It was delightful to see Prezzo Bill Ruto stepping out in spanking new brown shoes as the rest of us endure the dreadfully long month of January, or njaanuary to most Kenyans, looking so fit and alert. It means he’s been eating well and sleeping better.
I liked it that he was performing in a proper arena, so we’d appreciate the thought that had gone into venue design, complete with an arena that placed him smack in the spotlight to deliver his performative politics.
The choreography minimised the prospects of unidentified flying objects flying towards his direction, as happened some moons ago, discharging dust as it hurled dangerously close to the head of the Head of State.
The special occasion starring Prezzo Ruto, of course, was the ruling coalition’s national governing council conference in which he outlined his manifold successes in steering the State to prosperity, perhaps even his own, and more importantly, for those assembled before him.
The numbers bandied around were too many to remember, which tells you how expansive Prezzo’s brain must be, thanks to his Ph.D., and how he was able to weave a compelling narrative from fragments of notes.
He was going to modernise airports, he said, palm curling in the air to imitate flight, even though most jets at the national carrier are grounded; our cows’ teats are reportedly dripping with milk, producing more than other bovines on the African continent, despite the drought that has decimated many animals in the arid lands of this country.
What was particularly moving was the miracle in the education sector, which Prezzo purported to have singlehandedly “transformed…in a very fundamental way…” Consequently, he went on: “We have sorted out the problems that we have with CBC; we have sorted out issues with teachers’ shortage; we have sorted out issues with infrastructure shortage…”
Yes, Prezzo has sorted all our issues, even though thousands of youngsters are yet to transition to the next grade; Prezzo has sorted all that out because he says so. And he appeared convinced because he had said so.
Yet, even the most rehearsed performance can go awry, and this one, right from the start. Prancing around the stage in his spanking new brown shoes, Prezzo Ruto’s opening lines said all there was to be said about his tenure in under one minute.
“Kuna watu wa porojo mingi, propaganda mingi kule kwa social media kumejaa fitina. Hakuna kazi imefanyika. Wale walituambia uwongo. Lakini tumesimama hapa leo ili wale wanaosema tuliwaambia Wakenya uwongo waaibike.”
This pithy formulation defies easy translation. It’s unscripted. It does not roll off the teleprompter. It’s a cry from deep within. It loosely translates to mean that Prezzo is out of his depths, seeking to debunk the online chatter that he lied to Kenyans, and that nothing has been achieved. He’s debunking all this by his very presence, shaming his detractors.
That’s the embodiment of self-belief, his mere presence, he said, was all that Kenyans needed to believe that he had achieved all that he promised he’d do. Well, perhaps, not quite, he clarified, his implementation of the UDA manifesto stood at “almost 80 per cent.”
This lack of precision shouldn’t be mistaken for deceit; it allows for a generous margin of error so that scores can be adjusted as need be. So, if some independent lobby had assessed Prezzo Ruto’s scorecard to be 15 per cent, the “almost 80 per cent” undone sounds about right.
Similarly, the bags of fertiliser in the stores were “almost three million,” while the number of so-called Mau Mau roads completed was “almost 50 per cent,” which Prezzo Ruto adjusted quickly from “50 to 60 per cent.” That’s a ten percent completion rate in microseconds!
Understandably, the fortunes of our country are (almost) too good to be true. But we should be careful not to irritate Prezzo by asking for proof. He’s doing well in his new brown shoes, and so must we all, because he says so.
