In 2013, we missed the joke of the year when the goddess of laughter announced that Kenya’s leading presidential candidates were Raila Odinga, Uhuru Kenyatta and Musalia Mudavadi.
In one of Africa’s greatest nations, land of amazing wildlife and 40 million people, home of Waiyaki wa Hinga, Koitalel Arap Samoei, Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi, Mekatilili Wa Menza, Lwanda Magere and Mukite son of Nameme, the best we had were Raila, Uhuru and Musalia. Good Lord!
Can you recall something philosophical and profound that those three said last month? Last year? Ever? When you listen to them, does their intellect, depth and grasp of issues hit you smack in the face? Thought so.
No wonder they were whitewashed during a presidential debate by a joker called Mohammed Abduba Diba, a man who would have great difficulty convincing a village baraza in Wajir to allow him to cough. We should have laughed, but we didn’t. Big mistake.
When a journeyman steals the show in a debate against the country’s foremost leaders – the son of an iconic freedom fighter and president, the son of a vice president and towering opposition leader, and the son of a former powerful Cabinet minister – it can only mean one thing: Iko shida. We have a crippling shortage of political talent.
Let us begin with MaDVD. Everyone agrees Mudavadi is a nice person. But the nasty thing about life is that nice people belong in a kindergarten, not State House. Countries are transformed by ruthlessly efficient and determined people. Rwanda’s Paul Kagame is not nice. Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi was not a nice person. Transforming a country, especially a kumbafu one like ours, requires a bad ass guy who kicks butt like kicking butt is running out of fashion. You know what I mean?
That, by the way, is a weakness Mudavadi shares with Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto. In 2013, half of the country was dying to undress for them. The two were posing in elegant suits on billboards and claiming they would transform Kenya (it must have sounded very funny to them!) But that they were posing with Charity Ngilu, Najib Balala and Joseph Nyaga in that billboard should have sent sirens screaming nyuuuwii! nyuuuwii! in our heads. When you are going to transform a dead country, you carry a stick, an axe, a machete and a hoe. When you walk in carrying Balala, Ngilu and Nyaga on your back, you are a joker.
Anyhow, we bought it hook, line and sinker. We are so reckless that we actually elected two guys who stood the risk of getting locked up in a foreign jail by the International Criminal Court. Such is our recklessness that had those two been locked up at The Hague, we would have been stuck with Justin Muturi. Yes, that one.
That Uhuru and Ruto looked across Kenya and decided Muturi was the best person to be speaker of the national assembly isn’t surprising. I mean, they saw a bright spark, shining star, in Joseph Ole Lenku and Kazungu Kambi, too!
Remember Ruto was in something called Youth for Kanu. When the country was falling apart, and everyone was crying for change, Ruto was handing out ‘fake’ Sh500 notes to villagers and cooking inflation to buy votes. Now he was staring us in the face, saying he wanted to transform Kenya and we believed him.
Meanwhile, Uhuru’s political career was as short as a miniskirt. More scaring is that there was nothing particularly inspiring about his ministerial career, which was even shorter than a miniskirt. Yet we believed he was this great leader who was going to transform Kenya.
Kenya is doomedHutia Mundu!!