No time like the present, Mzee Emilio now counsels

By Peter Kimani

Retired Prezzo Kibaki, now Mzee Emilio of Mweiga, is back in the news and it’s amazing what just a few months out of politics can do to a man!

He is now a properly aged man, which is to say he has reached an age where he can get away with just about anything — like failing to answer questions and not offending anyone — but actually managing to do the opposite, which is eliciting empathy and laughter from the audience, as happened this week at the University of Nairobi.

Prezzo simply nodded to answer questions. But Prezzo demonstrated he has not forgotten the grand plans he had for our country’s infrastructural development, and which he says will provide a solid base for the country’s economic take-off, after sliding backwards in the decades before he took charge.

That’s to say the former Prezzo has little recollections serving in previous Government, which he did, rising to vice president.

That appears such a distant past that even when asked what he did in his formative years that prepared him for the future success, Prezzo would have none of that.

Thinking backwards

“It is a wrong manner of thinking that after you have been through with your life, you want to think what you should have done. It is wrong, it is wrong logic,” Prezzo’s baritone boomed, “You should consider what you should do now... because that is the only thing that can make sense. What you should have done you should have done at that time, but because you did not do it that time, why are you thinking backwards?”