A bulging young population, a shrinking middle class, and high levels of both household and sovereign debt capture are just the tip of the iceberg of the problems President William Ruto has to grapple with.
A diminishing middle class means that our capacity to create wealth is in jeopardy and young adults who had dreams of upward social mobility are now confronted with an economic nightmare through no fault of their own.
Clearly, we are a country at a crossroads. We find ourselves in a moment of great peril and in a moment of greater hope. After 20 years of gauging our success on account of skyscrapers, the glitter of our superhighways, and the engine size of the motor vehicles we drive, this has proved to be a phoney yardstick. For we, as a country, have ended up with the proverbial tale of two cities.
The minority few, the politically connected, the economically powerful, have ended up enjoying the splendour and the warmth of a shining city on a hill. However, to the rest of the people in the forgotten corners of this country, in the dark alleys of our city, plenty has not been found within our borders. For the teenage girl in Narok whose education was cut short because she was married off after being put in the family way, there is nothing to smile about.
This brings me to the core of my writing today. The soul of our Nation. It is Plato who first introduced us to the idea that a Nation has a soul that is very much similar to that of an individual person. The soul, he said, has the reason, the will and the appetite.According to Plato, in a healthy individual, reason directs the soul by orchestrating cooperation between the passions and the will. Accordingly, the healthy individual must possess (1) temperance (rational constraint over the appetites), (2) wisdom (knowledge and prudence), and (3) courage (not being afraid to do what is right).
As such, a healthy state resembles a healthy individual. However our country sometimes does not demonstrate compassion, rationality and temperence. For far too long, we have let personal interest, especially of the ruling elite to supplant the the national interest; what the president has rightly diagnosed as state capture. Like Abraham Lincoln, President Ruto has a real chance of leading us to a national rebirth.
The president rode to power on the back of the hustlers, people who have been historically jettisoned to the periphery. Their otherwise painful living conditions were made worse both by the pandemic and the contraction of the economy due to shocks that a general election comes with.
Police departments in a healthy nation do not drop bodies on river banks; they investigate, apprehend criminals, charge them, and deter crime. Citizens of a healthy nation do not turn against each other during elections for their individual souls are not directed by ethnic hatred and desire to violence against others.
Another indicator that our soul as a country is shriveled, is our inability to comprehensively address the question of transfer of power. In spite of the fact that the August 9 elections were largely peaceful, the attendant tension cannot be gainsaid. We had embassies issuing travel advisories. Healthy democratic states do not tolerate civil servants meddling in politics even if political outcomes are not favourable to their political interests. True leaders do not proclaim themselves the protectors of only those citizens who voted for them or agreed with their views. Such is the stuff of wayward dictators and authoritarian regimes.
A government for the people, by the people, and of the people must as a matter of priority discard all elements of Darwinism in its policy statement and thinking, and deliberately extend a helping hand; a hand up to those that are left behind and left out. In this great country, with the leading economy in the region, we can surely afford to take care of our senior citizens and expectant mothers even as we make necessary investments in areas of productivity and growth.
The president must focus on nurturing a more compassionate, temperate, and brave country than his predecessors. A nation that turns a blind eye to the hardship of its citizens is a country that is nearing spiritual death, as Martin Luther King Jr put it. After decades of infrastructure left development, we must now invest in rejuvenating the soul of this Nation.
Let us not let the Soul of our nation wither like a corpse left in the field for vultures.
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