Western Kenya, precisely the Luhyia Community and other parts of Kenya that have not produced any President for Kenya should stop whining and lamenting that because the Kikuyu community has produced two Presidents and the Kalenjin one President since independence therefore those two communities should not present Presidential candidates but that instead those communities should as it were stay out of the Presidential race in the forthcoming general elections. 

That call, that thinking, mindset is plainly myopic and is contrary to the Constitution of Kenya 2012 which guarantees any person who is a Kenyan citizen of over 18 years meets the Constitutional thresholds of Chapter Six and Nine on leadership and integrity and the executive is regardless of tribe or gender entitled to present himself or herself as a Presidential candidate and for the people of Kenya to make the choice.

The opportunity to have engineered the Presidency to rotate among the tribes of Kenya or the regions came and went in the crafting of the Constitution of Kenya 2010 and let nobody be heard to peddle the lie that the Presidency should during this forthcoming general election be preserved for other communities of Kenya and exclude the Kikuyus and Kalenjins simply because one or two of those communities’ sons have previously or presently occupy the Office.  Those who habour anti-Kikuyu, Kalenjin political inferiority complexes must be told to shut up and re-read the Constitution of Kenya. The Kikuyu and the Kalenjin Communities have the Constitutional right like the Luhyia, Luo, Kamba and other 42 tribes of Kenya or any other tribeless citizen of Kenya to have any of its sons or daughters vie for the Presidency in every and all elections.

Let all those who purvey anti-Kikuyu and Kalenjin propaganda seeking to circumscribe those communities sons and daughters rights to seek the Presidency in the coming elections be shamed and consigned to the dust bins of incorrigible anarchists and cowards who failed to push that agenda in the Constitution of Kenya 2010 and must forever keep mute on that topic and mantra. It’s simply balderdash and the anti-thesis of democracy and the Bill of Rights in the Constitution.

Western Province, and to the point the Luhyia Community must put its own sons and daughters and as many Presidential candidates as it wishes come this forthcoming general elections.  The rider however is that the other communities like the Kalenjin and the Kikuyu and particularly its elite who have tasted the magic and honey of a President coming from their community will not just accept any Tom, Dick and Harry from Western Province and vote for him or her.  Indeed, those communities will only be seduced to consider supporting a Presidential candidate from Western Province if that candidate has the character, the depth, the solidity that convinces them that they can entrust their destiny, their lives, their properties, their hopes together with other communities of Kenya in that Presidential contender.  It is a matter of life and death.

The long and short of it is that in fact it is upto Western Province to put its act together and present one solid Presidential candidate that is acceptable to those communities about whom cowardly people whisper that they do not vote for other communities.  The tragedy is that may be those communities that have never produced a President seem to harbor extra ordinary naivity of the Presidency and what it takes to configure and work out on a candidate to be deemed sufficiently convincing across the regions as a leader to be entrusted with that office.

Western Province must urgently make up its mind that it is ready, willing and able to put forward one of its sons or daughters as a leading Presidential candidate and demonstrate by all means who that person is and unitedly rally behind him and then market him or her outside the Province.  In this game there is no sitting on the fence and it cannot be the people of outside Western Province to choose for the region who it wishes to front as its Presidential frontrunner.  Any ambivalence on this matter will be interpreted that Western Province is not ready and serious to have a stab at the 4^th Presidency of Kenya, that is wide open to all Kenyans who are eligible for it.

And why would the other communities of Kenya the Kikuyu and Kalenjin included vote for a Presidential candidate from Western Province, if the region is seen as a political tower of babel that cannot unite behind whoever it chooses to be its Presidential flag bearer.  Charity must begin at home and Western Province must in one voice present  a credible, courageous warrior capable of being accepted by other Kenyans as upto the task of being the President of 41 million Kenyans or thereabouts.

Western Province would have to work on itself, its mindset, its self belief, courage, unity of purpose and the high standards of expectation of other communities of Kenya and then put forward a candidate that will be attractive and able to compete with all and sundry in the forthcoming general elections for the Presidency.  It cannot be the business, the worry of the other communities if western wishes to continue making cowardly and doomed to fail attempts at getting the Presidency of Kenya.  Investigate the social, political and economic chemistry that can make a credible candidate from the region win and work on the same relentlessly.  Anything less is day dreaming and an illusion, a bubble that will burst before the homestretch to Election Day.

WEST FM EDITORIAL ©2012