It is reckless to allow a child to touch embers in your presence unless your motive is to harm it.
This advice fits well with the current activities in Mt Kenya whereby some leaders think that liberating the people from economic challenges and poverty is to jump from the frying pan to the fire.
In order to justify such a motive those leaders are not tired of mudslinging President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Unfortunately, the vices that President Uhuru is standing against is what those leaders are using to mislead the people.
It is clear that suspected perpetrators of corruption and other evils in the country are among the President’s political detractors.
Having vowed to deal the vice, the president is facing resistance from unlikely quarters.
Among the hindrances that stood in the way for Uhuru to wage the war against corruption is the political rift that occurred following a bungled 2017 presidential election.
There is no denying it that the Handshake was a turning point for this country because it accorded Uhuru the goodwill to re-define his management and administrative strategy.
A closer scrutiny of the Handshake reveals a pact tempered with socio-economic and political re-engineering.
It became apparently clear that to a greater extent Uhuru and Raila wished to sanitise politics and restore economic and social order.
Obviously, such a paradigm shift would threaten political and economic ambitions of some leaders.
Those leaders are now poisoning the minds of the people by invoking tribal and personality fears to fix Mt Kenya region.
It is comical to hear some Mt Kenya leaders telling the people that the cause of unemployment and poverty in the region is because of the unity between Uhuru and Raila.
The narrative is that Uhuru has neglected his political backyard and diverted development in regions that never voted for him in 2013 and 2017.
In retrospect, compared to other regions, Mt Kenya has received the lion’s share of development projects during Uhuru’s term in office.
Yet with this truth, some people within the Mountain are yet to appreciate what Uhuru has and is still doing for his people.
Suffice to note is that the economy is under squeeze partly due to absence of illegal money circulating in the economy after the Central Bank demoniterization exercise, the fight against corruption as well as tight budgetary and fiscal management.
The economic situation has also been worsened by the outbreak of Coronavirus pandemic, which has slowed down the world economy.
Faced with budget constraints, Uhuru’s administration is becoming easy fodder for sectoral bashing, with institutions such as the Judiciary using lack of adequate funding as scapegoat for its failures.
It is therefore crucial for the President and his team to counter misinformation and negative propaganda head on.
Uhuru’s administration must communicate factual information to the people in targeted format, especially in Mt Kenya region where development projects are ongoing despite the financial strain the economy is experiencing.
Furthermore, Uhuru must assuage fears within the mountain by increasingly taking charge of his messaging in order to convince the people that he means well for them and country.
The President must fight fire with fire and be more forceful and open about his succession agenda in order to avoid unhealthy speculations.
Fortunately, Uhuru is spoilt for choice because his detractors are a contaminated lot and what they promise is utopia.
Ultimately, Uhuru must choose between hard and soft political tackles in his political backyard.
In the circumstances, Mt Kenya region is past the soft tackle stage and the best available option is to apply uncouth but necessary tactics.
Uhuru should neither succumb to political blackmail nor surrender to the whims of economic and political saborteurs.
Doing so would allow Mt Kenya and indeed the country to move from one problem to another.
This must not be allowed to happen because Mt Kenya and the whole country deserve genuine leadership and transformative change more than ever before.
Kaunda wa Muchunku
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