Just Because We Can! – Impunity Reloaded

When Obama ran for the presidency of the US, he had a campaign slogan – Yes We Can! It took the world by storm and the layman in me tells me this was because it was so simple and one everybody could relate to. I don’t know how much of the slogan helped him clinch the seat but it sure felt good to say, “Yes we can!”

Coming back to Kenya, there is a culture I have observed of people doing unnecessary, and sometimes out rightly stupid things just because they can. Drivers overlap and block each other on the road just because they can. People jump queues in banks and other public places just because they can. Others bribe Government officials to fast track processes, not because they are in any particular hurry, but just because they can. The list of things people do just because they can is endless and it is slowly but surely bringing about our collective retrogression as a country.

My dictionary tells me that impunity is exemption from punishment or freedom from the injurious consequences of an action. In layman’s terms, it means getting away with wrong doing. Kenya has always had laws even before independence. There has however been a class of people who have often felt like they are above the law. They do this either because they have money, power, or belong to the “right” tribe or family. They may also develop impunity because they know the “right” person. The expression “You’ve got to know people” may often be used on a light note but in this country, it may mean the difference between affluence and abject poverty.

I was keenly following the fiasco last week with the Langata road primary school and the then “unknown” developer. The fact that land belonging to a public school can so easily be grabbed even when everybody in authority can attest to the fact that it belongs to the school, shows the extent to which impunity has sunk us. I was wondering in my insignificant layman’s mind why it took a group of activists and school children to inhale some tear gas for the wheels of justice to slowly grind into action. I hate to imagine what would have happened to that land if the children had not created a media sensation when they did.

When I saw the video of honourable members of parliament flexing their legislative muscles at Gilgil, I thought it reeked of impunity of the highest order. Honourable Keter was invoking some big names in the hope that the officer could be intimidated to do whatever it was that he wanted him to do. He further trashed the law threatening to reverse it because, as he put it, he was government. Three things came to mind;    

1. Parliament is not the full Government; it is only a third of Government. It can only make the law; it cannot interpret or implement it. Keter talked as if he was in the Executive, the arm of Government that implements the law. 
2.   There is such a thing as Conflict of Interest. Keter had gone there to get the truck of his fellow MP released. Even as a layman, I know he should not have tried to use parliamentary privilege outside parliament, to secure its release. He was there as a client of the weighbridge, not the boss. 
3.     If the truck had been detained due to lack of compliance to requirements, then the MP had no moral authority to claim he was trying to expose corruption. Trying to use the names of senior members of the executive to secure its release was corruption in itself.

I have been looking and listening to various leaders and politicians and it is apparent that many of them would want impunity to be legalised. The way they try to discredit law and order shows that they would rather have a free for all where only the strong survive. This is one country where impunity is admired and even rewarded. I don’t know which side you will follow, but as for me and my fellow laymen, we will fight impunity even if we might lose – Just because we can!

P.S. Before we passed the new constitution, the Government did not have three arms, it had one arm and three fingers.