A challenge to Liberal Spring Democrats. Be the leaders you want.

We elect leaders then immediately start criticizing them. This is the mystery of Kenyan politics. I suggest that Kenyans, particularly the youth do not have a clear collective description of what we want in a leader. We are interested in a person’s ideas but care less about the inherent values and principles that inform the leader's ideas and actions.

Given, leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth but as we approach 2012, we must make an attempt to agree on some basics so that we don’t repeat the circus.

Because politics always is about competing forces or ideas, it is typical to assume that leadership is about mobilizing one group to dominate or vanquish another. By this, those who lead Group A to commit violence against Group B are "leaders." Even if we remove violence from the equation, and even if the "leader" represents some higher cause or value, the word still means the act of mobilizing with the aim of dominating. Although this may be inevitable, it is not a particularly inspiring or comprehensive portrait of leadership for it implies that one side must always somehow be injured, even if marginally.

My opinion is that leadership can be about promoting the best next thing so that whether one side wins or loses, there is really no real injury.

But let’s addresses the dilemma of where, exactly, this elusive quality of "leadership" resides. Is it a character trait that resides within a single individual as in a person with great leadership potential or is there a group component? A team won because they demonstrated superior leadership in which case leadership was harnessed within the structure of an organization or community.

What I am putting to debate is whether by continuous education and engagement around some common ideas, we can create a powerful movement that develops a magnetic effect that attracts individuals who seek political office so that as we exercise our responsibility to select our representative to bunge or any other office, the emphasis is not only on the qualities they possess but even more, on the nature of their impact on others.

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