NEVER COMBINE WEALTH WITH POWER

WEALTH AND POWER

De: TARCISIO F. B. GICHUNGE

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

By Gichunge WA M’Thirua

In the whole world, leaders sacrifice their lives to serve their communities and societies. Leadership is about sacrifice to serve people and not to accumulate wealth. Leadership is not about accumulating wealth when sharing the resources to the communities. Leadership is about dispensing services to the people. It is about fairness and justice to the people.

Long ago, politicians never directly shared the resources to their communities. Instead, Ministers of the ruling Government used to serve communities across their Ministries through responsibilities entrusted to them by the Head of Government who had appointed them. That is when the functions of the State Government were centralized. At the time, there were many disadvantages and advantages in the system.

The centralized Government enjoyed accusation of not being fair to those who claimed marginalization by the Central Government. Devolution is a creature of those claims of marginalization. However, Devolution brought one major evil in its making. The evil is that of “any Tom, Dick, and Harry could be a leader of his/her community.” “Busy bodies” found their way into leadership in the devolved Governments in Counties.
Colonialists had some confidence that Kenyans were mature to rule themselves. That confidence emanated from the fact that a few Kenyans were ready to lead others after their independence.

The main tool of Kenya’s independence was their Independence Constitution of 1963. After several amendments, then most Kenyans realized of its existence. People started to claim that certain provisions of the constitution stood infringed through several amendments that had crippled it. Many people had never heard of it or even seen it. After immense and massive amendments, through a very long process a new Constitution promulgated on 27th, August 2010 when many Kenyans became aware of its contents and became interested in it as a tool for their rights.

For example, who would be a judge when “Separation of Powers collided?” In Kenya today, we have witnessed the Executive defying orders of the Judiciary and vise versa. In that case, who should shout at them to respect the other? Now citizens suffer anarchism and may hem that result out of their disorder and disrespect for each other. Under normal circumstances, there should be a provision in the Constitution to deter the two from interfering with each other. The Constitution is silent of that vacuum.

This book has all the details that citizens would want to know about the responsibilities of their leaders and what leaders would want from the voters who at times demand handouts in order to vote for them, which is very wrong. Citizens must know that it is their right to vote freely and without demanding anything from the candidates during elections visa-vise free service from their leaders.

It is in voting right, freely, fairly, and objectively that the bright future of the citizens lie in any country that embraces democracy and while it does practice the rule of law. Kenyans are lucky to be in such a country. Kenyans are a resilient people who tolerate the errors of their leaders patiently and tolerantly.
Simply, never elect a wealthy person because of his wealth; if he combines his wealth with power, he might destroy the community because wealth and power are two dangerous combinations.