POST ELECTION VIOLENCE: THE YOUTH ARE VICTIMS OF POLITICAL SHENANIGANS

POST ELECTION VIOLENCE: THE YOUTH ARE VICTIMS OF POLITICAL SHENANIGANS
The politics that has manned the “Amnesty for the youth” debate is getting nasty on a daily basis and the momentum it has gained clearly reveals the nature and the nurture of our political class. One wonders whether both parties from the political divide: PNU and ODM have a genuine concern about these youths or whether their portrayed positions are formed and informed by their respective hidden political mission and vision.
To the extreme, this debate seemed to have posed a brittle fodder for departure and delinquent breakdown of the much touted Grand Coalition. Thanks to the Budget reading, the plane crash that claimed our two law makers, the by- election and the launch of the vision 2030 by the president; for they temporarily shifted the nations focus away from the much heated Amnesty debate.
As it was, it seemed that there had been no genuine concern to push for or against the amnesty for these youths. The initial signs have shown that the political class is concerned at the moment about 2012 more than any other thing. And as much they may deny this, they know well that the fate of those youth and the position they take now upon it may be of benefit or detriment to them come next general election.
The other day, the debate took a literary angle, when the Prime Minister, His Excellency Raila Amolo Odinga wrote an article in the same page with the Constitutional Affairs Minister Hon. Martha Karua in one of our local dailies on the topic of the amnesty for the Youths. Reading both articles, it was crystal clear that the two are actually reading from a different script. The latter took a legal angle, while the former opted to what may be classified under a moral angle. Surprisingly, all the arguments they put forward makes sense to Kenyans but derive a divided support depending on the political ridge upon which you lean.
The truth is that there more to what our eyes can see and ears can hear. Each group seems to be out to impress certain quarters of their communities or core supporters, a ceiling whose limits equates to an act of trade where the medium of exchange in this case remain the very youth whose fate not only hung unknown behind the bars but also thorny beyond entrustment unto the hands and terrain of our judicial system.
Awkwardly, Kenyans on the other hand have been dragged into this debate via a wrong route of perception and worse still drugged to believe that it is the youth who needs the amnesty more than any other person in this country. The gullible citizen have been made to believe that the youth who brought "sorrow" to this nation must be punished and that once this is done we, as a nation would have exercised justice. For those who take this deep debate on this shallow face value should note that this is a serious misgiving that should not blindfold our eyes as a nation. The political class has used such kind of tricks for so long to absolve themselves from all forms of accountabilities. In fact, at minimum, the sole intention of any political class in directing and distorting such contentious national debate is to end up hiding their own role.
The Youth are alleged to have committed a rainbow of crimes including but not limited to rape, destruction of properties, burnings, killings and looting. This clusters them as perpetrators but leaves vacant the names and whereabouts of the real architectures, facilitators, financers, planners and beneficiaries of such crime.
A report by Kenya National Human Rights Commission, A government’s own agency indicates that the violence were planned long time ago even before the Election. An equal report done by The Youth Agenda and named “Who Is Guilty?” launched late last month on Pre- Election violence has equal verdict; that the youth were just but the tail and not the head in the violence. The financiers were the old, those in leadership or a combination of both.
Unconfirmed reports also indicates that young men were being trained for war, in preparedness for the second phase of serious battle, were the Kofi Annan led talks hit a deadlock or fails. Further allegation has it that the young people who caused mayhem in Nakuru and Naivasha were transported there from Nairobi and other parts of the country. If this is what to go by, then it is a common knowledge that these young men were acting on behalf and for the benefit of the big and the mighty.
Rwanda case is a good example, while the people who caused mayhem or perpetrated the crimes against humanity, were hunted and apprehended those who are thought to have planned or financed the genocide are still being sought; a good example is one Felicen Kabuga who is still on the run over the genocide. Our own post election violence in Kenya may not compare to the Rwandan genocide but where are our Kabuga’s? And why are they still free if they are not on the run?
Kenyans need to be told why some of our legislators and prominent persons were issued with a visa ban by some western countries on the cases and at the epic of the Election violence? Could the ban have been related to their role in the violence?
The Amnesty Debate has been squeezed to sound as a favor for the youth but the reality is that those in power today, those sharing the same power and those in PNU and ODM today, deserve the Amnesty more than the youth. And if they are above it, so why not the youth?
The other side of the coin may display the accused youth as someone who need a payback more than the amnesty, deserving a reward and not a condemnation. After all, it can be argued that they protected our national democracy when those who are less interested about it wanted to deform it with impunity. They gave hope to the power of our vote. And they stood firm to say that we cannot lose our democratic gains that we painfully earned as a nation for the greed of the power hungry leaders. The youth and fear of their actions produced the grand coalition and brought the two leaders namely Raila and Kibaki to a serious negotiating table.
Amnesty or no amnesty, the following must prevail: fairness and justice must and should not only be spoken to or applied in favor of the few select or to the detriment of many arrested; The hand of law should not only be long when it comes to the arrest and accountability of the weak and the least and finally we have to learn to rise above our national crises devoid of political inclination.
Yours faithfully

Signed
OULU GPO
P.O Box 4598-00200
NAIROBI

Obama’s victory reflects the power of diversity

Obama’s victory reflects the power of diversity
Published on June 8, 2008, 12:00 am
Barack Obama is the world-man of the moment. His win as Democratic Party nominee has been splashed widely in the world news headlines as the maker of a world history, especially in US.
His victory is being celebrated all over. Indeed he has become more than a Democrat candidate but the world candidate of the year.
He is a true testimony of the Martin Luther King’s dream and a perfect heir of Malcolm X struggle of an American society void of racism.
His primaries campaigns showed that politics need not be marketed by politicians, packaged by pollsters and pundits and that politics can be a moral arena where people come together to find common ground. His candidature has expanded, unified, directed, and inspired the entire world towards the noble mission of identity with the mission to teach the illiterate; to provide jobs for the jobless; and to choose the human race over the nuclear race.
It holds a greater lesson; that we need not to talk tough, wage war on nations and play race or tribal cards on humanity to gain our political aspiration. It shows that we can stand on truth and be different if need be as long as we can do that, based on our inner believe for the common good of all.
We have watched of a good mind fast at work, with steel nerves, guiding his campaign out of the competitive and financially challenging field without appeal to the worst in us. We have seen his toughness and tenacity.
He has set a lasting tower of hope as a testament to the struggles of those who have gone before him; those to come after him; as a tribute to the endurance, the patience, the courage of the world forefathers and mothers especially from the black community; as an assurance that their prayers are being answered, their work, wish and suffering has not been in vain, and, that hope is eternal.
Obama’s win reveals of a leader who acknowledges that a generation may not choose the age or circumstance in which it is born, but through leadership it can choose to make the age in which it is born.
But above all, it shows that this leadership must be that of intangible combination of gifts, the discipline, information, circumstance, courage, timing, will and divine inspiration.
This is the kind of leadership that Obama has offered and believes in to mitigate the misery of America and that of the world.
Obama took into greater consideration that America is not like a blanket; of one piece of unbroken cloth, the same colour, the same texture, and the same size. America, and by extension the world, is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colours, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread – the true picture of the beauty of diversity.
The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt and so is the world. He has proved that he talked and appealed to all these groups and he stands to be their voice.
So the groups have spoken back, the delegates made their decision and the dice is now cast in favour of the son of African father and American mother. The American society has come forward to reconcile with the world that as much as they have been preaching democracy, a time has come for them to put it into practice. They have spoken and acted in the will and creed of their constitution.
Soon he (Obama) would travel the second tavern of journey — that of ensuring that he takes head on and brings into the rubble the fame and frame of the republican candidate, Senator John McCain.
The world now holds its breath with hope that the end will tally with the beginning. Obama’s candidature will go beyond the nomination but through to election. The wind of change is blowing and if the time has come, so be it. No one will stop this positive menace from clinching the coveted White House prize – that of presidency.
The campaigns were great; full of speeches and wisdom, energy and optimism and the world must learn that change lies in diversity. Time will tell, but the battle ahead is now between those for change and those against it.
The battle of course has surpassed the walls of blacks and whites – it is now at the level of the young and the old.
Oulu GPO,
Nairobi.