KENYA: Shun Ethnic Politics, Archbishop urges Politicians

Catholic archbishop Boniface Lele has urged local politicians to shun ethnic politics. The head of the metropolitan archdiocese of Mombasa said that “it is disheartening to see that some of our politicians are doing their politics on ethnic lines.”

He said politicians should instead practice politics of unity, nationalism, and love that would effectively unite the Kenyan people.

 “This time around, such politics based on ethnicity are out of place and should be shunned. We need to do politics of unity, nationhood, and one-ness,” said Archbishop Lele, who is the current Chair, Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Seafarers for the Bishops as well as the Vice-Chair, Bishops’ Commission for Health.

He added that as the country’s gears towards general elections next year, politicians should use public platforms to preach more unity, nationhood, peace, justice and reconciliation and not ethnic politics.

 “We as church leaders will continue to preach more about unity, love, peace and justice. We expect our political leaders to do the same,” he emphasized.

The Archbishop was speaking to CISA on November 7 at a Nairobi hotel during the handing over the management of AIDS Relief, programme of the Catholic Relief Services of the US Catholic Bishops, to the local Church under the Kenya Episcopal Conference (KEC) and CHAK-Christian Health Association of Kenya, run by the Protestant churches in the country.

The AIDS Relief organization is currently handling over 13 HIV programmes and their 28 satellite facilities in the country.

Since 2004, AIDS Relief has provided HIV care and treatment to more than 500, 000 people in nine countries in Africa, Latin America and Caribbean.

In Kenya, the programme partners with local faith-based health facilities to provide HIV care treatment services to more than 70,000 patients at 29 facilities in six Kenyan provinces, namely: Central, Coast, Eastern , Nairobi, Nyanza  and Western.

Archbishop Lele was present in his capacity as Vice Chairman of   the Health Commission of the Bishops.

He was accompanied by the Bishop of Nyahururu Diocese, Right Rev Luigi Paiaro, who is a member of the Bishops’ Commission for Health and Rev Fr Vincent Wambugu, the general secretary of the Kenya Catholic Secretariat.