Hardtalk: State funerals
Let me be clear right from the start. I respect dead people and this does not in way refer to any dead person specifically. I am just asking a moral question. Should the government be bankrolling funerals for ministers?

What does the law say? As best as I know it is only the president and his two assistants who should enjoy this. Others who have distinguished themselves in certain fields, both at home and abroad, should also be recognized and given a state send off. Wangari Maathai is a good example. Why should the government pay for funeral services of men who have amassed such huge wealth when IDPs are suffering in the camps? When children in Ukambani sit under trees for lack of classrooms, when men and women in Kakamega and elsewhere can’t walk because their feet have been ravaged by jiggers? Does anyone ever bother to know how those who die in the IDP camps are buried?

I have heard many say that Hon. Michuki transformed our transport sector. Did you know that he was on a monthly salary to do that? He just did what he was supposed to do and if I was to appraise his performance at the end of the year, I would give him an A. If anything he should have been accountable for what he did which he was not supposed to do. The raid at KTN by the Artur brothers in his efforts to stifle freedom of the media is a case in point.

My point is that tax payers’ money is used to pay ministers to work. If families of ministers feel that they should not use the wealth left by the deceased to give him a proper send off, they should hire some space at Garden Square like everybody else to collect money for a proper send off but not ask the government to finance their funeral. Here we are setting a very bad precedence. What criteria will be used to determine who gets a state send-off? Or does it mean that all seating ministers will get a state send-off?

I know I am treading on a topic regarded as a taboo to discuss. But I am not scared of death. When God feels that my time on earth is over, I will go and it does not matter whether I will be buried in a sack or in a gold casket. I know MPs can’t dare debate this in parliament for reasons they best know.

michuki will even get a gun salute and he was enviroment minister we live it to the historians

Some animals are more equal than others.

I can see you are inline with the popular myth promoted by kenyatta...
"Uhuru tulipigania ama tulipewa?"...TULIPEWA... the people you attribute with "nyakua-ring" had already been sorted out by 1956 and the leader of the struggle killed and buried in a grave that we have not discovered until now. The maumau resistance resulted in the deaths of 70 settlers and thousands of Africans before it was quelled. the US is the only country that "Nyakuwa-d" uhuru from the "mgereza". Uhuru was being given to colonies after world war 2 and the beginning of the cold war. we did not even need to fight, we would have gotten independence none the less - who fought for Ghanian independence? considering they got it 8 years before us!
I think the legend of the maumau is nice to tell to our kids. it falls within the requirement that a nation forms a common narrative for uniting its future citizens (that narrative does not have to be 100% true)...its not unique to us (http://fsi.stanford.edu/events/confronting_the_yugoslav_controversies_can_scholars_make_a_difference/) everyone does it :)

well...these are good things he did if you ask me!