Bishop Margaret Wanjiru: Political Blunders One Sunday Morning

Popular TV evangelist Margaret Wanjiru of JIAM (Jesus Is Alive Ministries) is fairly used to the glare of lights and the attention of cameras because that is how she records her rather popular TV shows several times every week.

But last Sunday the numbers of cameras in her church were many more than usual and included cameras from local media houses. This is obviously something that she is not used to, because she made some serious political mistakes.

Ms Wanjiru may not have realized it, but the minute she declared her interest in the Starehe seat, she was in politics. And politics is a very different ball game from what she is used to in her church circles. In Kenya it can be a rather dirty and sordid thing.

This whole saga should be very bad news to Kenyans because Ms Wanjiru's declared interest in politics really excited me and should have done the same for many Kenyans because these are the sort of "different" characters we need if we are to make a difference in parliament and have a fighting chance of getting in the sort of legislators who can change the direction of Kenyan politics. Bishop Wanjiru's track record is admirable. She has demonstrated that she can be selfless and that she can make a difference despite her gender, which tends to be looked down on in Kenya. And most of all she has demonstrated on several occasions that she can swim with the sharks and survive. Church politics is no picnic sometimes, especially for a single mother. Then there is the time that the sellers wanted to con her out of the prime property on Haile Selassie Avenue that houses her church when she had already paid a substantial amount of money for it. These are just a few of the many battles the evangelist has fought and won so far.

The no-nonsense-evangelist makes no secret of her poverty-stricken past and would make the perfect role model in parliament for many Kenyans who badly need to be convinced that it can be done. That just like a person can turn around their lives, the life of one Kenya can also be turned around.

The political mistakes that Ms Wanjiru made that now threaten her bid for the August house was firstly to lose her temper in public. Obviously this man who has come out of the woodwork touched a raw nerve in the evangelist. The timing and execution is such that ruling out a political motive is extremely difficult at this juncture.

For all we know, this could simply be a case of mistaken identity or even dirty political games, but whatever it is, the damage has already been done. The anger of the public was clearly illustrated in the sms poll carried out by KTN last night asking viewers if they read politics in Ms Wanjiru's woes, which clearly showed that most respondents (over 80%) were so angered at her reaction to the man claiming to be her former husband that they did not read politics in the whole saga. A curious assumption for anybody to have under the circumstances. But then angry people hardly reason, less so angry voters.

My hope is that the Bishop wins this latest battle and bounces back like she has so many times before. It will do Kenya a lot of good to have her in parliament.