Happy New Year listers,
I am just emerging from my new year break with family to find all your various comments ignited by the irrepressible Dr. Ndemo. Many diverse and cogent points have been made which would require several pages to respond to credibly. Rather than jump straight into it and take one position or the other on the various strains of debate, I would like to address the framing issue - the organising principles upon which the various positions are taken.
Taking the age-old debate about more or less government which is where the PS started us off, perhaps that is where we need to head and move away from a system of politics whose organizing principle is mere ethnicity.
I would recommend for those who have not watched the documentary or read the book, “Commanding Heights” which is compelling narration of the manner in which the global agenda was set throughout the 20th century. The great protagonists being John Maynard Keynes (for government intervention and spending to create jobs) and Frederick Hayek (for government getting out of the way and merely facilitating private business). Indeed Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were “students” of Hayek whose theories were consigned to the political wilderness from 1945 to 1978 by Keynes. With Thatcher coming to power in 1979 and Reagan in 1981 ably aided by Milton Freedman’s Chicago school on free markets, it was (and has largely remained) the Hayek era! Now with the global financial crises of the last four years (the housing market collapse in the US and the Euro crisis), Hayek is now back-pedalling.
I firmly agree with Dr. Ndemo that we must agree on what political and economic system we would like to espouse in Kenya and be deliberate about it. As we move into the new constitutional dispensation, it will be critical that we develop organizing political and economic principles of governance that must rise above and overcome ethnicity or greed for its own sake. Devolution under the right governance system will likely propel Kenya to the next level but if callously implemented also has the capacity to balkanize the nation. In voting for the new constitution, Kenyans chose two equally vital political and socio-economic organizing principles – the one to decentralize and devolve implementation and execution and the other to unify under one nation and centralize policy making and standards (and in the case of the especially crucial areas of security and education to centralize even the implementation).
A constitution does not exist for its own sake, rather it is a means to an end. “Wanjiku” struggled to see the constitution put in place not for political ends but in order that her life would improve. Indeed the constitution spells out the promise of the constitution for “Wanjiku” in several articles and chapters but especially in chapter 4 – The Bill of Rights! It is the fulfillment of that promise that Vision 2030 seeks to ensure. If the very bold and ambitious promises made in the constitution are to be met, then a very robust and equally ambitious national development plan must be mooted and executed. This is what Vision 2030 is all about and this is also why I feel that the time has come to take Vision 2030 to the people through their representatives – parliament!
What I am intimating is that Vision 2030 must be owned by the people and the necessary processes of ensuring that via their representatives are under way. However that is just process, there must be life breathed into the process of ownership. Educated and enlightened people such as those on Kictanet must take the lead in that ownership by engaging in every facet of the nation’s national development strategy. This engagement must be real – i.e. both as citizens holding their leadership to account as well as practitioners (e.g. private sector actors seeking to excel in their respective fields and therefore proactively working to ensure the necessary enabling conditions are in place).
Going back to my contention about the need for a set of organizing principles for our politics and economics to overcome crass ethnicity and greed run amock, I hearken back to Hayek versus Keynes (the debate on more or less government and the role of the private sector) and add to it Hamilton versus Jefferson. At the beginning of the American experiment, the US chose a federal constitution (much stronger than our devolution – even the court and internal security systems are decentralized in the US and the principle of subsidiarity to the states applies contrasted to our system of subsidiarity to the national government). And yet Alexander Hamilton (first Treasury Secretary) advocated for a strong central authority while Thomas Jefferson (author of the declaration of independence and later third president of the US) advocated for more power to the states. Hamilton created the Federal Reserve (or Central Bank which thrives to this day) and both created factions to engage in robust political discourse that resulted in the strong political parties we have today in the US which roughly continue the debate. Along the way (in addition to the strong centre versus strong states debate) came the debate on more or less government. The former is what I refer to as Hamilton vs Jefferson and the latter Keynes vs Hayek. America is a better place because politics has been focused around debating these different sets of organizing political and economic principles, with the pendulum swinging one way or the other and in the process, strong institutions of governance and economic management and growth becoming entrenched.
Is it feasible as we go into the new political dispensation that we could have our own Hamilton vs Jefferson and Keynes vs Hayek debate around the most efficient strategy by which to achieve Vision 2030 in a devolved system and eschew destructive ethnicity? Once we are agreed on a set of organizing principles, then it is easier to go into the nitty gritty of particular debates about more or less government, etc without the many philosophical inconsistencies I see articulated in adhoc debates on different issues.
Regards,
Mugo
Regards