By Crazy Monday
Every government suffers the unwelcome attentions of the media. And the media, as usual, have one or two “anonymous” sources of information.
Seconds after a Cabinet meeting is held and the proceedings labelled “Top Secret”, a media mole from right inside the Cabinet will be spotted at the State House toilets, frantically dialling his press contacts to pass on the juice from the meeting.
In Kenya, that sort of thing is normally done by salon gossips. Every self-respecting hair salon has a loudmouth hair stylist who just won’t shut up. She is never the prettiest one in the salon. In fact, the plainer the hair stylist, the louder her mouth is. With the coming of social networks and their ubiquitous ‘groups’, this role has also passed into cyberspace; the most vocal ‘status update’ junkies invariably turn out to be the fattest, ugliest ones in the group.
Selfish loafers
And so the public gets to know whatever the Cabinet discusses long before the discussion is even concluded. As the President toils to placate teachers who are itching to strike and MPs whose turn to eat has come, Kenyans are gripped in a sort of news-addicted rigour mortis, following every word that comes from our mis-rulers in the vain hope that something will change for the better.
There is no hope. Parliament is composed of largely incompetent, selfish loafers out to get as much money as they can out of the country’s coffers. The President’s chosen team of fixers don’t seem to be any better. Look, Kenya’s insecurity is worse than Mogadishu’s these days.
Maybe the President should, like an exasperated hair salon owner, find an excuse to dissolve Parliament and the Senate, fire every public officer earning more than Sh500,000 a month, and then begin fresh recruitments by interviewing candidates himself.
