Why Uhuru will not tackle public health crisis

As I write this, President Uhuru Kenyatta’s speechwriters are probably putting the final touches to what he will read in his New Year address to the nation from State House, Mombasa.

Mr Kenyatta and his predecessors have in the past used the occasion to state their respective governments’ top agenda for the year or make major pronouncements on some burning national issues.

But there were also those presidential New Year speeches that were remarkable only for their empty rhetoric, narrow political interests or long list of tired non-issues.

So what will Mr Kenyatta’s big speech for 2017 rank as the top priorities for his government or the burning national issues?

Will he announce a solution for the doctors’ strike that has paralysed services in public hospitals in the past 27 days or launch into an uninspiring sermon about peace and national unity ahead of the elections?

Will he step forward to state how he intends to tackle corruption in government, which is set to escalate during this election year, or make excuses for his failures?

My bet is that the President’s New Year speech will fall far below expectations.

FAMILIAR TREND
Recent events in Parliament and official pronouncements elsewhere suggest that the President and his government are preoccupied with how to win the August 8 elections.

Everything else appears to have been put in the back burner.

Take how the government has approached the two sets of issues around the elections and the public health crisis in the past two weeks, for example.

Both the National Assembly and the Senate have had to be recalled for special sittings to debate changes to electoral laws while the President has swiftly moved to nominate new commissioners to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.

During this time, the President has found time to host delegations of potential voters in State House, Nairobi.

Deputy President William Ruto’s Sugoi home has resumed welcoming large groups of such guests as well.

All the while, the duo has maintained a loud silence over the public health crisis.

Well, Eric Kiraithe, the Government spokesman, finally spoke for them last Friday.

But it wasn’t anything we haven’t heard before.

Plus, there is a tendency to assign Mr Kiraithe only the task of amplifying unpopular official positions on serious national issues.

RUNNING AWAY
His spin provided no more hope of a solution than the recent threats by Afya House to replace the striking doctors with foreigners.

Yes, the same Afya House that not long ago was in the news for having imported Sh10 million container clinics from China!

Elections aside, there is another reason the doctors’ strike will probably not feature prominently in the President’s New Year speech.

Going by his self-defeatist “what do you want me to do?” question at the State House Summit on Corruption, he never saw a big national problem he didn’t want to run away from.

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