Starstanley

The SOMU Score Card and Way Forward.

 Time is elapsing, days into weeks, weeks translating to months, and months ushering in a new regime. One doesn’t need rocket science intelligence to subscribe to the fact that less can be done as at now by the outgoing student government; holding their elapsed time in office as a benchmark. With this in mind, we can sufficiently draw a thick line between performers and their opposite counterparts. I will admit and express my satisfaction on the way some discharged their duties and mandate as required despite low expectations and mistrust at the beginning of their tenure. This is also common even in consolidated democracies. However, it must concern us deeply that by and large, some leaders have not fulfilled the full spectrum of the founding mandate of the Students’ Organization of Maseno University. Their performance was dismal and more so below the threshold. Let me withhold my stand on the implicit failure by some officials to pass the baton to younger blood. 

We need leaders as desperately as a desert sapling needs rainwater. Let’s be honest with one another. Maseno politics is an electoral democracy, but is still far from being a consolidated democracy; just like the Kenyan Political arena by extension. We need to come up with explicit ways of de-ethnicizing our politics and get back to our rooted political debate instead of always being quick to recede into our respective ethnic echo chambers. The Campus Agenda avails a worthy avenue to interrogate and evaluate the candidates seeking to hold office. 

 Leaders are elected to serve the entire student community not an assortment of ethnic kingpins. As such, any cost of misconduct is borne by all comrades. Let us refuse to surrender to the urge of enthroning demagogues lest our sovereign and independent-to-be body becomes a poisoned chalice. We need to build and maintain a political system that is responsive and can effectively deal with the myriad challenges facing the student fraternity. Response to comrades’ needs remains, in my opinion, the best metric of the much desired transformational leadership. We should not let our sovereignty crumble and rubble with one small mistake on the ballot box. The future of SOMU is bright and promising; but this will come to pass if power and authority is vested in the right individuals. I beseech you to elect individuals who demonstrate vision, flair, acumen and transformational leadership ability.
 I regard student leadership as a call of duty; the call has rung on me. 

Stanley Mutinda