial centre. If there is anything we learnt from this excessive use of coercive power, it is that this regime’s untethered fears, even paranoia informed the misperception that Mutemi’s post amounted to hostility that looked to tip out of control.
Let me remind the President about some profound invocations that his speechwriters penned soon after his coronation for the second term. “…if Kenya is to remain strong, we must change our approach to political competition.” The President intoned and went on to add that: –
“If there was anything I said last year that hurt or wounded you, if I damaged the unity of this country in any way, I ask you to forgive me, and to join me in repairing that harm”
A change of approach as enunciated then by the President was such a worthwhile value proposition that if all Kenyans and institutions took seriously, then today no Kenyan would be subjected to the ignominy that visited Mutemi. Even more poignant then was the President’s categorical proclamation of taking personal responsibility for the absurdity, waste and pettiness of the Kenyan security state. The President was by his public apology inviting Kenya to rectify its faults and get out of her vast historical amnesia.
No one would have thought that the President, acutely aware of the nature and potency of evil would sanction state mandarins to revert full cycle to the old order in which human institutions and personal rule trumped the Constitutional order and his avowed public commitment to reconciliation, reform ad collaboration.
The President said a lot of other important things. He said, “Kenya belongs to all of us, all of us are entitled to be heard; all of us are entitled to our fair share of Kenya’s resources; and all of us are entitled to a government that honors these commitments. The trust [you] have bestowed on [us] is sacred and that as leaders, [we] do not serve only those who voted for [us]; but all Kenyans as required by our constitution. None is above the law. There have been some challenges in the use of public resources, with some individuals fraudulently and corruptly diverting public resources to benefit themselves. Too many of our leaders have manipulated our ethnicities to seize power, and then exploited it to avoid accountability.”
Mutemi by his post calls attention to the President’s 2017 calls to leadership and peoples to live our constitutional values, in our dealings and private lives. Mutemi comes out as a citizen to fight and conquer graft by reporting what we all encountered and what we now know as borrowing that the powerful engage in without a thought to the consequences. Mutemi shows all citizens the right ammunition that can animate the President’s noble propositions of waging war against Lords of graft wherever they may be including on the IMF front.
