The behavior of Kenyan voters is also akin to the man who goes out for a drink in a bar full of prostitutes with too much make up. One blacker-than-the-darkest-night woman chooses to use scarlet red lipstick and looks like something out of a Hollywood horror movie... By the time the
man’s watch says it is 2 am all the women and especially the
dark-black-complexion-in-red-lipstick woman look like angels...
In Kenya it is now 2 am
Come March 4th and I will NOT vote any of the clowns thus far before us. I am through with this story of voting for the lesser evil which is what I have done in past elections.
If you look at the leading contenders for the Kenyan presidency not a single one of them is qualified for the highest office in the land so much so that we have no business even discussing their merits and de-merits. Opinion polls show that a man who has been an equal partner of the irresponsible slow-to-act-no-security-in-the-country government of the last 5 years is set to be elected. Close in his heels in the polls is an ICC suspect… and I can go on and on.
Regular readers of Kumekucha will know that I have a simple but effective system for gauging the mood on the ground and I can tell you that Kenyans are very much in an election mood. The problem is the vast majority have stopped thinking.
We Kenyans have a very serious problem when it comes to election time, we usually stop thinking and start behaving very strangely indeed. Only to start complaining about bad leadership just a few months down the road when the honeymoon is over and the clowns we have elected have to actually get down to the work of being our leaders.
Let me illustrate this for you a little more vividly. The old dukawallas (Asian shopkeepers) of Kenya were always a very disciplined lot and that is how most ended up making so much money. They used to have a saying that went like this;
Mboro simama akili potea
For those who don’t know Swahili it simply means that when a certain part of the male anatomy is gorged with blood (to be more specific the tool that ensures that you do not go six feet under without leaving heirs to your property or stupidity) you stop thinking.
This rather crude saying is loaded with truth because we all know how most people start behaving when that part of their body is gorged with blood. They forget that the object of their desire is their best friends’ wife or the age mate of their mother. The brain literally stops functioning momentarily and all reasoning flies out of the window. That’s where Kenyan voters are right now.
As you read this my information is that there are major erections in Central province over Uhuru Kenyatta. The same is happening in Nyanza over one Raila Odinga.
The behavior of Kenyan voters is also akin to the man who goes out for a drink in a bar full of prostitutes with too much make up. One blacker-than-the-darkest-night woman chooses to use scarlet red lipstick and looks like something out of a Hollywood horror movie. As the man sips his first beer he can hardly look at the ugly things. A few drinks later the very same ladies start looking very attractive, even sexy. By the time the man’s watch says it is 2 am all the women and especially the dark-black-complexion-in-red-lipstick woman look like angels.
When the man wakes up the next morning he finds that he had unprotected sex with somebody he cannot even look at without rushing to the bathroom to throw up.
In Kenya it is now 2 am. People who are known to be crooks have suddenly evolved into viable and even attractive presidential candidates. 3 months after the election it will be the next morning and we will find that we have elected the usual suspects to take us through another 5 years of hell on earth. The difference between Kenyan voters and the man who woke up next to the horror-movie-woman is that he will quickly leave the hotel room. We Kenyan voters will have to remain in that hotel room throwing up regularly in the toilet for 5 long years. Just think about that.
I am well aware of the fact that what I am doing here is akin to playing a guitar for a goat. Nobody wants to listen when there is all the excitement about the upcoming elections.
Yesterday I had a long conversation with a close friend and she told me that in 2007 she voted Kenneth Matiba and so when Kenyans were complaining about the very leaders they elected she had a clear conscience and could live with her decisions.
The truth is that I have no idea how most Kenyans live with their election decisions. Why should anybody elect any of the leading contenders for the presidency and then complain about corruption. How???
How do you keep a venomous snake in your house and then complain that it bit your children? Does that make any sense? Somebody please help me understand.
We are now at the eleventh hour and unless some miracle happens and somebody worthy stands for the president I am not voting for any presidential candidate and my ballot paper will remain blank in that particular category. That is the only way I can look at myself in the mirror for the next five years and continue to write posts here with a clear conscience.
You are also bound to enjoy reading...
Just how clean is Mr. Safi Kama Pamba Peter Kenneth?
Is Uhuru Kenyatta a drunkard?
What is it that leading Presidential candidates in 2013 don't want you to know?
Kibaki laughs at pretender MPs praising his rule
Cashing in on Uhuru's troubles
Where it all started Uhuru's secret deal with Kibaki in 2007
David Kimaiyo: Kenya's first inspector general who incidentally was director of operations at police headquarters at the height of the post election troubles in 2008. Fighting crime should not be left to the police and he is doomed to fail if the next administration approches crime in the same manner as the Kibaki administration did.
A few days ago a Matatu headed to Eastleigh was hijacked by six smartly dressed gunmen who robbed all the passengers of cash and cell phones.
As I write this post, this incident has yet to be reported anywhere in the local media.
There are a number of interesting things we need to point out about this latest incident. Firstly it happened in broad daylight (at about 2 pm). Secondly the fact that they picked a matatu headed for Nairobi’s “Mogadishu” Estate was no accident. These matatus are usually packed with traders from Nairobi and indeed all over the country headed to popular wholesale venues like “Garissa Lodge” and others where all kinds of items whose import tax and duty has not been paid can be obtained very cheaply thus assuring retailers a handsome profit. They are usually carrying huge sums of cash and it is not unrealistic for robbers to get Kshs 1 million or more from a single matatu headed to Eastleigh. What that means is that anybody hijacking a matatu on this particular route is bound to make off with a very hefty sum of cash. As opposed to robbing a No 8 Matatu headed to the sprawling Kibera slums for instance.
What should really worry Kenyans here is whether the country has gone back to the Major-Hussein-Ali policy of fighting crime by NOT reporting major crimes so as to give the impression that crime was on a downward trend. At one point the police commissioner soldier was literally editing crime stories at the Daily Nation, albeit on phone. You really cannot blame the man with military training who was made a top cop by the Kibaki administration for that kind of thinking. In a military war (as opposed to a war on crime) propaganda is such a critical weapon that it has single-handedly won many major battles and even wars throughout history and when used well can be more lethal than any guns and ammunition on the ground. This is a historical fact starting right from the beginning of time an even in biblical times when a might army was defeated by simply being given the impression that there was a very big army marching against them when in reality there was actually nothing but some serious sound effects from the Almighty himself.
The only problem is that when fighting crime, propaganda has quite the opposite effect. If I was a violent criminal and nobody was reporting about what I was doing I would be delighted. It would mean amongst other advantages, that I would be able to retain my element of surprise on unsuspecting victims. The folks who robbed the Eastleigh matatu in broad daylight can do it again and again and many on the route will not even be aware that this was something that had happened before.
Yesterday we mentioned some of the successes of the Kibaki administration but today it is worth mentioning tha one of their biggest failures has been security and the fight against the escalating crime rate in the country.
For the sake of the next administration it is worth analyzing this failure a little deeper.
President Kibaki came into power in 2003 with the firm conviction that crime was one of the easiest of problems on his long list to handle. All the country needed to do was to find the money to increase the number of policemen and women in the force. This was promptly done but predictably nothing happened. Then they came up with the idea of appointing a tough military man to scare the criminals. This too did not work. Finally the president himself took to threatening criminals during his speeches to the public warning them that their days were numbered. Of course all those in crime must have had a good laugh and escalated their activities.
While it is true that we have just gotten a new inspector general who is probably the most competent and qualified person to ever head the police force since independence, even he will not have any impact on the war against crime until the next administration come to the realization that this is something that cannot be left only to the police. The next administration needs to actively pursue policies that are designed to curb crime.
Fighting unemployment like there was no tomorrow is one thing that must be emphasized from day one. More hidden close circuit cameras all over the city and indeed the entire country is yet another step that needs to be taken. Then we need to seriously look at the budget allocated to intelligence and undercover operations which is currently a sick joke. Lastly we need to come to the realization that the fight against crime never ends and so we need to brace ourselves for that.
There are of course many other good ideas that security experts can come up with. It is important to ensure that experts are involved in the decision making process to the highest level because switching off all unregistered cell phones for instance is not going to reduce crime involving cell phones as some smart alecs seem to believe. Indeed those kinds of crimes seem to be on the rise because my wife received a call recently from a man who told her she had won Kshs 100,000 and she should not send money to anybody to get the prize. But meanwhile she was casually asked if she had an Mpesa account. Much later in the conversation she was asked to enter a strange code that would have cleaned out her Mpesa account.
My point is that I often hear the views of Kenya’s middle class and the rich on fighting crime and just laugh my head off. Most Kenyans are so out of touch with the realities in their own country that it just unbelievable. To start with Kenya’s escalating crime rate has a lot to do with the huge number of foreigners we have allowed into the country many of whom do not have any papers. Especially from countries like Nigeria and Somalia. Some of these people are hardened criminals who see criminal opportunities where Kenyans have never dreamt that any exist. Just to give an example. A few years back some Nigerians took a lot of interest in the Post office at the City Square in Nairobi. They place had no security and so they just walked in late at night and spend time picking the locks of mail boxes to read the letters inside. Other Nairobi criminals must have been more than a little surprised as to what their motives were. However a few months later it was reported that companies and individuals were losing millions to intercepted cheques that criminals had found a way to cash. Indeed this is one of the reasons that led to banks refusing to cash third party cheques over the counter.
Why is it that we don’t realize Kenya is now an international hub with all kinds of characters arriving here daily? Long gone are the days when the most serious crime many sleepy rural police stations had to deal with was the theft of chickens. Despite this we expect the same kind of police force equipped in the same way it has always been to deal with the new realities on the ground. Getting more policemen without looking at a number of other policies is just recruiting and sending sons and daughters of Kenyans to unnecessary slaughter in the hands of a new kind of criminal who is extremely sophisticated and more daring than ever before.
Interestingly I have not heard any of the presidential candidates address this issue so far.
You are also bound to enjoy reading...
Kibaki laughs at pretender MPs praising his rule
Cashing in on Uhuru's troubles
Where it all started Uhuru's secret deal with Kibaki in 2007
Just how clean is Mr. Safi Kama Pamba Peter Kenneth?
Is Uhuru Kenyatta a drunkard?
What is it that leading Presidential candidates in 2013 don't want you to know?
