Governance and Policy Analyst Abdullahi Alas has warned that politics in Kenya and around the world increasingly resemble a theatre driven by identity disputes, corruption, and unresolved historical grievances.
Speaking on Friday on Radio Generation, he said this environment has led citizens to distrust leaders and view political conflicts as dramatized, with societies repeating old patterns under new conditions.
Alas dismissed attempts to treat controversies involving Somali communities as exceptional.
“If a thief is a thief, whether it is Somali or any white or black, a thief is a thief,” he said, cautioning against exaggerating ethnicity-based narratives. He referenced recent comments by former US President Donald Trump, who criticized the Somali community, claiming they posed a threat to US security.
Highlighting the role of global systems in migration, Alas said Western nations often create the very crises they later blame on migrants. He pointed to US military interventions in Muslim-majority countries, noting, “America decided in 2000 that we’re going to invade more than seven Muslim countries. They did. What they did not know is, where will they go? You destroy Somalia, where do you expect people to go?” He said displacement into Europe and the US is a predictable outcome of conflicts whose consequences were never fully considered.
Alas argued that migration debates in Western politics are often framed hypocritically. “Ilhan is an American who is of Somali descent. Trump is an American of a German descent,” he said, stressing that societies globally are built by migrants. He added, “We are all descendants of somewhere, the plot you have now was someone’s plot before. The house you rented now was someone’s house.” He described global politics as “a theatre,” where nations dramatize identity instead of reflecting on history and shared human movement.
Turning to governance, Alas said corruption remains a defining challenge in Kenya and globally.
“For you to speak truth, for you to have character, for you to be honest, you need to be mad,” he said, arguing that systems worldwide reward dishonesty and punish reformers. He cited examples like Singapore, noting that transformation demands extraordinary conviction. “For you to implement revolutions, you need to be mad, doing things that are not ordinary, things people don’t want to do,” he said.
Alas also criticized modern political discourse for being shaped by shallow knowledge and social media narratives.
“There is a difference between a man who trained and read and researched for 20 years, and a young boy who learned from social media,” he said, warning that misinformation has left societies vulnerable to manipulation.
Addressing Kenya’s local political climate, including tensions in recent by-elections, Alas said public perception of leaders has worsened. “When the ordinary Kenyan believes that from the executive, judiciary to parliament everyone is a thief, that is a time bomb,” he warned, adding, “They have shown us that indeed they have the capacity to steal from us, and they’ve actually done it.”
However, he cautioned against painting all leaders with the same brush. “If indeed all the politicians and all civil servants stole, there’d be nothing left,” he said, urging citizens to hold leaders accountable without collapsing all institutions into one narrative of failure.
Alas concluded by reflecting on the cyclical nature of politics, saying Kenya’s challenges mirror global trends. “Power is illusion, the drama you see now is global theatre,” he said, urging citizens to look beyond ethnic, religious, or partisan triggers and understand the deeper forces shaping governance.
