Of PR stunts and what 2017 brings

A Sample paper of Siaya County Mock Examination bearing the portrait of Governor Cornel Rasanga. (Photo: Olivia Odhiambo/Standard)

Form Four and Standard Eight final exams are days away. In Siaya County, the mock exams students sat have been cancelled.

Word leaked that the question papers bore the portrait of Siaya County Governor Cornel Rasanga; who apparently was the ‘sponsor’.

We can bet to the last tongolo (cent) that this ‘sponsor’ used public funds. But because he is a politician seeking re-election we can also guess that he wanted to attract attention to the fact that it was him as governor, not the county government, that needed to take the credit.

This way he would be on the high ground to get noticed by the electorate, and to demand that they reciprocate because he had demonstrated he cares and he has ‘brought’ development.

Unfortunately, the county education officers have had to pay for this with their jobs. In Nyamira, Governor John Nyagarama was forced by public pressure to remove his portrait from street lights that his Government had put up in trading centres across the county.

When youth first challenged him on this, he called it a ‘misdemeanour’ by the contractors. Yet the billboards were supposed to give the county a new revenue stream by way of advertising space to be offered to companies and private business on set cost.

Still in Nyanza, an aspirant has also been found to have had his name and portrait on exams he sponsored.

Candidates are pulling all strings and play all manner of tricks to catch the attention of the voter and steal his or her heart.

My fan, Sailochi Koech, challenged me to explain why people are furious with Mr Rasanga. My answer would not be about who is right and wrong between Education CS Fred Matiang’i, the governor and county education officers. I will look at it with the broader lens.

Secondly, I look at the public relations stunts our national leaders are engaged in as the electioneering bug bites, and conclude that even grassroots’ leaders have eyes and ears.

Only this week, this newspaper carried a shocking expose on the state of water and sanitation facilities in our schools, complete with pictures of rotting mabati toilets that killed our appetites.

Yet the truth is that most rural schools are in that state, and consider the fact that children walk into these contraptions without shoes because their parents can’t afford them.

Yet in the best of judgement, according to Jubilee mandarins led by President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto, they should be given laptops, a dream later scaled down to tablets. We have not even looked at the food they eat and the houses they sleep in!

That aside, you remember we have Seen Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto walk into mud-walled houses on the verge of collapse because of age and the vagaries of weather, to switch on electric lights under the ‘Last Mile’ programme.

They have also had occasion to walk into roadside eateries with open sewers and flies all over to eat nyama or kuku choma (roasted meat or chicken) as a demonstration to wananchi that tuko pamoja (we are together!).

As they ate, pictures would be posted on Facebook and Twitter to show they are watu wa watu (men of the people!)

This week too, you saw Opposition leader Raila Odinga being tightly embraced by an old woman at the Coast, who in ordinary times, would probably not be let near the former PM by his ‘Men-in-Black’ rib-crashers.

We have also seen a deliberate effort by the Government to pass off projects inherited from the Moi and Kibaki regimes as products of their energy and digital planning and focus.

They could be roads, hospitals, schools and even airports, but all are projected as Jubilee rather than national programmes and you could think the financiers are the party’s high-command.

Yes, this has always been the practice; the incumbent using State resources to campaign and to intimidate its opponents who have no access to the granary where our taxes are pooled while cheekily asking them to show the ‘development’ they have initiated.

Now back to Mr Rasanga and Mr Nyagarama, who are among those who have been told that they can remain where they are and just ‘enjoy’ the aroma of the meat Jubilee is feasting on.

They too like other governors have the yam and the knife and it is at their discretion to do what Americans call show-boating.

So, ladies and gentlemen, we have grassroots leaders who are a reflection of those at the top, and then the PR stunts to seduce us to vote for them.

Then finally, whereas legally it was wrong for Mr Rasanga to have his portrait on the exam papers, there is the moral question of which is worse, no mock or mock with his portrait? A beggar, after all, we were told, does not choose and the beggar here isn’t Rasanga!