Reading the Sunday Nation and The Sunday Standard newspapers today (23.08.2026), side by side, one is struck by something increasingly troubling about the philosophy of government now revealing itself from the very summit of the Kenyan State. It is not merely what President William Ruto says about Uhuru Kenyatta, nor merely what Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen says about citizens who attend political meetings despite warnings of possible violence. It is the common philosophy underneath both statements that should concern us. Read the headlines, listen carefully to the words, place the propositions beside each other, and an extraordinary doctrine begins to emerge: the citizen, the opposition politician, even the retired President, appears to enjoy freedom only for as long as he exercises it in a manner agreeable to those presently holding power. That is a very peculiar understanding of a constitutional republic. And because Scripture reminds us that “where the word of a king is, there is power” (Ecclesiastes 8:4), we should never treat casually the philosophy revealed by words proceeding from those entrusted with the highest instruments of State authority.
President Ruto now complains that his predecessor had the opportunity to become a “statesman” and “rise above politics,” but instead “chose to climb down and become an opposition leader.” There is almost enough constitutional philosophy packed into those few words to occupy a semester. Apparently, according to this emerging doctrine, retirement from the presidency should somehow include retirement from political opinion. A former President may advise, unite, bless national visions and perhaps sit decorously beneath an acacia tree dispensing elder wisdom, but should he organise politically against the incumbent, he has somehow “climbed down.” Yet Uhuru Kenyatta handed over the instruments of State in 2022. He did not hand over his citizenship. He surrendered the presidency, not his freedom of association, expression or political choice. Scripture’s conception of justice is particularly inconvenient to adjustable political standards: “Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 20:10). What is legitimate political freedom when exercised by one man cannot mysteriously become political impropriety merely because the same freedom is subsequently exercised against him.
The irony becomes almost theatrical when history enters the room. William Ruto himself spent the latter years of the Jubilee administration as Deputy President while mounting what became, in substance, a formidable political rebellion against the succession preferences of the President under whom he served. He ultimately defeated the candidate supported by Uhuru Kenyatta and became President. So we are being invited to contemplate a wonderfully elastic political theorem: opposing the President while you are his Deputy President can constitute legitimate political independence, but opposing the President after you have retired completely from government may amount to descending from statesmanship. One suspects that this theorem works particularly beautifully when one happens to be the President. Yet Christ supplies a measuring instrument from which political convenience cannot escape: “with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” (Matthew 7:2). If vigorous political independence was legitimate when exercised against Uhuru, the same measure must surely survive when exercised against Ruto.
But then comes the Interior Cabinet Secretary, and suddenly what might have looked like an isolated presidential irritation begins to resemble something more philosophically coherent. Murkomen has rejected the proposition that Kenya has a “goons crisis.” More revealingly, in the clip circulating publicly, his reasoning regarding potentially violent political meetings essentially asks: if you know somebody has planned violence, and the police have warned you, why are you going there? On the surface, that may be presented as practical advice. At the level of constitutional government, however, it raises an alarming question: since when did the State’s inability to guarantee security become the citizen’s obligation to surrender the activity requiring protection? Romans 13:3–4 places the sword of legitimate civil authority in a very particular direction. The ruler is supposed to be “a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” The biblical architecture is therefore wonderfully straightforward: the coercive power of government should make the wrongdoer apprehensive. It should not make the law-abiding citizen progressively apprehensive about exercising lawful freedom.
Think about the inversion. If criminals threaten a political meeting, the first questions of a properly ordered State should be: Who are these criminals? Who organised them? Who financed them? Who armed them? Why have they not been arrested? And how will the State secure the meeting so lawful citizens may exercise their rights? The question should not principally become: Why did the citizens go there? Otherwise we have discovered a wonderfully inexpensive method of maintaining public order. No need to defeat violent gangs; simply advise their prospective victims to remain indoors. No need to secure political meetings; merely wonder aloud why anybody attended them. Extend that philosophy far enough and the burglar eventually acquires a remarkable constitutional advantage: instead of asking why he broke into your house, government may inquire why you possessed a house capable of being burgled. Isaiah 1:17 gives authority a rather different assignment: “seek judgement, relieve the oppressed.” Notice the direction of responsibility. The oppressed must be relieved of oppression, not trained to organise their lives around the convenience of the oppressor.
That is precisely why the conjunction of these two episodes deserves attention. From the President comes a conception of political harmony in which the retired President achieves the higher estate of “statesmanship” by declining to organise against the incumbent. From the minister constitutionally responsible for internal security comes reasoning capable of shifting attention from those threatening lawful political activity towards the judgement of those who nevertheless exercise it. Different subjects, different circumstances, different speakers, certainly. But listen to the underlying music and one hears an unsettlingly similar note: peace seems increasingly to mean that everyone else should adjust his behaviour around power and disorder rather than power being compelled to protect the space in which disagreement occurs. Yet Psalm 82:3–4 addresses those entrusted with authority in precisely the opposite direction: “Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.” Not rid the lawful citizen out of the place where the wicked threatens him. Rid the citizen out of the hand of the wicked. The distinction is enormous.
That is not a small philosophical problem. Democracy is not the absence of opposition. Security is not the absence of citizens from places where criminals might attack them. National unity is not achieved when political competitors become agreeable to the incumbent. And statesmanship cannot possibly mean political retirement for one’s opponents while energetic political mobilisation remains entirely respectable for oneself. A republic worthy of the name requires precisely the opposite mentality: I may profoundly dislike what you are doing, I may campaign ferociously to defeat you, but the State entrusted to me will protect your right to do it lawfully. That is the difficult discipline separating constitutional authority from personalised power. Proverbs 21:3 says that “to do justice and judgement is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.” Government is ultimately measured not merely by its proclamations, ceremonies or magnificent development visions, but by whether justice operates when its beneficiary happens to be politically inconvenient.
Indeed, the Presidency ought to be the safest place in Kenya from which to hear political criticism because the President possesses more constitutional power than any critic. The Interior Ministry ought to be the last institution asking citizens why they exercised lawful freedoms in dangerous circumstances because its very reason for possessing police officers, intelligence systems, vehicles, weapons, budgets and coercive authority is to make the exercise of lawful freedom possible. Government does not receive those enormous instruments merely to describe danger to us. We already possess eyes. It receives them to confront those who manufacture the danger. Scripture puts the governmental duty with breathtaking economy: “Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked” (Psalm 82:4). The police should therefore complicate the life of the goon, not simplify his political objective by persuading everybody he threatens to disappear.
And therein lies the disturbing mindset we must resist, regardless of who occupies State House. The governed must never gradually be conditioned to organise their freedoms around the comfort of the governors. The constitutional arrangement runs the other way around. Government must organise its enormous power around the freedoms of the governed. Opposition is not an unfortunate malfunction of democracy. Opposition is democracy breathing. Political meetings are not privileges extended by benevolent rulers. Criticism is not ingratitude. And a former President does not become constitutionally radioactive merely because he decides that his preferred successor is somebody other than the incumbent. Proverbs 28:16 warns that “the prince that wanteth understanding is also a great oppressor.” The danger in government therefore begins long before oppression becomes spectacular. It begins with a defective understanding of what authority is for.
This is why governing philosophy matters enormously. Ideas at the summit of government do not remain philosophical abstractions for very long. They become assumptions. Assumptions become instructions. Instructions become administrative habits. Administrative habits become institutional culture. And institutional culture eventually becomes the lived experience of ordinary citizens. Scripture understands this downward movement from ruler to institution with frightening clarity: “If a ruler hearken to lies, all his servants are wicked” (Proverbs 29:12). What settles in the mind at the top eventually finds hands and feet lower down. That is why a nation must interrogate the philosophy of its rulers before that philosophy acquires uniforms, vehicles, budgets, commands and institutional habits.
Kenya therefore needs something much deeper at the helm of the State than clever political manoeuvring. It needs a philosophy of government sufficiently confident to tolerate contradiction, sufficiently democratic to protect dissent, sufficiently just to apply the same measure to friend and opponent, and sufficiently secure in its authority that it does not mistake disagreement for disloyalty. “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn” (Proverbs 29:2). The enduring test of authority is not how enthusiastically it is applauded by friends, but how justly it treats those who refuse to applaud. Indeed, the biblical qualification for the ruler is startlingly simple and profoundly demanding: “He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God” (2 Samuel 23:3). Not merely clever. Not merely powerful. Not merely electorally formidable. Just.
Perhaps the simplest democratic test is therefore this. If Uhuru wants to oppose Ruto, let him oppose him. If Gachagua wants to hold a meeting, let him hold it. If Kalonzo wants to campaign, let him campaign. If Matiang’i wants the presidency, let him seek it. If citizens want to listen, let them listen. Then let William Ruto campaign, persuade, organise, defend his record and seek another mandate. Let ideas collide. Let records be examined. Let competing visions be tested. Let every politician make his case, and then let the Kenyan voter deliver the verdict. Proverbs 18:17 observes that “he that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him.” Opposition performs precisely that searching function in a democracy. It interrogates power. It exposes contradictions. It presents alternatives. The ballot box then decides who persuaded the country.
The State’s job is therefore not to determine who should conveniently disappear from the political field. Its job is to ensure that every lawful contestant reaches that field alive, free and unafraid. Nor should political violence ever acquire the grotesque reward of regulating constitutional freedom. The more determined the goon becomes, the more determined lawful authority must become to protect the threatened citizen. Otherwise the political lesson becomes catastrophic: frighten people sufficiently and their freedoms will retreat before you. Yet Scripture commands rulers to “judge righteously” (Proverbs 31:9), not to redistribute the inconvenience of wickedness onto those threatened by it.
And because political power is transient, those presently exercising it should perhaps remember another biblical reality: “For God shall bring every work into judgement, with every secret thing” (Ecclesiastes 12:14). Today’s President eventually becomes a former President. Today’s Cabinet Secretary eventually becomes a private citizen. Today’s opposition leader may become tomorrow’s President, and, with Kenya’s extraordinary political chemistry, today’s mortal enemy may even become tomorrow morning’s coalition partner. That is why principles must survive personalities. The protection we defend for Uhuru today is the protection Ruto himself may require tomorrow. The political space defended for Gachagua today may one day shelter somebody presently sitting comfortably inside government. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). Nations, institutions and rulers are not exempt from the principle.
Because once a government begins thinking that political tranquillity is best achieved by opponents becoming quieter, citizens becoming more cautious, and victims becoming more responsible for avoiding those who threaten them, we should stop laughing for a moment. We are no longer discussing merely unfortunate turns of phrase. We are discussing the philosophy by which power understands itself. And no republic should ever be casual about the philosophy residing at the helm of the nation.
For the final biblical measuring rod is not mysterious: “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 14:34). Kenya will not ultimately be strengthened by making opposition harmless, dissent timid or citizens afraid to occupy lawful political spaces. It will be strengthened when authority is strong enough to restrain wrongdoing yet restrained enough to tolerate disagreement; when the ruler is confident enough to hear criticism; when the police make the goon afraid rather than the citizen; and when political power remembers that it is stewardship rather than ownership. For government does not exist to make freedom comfortable for those who govern. It exists to make freedom safe for those who do not. And any philosophy at the helm that begins reversing those two propositions deserves to be examined, challenged, and resisted while there is still abundant freedom to do so.
A DANGEROUS PHILOSOPHY AT THE HELM
A Biblical and Constitutional Reflection on Power, Dissent and the Duty of the State
