Uhuru is young enough to go for another term

Uhuru Kenyatta’s final presidential term will come to an end soon. Unfortunately, the law does not allow him a third term. I say ‘unfortunately’ because Mr Kenyatta’s experience and reasonableness will remain essential to the unity and purpose of the nation-in-the-making called Kenya.

Yet, mentally and physically speaking, Uhuru will still be energetic enough to continue to serve this country productively and with dedication in some other essential national capacity.

EMPOWERING

Having served Kenyans as head of state for many years, this son of Jomo — our founding father — will enjoy greater knowledge and experience than any other Kenyan individual in the field of governing and defending a nation.

That is why my advice would remain for lawmakers to invent some constitutionally defensible method by which to enable the young man of Gatundu to clinch even a third term. Yes, I am familiar with the general human fear against empowering any individual for such a long time.

SUCCESSORS

Moreover, I have nothing in particular against such of Uhuru Kenyatta’s many potential successors as William Samoei Ruto and Raila Amolo Odinga. One of the points to make here is that both are still young enough to afford all the time that it might require for them to wait in the wings.

Moreover, patience pays. Patience offers you the time and experience to weigh your circumstances more objectively and, therefore, with greater accuracy than otherwise to organise your arrival more triumphantly and with colours that are more attractive.

PATIENCE

Mr Odinga will require extraordinarily thoughtful patience because his mass support belongs to a single ethnic community whose power belongs only to its numerical size, but which is notorious for extreme political excitability of the kind that can only weaken you.

Luo excitability is what most of Kenya’s other communities appear to fear the most against an individual belonging to my community ever becoming the president.

ARROGANCE

I refer, in particular, to the readiness and extraordinary arrogance with which any Luo mass tends to plunge into thoughtless violence of the kind most likely to prove counter-productive because most forms of such chest-thumping heroics are not consequences of maturity and proper and adequate mental organisation.

RESPECTABILITY

My community will begin to gain national inter-ethnic respectability, trust and support only when the Luo elite begins to compose itself into calm purposefulness. As a Luo leader, history will applaud you by the manner in which you behave, especially in the tactical process by which you seek to organise the many ethnic and racial peoples of Kenya into a modern instrument.

Any national movement led by an ethnic individual may begin to gain and enjoy inter-ethnic and inter-national respectability and support — especially in the field of politics — only when the given party’s organisers and followers have begun to behave with purpose and colour.

EXCITABLE

Politically, my community is notoriously excitable. It will begin to enjoy inter-ethnic trust and respectability only when the Luo begin to behave with calm, with class, with respectability and with purpose even in the face of such excitative inter-ethnic adversities as unsuccessful presidential elections.

Unfortunately, in most former European colonies, politics remains ethnic in form and content and in its representative organisation, most especially during such particularly emotive mass gatherings as rallies. When will any ethnic or racial Kenyan begin to feel at home among a company dominated by a different ethnic or racial group?

Mr Ochieng is a veteran journalist.