President Uhuru Kenyatta delivers his new year's message to the Nation at State House, Nairobi. PHOTO/PSCU
Mr President,
Fully
aware of your preferred uses for newspapers, this missive to you has
been hidden in the middle pages of one in the hope that perchance, while
enjoying a typical roast of leg o’ lamb, you might espy the
felicitations hidden therein.
Doubtless, the intelligence service must hide a great many secrets of our nation in similar fashion each day.
Sir, please accept assurances of the highest consideration for your New Year message to Kenyans and friends of Kenya.
Your
belief and assurance that the objectives of Vision 2030 – to turn Kenya
into a middle income economy – can be achieved in six years flat has
reaffirmed the confidence of a great many in your ambitious leadership.
You want the national agenda to be progressive, issue-based and people-centred.
Such
engagement cannot be based on newspaper rumours or daily demonstrations
in the streets by ignorant civil society busybodies.
That is why those who thrive on the rumour mill will soon be fined into penury.
Those
who insist on embarrassing the government should similarly face varied
legal actions outlined in the Penal Code such as possession of
marijuana, causing affray and indecent exposure.
No one
can quibble with the fact that official information is a great resource
that must be guarded jealously by government lest it harms the people.
Those that do not have it should not speculate or pursue a parochial and
divisive politics.
It is remarkable, Sir, how you
refused to give voice to the bloodthirsty terrorists who attacked a
shopping mall in Kenya last year and killed over 60 people
.
.
SHAMED BY YOUR SILENCE
You
can imagine the disappointment of their sponsors when you refused to
give them even the slightest clue of when the commission of inquiry you
promised into the attack three months ago might be appointed.
They
must be worried sick to hear how – over and above the great
coordination in the security services – every 10 households are meeting
over a cuppa every weekend to sniff out suspicious characters, and the
closed-circuit television cameras on the streets can pick them out of a
crowd.
The pyromaniacs, who started the only fire at
the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport since its establishment hoping
for world renown, have similarly been shamed by your silence.
It
was a non-event whose serendipity they hoped to cash in for attention
through a long-drawn inquiry complete with a report that would be
debated for weeks.
Those who had hoped to cash in on
the accidental death of Senator Mutula Kilonzo weeks after his election
must be disappointed that there is no new information on the various
theories the police had over six months ago.
It does
not benefit a nation in any way to keep discussing suicides, poisoning
and secret night visitors in the same breath as free maternity services,
laptops for Standard One pupils, irrigating a million acres and the
standard gauge railway.
It is not as if commissions of
inquiry and statements of accountability on their own can create jobs in
the construction and agriculture sectors.
It is not
as if speaking about dead people can add 5,000 megawatts of electricity
to the national grid in the next three years or even cut the price of
electricity by half by January 2017.
Just as well that
you exhorted leaders to pursue a brand of politics that helps to improve
the welfare of Kenyans instead of pursuing parochial and divisive
politics.
A grateful nation eager to put a traumatic year behind it heard you.
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