Kajwang’ was gifted in defusing tension at times of crisis

Theatre critics speak of “dramatic relief” to refer to that height of tension when something suddenly happens to defuse the tension, pain, anxiety or distress among the “dramatis personae”.

Without Sir John Falstaff’s inimitable wit, William Shakespeare’s King Henry series would be far too tragic for the audience’s psychological health.

That is why in the cast of every one of the Bard’s tragedies, there is a “touchstone”. Though in the royal court – which is never a very good judge of any social climate – he is called a “fool”, he remains, for the audience, the wisest member of the cast. That is why, in one of the Bard’ most delightful comedies, the “fool” is called Touchstone.

The word touchstone describes a person who acts as the standard by which all judgement should be made concerning every family or social situation. In all Shakespearean plays with such a role, the “fool” makes the most informed, most sagacious and most penetrating comments on all family and life situations.

Gerald Otieno Kajwang’ was the Touchstone of our Parliament. In a House perennially bogged down by social ignorance, personal malice, greed, tortured prose and humourlessness, Kajwang stood out like the other English poet’s star – “when only one is shining in the sky” – with his eye for detail, sense of high drama, ribbing wit and a smile broader than that of Alice’s “Cheshire cat”.

No, it was only concerning social substance that Kajwang’ stood to be criticised. He was perhaps the loudest among the parliamentary opposition’s critics of whoever was the government for the time being. But – as I say – here he was not different from any of the plethora of judges of the Moi, Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta administrations.

Here, I never heard any proposal from any other member of an opposition party that could be construed to represent any real social transformation in such perennial social problems as security, crime, tribalism, education, gender relations, wealth distribution, world trade, election theft and the now wholly forgotten internally displaced persons (IDP).

THOROUGHLY PLEASANT

But I reiterate that, here, Otieno Kajwang’ excelled in the manner in which he carried himself – extremely serious and yet thoroughly pleasant – while his colleagues reacted with that Philistine shoe-banging anger and forbidding Satanic face as often characterised Moscow’s Nikita Khrushchev and Andrei Gromyko at the United Nations on New York City’s Manhattan Island.

No, Otieno Kajwang’ never needed such boorishness to floor his interlocutors. He could do it simply by causing them to laugh at themselves. A mind so nimble and a face always creased with a brilliant smile, he was what Shakespeare would have called “the nonpareil” in the realm of political theatre.

However, on the question of loyalty to the party and its leaders, Otieno Kajwang’ could have raised a troubling question or two. Are they necessarily less loyal, those who rise to criticise the daily or long-term performance of their party and its supremo? Here I stand with those who posit that loyalty to a group is to be measured primarily by a member’s readiness to point out to the group where he or she thinks the group has lost the way.

A member who either keeps quiet or even pours fulsome praise on his or her party and its leaders even when the party is sinking to the bottom of the sea – that is the one I would accuse of disloyalty. That was where Otieno Kajwang’ and I often parted the ways. We never saw eye-to-eye on the whole issue of socio-moral substance.

But on one aspect of what the French call savoir-faire – on his effortless ability to defuse socio-political tension whenever it reached dangerous heights – Otieno Kajwang’ had no competitor in Kenya’s grand theatre of politics. Death has robbed us of the one who could have served most brilliantly as the party’s – nay, even the government’s – chief whip.

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