We are sleepwalking towards a political bloodbath, and the most dreadful part is how the police watch as violence is elevated to an art.
From Ol Kalou to Homa Bay, savagery has morphed into a feature of political life while a police service, notoriously soft on crime, folds its hands and watches. There can be no doubt. Our hapless police have surrendered.
Journalists, the ever-harmless messenger, now live in fear of attack; up to 18 reporters have been assaulted in the past two months.
In Ol Kalou, photojournalists were not only beaten up, but their cameras were also confiscated and have until now not been recovered.
Our democracy is under attack. Transparency, not darkness, is the lifeblood of a robust democracy, and when journalism becomes a crime, the gangs in control of guns take charge.
When the police cannot protect the people documenting its public discourse, constitutional guarantees about the freedom of the press become just hot air.
Inspector General Douglas Kanja and his top team must come out of their slumber and treat violence for what it is—a major violation of law and order and a threat to national stability. Perpetrators must be arrested and charged. Planners and funders must be probed and exposed.
The work of the police is to preempt the mayhem, not to issue statements after people have been killed or injured.
For 2027, the writing is on the wall. There is no room for complacency. Next year could eclipse 2007 unless the police wake up and take their work seriously.
The NCIC must show teeth. Incendiary speeches by the usual empty-headed politicians masquerading as leaders must have consequences.
We cannot afford an environment where hate speech is tolerated until violence becomes inevitable.
Quote of the Day: “Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him? — French mathematician, physicist and Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal died on August 19, 1662
