If someone has already invented the wheel, or made a better one, why reinvent it? This Kenya Forum sermon takes as its reading Macharia Gaitho’s excellent article in today’s Daily Nation – ‘It’s not clear just what Cord hoped to achieve at the cacophonous rally’ – which is a damning indictment of both the Jubilee government and Cord in opposition.

Machario Gaitha is a respected columnist and Chairman of the Kenya Editors Guild, a man who is quite prepared to lay into Jubliee’s leaders (for example, over the threat to media freedom in Kenya) just as he has now fired a salvo at the leaders of Cord.

CONFUSION AT UHURU PARK

Writing about Raila Odinga’s homecoming rally in Uhuru Park at the weekend, Gaitho’s main criticism is that with the Jubilee government so open to criticism the opposition failed to offer a coherent alternative and instead speeches by Cord leaders, not aided by what he called the ‘sheer chaos and disorganization’ of the rally, resorted once again to rabble rousing and ‘working up the crowd’ and delivering a message that ‘was confusing, disjointed and uncoordinated’.

UHURUTO ‘FALTERING’

What with poverty, unemployment, ‘rampant insecurity’, tourists fleeing the country, appointment by tribe, the Anglo-leasing payments scandal and much else besides, Gaitho accused the ‘UhuRuto administration’ of ‘faltering and desperately looking around for external scapegoats, in good old one-party regime style inciting the people against imagined enemies’. He’s quite right, says the Kenya Forum.

CORD OPPOSITION ‘FLAILING AIMLESSLY’

The problem, or just one of the many problems facing Kenya, is that in Gaitho’s words, ‘Instead of the opposition taking advantage of Jubilee failings by offering alternative policy prescriptions, it is flailing out aimlessly’.

‘Those who paid attention to the Uhuru Park rally’, wrote Gaitho, ‘must have left unsure whether the opposition is calling for mass action – riots and demonstrations – as a means of toppling the government; preparing ground for a legitimate stab for power come the next elections; or demanding a place at the eating trough’.

NATIONAL DIALOGUE?

So what does that leave us with? Macharia Gaitho suggests that all the Uhuru Park rally leaves us with is Cord’s demand for a national dialogue but as he also points out it is difficult to see ‘how Cord expects to play a part in helping realize the Jubilee election manifesto’.

Mr Gaitho’s article is quite rightly critical of both Kenya’s government and opposition. Both are dis-coordinated and are failing to address the vital and pressing issues of the day. Meanwhile Kenyans suffer.

Read it and weep.