2014 ODM PARTY ELECTIONS THE YOUTH CHANGE POLITICS

PLEASE DONT TELL ME YOU ARE YOUNG. SHOW ME THAT YOU ARE A GREAT LEADER Kiboyye Okoth-Yogo It has been reported in the media that some youthful ODM politicians are asserting the irrelevance of the old guards. They think the older members should give way to the younger members in party leadership. Now youth change is one of those things that are often talked of in Kenya. Needless to say that youth change is as obvious as death. When older people die off, younger people take over. In many societies there is a tendency to equate longevity with experience and youthfulness with freshness. These in my opinion are beside the point. A system where people claim political leadership entitlement as a matter of age is founded on fuzzy political and management science. I will use intellectual leadership in Universities as an example. This is for the simple reason that I have spent much my life time in universities. The University society is what I now know best. I also believe this is one of the places where people make profound assertions of intellect. You walk one minute on an academic avenue and encounter this extremely brilliant don who is barely 30. He is world renowned in his area of expertise. He is well research and published. He has made momentous technical contributions that have changed structures, processes and lives in crucial ways. He is consulted by who is who in government and the private sector.He is a proven hand despite his young age. You make another turn and encounter this old professor in his eighties who is literally shaking as he strides. However the moment he express himself, you realize he is still the leader of current thinking in his area of expertise. He has been at it for the last sixty years. Take for example Professor Bathuel Ogot. In the late fifties he was already a leader in the study of African History. He is one of the greats who mainstreamed the use of oral tradition as an approach of studying history. The last time I met him he was still the Chancellor of Moi University. The man can come out in various strains of might but never condescension. As a scholar he remains the ever fresh thinker, continuously generating great ideas, and humble to the tilt. His attempts at contextualizing global historiography-as that which is not complete without the African mould, challenging the positions held by great western scholars like Arnold Toynbee who bellied the obnoxious tabula rasa conception of the African- is definitely ground breaking. He remains fresh in as far as confirming the place of an African identity and presence, whether in history, anthropology, music, politics, academia, entrepreneurship.is concerned. In his eighties he still managed to pen these great ideas in his leading works-History as Destiny and History as Knowledge; Who if anyone owns the Past? A History of the Luo Speaking Peoples of Eastern

Africa, not to mention his biography which he has since revised. There are many others of his works I have not mentioned. He did this while serving Moi University as a Chancellor and Maseno University as Professor Emeritus. I am not referring to those professors who kill any fresh initiative in their areas of expertise by failing the accommodation of alternative thinking test and using their proven might to bring fresh ideas down. I am talking of those old greats who still open themselves to self improvement and peer appraisal. Take another turn then you will meet this young don in his twenties and thirties whose claim to greatness is presentations of largely plagiarized work and a lot of media hype and personal marketing which helps in blurring his wobbly value. Take another corner then you encounter this old professor in this eighties and whose claim to academic greatness is sycophancy, meticulous loyalty to his seniors ideas, marched with legendry political correctness and prodigidious patience over time. Talk of people and ideas. You can apply the same model to enterprises, SMEs or blue-chip companies, bureaucracies, political parties, among others and you realize that idea generation for impacting presence in management renewal and the human personality adhere to analogous patterns even in different organizational and cultural environments. Organizations require great minds, hearts and management prowess to weather the tide of complexities which is the world of societies. Political organizations are just like any other. They ought to do with the best living human resource they can harness. Party revitalization is about freshness, novelty and political significance of ideas, moments and persona, not age. Plus democracy must remain the balancing of winning numbers, winning ideology, winning ethics and sheer justice in its various expressions- intragenerational equity, distributive, restorative... When any of these is subjected to unnecessary abrasiveness then achieving the necessary linier progression that ought to be curved at the expense of debilitating complexities inherent in party politics is negated. Disruption of linear progression in momentum should only be allowed to establish more strategic progressions. The problem with ODM has never been its lack of youthfulness or effective regional representation. It remains two things. Firstly, the party lacks morality in strategizing for effective party platform. A platform that is so compelling so much so that party members voluntarily, relentlessly and radically pursue them. Now, it is impossible to have every party member think the same way. However, an open and honest party philosophy helps in establishing transparent and accountable political, legal and ethical boundaries. Secondly, lack of loyalty, let alone fierce fidelity, in following on the few strategies that are in place. What am I saying? Look at some of the parties the world over. They sell unmitigated free enterprise as party ideology- really greed. They are loyal to greed ideology and they are not apologetic. Some parties sell the ethnocentric ideology, and they remain loyal to it. If ODM claims to represent reforms, they must sleep

reforms, dream reforms and wake up reforms. When the party says all the good things but depicts the converse- greed, organized chaos as party nominations, plain inertia in projecting the party as either government or alternative government, M. Pigs running riot with national coffers, unfounded belligerence to constitutional organs that backstop devolution which is one of the cornerstones of reforms in Kenya, lazy portrayal of reform agenda as the party hallmark, intolerance for debate. then they really look like rotten roses. Now to have some young men and women claim freshness after having been together with the oldies in hijacking the party nominations through sheer corruption, fraud and power of violence, enforcing their ineffective cronies, boyfriends and girlfriends in the counties where they control, rat racing for county tenders..is to say the list an abuse of the aptitude of the party members.

ODM party must be founded on clear ideology. Does the party aspire for reform purity or not? To be or not to be, for that is the question. ______________________________________________________________________________