Palaver

Palaver

Former President Bill Clinton is one man that deserves to be appointed — in serving President Barack Obama’s words — “Secretary of explaining stuff”; some sort of surrogate-in-chief firstly, because the fella has a way with words and secondly because he is a media magnet and a crowd puller and thirdly because he is a money-maker. Whether he is doing it because his wife Hillary is Diplomat Number One or he misses the view from the window of his former office is neither here nor there. Since Bill joined up, he has appeared at more than 30 fundraisers, attended 15 rallies for Obama and hosted events where people fund the Democratic campaign for another stint at America’s most prestigious address at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest  Washington, DC 20500, United States. Need I say more?

 

Cherangany MP Joshua Kuttuny  is now a very angry man who feels jilted. He cannot understand how one William Ruto can contemplate jumping back into ODM. Hear him: “Some of us have personally fought him (Raila odinga) for the last four years and can simply not go in that direction. One wonders what Agwambo might do to us if we regroup under his presidency,” Ouch!

 

The legendary power of the pen is something authors are quickly learning can cause offence. Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses earned him several fatwas and he crawled from one hiding place to the next for 15 years. I am sure he still steals glances over his shoulder. Michela Wrong paraphrasing John Githongo’s tribulations in It’s Our Turn To Eat  saw the chap shuffling around varsities in Europe’s coldest cities; Miguna Miguna lost a shoe here and a cap there when he peeled off some ‘secrets’. And now former UN chief Kofi Annan’s Interventions: A Life In War And Peace, did not win the man many friends in Kenya last week and he even earned the new title of Political Tourist. Sounds better than Chief Mediator.

 

And finally…

What is it about the sons of former presidents the world over? First wasformer president Rupiah Banda’s son Henry on charges of corruption. Then came Muammar Gaddafi’s Saif al-Islam awaiting a date with a magistrate. Then Hosni Mubarak’s sons, and now, Mr Maksim Bakiyev, son of the former president of Kyrgyzstan over charges relating to fraud.

 

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