Why it's dishonest to blow Ruto slap remarks out of proportion

Deputy President and Kenya Kwanza Presidential Candidate William Ruto during a Townhall meeting. [Samson Wire, Standard]

An orphan boy in Charles Dickens’ 1838 novel, Oliver Twist, says he will eat the boy who sleeps next to him.

Dickens uses literary hyperbole to bring home the message of starvation among a bunch of boys in an abusive orphanage.

Hyperbole is extreme exaggeration of expression. An extravagant way to drive home your point. It is normal in conversation and literature.

“I wanted to kill him” does not mean you wanted to murder someone. Nor is Dickens’ hungry boy a cannibal. He simply uses hyperbole to paint his pathetic situation.

It is dishonest, even laughable, for intellectuals to blow out of proportion the significance of Dr William Ruto’s words, in a secret recording, that he “could have slapped President Uhuru Kenyatta.”

I participated, this week, in a TV debate where a waxy scholar decried the thought that anyone would want to slap the president. This is a defect of character, he said, and the slapper should resign.

Such are the extravagances of irrationality in missionary work, even in the academy. It is difficult to distinguish between scholars and sheeple. George Orwell has written of such situations, “You would often hear one hen remark to another, ‘Under the guidance of our leader, Comrade Napoleon, I have laid five eggs in six days,’ or two cows, enjoying a drink at the pool, would exclaim, ‘Thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!’.”

Suna East Member of Parliament Junet Mohamed, was the man to first play in public the offending recording.

Dr Ruto is heard telling of his frustration with his boss, who wanted to throw in the towel after the Supreme Court nullified their re-election in September 2017.

Ruto thought he would slap him. Simple and clear hyperbolic expression of sentiment.

Yet it should not surprise that it is blown out of proportion in this season of toxic political competition.

Separately, Mr Mohamed has unleashed another dossier that implicates Senator Moses Wetang’ula and an official of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) in an alleged conspiracy around the award of tenders to print this year’s election ballot papers.

Mr Mohamed is the crime buster in the Azimio la Umoja – One Kenya Alliance. He has the capacity to detect and bust witches and Red Indians in the Kenya Kwanza Alliance.

It will be interesting to see what he busts next. Casting his opponents in bad light is in order. That is part of this business. It is up to them to go on the counter offensive.

Yet these offensives could also recognise that we have a country to carry beyond the elections.

To blow out of proportion Ruto’s hyperbole is fine. Not so fine is to cast aspersions on the integrity of IEBC.

Experience has taught us in Kenya that when politicians rail at IEBC, they are preparing to reject election results.

They have usually privately conducted scientific opinion polls. No matter what, things look bad for them.

They begin attacking the electoral process, in readiness to reject the looming outcome.

At the critical juncture, they do not just reject the outcome within the coordinates of the law. They carry the country with them into turmoil.

It has become so predictable that when Prophet David Owour says Armageddon is coming this August, Kenya ignores him at its own risk and peril.

The country walks the tightrope at each General Election. Regrettably, Kenya lost to caustic BBI debates four good years in which it could have corrected what ails its elections.

It must go to the August elections with the IEBC and the electoral capacity and capability that it has, and hope for the best.

Demonising the electoral authority and processes now only portends doom. We can only hope and wait.

Meanwhile, someone please remind Chief Justice Martha Koome, that she jumps the gun each time she talks about IEBC. We will find it hard to believe her, when the contest gets to her court, as it looks it set.

Dr Barrack Muluka is a strategic communications advisor. www.barrackmuluka.co.ke