(venting some steam!)
The unrest in Kenya has extended my holidays, and so I should be grateful. Like I was at 16 during the Molo ethnic clashes, when my boarding school postponed the semester until further notice because the stables were burning. That u-turn on the way to the airport was every student's dream come true.
But now I'm just p#%&ed off. Not that I don't find both candidates creepy. But somehow I just think people should get to choose their own leaders. Ordinary Kenyans have gone to the polls to say who they trust to make decisions about their country, and with all this noise nobody can hear what they said or even seems to care. BBC World Service, the best of the mediocrity that passes for international news, talks of Mwal Kibaki and Moi Kibaki, Kah-bera slums, calls the party who won the parliamentary majority for 'the opposition', and mixes Luo with Kalenjin with Kikuyu as they tell the world what is happening. Election observers can't quite sink to the level of denying the blatant rigging on both sides by rubber-stamping it 'free & fair', but what the heck, who do they think they're fooling? The international community doesn't give a shit about democracy in Africa. Given the choice between stability and people getting to choose their own government... My bet is everyone will stand way back until either Kibaki's forces have either teargassed, shot or beaten people off the streets (ie delivered stability) or until some deal has been brokered between the 2 factions. And that, not the preferences of the ordinary people whose country it actually is, will decide who gets to pillage the coffers next.
Hurrah democracy. Bravo the Free World. And all the other Cold War slogans.
The unrest in Kenya has extended my holidays, and so I should be grateful. Like I was at 16 during the Molo ethnic clashes, when my boarding school postponed the semester until further notice because the stables were burning. That u-turn on the way to the airport was every student's dream come true.
But now I'm just p#%&ed off. Not that I don't find both candidates creepy. But somehow I just think people should get to choose their own leaders. Ordinary Kenyans have gone to the polls to say who they trust to make decisions about their country, and with all this noise nobody can hear what they said or even seems to care. BBC World Service, the best of the mediocrity that passes for international news, talks of Mwal Kibaki and Moi Kibaki, Kah-bera slums, calls the party who won the parliamentary majority for 'the opposition', and mixes Luo with Kalenjin with Kikuyu as they tell the world what is happening. Election observers can't quite sink to the level of denying the blatant rigging on both sides by rubber-stamping it 'free & fair', but what the heck, who do they think they're fooling? The international community doesn't give a shit about democracy in Africa. Given the choice between stability and people getting to choose their own government... My bet is everyone will stand way back until either Kibaki's forces have either teargassed, shot or beaten people off the streets (ie delivered stability) or until some deal has been brokered between the 2 factions. And that, not the preferences of the ordinary people whose country it actually is, will decide who gets to pillage the coffers next.
Hurrah democracy. Bravo the Free World. And all the other Cold War slogans.
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