The debate by politicians about the sugar trade deal with Uganda has generated a lot of heat but shed little light on the actual situation.

The opposition and its supporters see the sugar deal as an attempt to impoverish its political strongholds by killing the local sugar industry, and the cane farmers who depend on it.

Alternatively, they see the trade pact as a cynical ploy designed to benefit ruling party politicians with a stake in the dairy industry.

There are, of course, undertones of ethnic partisanship in these views. After all, this is Kenya, where every action, private or public, is seen to be done either against or in favour of this or that tribe.

Not to be outdone, the government and its supporters accuse opposition leaders of having had a hand in the downfall of the local sugar industry. Some of them have claimed that they were fired from their jobs during the previous administration in order to protect sugar barons.

Others have claimed that some opposition politicians owe the Mumias Sugar miller millions of shillings in unpaid loans.

These exchanges between the two sides have lacked civility, and are characterised by vitriol, name-calling and shameless attention-seeking grandstanding. As a result, we are now told there will be libel suits.

Now, democracy not only provides for disagreement but demands it. In his book Essentials of Democracy, A.D Lindsay writes that democracy “does not only tolerate difference, it implies and demands it.”

But this democratic tenet presupposes a number of things:

1. That the disagreements will be argued out on the basis of facts and logic;
2. that the disagreements are argued in good faith;
3. that the disagreements are conducted with scholarly reasonableness, and
4. that the disagreements are conducted with respect and appropriate decorum.

One can easily see why these assumptions are crucial. First, they ensure that debate on matters of public policy enlightens the public, not confuses it.

Second, they ensure that such discussions have as their object achievement of the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Third, that participants in the discussions remain civil to each other, and therefore bring honour to their positions and the country. The overall result of such discussions is a vibrant population, proud of itself and willing to recommit itself to the national development project.

The sugar debate has violated every one of the assumptions above and, therefore, key issues have remained muddled.

What ails the local sugar industry? Does the sugar pact with Uganda necessarily undermine the local sugar industry? Are there loopholes that could cause a well-intentioned pact to be counterproductive? Or conversely, are there loopholes we could close to improve on the deal?

Unless these and related questions are answered, we cannot say the eventual sugar policy will have benefited from our best intellectual efforts.

But the sugar debate is doing violence not just to the truth, but to something else — to our patriotic sense. Instead of the debate helping to define the Kenyan character in progressive terms, it dishonours the country, making us feel ashamed. We become less committed to the national development project.

Sadly, the sugar debate is typical of the way we conduct debate, whether it is on matters of terrorism, famine, annual floods, etc. It seems not to bother our politicians’ consciences that the end result of these hypocritical shouting matches is the death of thousands and untold suffering.

In the Kanu era, the object of political debate was to muddy issues, to misstate facts and misapply logic. So queue-voting was judged to be African democracy. Disagreement was judged sedition. History was remade in the image of the dictator.

Politics became the art of bringing political opponents down. What mattered was not the truth but who, in an exchange, got the better of the other.
And it did not matter if that “victory” could be achieved by name-calling, lying or through violence.

Tragically, the sugar debate tells us that 15 years after the defeat of the evil system that was Kanu, we are still to embrace the mentality that democracy presupposes.

Tee Ngugi is a political and social commentator based in Nairobi.