Kenya: Why Uhuru Won't Offer a Solution to Teachers Strike
OPINION
Kenya Nation
By Otieno Otieno
It is understandable that many Kenyans should feel so frustrated at how President Uhuru Kenyatta's administration has mishandled the ongoing labour dispute with teachers.
In trying to wear out teachers through long-drawn court battles, threats of withheld salaries and even closure of schools, the government has only succeeded in punishing millions of innocent children and parents.
Even more disturbing is the casualness with which the government has approached the matter - a business-as-usual attitude suggesting little official regard for the role education plays in society.
An educated population remains the single-most important resource for a country like ours, and the school children are its future.
For the majority of poor households in rural areas and urban slums who rely on public schools, educating one or more of their children is their best bet out of poverty.
Indeed given a chance between opening a school in the neighbourhood and cutting a road through it, most communities would opt for the former.
GROSS DERELICTION
A government official who wakes up one morning and proceeds to declare all schools closed without batting an eyelid should therefore have his or her head checked.
A president who strolls to his plane and flies out to New York to lobby for the personal freedom of his deputy from the International Criminal Court, leaving behind the worst public education crisis at home in recent times, is guilty of gross dereliction of duty.
Yet this isn't anything Kenyans haven't seen before. If there is anything one can't accuse President Kenyatta and his Jubilee government of it is providing solutions to big problems that don't involve the usual ethnic and party politics.
You look through each of the major challenges the administration has had to deal with in past two and a half years, and a clear pattern emerges in which a template strategy of ethnic mobilisation or whipping of party troops in Parliament or county governments has been deployed with varying results.
UNFAMILIAR FOE
The controversial Eurobond was pushed through Parliament on the back of the ruling coalition's tyranny of numbers despite public protests against questionable payments to the so-called Anglo Leasing ghosts.
In contrast, the Uhuru administration has looked badly out of depth or clueless in situations where the ethnic card is irrelevant or the battleground has shifted away from the political arena.
The litany of national security failures and the signature projects like the schools laptops bogged down in the courts over tender wars speak volumes about the administration's ability to tackle complex governance and policy matters.
In teachers, the administration has found itself up against an unfamiliar foe - enlightened about their interests and fiercely loyal to their well-organised unions, not tribes or political parties.
Kenyans must be asking too much of Mr Kenyatta and his government to provide a solution.
Kenya Nation
By Otieno Otieno
It is understandable that many Kenyans should feel so frustrated at how President Uhuru Kenyatta's administration has mishandled the ongoing labour dispute with teachers.
In trying to wear out teachers through long-drawn court battles, threats of withheld salaries and even closure of schools, the government has only succeeded in punishing millions of innocent children and parents.
Even more disturbing is the casualness with which the government has approached the matter - a business-as-usual attitude suggesting little official regard for the role education plays in society.
An educated population remains the single-most important resource for a country like ours, and the school children are its future.
For the majority of poor households in rural areas and urban slums who rely on public schools, educating one or more of their children is their best bet out of poverty.
Indeed given a chance between opening a school in the neighbourhood and cutting a road through it, most communities would opt for the former.
GROSS DERELICTION
A government official who wakes up one morning and proceeds to declare all schools closed without batting an eyelid should therefore have his or her head checked.
A president who strolls to his plane and flies out to New York to lobby for the personal freedom of his deputy from the International Criminal Court, leaving behind the worst public education crisis at home in recent times, is guilty of gross dereliction of duty.
Yet this isn't anything Kenyans haven't seen before. If there is anything one can't accuse President Kenyatta and his Jubilee government of it is providing solutions to big problems that don't involve the usual ethnic and party politics.
You look through each of the major challenges the administration has had to deal with in past two and a half years, and a clear pattern emerges in which a template strategy of ethnic mobilisation or whipping of party troops in Parliament or county governments has been deployed with varying results.
UNFAMILIAR FOE
The controversial Eurobond was pushed through Parliament on the back of the ruling coalition's tyranny of numbers despite public protests against questionable payments to the so-called Anglo Leasing ghosts.
In contrast, the Uhuru administration has looked badly out of depth or clueless in situations where the ethnic card is irrelevant or the battleground has shifted away from the political arena.
The litany of national security failures and the signature projects like the schools laptops bogged down in the courts over tender wars speak volumes about the administration's ability to tackle complex governance and policy matters.
In teachers, the administration has found itself up against an unfamiliar foe - enlightened about their interests and fiercely loyal to their well-organised unions, not tribes or political parties.
Kenyans must be asking too much of Mr Kenyatta and his government to provide a solution.
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