“…show me to the pillars of the city…” Exit Joshua, Enter Samson.
There is no more Canaan.
He has realized Delilah’s deceit, borne of the Paradox of Democracy.
Her promise to be true to him while she was there all the while to serve the established elite order. Delilah like Democracy is devious. She subdued Raila the Man and his Masses with promise. She became his quest, but her heart and title, Power and Prestige, both cold and hard remained the possession of the Philistine elites.
Now, vindictive and blind with rage, Samson will use Delilah, her sweet “Freedom of Speech”, completely unrestricted “Freedom of Assembly and Association” to find his way to the pillars that hold up the city… and as he cannot rule it, he will destroy it…
And the intelligentsia sense this and have articulated as such. In the Star Newspaper Godfrey K. Sang terms him “The King of the Ashes” https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2017/09/16/king-of-the-ashes-why-raila-can-only-rule-the-ruins_c1635950 and in the Nairobi Law Monthly August 2017 Double Issue, Lawyer Kibe Mungai in “The Case for Uhuru” made the case that Raila was a demolition man.
Samson and Delilah, Raila and Democracy. A beautiful metaphor.
But does it effectively capture our situation after the highly polarizing #ElectionsKE2017 political battle? While the story of Samson and Delilah beautifully caricatures Raila Amolo Odinga’s (from hereon #RAO) relationship of deceit, dishonesty and betrayal with Democracy, King Pyrrhus of Epirus better captures ours, the native people of the territory.
King Pyrrhus defeated Rome at Asculum in 279 B.C. achieving a victory that left him destroyed, while Rome could replenish itself and recover, Epirus could not. #RAO’s victory will have politically destroyed all the Institutions meant as a wall of defense for the masses from the Elites. His political attack on the Military will have triggered internal re-organization that could only benefit the entrenched elite. His bruising battle against the Centre has effectively destroyed the dispute resolution arm of the system, the Supreme Court of Kenya and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.
This leads us to August 1982.
August 1982 Reset; The Supreme Court of Kenya Presidential Petition №1 2017 Judgement Debacle
In the Supreme Court of Kenya (here-on referred to as #SCOK) Presidential Petition №1 2017 Judgement debacle, the #SCOK achieved more infamy than may ever be possibly realized by any other Court here or elsewhere. #SCOK decimated the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (hereon referred to as #IEBC), committed institutional suicide by creating a political paradox and reset the territory’s political clock back to September 1982.
#SCOK issued a judgement that defied even pedestrian wisdom in its legal basis and political ramifications. #SCOK by ruling in favour of the Petitioner, politically indicted the #IEBC of criminal malfeasance in one breathe, and in the next breathe tasked it to oversee the political event it was charged with violating in the first place.
#SCOK didn’t stop there. Lets go back to the beginning.
#ElectionsKE2017 “Democratic Vote” was held giving rise to a political dispute. The dispute was brought before the highest Constitutional court of the land, #SCOK. #SCOK then used the proximate cause of the dispute i.e. a “Democratic Vote” to decide the dispute? #SCOK then issued a judgement compelling another #ElectionsKE2017 “Democratic Vote” as the solution to the dispute. Thus returning the country and the disputing parties to the initial cause of its dispute, while giving birth to a dispute of similar nature within itself?
Presumably, a bench of the best legal minds, with all intellectual infrastructure and financial resource of Government, given 2 weeks to deliberate managed to lock a population into a political process configured with the fallacy of circular logic.
How does an institution with all means of Government decide truth and falsehood, right and wrong by “Democratic Vote”?
Alas! #SCOK has now made to the world clear how by the justice of “Democratic Vote”, Socrates was sentenced to death by poisoning and the Christ was crucified.
The litany of #SCOK blunders is a study in intellectual bankruptcy, jurisprudential ineptitude and political naivete.
From linear thinking, by applying scientific material method to sociological processes that demand rational thought, to the public display of internal dissent, institutional disunity and judicial indiscretion, #SCOK Presidential Petition №1 Judgement 2017 will ensure that it will not only occupy a special place in ignominy for the rancor and political turmoil that is sure to arise from their lack of wisdom, but also by triggering systemic failure using the most unresolvable flaws in the nature of Democracy.
But of all the ontologically fallacious errors #SCOK managed to find and apply in its judgement, there is one of such egregious proportion there will be no forgiveness from nature.
#SCOK created and locked the territory into a real manifestation of the tortuous “Byzantine General’s Paradox”.
And not just any configuration of the Byzantine General’s Paradox but the impossible configuration of the Byzantine General’s Problem, as the starting assumption is no messenger can be trusted.
The Byzantine General’s Paradoxical political contradiction #SCOK created and institutionalized by its judgement of 1st September 2017, can only be resolved through material means internally, or by external political intervention which will ultimately facilitate deepening of the imperial yoke on the body politic.
What of the August 1982 reset?
While within the act of putsch little to nothing outside of violent political revolution can match military coup d’état in the civilian domain, they both result in deep institutional distrust and weakness, that leads to unrest, purges and tyranny.
Lack of faith in institutions by individual plebian citizens has little consequence, lack of faith in institutions by elites on the other hand has dire implications.
It is often postulated that the Daniel Arap Moi of pre- and post- 1st August 1982, are different men. And it is in terms of political behavior, rationally consistent.
While Dr. David Ndii’s and Justice David Maraga’s professed willingness to die for their “Democratic” ideals will hopefully never be tested, analogical reasoning would suggest that the territory is in a new political dispensation, and the Morlock natives (used in its original imperialist sense i.e. non-white original inhabitants of the country) should stand strongly advised not to presume the courtesy will be extended to any but the comprador Eloi of H. G. Well’s Time Machine. That would include civil society, judiciary, military, media and multinational corporation directors, presidents, generals, and executive officers respectively, and all dual and commonwealth passport holders.
Let it also be understood, that the treatment of the adults by instruments of State terror in both categories extends to the children, with consistency.
What now? We are trapped in a political clash of slavish comprador backed by genocidal and belligerent imperial suzerains knotted together in a paradox, with no institutions that can resolve the dispute, a collective consciousness decimated by individualism, and a materialist and bankrupt intellectual elite.
How did we get here?
Intellectual Cyclopia
To be fair, this Gordian knot is the culmination of more than just a single naive #SCOK judgment. Our history is deeply deeply challenged.
Our lack of history of either ideological adherence or political centralization that could lead to the rise of State, has borne us myopic narcissistic tribal chiefs. This lack of criterion is also what enabled the West to shepherd the population into promulgating a dysfunctional Constitution that can only ultimately lead us to balkanizing the territory. This is the ultimate end result of devolving politics to the regions. A crippling education system specifically designed by the territory’s imperial suzerain Britain, to mass produce intellectual cyclops i.e. highly educated individuals with intellectual cyclopia compounded with tunnel vision. Politicians with no knowledge of Law, Economics and Sociology; Lawyers with no knowledge of Sociology, Politics and Economics; Doctors who can only write a prescription; Engineers who can only fill out Tenders; Businessmen and Executives with loyalty to nothing except money, all thrown together into the Nation-State forge, the kiln ignited with the passions of individual pursuit, the flame amplified with the winds of Democratic freedom to unleashed and pursue our basest desires, power, lust, wealth, without limit or account, and presumably out of this vile concoction shall rise an enlightened civilization.
And we are befuddled when we find ourselves in a Hobbesian “State of Nature”, a “War of all against all”. A state of social order so low, many scholars challenge the possibility of its existence as a reality.
But, where are we? Are we not in a war of “All against all”?
Citizens against Government, Government against Citizens, Children against Parents, Parents against Children, Children against Teachers, Teachers against Children, Employees Teachers, Nurses, Doctors, Police against Employers, Executive against Judiciary, Judiciary against Executive, Parliament against the People, the People against Parliament, Tribe against Tribe, Tribal alliance against Tribal alliance, endlessly…
What is wrong?
#DemocracyHasFailed
How could Secular Democracy not fail?
“Democracy is a mirage, a useful fiction to keep the population passive and compliant.”
[Chris L. Hedges]
A vacuous irrational political system based on creating and ensuring the continued existence and entrenchment of multiple antithetical ideas underpinning corresponding competing centres of power.
And the West is not blind to Democracy’s death spiral but the 3rd World suffering intellectual cyclopia persists in bankruptcy and disorder.
Little is expected from Democratic politics and politicians than war, corruption, scandal and circus.
#NationalismHasFailed
How could Westphalian Sovereignty not fail? A political identity and system built on a divisive material characteristic that can never be bridged.
How could African Nationalism not fail? Founded atop artificial territories created through a process of imperial accumulation by dispossession, how could these mine and farm territories ever evolve into anything political.
We need to wake-up to the complexity of the problem troubling us, make an inordinate intellectual effort to understand and explain it to each other then begin the process of finding our way out of it.
The problem is artificial. It is man-made. In all aspects.
Let us take for instance the very real (not perceived) problem of Kikuyu hegemony. Kikuyu political relevance to the centre is sadly not correctly understood and therefore makes easy bait for demagogues competing to acquire equivalent dominance rather than solve the problem.
Kikuyu dominance many do not understand is built in to the genetic fibre of the territory which is still a British East African Protectorate. The territory was deliberately hived in a way to divide all the other large tribes on all sides of the territory in half, over a century ago. That would be the Oromo to the North, the Luo to the West, the Masai in the Rift Valley and the Somali in the East, ensuring the Kikuyu tribe was the only whole entity within the British East Africa Protectorate, while also strategically positioning it at the centre. Now, by “breaking” the Kikuyu tribe, yoking it and imbuing it with Capitalist values, the British had a task master who could implement their Capitalist order over the entire territory. The Englishman’s “House Negro” if you adopt Malcolm X terms.
Were the territory cut in such a way that the entire 7 million-plus strong Luo Nation was within the boundaries of a single British East Africa Protectorate, the hegemon would be the Luo and the anti-hegemony sentiment would probably be led by the Kikuyus against the Luo.
Kikuyu dominance is a result of imperial design, not tribal choice nor socio-political evolution. There is no way to end Kikuyu taskmaster-ship without ripping the map as David Ndii has repeatedly proposed, thus making a new order. The solution to Kikuyu hegemony therefore exists at supranational counter-imperial level.
Any other Nation-State or Democratic solution will lead back to the same problem, because Nationalism and its illusionary political system Democracy ARE the problem. South Sudan just like Kenya after many years of seeking separate Statehood immediately entered a civil war as the Dinka, America’s taskmaster in the South became the new hegemon, in the same way the Kikuyu became Britain’s Taskmaster when it withdrew from overt, direct administration of its colony.
If David Ndii and the @CoalitionNASAKe ilk followed through on their call to secede. The Luo nation would be the new hegemon of the People’s Republic of Kenya.
If the Mombasa Republican Council succeeded in their quest for a Mombasa Republic, the new hegemon to struggle against for the people of the Mombasa Republic would be the Digo.
If Kenya were united with Somalia, the hegemon would be the 20million-plus strong, vertically integrated Somali nation.
There is no Nation-based Democratic configuration under which there would be peace, neither here nor in America where over 22 states are attempting to secede, nor in the United Kingdom where Scotland and Ireland have fought wars and initiated referenda of secession, nor in the East where India, Pakistan and China are struggling to stamp out secessionist movements, nor South Sudan where Darfur and a host of other provinces are also trying to secede… and this is because Nationalism is not a basis upon which to build a harmonious Society, never was, never will be.
Not even when you are a single nation, with a single religion like the Somali.
Democracy as a system to govern is completely antithetical to holism. It cannot unite an institution let alone a society as we witnessed with the #SCOK fiasco. Everywhere, as in the choice between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Amolo Odinga, Democracy is adept at production of political paradox always creating choices between the devil and the deep blue sea. In America, it was between the “Goddess of War” Hillary Rodham Clinton and the warmonger Donald J. Trump, and because Democracy has no fixed criterion, even when you choose a leader for the values he professes he can expediently backtrack without contradicting Democratic principles, citing security, stability or whatever campaign spin masters conjure up for the need of the time.
Nationalism and Democracy lock Society into an endless cycle of political instability, economic loss and social decay.
Wherefore, the Rule of Law
The illusion of State that intellectual elites in Africa have bought invariably leads to incorrect assessment of political situation, there following wrong conclusions.
Kenya like Uganda and other territories carved and shared out by European imperialism in 1885 do not qualify as States and will never evolve in to States. The people are not Sovereign and cannot be, as this is ontologically impossible. As the territory is an artificial imperial construct and the illusion of Democracy is the imposed political method. A Society can never be forged and therefore a real State can never be born.
Therefore, the endeavour to achieve “Rule of Law and Accountability” is moot as “Rule of Law and Accountability” have State as an absolute sine qua non.
To argue that it is only through Democracy that Rule of Law can be achieved and logically deduce that this leads to Justice is not only flawed but has now been revealed to be manifestly false. As long as the Law is made and unmade by Men, the measure of Justice will always be calibrated by the powerful, thus leading to oppression and injustice.
Failure by the Executive and Legislative arms to govern justly had left the world governed by Judicial decrees. The Judiciaries of the world are depended upon to protect the public from excesses of politician’s injudiciousness but with the moving dial of Rule of Law, how can they hope to achieve this?
Now all this assumes “the Rule of Law” is the holy grail of Justice for Man.
Completely ignoring that the much boasted possible first codification of “The Rule of Law” itself, the Magna Carta (or Great Charter), was itself a contract signed in 1215 by King John of England between him and a group of barons, powerful noblemen who supported the king in exchange for estates of land. The noblemen demanded that the king sign the charter to recognize “their” (the noblemen) rights. Article 39 of the Magna Carta was written to ensure that the life, liberty, or property of free subjects of the king could not be arbitrarily taken away. Instead, the lawful judgement of the subject’s peers or the law of the land had to be followed.
It was therefore signed, in the context of a Sovereign who has been taken hostage by powerful elites. It therefore automatically presumes significant political power on the side of the subjects and therefore cannot protect the plebeian masses who lack the organizational capability and ownership of instruments of power the nobility had.
This context for “The Rule of Law” is never mentioned in discussions about “The Rule of Law”.
Aside of this little “nuisance detail”, beyond the general idea that “The Rule of Law” dictates that society should be governed by Law and not by the whim of beasts (as Aristotle referred to Men) there is no real consensus on what “The Rule of Law” epistemologically is.
Friedrich Kratochwil bemoans the degeneration of “the Rule of Law” in to “the Rule of Lawyers” in his 2010 book “The Puzzles of Politics”. Writing that while Rule of Law is fundamentally a political conception it has now become legalistic and defined by the elite in such a way as to compel submission by the demos to an order which cannot be clearly defined and therefore cannot be queried, and in reality is a compulsion to status quo as defined by the elites.
As the #SCOK Petition №1 2017 described above shows, Justice and “the Rule of Law” have been reduced to a series of clever arguments with hidden “gotchas”, all completely detached from the reality, and therefore completely irrelevant to it.
Therefore working backwards, the epistemologically vacuous construct of “The Rule of Law” assuming just, has been debased. And where we as natives are concerned, given its assumed nature, submission to “The Rule of Law” is primarily an instrument to protect the imperialist order created in 1885 and imposed upon the entire continent.
Clearly as long as Man is the Sovereign, justice will be a mirage…
Rule of Law vs. Majority Rule
Clearly both have failed. For both the elites and the masses. Both here in Raila vs. Uhuru 2017 and in the epitome of Democracy Bush vs Gore 2000, “The Rule of Law” imposed on the elites was determined by “Majority Rule” (on the Bench).
Justice in the Secular domain given the lack of objective anchor for metaphysical questions, becomes of necessity, not just highly subjective but also highly unjust. Not even elites can get justice they can believe in.
For the vampire, justice is right to your blood; for the Imperialist, justice is right to your resources; for the Colonialist and his Colonist, justice is right to your land; for the poor and disenfranchised, justice is the right to feed and breed….
Secular Democracy is not leading us to any just Society as its high priests would have us believe.
#CapitalismHasFailed
Year 2017 ends with a Capitalist rating action reality check: On 2nd October 2017 Moody’s Investors Service placed the B1 long-term issuer rating of the government of Kenya on review for downgrade. https://m.moodys.com/Research.html?docid=PR_373279
Global Credit Research — 02 Oct 2017
For context, backplane this rating downgrade against a graph plotted with the Greece government debt crisis timeline. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-debt_crisis_timeline
In the case of Greece, it too was plagued by industrial action (strikes) while in a Moody’s credit rating of B in 2010. Violence rapidly escalated as Moody’s slid it in to C and looking at the Greece government-debt crisis time-line, it looks like it locked itself into a vicious cycle with the instability feeding the uncertainty and the uncertainty feeding the instability, creating a deadly spiral.
One has to be extremely cautious with correlation. Drawing a hard parallel line between Greece and Kenya would be incorrect. The difference between the two geopolitical entities could not be more acute. One is a State in Europe the other is a Protectorate Territory in Africa. One has a 4,000 year history of civilization and being an Island has limited natural resources while the other is a population plagued by tribal wars and teaming, literally teaming with unlimited resources.
Is Kenya’s October 2017 B1 rating downgrade Greece’s 2010 #Moodys credit rating moment of watershed?
It is hard to any draw parallels beyond the credit rating and it’s surface effects but there is something to keep our eye on there.
#ConstitutionalismHasFailed
It is fair to state that we are all Constitutionally agnostic, but ruthlessly politically expedient.
That no-one really believes in the constitution is not in question. From the masses to the elites, the bankruptcy is absolute.
The masses elected individuals on trial in a case they endorsed. No Constitutional fidelity here. The same masses called for secession when their favoured candidate lost in #ElectionsKE2017. Again, no reference to the Constitution, by either the masses nor their political elites.
The Military unconstitutionally invaded a foreign land, then ratified the occupation. The Constitution a minor inconvenience for them too.
Members of the Highest Court of the land committed Constitutional apostasy within 2 years of the promulgation of Constitution of Kenya 2010 in entertaining Justice Kalpana Rawal’s challenge to the Statutory Retirement age for Judges.
The fact of Raila Amolo Odinga, the Constitution’s initial chief protagonist’s contemptuous dismissal of the Constitution after losing #ElectionsKE2017 needs no stating. President Uhuru Kenyatta studious silence on the extrajudicial killing of his own citizens by Police Death Squads speaks volumes. Deputy President William Ruto is actually on record calling upon the Judiciary to turn its back on the Constitution and stand with the People in the Western sponsored imperialist War on Terror, an institution who basis and purpose of existence is the Constitution.
The Police, need no mention. That by nature and action it is a legalized criminal gang, there is no question. They kill whomever they will whenever the feel, with their only fears being unified public opinion and their political paymasters wrath in the Executive. Their criminal activity often under cover of dark but occasionally on social media. But to go so far as to forge warrants as they were caught by Lawyer Harun Ndubi doing in broad daylight in order to gain illegal access to AfriCOG offices reveals the institutional contempt the Police have for anything resembling Law. Former Inspector General of Police David Kimaiyo, oddly for a man who has spent his life in the Police Force yet consistent with his theological pursuit, boasted in a newspaper interview that “I have never killed anyone in my entire career” but added that the one time he nearly shot someone, it was his fellow police officer whom he found attempting to rape a young girl during a police operation he was commanding.
These are your shepherds.
This is not individual fallibility, this endemic turpitude is systemically induced.
To end it, we MUST of necessity, change the basis upon which Society is built then…
#ChangeTheSystem
Humanity needs a new Ideological Operating System. Built upon a doctrinal creed that will symbiotically bind with man’s cerebral and visceral essence to illuminate him and give rise to an enlightened civilized society.
END.
