Kenyans want to hear where this Government is going
PRESIDENT KIBAKI WILL on Wednesday night not be hosting the traditional ball dance – bull dance during the Moi era – to “jump the year”.
The official spin is that the President and First Lady are dispensing with the usual New Year revelry “as an expression of solidarity with other Kenyans who are facing difficult circumstances”.
Tell us another one, Mr spinmeister!
My own suspicion is that cancellation of the New Year’s eve bash has absolutely nothing to do with the sympathy for Kenyans who got the short end of the stick.
This is a Government, after all, that has all along preferred to pretend that the underclasses, the unemployed, the dispossessed, the internal refugees and the rest of the long suffering masses do not really exist.
This is a Government that absolutely refuses to recognise that there is anything horrendously wrong in an economic and social system where the gap between the poor and the rich is wider than the Rift Valley; a country, to update the late J.M. Kariuki, of 30 billionaires and 30 million beggars.
Some would say that foremost in the mind as the Mombasa State House party was cancelled, was another of our self-created festering sores, the Internally Displaced Persons, to borrow another of those mind-numbing terms created by NGOs.
But officially, the IDPs no longer exist. If you checked with the Office of the President, the word is that it is only a few malingerers, idlers and enemies of development posing as internal refuges so that they can continue to get free food and shelter.
You might be told that the resettlement programme worked with clockwork precision.
Those run out of their homes, farms and business enterprises in the Rift Valley, Central, Nyanza and Western Provinces, and elsewhere, have returned to rebuild their lives; complete with generous cash compensation from the Government and to the welcome embraces of now remorseful neighbours who kicked them out in the first place.
Those who insist on staying in the refugee camps are troublemakers who must now be removed by force.
Now that everybody is happy sharing power in the grand coalition, now that Raila Odinga is Prime Minister and his Rift Valley allies such as Mr William Ruto and Mr Henry Kosgey are in the same government, surely there is no need for some lazy fellows to continue demanding handouts.
PEACE HAS BEEN RESTORED AND they all should go back to their homes and farms and make an honest living.
A Government wired to think like that would not cancel the State House party merely to express sympathy for the wretched and lazy masses, in their view, who refused to work.
Therefore, there must be another more compelling reason why the State House ball dance was cancelled. Perhaps some of those legendary tantrums in the place have something to do with it?
Anyway, whatever the reasons, it is not an event that will be sorely missed. Sweaty dignitaries with absolutely no dress sense and not the slightest bit of rhythm trying to dance to sounds by the most boring bands ever assembled, does not make for captivating television.
The highlight of the do was not the comedy of a ball, but the midnight presidential address.
This time, the President will address nation from a the privacy of recording at a State House not soiled by the feet of unwelcome guests.
From the security of State House, the President can be assured that there will be no hecklers to interrupt his address.
We can also assume that the few TV and radio technicians handling the recording will have been made to leave their shoes at the door.
Perhaps then the President will have the time to address the issues that really matter.
Kenyan’s want to know where this Government is going and whether it will remain in perpetual paralysis.
They want to know whether their most biting concerns about runaway prices and an economy in reverse are being addressed.
They need guarantees that the Government will not again cheat them on the reform programme.
And they are anxious to see a new constitution with all speed; and the national accord and reconciliation process proceed without further delay.
