Uhuru rides verbal cockerel

By Politically Incorrect

To be honest, cartoonists depicting Uhuru Kenyatta as a slow student whose school mathematics grades were abysmal aren’t fair to the Finance minister. Uhuru is an alumnus of an Ivy League school where his classmates, according to Wikipedia, remember him as one of the brightest students.

In any case, anyone who has attempted to count 10-cent coins will admit that the figure of Sh9.2 billion can be challenging, even for someone with a PhD in

mathematics from a foreign university.

Instead, Uhuru should be saluted for taking on a man of the stature of Gitobu Imanyara. You see, Imanyara is a fierce junior Njuri Ncheke elder who, as we speak, is embroiled in two battles with the First Family — one legal and the other involving a live he-goat.

He didn’t become a junior elder by fluke. In 1982, when Uhuru was still in diapers, Imanyara was discussing locus standi and such legalistic mumbo jumbo in defence of the Kenya Air Force soldiers who had staged a coup. So hot were those cases that even the so-called leading lawyers of the day wouldn’t touch them with a 10-foot pole.

The man has been detained, jailed, tear-gassed and harassed by police more times than anyone cares to remember. Once he even spent quite some time chained to a hospital bed. So when such a man stands up on a frivolous point of order, on a matter he knows absolutely nothing about — you know how hopeless lawyers are with mathematics — only a very brave man can tell him off.

power sharing

So here I am wondering why we didn’t make Uhuru President in 2002. With Mudavadi and Ruto standing firmly behind him, it would have been like enjoining a third of ODM, a third of Kanu and a third of PNU in a proper and well-oiled power sharing coalition.

I can even visualise him as commander-in-chief, droopy eyes, long lazy Obamaish strides, and in clipped tones and his masterful oratory, telling everyone off over something. But the next day, what would stop him from summoning the press and, while looking and pointing everywhere and nowhere, blame his political enemies and the press for, er, a typographical error?

The man has a degree in political science. And the first thing they teach you at a political science class is, "Never, ever admit that you made a mistake and that you are sorry."