Wrong use of a conjunction can easily mislead

What did The Standard have in mind when it informed us in its October 5 number that “Taita Taveta Governor John Mruttu and Principal Secretary John Musonik joined hundreds of aviation enthusiasts... to celebrate 100 years since the first flight in East Africa took off... in Taita Taveta County on October 4, 1915”?

Surely, this — that both Mr Mruttu and Mr Musonik are officials of Taita Taveta.

By placing the governor in Taita Taveta but, in the same verbal breath, failing to place the principal secretary anywhere, you force the reader to assume that Taita Taveta applies to both.

Moreover, through the conjunction and, you make even principal secretary Musonik an official of that county.

Through that conjunction, the writer misinforms us that Mr Musonik is the “principal secretary” of that county.

What nonsense! What information do you impart whenever — through the conjunction and — you announce that John Musonik is also the “principal secretary” of Taita Taveta? Do our counties have such offices as principal secretaries?

TRIBE-WRACKED COUNTRY
What I suspect is that the reporter and the sub-editor involved knew much better.

For those who have never heard of Their Excellencies, “sub-editors” is the internal term for a newspaper’s word technicians and page artists, including the bloke who allowed the above bloomer to pass muster.

As information merchants, what let our newspapers down is only that, in the same breath, they lumped together both the two office holders in such a way that the principal secretary, a national official, and that the governor, a county official, had no choice, grammatically, but to share what is only a county office.

In other words, in such a construction, the conjunction and makes both Mr Mruttu and Mr Musonik officials of the Taita Taveta county government.

In a tribe-wracked country like ours, one of the names may make us smile as broadly as the Cheshire Cat.

If a Kalenjin Nilote (as Mr Musonik seems to be) can be the “principal secretary” in a Bantu government, like Taita-Taveta’s, then the days of Koigi’s “negative tribalism” may look numbered.

THE PROPER WAY
Yet many of us know quite differently. At any rate, we know that, as principal secretary, Mr Musonik can only be an official of the national government.

For — as we also know — that is the only place where the term principal secretary now applies. And, for that knowledge, there may be a general or theoretical statement.

It may be this: Whenever you use the conjunction and to join two separate subjects, you must, on first mention, precede each office with the holder’s name.

In your sentence, you must say: “Taita Taveta Governor John Mruttu and national principal secretary John Musonik...”

If you do not introduce the adjective national just before the second official’s name, you will have reduced John Musonik — the principal secretary — from his national pedestal to a county official.

Or you will have mistakenly declared that Taita Taveta is the sole locus, the only theatre, of both governor Mruttu and principal secretary Musonik.