Words alone aren’t enough to unseat an elected government

Words often shrivel into a whimpering incoherence when seared with the full force of power.

Vaunted as freedom of expression is, burning Uhuru Kenyatta’s presidential portrait in a gigantic bonfire as proposed by lawyer Miguna Miguna would have been the height of political insurrection and an affront to democracy.

The vision of naked flames licking at Mr Kenyatta’s visage as the glass and wooden frames resisted the heat would have been the last straw that would break the government’s back.

Coming on the back of the treasonous 'swearing-in' of Mr Raila Odinga as the 'People’s President', a crime abetted by thousands of ignorant people, Dr Miguna’s public confession to leading a militarised criminal group was impossible to ignore.

STATE POWER
Here was a self-declared general with no troops and armed only with words declaring war on a government deeply nuanced in the art of dispatching people.

The impunity of confessing to administering an oath in which someone other than Mr Kenyatta swore to uphold the Constitution and protect human rights meant other legal upstarts could start swearing-in parallel chiefs, and other alternative leaders.

Previously, Dr Miguna has called on misguided youth to arm themselves — with words, the law and the Constitution — in standing their ground and fighting the government.

One person recently died in protests to demand his release.

His fate should be an object lesson that being a wordsmith and clever lawyer are no match for state power.

MIGUNA EJECTED
For the longest time, the government had been willing to overlook Mr Miguna’s 30-year Canadianness — until he started drumming his chest on television like a gorilla well before the watershed period.

His declaration of the Cabinet secretary for the Interior and National Coordination as Public Enemy Number 3 was extremely disrespectful, given Dr Fred Matiang’i's high standards.

Dr Matiang’i, who is as calm as a bowl of porridge, began to methodically dismantle the myth of Dr Miguna without leaving any fingerprints.

Nonplussed by court orders, laws, and other wordy excuses, he has taken a huge problem off Kenya’s hands and deposited it in the Ottawa winter.

RAILA ADVISOR
The delivery of Dr Miguna to his home in Canada is a fitting payback for his continuing treachery of his motherland, evident in sneaking bad words into the Constitution of Kenya, 2010, when it was being written.

Since Dr Miguna lost his job as advisor in the Prime Minister’s office, he has been unemployed while still falling well below the regulation age for receiving government social support.

Government was willing to wink on his lack of Kenyan citizenship when he sought election as governor of Nairobi as part of the effort to end unemployment.

His return-to-sender one-way ticket to Canada is a reminder that citizenship is a gift enjoyed contingent on one’s good behaviour, and the government never forgets.

PASSPORTS
Thousands of Dr Miguna’s compatriots who were witness to the treasonous events of January 30 have been invited to return their passports, the property of the State.

Those without passports should surrender their national identity cards to set down the burden of Kenya’s success.

Anyone who does not love the government should take himself to the country he loves, or be assisted along.

Those threatening to offer themselves for arrest for witnessing the fake oath ceremony run the risk of having their national identity cards impounded, and their citizenship revoked as they are assisted to return to their homeland nations in Somalia, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia and Tanzania, without great expense to the exchequer.

Government is easily irritated by the spawning negativity that is arresting development.

Buried in the heap of examination results, mass failures, new Cabinet secretaries, and the price of maize meal, words have this annoying habit of going on like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

The writer is a Programme Adviser, Journalists for Justice. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect those of JFJ. [email protected]