Palaver

The exposÈ by The Standard on Sunday on the 2007 General Election fiasco is deeply disturbing. The Samuel Kivuitu-led ECK seems to have been overwhelmed, thoroughly compromised or sprinting around polling stations seeing no evil at the ballot boxes. It is now doubtful that anyone in the Tenth Parliament, right from the President, down to the 222nd MP, won their election freely and fairly. Now that seats are being lost like a house of cards, does anyone care to prove the election petition courts wrong?

Granted we have our very own genocide probe courtesy of The Hague’s ICC, it still rankles when Palaver reads tales of the Lord’s Resistance Army’s monthly massacres in the DR Congo. Chilling accounts of rapes, emasculations, slaughter and other macabre killings makes even a hardened journalist cringe in horror. This Ugandan rebel group is reportedly ‘king’ of swathes of jungle in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In which Lord’s name are they slaughtering unarmed villagers?

Folks, I told you the circus is officially in town. And wasn’t Labour Day hilarious at Uhuru Park with the Prime Minister taking of the ‘No’ brigade in very unflattering terms and a very graphical pro-life (or was it pro-abortion) tirade? But the workers were in no mood for such sermons. They not only heckled Cotu boss Francis Atwoli and booed the Labour Assistant Minister off the podium, they even ventured to ask the PM to skip his written speech and just announce the percentage pay increase. Don’t you just like a people who know what they want minus the blah, blah, blah?

Forget about those cattle rustlers in Western, NEP and Nyanza, Japan is reeling under "Bee rustlers" after reports showed that more than two million bees were stolen last year. The sting in this tale is that the price of honeybees has doubled in recent years after a ban on imports. Now beekeepers are being warned to be on their guard, following several hive thefts.

And finally...

The din about the Proposed Constitution reminds Palaver of the Latin dictum Tempus fugit et nihil facitur (Time flies and nothing gets done). So much heat and no light!

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