No matter how far you urinate, the last drop always falls at your feet

Among the Ibos of Nigeria there is a saying from some wise cola nut eaters, I just don’t know how they manage to chew that bitter thing- Well our sugar too has turned bitter. As I was saying, a wise man once said: ‘No matter how far you urinate, the last drop always falls at your feet.

Today the cane cutter has decided not to delve into matters sugar. The amount of words bandied around about the commodity by even people who don’t know what sugarcane is can make you sick in the stomach. The cane cutter has chosen instead to write about the morals we can learn from the debate and many more going into 2017.

Ever since the Jubilee Government came to power, they have tried to urinate far from themselves and put blame on others, but each time the last drop keeps falling on their feet. The latest being the sugar deal, but again is it there or not?  The president is saying this while the Cs for foreign affairs Ambassador Amina Mohamed is saying the other. Nothing puzzles God; cane cutting is also a venture.

From the day they ascended to power the Jubilee government has more often than not behaved as if they are the opposition, nay activists as Martha Karua puts it, blaming everything and anything that goes bad in the country and even within their on coalition on the opposition which by the way owes no one any apology even if they make fools of themselves like it was reported during Obama’s visit.

If there is any government that has placed the country on an election mode since day one of being sworn in, it is the Jubilee government. Despite his own promise, and he has had many and  broken many too, President Uhuru  Kenyatta and his Dp William Ruto have carried themselves around as if they are the opposition campaigning at every turn.

From day one we have been treated to theatrics and antics that pass as development tours and agendas. When they are not allergic to criticism, and throwing tantrums all over, they are on constant combative mode save for the times of disasters which seem to have built its nest in Kenya even since Jubilee came to power.

The dynamic  duo as our media calls them are constantly out  to prove a point, reminding us  at every turn, the latest being last week for the umpteenth time, that they are in power and all others like the cane cutter here are just  a bunch of idiots and fake magicians. That may only explain one thing: Uhuru Kenyatta  and Willima Ruto may after all be  having no confidence of the government they run, if not why have so many State House tea sessions with the same group of MPS in the name of convincing them about government projects? Still why struggle to prove to us every so often who the real Sheriff in town is 3 years down the line?

From Caren, to Lamu land saga, the insecurity at the coast and northern Kenya, the KQ mega loss, the Auditor General Ksh 67 billion report, Jubilee has tried to shake off the last bit of the urine right onto the feet of whistle blowers and the Opposition but themselves and now the Kenya-Uganda sugar deal. However, the flipside of it is that each time they try to shake off the urine from themselves; the last bit of it has always dropped on their own feet, sending them into fits of rage, just hear  how they are shouting back as concerns the sugar deal with Uganda.

It started with the clearing of the land’s registry, by the time the exercise was over, not only was it reported that all the missing files dating back to the 70s were recovered, the title deed processing  we were told, was like a touch of the button, the cane cutter is still waiting for his 5 years on.  Perhaps the most poignant announcement have  to come from Arthi House from  that excises was that President Uhuru Kenyatta, despite his own admission during the presidential debate, after all, owned no land! But just when they thought the urine had landed far from them, the Langata primary school and Caren land sagas popped up; currently Cs Ngilu is facing some charges in court related to issues of land.

Mpketoni happened and very fast, the President told the world it was the work of the opposition until an investigation revealed that indeed Al-shabab carried the attack, but of more significance was the revelation that the very police officer(s) who was tasked with investigating the activities of the terror group in the area before the attack was the supplier of the weapons. Just before the Garissa University attack the President at a forum told off especially the United Kingdom for giving a  warning of impending attacks in the same area in that month of April or thereabout. A day later, the same president was sending helicopters to airlift the bodies of the 147 students murdered by Al-shabab in their dormitories.

The gaffes and goofs have been many for this government: Apart from having too many spokespersons saying different things for the same Government, we have had all other manner of absurdities. Remember the Grand Prix selfies of the president while Kenyans were being slaughtered in Mandera to the mysterious mid air turn of the President’s Aeroplane En-route to USA. From the hustlers’ jet to the premature statehouse condolence message to the families of the ‘police officers’ purportedly  killed during an ambush by Al-Shabab, only for it to emerge otherwise.

Forget the highly publicized Kibera cleaning and world class NYS documentaries, forget the RGS or the Lamu Port project; forget the Transformation hash tags and all those terms and terminologies coined by the Jubilee mandarins, the 2017 General elections will be fought, won or lost on the foothill of the war against graft, insecurity, and largely broken promises.

For now rest assured the class 1 tablets, desktop computers or laptops- would come around the 2016/2017 to be used for campaigns, the standard Gauge Railways would reach Nairobi around that time too, but the real deal is how the Jubilee handles insecurity, corruption and the economy that would eventually matter when finally all the chips are down. Ask Emilio Kibaki. The old man was almost run out of town by the Orange wave despite giving Kenyan children free primary education. When he was hurriedly sworn in as president at dusk, he could not read the words scribbled on the paper properly mumbling something to the effect ‘Mungu unisadies kufanaya kazi yangu wa uhalifu…..’ (God help me to do my work of crime)

The 1992-2002 elections were found on the platform of reforms and the general feeling of suffocation by the masses under the weight of one party rule. Perhaps the most fiercely fought electoral battles that will forever go down in the history of Kenya, is 2007 General elections. Fought on the platform of betrayal of the Rainbow dream of one united prosperous Kenya, before the Arturs landed with their own beasts, trust (mistrust) between Raila Odinga’s liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Mwai Kibaki’s NAK which formed NARC, 2007changed forever the way Kenyans lived with each other. From Yote yawezekana bila Moi (All thing are possible without Moi), one the most optimistic country in the world in 2003 to the most traumatized souls in 2017/2018, the effect of which we are still feeling to date.

Any children born after that year ought to be taught that Kenya almost became a ‘once-upon-a-time-country storyline; that of a country which almost went to limbo. Sadly my simple cane cutter mind tells me our grand children will not know about it, they will continue reading about some characters as Christopher Colombo, the first and second world wars in far lands as Hiroshima and Nagasaki,  for that is what our curriculum teaches.

2017 elections will not be about who was the chief witch or idiot. It will about who was in power when Kenya airways lost Ksh 26 billion, who was running he government when innocent Kenyans died in the hands of terrorists while the head of state was taking selfies and his deputy and the Leader of majority of the ruling coalition were were busy throwing jesters at the opposition and those opposed to their ideology.

2010, terror attacks in Kenya have momentum led to the death and maiming of hundreds of citizens and security officers. The biggest spike came in 2012 where 90 died in 75 attacks. In 2013, 43 attacks happened claimed the lives of 157 and last year 2014, 62 attacks killed 290. For some people just like anything else, they have moved or forgotten, but the victims and their relatives have scars, and verily they would remember this in 2017.

Those still who have the passion and still love this country in their hearts are alarmingly getting few each passing day, will ask, ‘under whose watch were our children tear gassed for standing up against known land grabbers?’ it is then that the can cutter will get back his voice to ask, about who opened the flood gates of sugar that finally sunk our own factories when actually we knew who owned Brookside. Who was the president and deputy president went innocent children from northern Kenya failed to be taught and eventually lost out terrible in the national examination? (just wait for the 2015 result when it will be out, if at all they will sit for it)

Napoleon once said that the world suffers a lot not because of the violence to bad people, but because of the silence of good people. The Jubilee supporters and operatives have perfected the art of seeing the tribe and not the crimes perpetuated by the associates of the Jubilee regime, bad decision made by the Jubilee Government or the lack of tangible actions by the government of the day to stem the vices afflicting the common man especially when that common man is a can cutter.

Hell, you will agree with me that the state has done very little the sugar farmers as much it has been to the coffee farmers; the fact and figures are out there to vindicate my point.  I have heard some say, they don’t care where the sugar the take comes from, that so long as it is cheap and can be readily found in the shelves they would buy. That is the far our ignorance of socio-econopolitical ramifications of some of the decisions made on ‘our’ behalf by the government has taken some of us in spite of the expanded education system. For now the cane cutter can only hope that the same line of thought would apply when we were tell Ethiopia to export coffee to Kenya and Uganda to add Matoke to the sugar list they are set to sell to Kenya.

William Arthur said: ‘Opportunities are like sunrises, if you wait too long you can miss them. The Jubilee regime is fast loosing theirs even before the sun rises what with high octane PR. Unless they change the angle and level of standing while  trying to urinate the bad things from within, the last drop of that urine will always fall at their feet, if it  intened to land at the feet of the masses and and it will be a smelly one come 2017. For now the cane cutter can live with the label of being a fake magician or idiot; Cane cutting I tell you has many titles.