Why images of lousy politicians must feature on our bank notes

The Central Bank of Kenya is drawing your attention to Article 231 (4) of the Constitution, which stipulates that notes and coins issued by CBK may bear images that depict or symbolise an aspect of Kenya but shall not bear the portrait of an individual.

Accordingly, the CBK has invited individuals, institutions, organisations and professional bodies to present proposals on elements/features to be considered for incorporation in the design of the new currency. Never mind that the currency printing deal is yet to be sorted out.

The deadline is Friday the 13th, no less, probably because the CBK’s director of currency operations and branch administration department has not lost sight of the fact that money brings only bad luck to Kenya and instead of easing things up for the citizens, it makes them poorer when they have to pay for undelivered goods in the form of Anglo Leasing and Goldenberg scams.

The guiding themes for the new currency are ‘Kenya Reborn’ and ‘Kenya Prosperity’, and the design elements should be unique to Kenya by depicting physical features that reflect any aspect of the country, like flora and fauna that are unique to us, and key aspects in agriculture, technology, manufacturing, infrastructure, sports, tourism and environment.

As a transparent institution, it encourages public participation in this “important exercise” because citizens’ views and input in the process is a fundamental Constitutional right. Thus, I am exercising mine here, and now, in the court of public opinion so as to make the judging process easier.

Since the leadership has proven that it can eat the citizenry alive and leave the bones and other unfavourable parts for its cronies, the new currency should bear hyenas and vultures as the national animal and bird respectively, to replace the lion and the cock, which no longer represent Kenya’s aspirations in the 21st century.

As for flora, the new currency should bear psychotropic plants like bhang and miraa, Kenya’s major “exports” whose use is gaining currency among the local youth, and which are increasingly replacing coffee, tea, pyrethrum and other agricultural produce as foreign exchange earners.

When it comes to Kenya’s national treasures, culture and heritage, the new currency should bear images which depict corruption and impunity. These are the most common cultures that all Kenyans share and, forever and ever, Amen, will be the legacy of our leaders who swear by the motto of ‘It is Our Turn to Eat’.

The preferred colour scheme of the new currency should be red, to depict a citizenry whose bank accounts are in the red, thanks to high interest rates on loans, high prices of basic commodities, high rates of inflation and the high taxes they pay.

The red colour scheme will also depict the sad state of State corporations whose accounts are in the red because they are looted, and the blood Kenyans lose on the roads.

As for the key aspects like agriculture, the new currency should have famished human beings pleading for relief food and bones for the ones who have died of hunger and starvation or after eating maize with aflatoxin, thanks to flawed agricultural policies which ensure lack of food security and, by extension, famine.

As for infrastructure, how about images of bad roads and an uprooted railway lines and derailed trains next to the country’s biggest slum? That would be a perfect image for it would also depict how we have advanced in the field of technology.

Indeed we have: While other countries are wasting public resources by using e-mail, we are still airlifting presidential speeches just to be sure that words such as ‘‘bloody bure kabisa’ and “pumbavu” are not lost in transmission.

Tourism can be depicted by visitors leaving our shores or avoiding our country altogether due to poor or old school marketing strategies that see the officials of numerous tourism (development) bodies gloat over one million visitors in a year, yet cities, not countries, like Cape Town get just over seven million visitors in the same period.

Since the CBK wants the features of the new currency to be consistent with the requirements of the Constitution, they should have images of politicians pulling in different directions, shouting at one another, back-stabbing each other, tearing apart the Constitution itself and generally exhibiting their anger at a document which they have deliberately refused to read and understand because their ethnic interests are more important than those of the nation.

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Don’t you just love the fire in this man!

DON’T YOU just love Eugene Wamalwa, the new Justice minister who is on a noble mission of educating Kenyans and letting them know that, for several months, his predecessor was treading on the wrong path and probably leading this great country astray?