#FRONTROW: Discuss issues, not Bahati’s stunt

First Lady Margaret Kenyatta watches as singer Bahati performs during the launch of the Jubilee Party on September 10, 2016. The artiste’s act of sitting on the President’s seat as he serenaded the First Lady has drawn more discussion than what the President said at the event. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • “History written,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “I Bahati become the shortest serving President as President Uhuru “vacates” his chair that I may sing the song Mama to Kenya’s First Lady Margaret Kenyatta!!! GLORY TO JESUS.”

Bahati’s Internet-breaking stunt at Kasarani last Saturday should be the least of your worries. That a young, audacious musician kicked out the president and sat on his seat while he serenaded the First Lady is, at best, a footnote.

The fact that so much time and endless data bundles have been spent discussing this one little sideshow should worry anybody who cares about the future of Kenya.

In a grand-scale staged production like the launch of the Jubilee party, the biggest take-out shouldn’t be about the curtain raiser, but the substance of what was said.

“We should stop complaining about Bahati’s antics and focus more on how much this launch cost us as taxpayers,” tweeted commentator Cindy Ogana.

That’s a perfect place to start, considering that the billion word has been thrown around, and some say as much as Sh2 billion might have been spent.

You can’t dismiss it as an exaggeration or a lowball unless some serious guesstimation goes into it. None of that can happen if all the collective energy of a nation is spent discussing whether an artiste in his early 20s was respectful to the presidency or not.

“History written,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “I Bahati become the shortest serving President as President Uhuru “vacates” his chair that I may sing the song Mama to Kenya’s First Lady Margaret Kenyatta!!! GLORY TO JESUS.”

There, he said it, can we move on now? If you’re still obsessing over the minutiae of what went wrong with the performance or who dropped the ball, you need to have your head checked.

Either that, or you’re just secretly jealous that Bahati has such great rapport with the first family that the President just grinned indulgently and his wife played along.

Saturday was a momentous day in Kenya’s political landscape, with extraordinary events in Nairobi and Mombasa. Former prime minister Raila Odinga and his ODM brigade put on a parallel show in the coastal city, claiming credit for some highlights of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration.

It was a valiant effort by an Opposition often criticised for being rudderless and ineffective. To no one’s surprise, Mr Odinga was declared the ODM flag-bearer in next year’s presidential contest.

He will compete against Uhuru Kenyatta for the third, and probably last, time. Some already know how this story ends but that’s a story for another day.

SOURCE OF FUNDS

His party has asked Jubilee to declare the source of the funds used to pay for their Kasarani launch and prove that no state resources were used. The coming-out party for the president’s new political vehicle was organised by many who, technically, are still civil servants.

Plenty of State House staff were directly involved in the planning and execution of the launch, even though they still work for the government and should not be openly supporting a candidate in the General Election.

From here on, President Kenyatta and the government will be conflated often and the staff on his team will work for both his administration and his campaign. Even his speech from the unveiling was posted on the presidency’s official website. The video was shot by staff of the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit.

Did you know that candidate Uhuru mentioned the world “change” four times in his speech? That is an interesting proposition for a candidate who has been president for four years.

“As we gather here, the very forces that have caused us misery, the forces behind the Eurobond and NYS scandals and the grabbing of school land are gathered in Nairobi to plot how to give us more of the same pain,” said Odinga.

He claimed that ODM was the largest party by geographical reach. Maybe that requires some fact-checking and is worthy of some scepticism. No amount of serious inquiry or interrogation went into any of what he said because Bahati was a much hotter topic.

“Not every leader can read the signs of the times,” said President Kenyatta. “Time and again, they have chosen violent, destructive and undemocratic politics. And each and every time, ordinary Kenyans have paid a high price for the irresponsibility of their leaders.”

Now that is a scintillating broadside against Odinga and his colleagues at the top of Cord. It is also a talking point that needs to be taken apart and considered carefully and soberly. Both politicians were posturing, speaking to receptive crowds and airbrushing their roles in our history with a bit of revisionism.

Instead of vigorous debate on the issues that divide us, the trivial once again took centre stage over the important. We’re less than a year away from the election but we want to hold a national referendum on a musician’s upbringing instead of how to move the country forward.

That  is precisely what is wrong with Kenya.  

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CANON PROJECTS GROWTH FOR KENYA

Everyone is a YouTube star these days. Everywhere you look, there are people capturing life, sometimes with professional cameras but mostly just for Instagram or Snapchat.

“We are actually seeing that region as a central growth area and we’ve been running some programmes in Kenya both for still photography and video,” Paul Atkinson told me at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam last weekend.

He is Canon’s European pro video specialist for the Consumer Imaging Group and we were talking about trends. “It’s underdeveloped in certain areas but we find that it follows the same natural progression.”

Translation: there aren’t enough Mutua Mathekas running around capturing awesome moments but it’s getting there. The IBC is a startlingly huge conference and exhibition for everyone in the media and entertainment creation or distribution business. Even though no Kenyan station broadcasts in high definition, it is so last year; people here talk about 8K or high dynamic range.

“We always pride ourself in the quality of our image,” he says when I tell him about the choice. “Your first, second and third priority should always be the quality of your image.”

Surprisingly, he doesn’t think 4K video is a gimmick so your next TV should probably be compatible with that. 

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APPLE RUINS THE IPHONE

Watching Tim Cook and his band of wizards at Apple describe their new products is a bit like magic. They overuse “awesome”, “amazing” and “fantastic” even when what they’re launching is anything but.

As a side note, design chief Jonny Ive should just start a cult. That voice is all he needs to get a steady following beyond the nerds who already worship him.

That said, the iPhone 7 is almost a dud. Not much innovation went into it even though Cook painstakingly went through 10 supposedly new elements.

As one writer has already pointed out, their claim that removing the headphone jack was an act of courage led to collective eye-rolling around the world.

The only positive might be the doubled space available for your baby’s cute pictures. Otherwise, the disappointing new device is only incrementally better than the previous one. That means it will probably make a lot of money, Apple style. 

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