Telling election defeat that’s a lesson to arrogant politicians

While events in the boardrooms of politics have unfolded with an almost inevitable regularity – Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka, Musalia Mudavadi, Moses Wetang’ula, and Isaac Ruto sat into the night and agreed Mr Odinga should be President and shared the other big posts surprisingly amicably – the people have been sending another deafening message and one which I hope, in some measure, restores our faith in the resiliency of democracy.

You may steal public money and get away with it – and the biggest looter in this country appears to always get away with it – and you may brutalise and abuse ordinary folks as much as you like, but I promise you that is not the end of the story in every case.

This week, I was rather surprised when some of my workers said they couldn’t make it to their duties at the expected time.

What’s happening? I wondered. “Tunaenda kutoa Kabogo [we are going to send home Kiambu Governor William Kabogo],” they said.

MONEY AND POWER
The stories about Governor Kabogo’s hubris are legend.

I always say that middle-aged men carry themselves with the arrogant self-assuredness of beings who know the taste of life, but the most arrogant being on earth is a middle-aged man from central Kenya, especially one who thinks he has money, which, regrettably, appears to be the majority.

And I support my conclusion with many examples, including this occasion when I had gone to Kirinyaga Road, Nairobi, to buy garden lights because I had been advised that I could find “imported” products there at a throw-away price.

This is a marketing myth. I bought Chinese junk, the type you would expect to grace a village lodging, and paid a king’s ransom for it.

KIND MAN
Anyway, I was rather taken aback when a fellow in jeans head-to-toe parked his over-decorated Toyota behind our taxi, and with great ceremony armed his alarm and squeezed himself into one of those River Road “shops” in which the shopkeeper has to spend the day contorting sideways from rack to rack, because you can’t quite fit in it.

“Njoroge will come and remove it. He doesn’t have a problem,” a shopkeeper assured me.

No? I’d have thought parking your overdone car smack in the middle of the road and inconveniencing the entire city is problematic, bigly, as Donald Trump would put it.

“He is very kind,” I murmured in admiration. “He has a lot money,” the shopkeeper, who is from Murang’a where they know about such things (everyone in Kirinyaga Road is from Murang’a) assured me.

“He used to work in that shop,” he pointed with his lips at another sideways premises, “now he has his own ‘hard waya”.

KABOGO'S WEALTH
At this point I am sure my eyebrows must have disappeared into my receding hairline.

I am middle-aged myself, 48, no less, and was pretty sure that I’d recognise money if it armed its over-decorated car’s alarm in front of my very own eyes.

Anyway, I digress. Governor Kabogo’s great wealth is widely celebrated in Central, not least by himself.

I have been told about how he would joke with women, asking them: “Why don’t you want to dance for me today? Is it because you are not wearing bikers?”

“We have them!” the women would holler back.

“OK,” he would say, “line up in two neat rows like a dog’s tits”.

GREATEST DEFEAT
And the women would each get Sh300 to “go buy bikers”, maybe after a few more “jokes” about their “useless husbands”.

As for the “useless husbands” they, too, would line up in twos like a dog’s tits and each would get Sh500 and the admonition: “Don’t ask me for roads. That’s what you have eaten.”

These good folks, the “useless husbands” and “bikerless women” lined up in twos like a dog’s tits to deliver one of the biggest electoral defeats in our times.

A campaign that was conducted in armoured trucks and helicopters couldn’t get 100,000 votes against a former councillor who didn’t even have T-Shirts and yet netted more than 350,000 votes.

VIOLENCE DURING PRIMARIES
It’s probably too late for politicians to improve their manners, whether they have been punching women or robbing the till, they can only wait and see whether their “adoring” public will bundle them out, and set them on the path to Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. That is always a possibility.

Finally, the violent passion with which these primaries have been conducted tells us that the election will most likely be chaotic, probably even violent.

And this is mainly because politicians are impossibly vain: A man who got only half of his opponent’s tally can still stand up and blame his unpopularity on the process and demand another vote.
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Could Karen Nyamu – in the unlikely event that the video clip is genuine – possibly consider running as an independent? (Asking for a neighbour.)

Her contribution to the nation, not to mention social media, is apparently still required.

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