By Susan Mugwe
“If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”
Pyrrhus was king of Epirus and was one of the strongest opponents of early Rome. In 280 B.C, he invaded Italy after allying himself with Tarentum, a Greek speaking city that resented the Roman Republic’s domination over their homeland. King Pyrrhus was extremely confident that he could extend his empire.
So, he invaded Italy with a force of 25,000 men and 20 war elephants. This was the first legionary of its kind that the Romans had ever faced. King Pyrrhus immediately scored his first victory in this battle at Heraclea. The following year, he defeated the Romans a second time during a heated clash in the battle of Asculum.
By this time, King Pyrrhus fancied himself a latter-day Alexander the Great. He hoped that his victorious invasions would give his empire a foothold in Italy. But while he had defeated the Romans in Heraclea and Asculum, his victories had caused him unacceptably heavy losses.
He lost more than 7,500 of his most elite fighters, including officers and commanders, many of whom were his friends, and his prized war elephants.
While preparing for yet another battle at Beneventum, King Pyrrhus realized that he had no way of replacing his casualties. He did not have anywhere near enough potential recruits to replenish his army. Meanwhile, the Romans were only temporarily defeated.
They could replace their lost soldiers with relative ease. Even worse, the two losses had so enraged the Romans and made them more willing to continue fighting.
King Pyrrhus’s failure to deal the enemy a complete deathblow, sent morale plummeting within his ranks. Upon serious reflection, he told his troops, “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”
Reluctantly he called off the battle and sailed back to Greece. Since then, this has come to be known as Pyrrhic victory. Pyrrhic victory is a victory that is not worth winning because so much is lost to achieve it.
It is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. It takes a heavy toll that negates any true sense of achievement, or damages long-term progress.
This week, parliament erupted in cheers, with lawmakers backslapping, high-fiving, and fist-pumping as they celebrated the passing of the impeachment motion against Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua. From the MPs perspective, this was a decisive win.
They had not only dealt a blow to a key political adversary, but it was also a bold demonstration of political might, and of their ability to navigate the labyrinth of political alliances, and ultimately assert their dominance in the country’s shifting power landscape.
It was a maneuver that was as much about power as it was about control. Outside the parliamentary chambers and as evidenced on social media, the mood among Wanjiku was anything but celebratory. Although there was no immediate outrage, the mood was demure.
The reaction was that of quiet resignation, disenchantment, and cynicism. There was no spontaneous celebration in the streets and no feeling of collective relief. Only the cold understanding that another round of political chess had been played with the people’s future at the stakes.
Many viewed this not as a step toward justice or a cleansing of the tainted political system, but rather just another chapter in a long saga of political power struggles.
The public participation exercise held before the impeachment vote did little to persuade the public that their voices had any real influence on the final decision.
To them, it was more of a staged performance than a genuine democratic process. While the MPs reveled in their moment of triumph, the pressing challenges facing the nation—such as the new health insurance scheme, the revised education funding model, rising unemployment rates, and the unresolved questions surrounding the Adani saga—remained unresolved.
To add to the tension, a joint strike notice has been issued by all public sector unions, specifically to highlight the issues hindering the seamless transition of the health sector insurance. This signals a citizenry growing increasingly weary of political grandstanding.
To many observers, the signs of a pyrrhic victory for parliament are unmistakable. Like King Pyrrhus who defeated the Romans at such a devastating cost to his own army that even his triumph felt like a defeat, parliament may have scored a tactical win, and savored a fleeting high, but at the expense of long-term public trust.
A decisive victory suggests that the cost of achieving this outcome was justified with minimal collateral damage. It implies that the benefits far outweigh any drawbacks and pave the way for more expedient decision making, reform governance, and provide a clearer pathway to resolve the agitation that caused Gen Zs to take to the streets.
Begs the question: Could the elation of the MPs soon transform into a sobering realization that this impeachment process has come at such a steep price that its consequences might unravel the very foundation of political cohesion on which they criticized him?
Will it further deepen divisions within the political class, erode their credibility, and breed resentment among the electorate? You be the judge.
I submit that the cost here is not only the alienation of a large swathe of the electorate. It is also a weakening of democratic principles.
The perception that the impeachment process has been driven more by political vendettas rather than by genuine accountability, further erodes the public’s faith in democratic institutions.
It deepens the disconnect between the rulers and the ruled and amplifies the self-serving nature of the politicos more interested in their own survival than in the country’s progress.
And as the cheers fade in parliament, this celebration will be remembered as a hollow triumph. A victory in name only. It will soon become clear that the electorate’s silence is not a sign of indifference, but of perceptive clarity, seeing beyond the political façade.
The MPs may finally recognize that this battle may have been won at far too great a cost. Finally, my unsolicited advice is to the MPs.
Allow me to tell you a story about John Henry. John Henry was a railroad worker in America. He was also very stubborn and did not embrace divergent opinions and ways of doing things. One day, his company announced that they were going to introduce drilling machines in place of the workers to increase efficiency.
John Henry was enraged to hear that drilling machines might take over his job. He decided to prove that his drilling skills were more superior than the machines.
To indulge him, his bosses arranged a contest and to their surprise, the results were quite impressive. The machine drill broke after drilling three meters, while John Henry drilled four meters in the same amount of time.
As the rest of his fellow workers celebrated his victory, which they also deemed to be their victory, John Henry collapsed holding a hammer in his hand and died of exhaustion.
John Henry might have been victorious against the drill, but that small win was meaningless in the face of his subsequent death.
Like King Pyrrhus, he won the battle but lost the war.
Once you hear the details of a victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat – Jean-Paul Sarte