What dissident dare defy joint edict from president and prime minister?

So this darned saboteur will not defy just the Central Bank, but can go ahead and treat with contempt pronouncements by the President and the Prime Minister?

If these were the dark days of Baba Moi, we probably would have some Kariuki Chotara, Joseph Kamotho, Shariff Nassir, or James Njiru going apoplectic over the fate awaiting a traitor that is obviously an enemy of development.

Parliament would suspend all other business to discuss as a matter of national importance an arrogance that can only indicate one working at the behest of foreign masters to undermine the beloved father of the nation and his popularly elected government.

An emergency session of the Kanu Delegates Conference would be called to rubber-stamp immediate expulsion as decreed by the president through the National Executive Committee.

The Intelligence Department Special Branch would swing into action keeping the torture chambers at Nyayo House extremely busy extracting confessions for all sorts of imagined crimes, including treason, sedition, terrorism, sabotage, and warlike activities.

Eventually the culprit would, if lucky, be jailed for some high crime or get detained without trial. Or if unlucky, be reported to have committed suicide by jumping from the top floor of Nyayo House.

We thank God that those dark and dangerous days are no longer with us. But we must still demand answers.

What in this country has the arrogance or power to brazenly contradict the combined efforts of the President and Premier?

What power is this that can contemptuously disregard instructions from Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, Treasury permanent secretary Joseph Kinyua and Central Bank Governor Njuguna Ndung’u?

What arrogance to laugh loudly at an attempt Parliament’s Finance Committee to set things straight?

I just can’t get why the shilling is behaving the way it is. And with that, we have galloping inflation, killer interest rates and an economic outlook that makes a mockery of all the optimistic projections of six months ago.

Now, I freely confess that economics was never my strong point. I attended a few lectures at the University of Nairobi like a million years ago, but it was a course I generally gave a wide berth to because it really meant nothing in my area of specialisation.

I could not make head or tail of all those fancy and rather arcane theories; though the graphs looked to have some interesting curves from the creative point of view.

Dozing at the back of the class, I was sure the lecturer, one Joseph Kinyua, could never pick me out in an identification parade.

Trying to teach economics to an uninterested, bored and clueless bunch from the Design class was no doubt torture to a lecturer who would much rather have been engaging with smart fellows from the real economics class.

One of the brainboxes easily digesting all the knowledge Mr Kinyua dispensed was one Njuguna Ndung’u.

The former is now the Treasury permanent secretary while the latter is now Central Bank Governor.

Even by osmosis, I could not pick up anything from the two fellows who rose to be Kenya’s top fiscal and economic policymakers.

But then, if the two have been unable to pull the country from regressing into economic numbers threatening to resemble the money-printing policies of the Moi years, perhaps I did not miss very much.

Even President Kibaki, who was elected trumpeting his credentials as an economist and former Finance Minister, has been unable to employ executive fiat to arrest the shilling’s slide.

This is when I begin to wonder whether we are simply witnessing market forces at work, and the impact of the economic slump in the United States, fiscal turmoil in Europe, and rising international oil process.

But if the US and Europe are both in trouble, should our shilling not then be gaining against the dollar, the Euro and the Pound Sterling?

And if it’s all external factors, why then should our currency be falling much faster compared to our neighbours?

I smell something fishy in a pre-election year, but then I am not schooled in these secret arts of economists.

mgaitho@ke.nationmedia.com