Political satire By Trevor Makona
KISUMU, KENYA: Ambassador Raychelle Omamo, Senior Counsel, stands poised to become Kenya’s first female Defence Cabinet Secretary, a position that any sane African leader should only trust with a member of his community.
Luo Nyanza is frozen with shock. Never in their wildest imaginations would it have occurred to them that the son of Jomo would appoint one of their own, and a daughter at that, to such a critical and powerful position. Gender and Sports, maybe. But Defence? Wah!
Cynics, however, say the Defence portfolio isn’t much, arguing that the Cabinet Secretary is but a figurehead.
“It is the Generals and their commander-in-chief who call the shots,” they nod knowingly, even though the closest they have been to the army is the AFCO bar where they passed out after six tax-free beers.
They swear trouble will begin when Amb Omamo starts poking her legal nose in certain (dodgy) procurements running into billions of shillings that should, as a matter of ‘national security’, be shrouded in secrecy.
Those who claim to know her ‘very well’ (the closest they have been to her is via photographs published in newspapers) say Amb Omamo is a stubborn girl, a chip off Martha Karua’s block. They swear that unlike Amos Kimunya, who would rather die than resign, the daughter of Kaliech will tender her resignation the moment the Generals try to arm-twist her. But it is early days, so fingers crossed.
Still, Madam Cabinet Secretary, as the army brass will be addressing her, might, as soon as she is confirmed, want to take a ride incognito passed some of our military barracks, especially in the early evening. When the KDF crossed into Somalia in pursuit of the Al Shabaab insurgents, security at those gates was airtight, fingers on the trigger — all the works.
But with the passage of time, security has become perfunctory— Bored sentries chatting with each other, others peeping casually into visitors’ cars, weapons slung impotently over the shoulders. Routine.
Perhaps that is why the Maasai, Pokot and Turkana are hopping mad. The President did not deem it fit to appoint one of their own, even when one suspects they could have done a fantastic job in the Defence docket seeing as in our pastoralist communities, virtually every adult male is a trained marksman. As if that wasn’t insulting enough, the President appointed a woman, who, in those places, and most parts of Kenya anyway, is regarded as a ‘child’.
Curiously, even those who got a piece of the Cabinet cake aren’t all smiling. In coast, the Kaya Elders are seething with fury because President Kenyatta gave a sliver of cassava through the Ministry of Mining to Hon Najib Balala.
Their rage has little to do with the fact that no mining goes on in Kenya apart from a few daredevils prospecting for gold using 100BC tools. They are mad because Balala is Arabic yet they would have preferred that the seat goes to one of their own — a Mijikenda. So Pwani is not Kenya, but even then Pwani has its real owners and if the Kaya elders can be believed, the small tribes along the Coast are not it.
It is a headache Deputy President William Ruto is familiar with. Even though he has given ‘his people’ four seats, those same people are grumbling because the seats were allegedly scattered around his village and not far enough to allow everyone partake of the goodies.
Meanwhile, as Kenyans whine about certain religions missing out, the marginalised groups being neglected as usual, Western getting a raw deal (never mind that they didn’t even bother to vote, leave alone for Jubilee) and those with disability grumble about getting nothing, those in the know are scrambling for the real national cake.
County Governors want their piece and they want it now. Commissions are wallowing in the fat, MPs bay for higher salary, fatter loans and tango with the Senate for power as IEBC spends millions of that tiny cake, hiring lawyers to defend it in election petitions.
Meanwhile, the recent heavy rains have pulverised national infrastructure leaving roads in urgent need of repair. We need billions to supply Class One kids with free computers, revamp the police service, kit up the army, buy subsidised fertilizers and build hospitals.
Yet ominously, KRA has missed its target, even as some creative Swiss claims to own an Island, which, coincidentally, is a gazzeted national park.
And you know what? All that Kenyans, the same Kenyans who used to complain that President Mwai Kibaki’s Cabinet was bloated, can think of is that a tribesman or woman wasn’t appointed Cabinet Secretary.
Doesn’t it remind one of the juvenile tantrums that toddlers kick up when their hard-pressed mother comes home with one sweet, even though they know she is dirt poor?
