Raila is the author of his own troubles, not Miguna
Glad that the Right Honourable Prime Minister finally found it worth his time to react to my favourite whistleblower Miguna Miguna and his book last week.
His entourage of official and unofficial advisers had hogged acres of newspaper space parroting the line that it was beneath ‘a whole Prime Minister of the Republic of Kenya’ or ‘a public figure who is larger than life’ to respond to non-issues raised by a bitter former aide in his rag of a book.
You knew that Mr Miguna had brought out the worst in otherwise respectable people in society when corruption, nepotism and cronyism began to appear like legitimately defensible public values.
The problem with trying to spin stories about allegations of malpractices like corruption in public offices populated with well-known crooks is that however much you try you simply won’t have the last word.
It would actually be a completely worthless exercise if it were not for the incentive, as Martha Karua would say, to earn a living in a difficult economic environment or for deeply sentimental reasons.
Understandably the Prime Minister in the interview with the Sunday Nation still couldn’t summon the courage to confront the more serious issues raised in Peeling Back the Mask.
But it was interesting to note the lengths to which he went to confirm some of the very things Mr Miguna writes about him.
The Raila Odinga Mr Miguna portrays as keeping a large retinue of advisers around him but whose advice he ignores is the same one we see jumping at the first opportunity to lash out at Mr Miguna — against the ‘best advice’ of the team, of course.
Then there is Mr Odinga the cry baby and the blamer-in-chief — the one who blames his problems on everyone other than himself. It turns out that the fall guy this time around isn’t just Mr Miguna.
A co-authorship role for the National Security Intelligence Service makes the perpetual victim story sound fairly credible, doesn’t it?
True, it is not beyond intelligence agencies to mastermind all manner of plots to bring down leaders they don’t like.
But even if it were to be confirmed that the agency bankrolled Mr Miguna to write bad things about Mr Odinga, he [Mr Odinga] would still not dodge personal responsibility for handing his enemies the rope with which to hang him.
Dishing out favours to relatives or surrounding oneself with scandalous characters is clearly a matter of personal choice.
