EDITORIAL: Plans to block State House, Bunge ill-advised

President William Ruto is a soapbox genius.

His gripping deliveries and attention to detail have become the subject of amusing national debate and are now generally considered a new bench mark for politicians keen to carry the public along.

But there is a disturbing disconnect when it comes to responses to national challenges.

Take the case of the Gen Z protests, obviously, a right, enshrined in our supreme law.

In the wisdom of Kenya Kwanza’s masterminds, instead of treating the protests as feedback, they have concocted a plan to make Parliament and State House, key symbols of our fledgling democracy, as impregnable forts that must be cut off from the very public who pay and own the institutions.

These are two momentous symbols of government and which must remain the venues where the public must express opprobrium when and if the occasion demands.

Democracy, the Kenyan version, is a contact sport and channels must never be shut off from the public, because it is morally and legally untenable. Crafting law with a myopic and short-term view is obviously counterproductive.

The government will in essence treat the symptoms instead of treating the disease.

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Quote of the day: “All the love in the world is useless when there is a total lack of understanding.”

—The novelist and writer Frantz Kafka from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian and Czech was born on July 3, 1883