Police playact showed the state has simply run out of ideas

An injured officer is helped into an ambulance at Wilson Airport on May 24, 2016, after he was injured during an anti-IEBC protest called by Cord. The drama evoked mixed emotions among Kenyans on social media. Some commentators couldn’t pass up the chance to poke fun at the police officers for their perceived fakery. PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Where an insecure ruling elite starts to believe its own propaganda chances are it could go about lighting fires all over the place that it might not be able to control in the long run.
  • And sections of the population that feel alienated, deprived or targeted for State repression are prone to embracing radical ideas.

It has been likened to a poor imitation of Cobra Squad, the television drama series produced by Dr Alfred Mutua that premiered on NTV in 2007.

Scenes of about 10 police officers — a majority of them with their left arms either bandaged or hanging in a shoulder sling — walking to the plane in relatively high spirits at Kisumu International Airport and disembarking on stretchers at dusk after the 45-minute flight to Wilson Airport, Nairobi, are straight out of an amateur filmmaker’s script.

As one would expect, the Tuesday drama evoked mixed emotions among Kenyans on social media. Some commentators couldn’t pass up the chance to poke fun at the police officers for their perceived fakery.

Others cheered the heroic officers and demonised the violent protesters who reportedly hit them with stones.

They all missed the point though.

The medical airlift drama, directed by Interior Principal Secretary Karanja Kibicho and Inspector-General of Police Joseph Boinnet, wasn’t meant to humour anyone.

It was a symbolic message that the UhuRuto state is keen to entrench the narrative that the Luo Nyanza counties of Kisumu, Siaya, Homa Bay and Migori, where these officers were allegedly injured, are hostile outposts and that there is more to the anti-IEBC protests called by the Opposition coalition Cord than meets the eye.

Indeed, the last time such an atmosphere of official solemnity engulfed Wilson Airport was during the ceremonies of receiving the returning survivors of the bloody El-Adde military camp attack staged by Al-Shabaab militants on Kenyan soldiers in Somalia.

In the wake of last Monday’s demos, which left four people dead and scores nursing gunshot wounds in that part of the country, the National Security Council has been reported in a newspaper article as alleging a civilian coup plot by Cord.

BE CAUTIOUS

Mr Eric Kiraithe, the Government spokesman, was quoted in the same story as not only confirming the existence of those intelligence reports but also justifying the use of live bullets on protesters.

The official attitude, amplified by the likes of Mr Kiraithe, should worry Kenyans.

Where an insecure ruling elite starts to believe its own propaganda chances are it could go about lighting fires all over the place that it might not be able to control in the long run.

And sections of the population that feel alienated, deprived or targeted for State repression are prone to embracing radical ideas.

Already, some Cord MPs have accused the State of engaging in ethnic profiling, citing the police brutality witnessed during the anti-IEBC demos in the Luo Nyanza counties and Nairobi’s Kibera slum.

But a more remarkable statement was the one attributed to one of two young men shot in the chest by police in Siaya, who had vowed to go back to the streets tomorrow if Cord hadn’t called the protests off.

The scaremongers should be careful what they wish for.

 [email protected]; @otienootieno