President Kenyatta addresses a press conference at State House. FILE PHOTO | SALATON NJAU |
NATION MEDIA GROUP
Your Excellency,
Most of us Kenyans have great
respect for institutions and that is why we get so wounded when some of
them seem not to work as we think they should to give us the results
that are our right as citizens.
That is also the reason
our confidence levels improve when the institutions that manage our
socio-cultural, economic and political life do things right.
Now,
you and the office you hold are a most important national institution.
You are an institution that belongs to all of us whether one voted for
you or not. You are the symbol of the Kenya we are.
The
issue of safety and insecurity has been in the minds of a lot of us
Kenyans in recent times and we have been embarrassed by the manner in
which some of the institutions that are mandated to deal with these
matters have been operating.
FAILED TRIP
Our
latest embarrassment is your own failed trip to the United States. It
seems to us, observers, that the planners of that trip did put the
institution of our Presidency under obvious serious threat of
insecurity.
The understanding of most of us is that
ordinarily every possible detail is taken into consideration in the
planning of presidential travel. Quite obviously some details were left
out this time round if what we are being told is the actual truth.
Who
organised this whole fiasco anyway? Being a foreign trip, the Foreign
Affairs ministry and the Cabinet secretary responsible must have been in
the middle of it.
She is usually quite eloquent on
issues but we have not heard from her so far. In matters security and
safety, we saw both the outgoing and the incoming Chief of Defence
Forces at the airport with you.
Which of them sanctioned the flight?
I
saw a picture in the news of our Communications Cabinet Secretary and
the former Prime Minister of Britain Tony Blair at the conference you
should have attended. Mr Blair is advising you on some matters of
governance and so on.
My big question is: Would this
same man who is advising you have been put through this kind of
embarrassment by the British civil service when he was Prime Minister?
This
whole thing smells of a Kenyan way of doing things that is completely
casual and which can easily provide an entry point to forces that do not
mean well for us.
Thinking politically, some of your
operatives Mr President are exposing your government to the Opposition
and painting an ugly image of all of us.
If in fact the
President of this country is exposed to unsafe circumstances whether
willingly or otherwise, who else can expect to be safe?
Fr Wamugunda is dean of students, University of Nairobi; wamugundaw@uonbi.ac.ke
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