Lies, Lies

My great concern for the motherland just now is how lies and pure fiction peddled as the truth have dominated and taken over public affairs in the country, even as we hurtle towards the most serious crisis ever seen in these shores since the beginning of life itself.

That crisis, unless checked will include widespread famine, hunger and very hard financial times for ordinary Kenyans.

It is not news to any Kenyan that Dr Alfred Mutua regularly tells lies in public in the name of practicing Public Relations. The training I have in public relations tells me that lies is NOT PR and will always catch up with you sooner rather than later and when it does nothing you do will be effective.

Shortly before the coalition cabinet was announced, Dr Mutua with cameras rolling and a straight face, told us that the extra ministries would definitely not be of budgetary concern. The reason he gave made me double up in stitches of laughter. What made the whole scene so comical is that some reporters (who shall remain nameless) were busy taking down notes and hanging on his every word, looking serious and attentive.

Dr Mutua said that what would happen is that existing departments previously clustered together would be split to create the new ministries and those departments still had their old budgets intact. So the huge cabinet would make very little difference to government expenditure.

Now last week a worried looking Finance Minister, Amos Kimunya admitted that the government was in great difficulty financing its’ expenditure which includes the new colossal cabinet. And as if that was not enough, Baba Jimmy himself, he of duly elected president fame, told angry workers at Uhuru Park that things were “not good” financially in the country. But that was a bitter pill for workers to swallow because the colossal cabinet is a serious cash guzzler and trimming it down to size can go a long way in helping afford salary increments for the lowest cadre of workers who are already going hungry on a regular basis, let alone starting to put aside cash to purchase food to deal with the coming famine. Let us not even talk about subsidizing food prices so that ordinary folk can afford to put food on the table. By the way ask yourself a simple question. If people who have jobs are going hungry, what about the jobless?

On the ground all the signs are there that this government is pretty broke. In fact it is now rather clear that had the Safaricom IPO not happened when it did the chaps at Treasury would be sweating a lot more than they are right now. But one thing I can assure you, they are still already in a cold sweat.

But Dr Alfred Mutua is not the only person in the Kenyan government to peddle lies on a regular basis. Mr Kimunya himself told us shortly before the grand coalition government was unveiled that the country would NOT be affected much by the post election crisis. Again any fool would have realized that the country’s bread basked bore the brunt of the violence, so how could the economy be barely affected? In fact as you read this, there are those who are predicting that the Kenyan economy will never recover in a long time. That is a view that is bound to gather currency in the weeks and months to come.

Then today Police Commissioner Maj Gen Ali came out with both barrels blazingto deny any involvement of the police department in the execution of Mungiki suspects. I am well aware of the sentiments of most readers of this blog who favor extra-judicial killings and believe that it is the only way of dealing with the murderous gang. But surely Kenyans deserve the truth on such a serious matter.

But then all these lies are hardly surprising are they? After all this government is headed by a man who won a single province decisively and lost 6 very decisively and yet insists to this day that he won the presidential elections. Not to mention the lesser liar but nevertheless still a liar in the ODM party which promised a new beginning and swore that they would do things differently and then went and appointed dinosaurs William Ole Ntimama and Fidelis Fred “slapped a woman returning officer” Gumo to the cabinet. Those appointments were a huge statement proving that we were told a lot of lies during the campaign period.

I am not naïve and I know that politicians the world over tell fibs on a regular basis. In fact there are those who define politics as the art of being able to tell lies with a straight face. If this is true then surely there is no hope for Mother Kenya.

Why Kikuyu women have always had a terrible weakness for Luhya men