Jubilee losing propaganda war to Cord due to its complacency

Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich (centre), Permanent Secretary Kamau Thugge (left) and Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo during a press conference to address queries on Eurobond at Treasury Building in Nairobi on December 4, 2015. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • What if, in our wisdom, we do not give the government the chance to do its job? Who is supposed to shoulder the blame?

By their very nature, governments the world over are the most difficult entities to defend. And for understandable reasons, human beings find it a lot easier to criticise than to appreciate a nebulous concept, an enigma alien to their daily experience, but also a handy presence on which they can heap their collective failure rather than look into themselves to understand where they went wrong.

In short, we are always looking for a convenient scapegoat to explain why we are poor, why we go hungry, why we steal, why terrorists kill us, why floods regularly sweep us from our homes and why we starve.

“It is the fault of the government,” we are told, and we believe it because we may be too lazy to seek the real answers. This “government” is one of the corniest excuses is the world, for it absolves us from taking responsibility for our lives as individuals and as a society.

There should be limits to such self-indulgence. In the end, we are solely responsible for our own lives and all that the government is required to do is to facilitate us the opportunity to better those lives. But what if, in our wisdom, we do not give it the chance to do its job? Who is supposed to shoulder the blame?

In the past four years, this country has been in a state of flux. People who should know better have been conned by wily demagogues that the Jubilee government is the worst they have ever had since Independence, when this is not actually the case. As the saying goes, a lie often repeated becomes the truth. And this lie has been spread with such a singularity of mind, and for so long, that some people may begin to believe it is the truth.

Let us just look at a few examples. A year ago, the buzz was all about how a selfish Jubilee government was starving the counties of money because it was against devolution. But when it came to light that even those “few” billions of shillings channeled to counties were, and still are, being misused by governors and MCAs on undeserved sitting allowances and useless “benchmarking” trips all over the world, that contention started losing its value.

Unfortunately, very few people, whether in government or in the ruling coalition, came up with a cogent counter-argument to the charge. A few tried, but mostly, they answered propaganda with dry figures and statistics, which was a no-contest in the circumstances.

As a result, some people out there believe the national government is still intent on withholding the bulk of the country’s revenue for sinister purposes.

Populism can never compete with the truth; the former always carries the day. Just the other day, we were regaled with tales about how the Eurobond billions were pilfered by a few in Jubilee. Now, very few people know much about the Eurobond or what it is meant to be.

They were told by their leader that Jubilee stole the money and that was enough. One investigation after another, and even the IMF, have absolved the National Treasury of this treachery, but when that happens, it rarely makes major news. How come nobody uses the Eurobond issue as a propaganda tool today? And how come nobody in Jubilee has debunked the myth comprehensively to discredit those who sought to capitalise on people’s ignorance?

It is naïve to expect that the truth, especially on such arcane issues, will resonate with poor Kenyans the way accusations of grand robbery would.

There are many similar issues that leave thinking Kenyans flabbergasted. Just the other day, a high-ranking member of the Cord fraternity, without an iota of evidence, claimed the IEBC had sent a commissioner to South Korea to learn how to use computer applications for manipulating voters.

Even when the Korean ambassador refuted such allegations, the person who made the allegation kept a studious silence and so did newspaper columnists and TV talk-show pundits. As a result, the accusation must have stuck in people’s minds.

For how long will Kenyans be held in thrall by masters of propaganda with a messiah complex?

And how is it that only a few Jubilee stalwarts in Parliament and a few brave souls at State House, have the guts to fight back?

This complacency may turn out to be very costly.