Jubilee deserves another 5 years

 

Uhuruto need another 5 years to finish that which they started. There are a million on-going government projects whose completion only Jubilee administration can be trusted with.

A cool and humble president is all we need.

One who can share a cup of tea with convicts. President Uhuru’s acts of humility are uncountable. One, Like Jesus, the President sees nothing wrong with associating with inmates, the least loved members of the society. Two, despite his busy schedule, the good president can create time for our school going pupils. He is actually the first head of state to invite school children to the state house. A record! Three, the president, in spite of his age and status, does not mind bending his backbone to enter manyattas to ascertain if electricity has actually reached the people of Samburu. Four, he was spotted sometime back chatting with bodaboda guys, playing with them and boarding their motorbikes. The list is long. Allow me to jump to the last one – eating nyama choma in a kibanda. What other way can a man show his self-effacement? In a world where leaders are surrounded by a hundred men of tight muscles, our own Uhuru is walking on the streets with us, boards Rongai passenger busses and unpretentiously humbly gives space to a teenage musician to play with his wife. A digital government it is, we must thank Jubilee for dismantling machines of social ghettoization and economic classification. PR is what we voters bargained for. It is what will make us an upper-middle income economy.

Jubilee needs another term.

According to the 2009 census, the population of Kenya, as at then, was 43 million. I am not an expert in matters demographic, but the law does not stop my mind from doing random estimation. Let’s say, we have approximately 47 million people fighting for oxygen in a country that enjoys cutting down its trees. Nigeria has 180 million people. India 1.2 billion, America 320 million and Ethiopia 96 million.

But the figures are not what I want to analyse. I am doing no comparative study here. The point I’d like to put across is that with our small population size, I see nothing wrong with government officials taking some pieces of land from us. We are slender and can only fit in narrow beds. What do we need big spaces for? Our legs are a sling holding a stone, how many acres can our shoes occupy? We are jobless and capital-less, what investment can we do on land?

Since I acquired tertiary mind, I’ve been wondering why we have been wasting large tracks of land planting unyielding crops instead of giving the titles to serious investors. I thank God Jubilee came to power. They saw my unpublished thoughts. They grabbed the opportunity and off, Kenya took to the sky. In order to achieve the promise of taking us to the heavens, Jubilee needs a further 5 years. They must, in their second term, go for the idle school fields, estate pitches, forests and even violently bring down houses of those who resist demands to surrender land to private developers.

Let’s give Jubilee one more term.

So that families that lost their loved ones in the hands of Al shabaab can get a chance to share their sorrow with us. Bullets felled around 67 souls at Westgate in September 2013. In December 2014, 36 quarry workers in Mandera town were brutally killed by terrorist. The bereaved families were torn.

It is difficult to write about deaths at Garissa University that occurred in April 2015 but the gods of communication insist that objectivity, accuracy and completeness of information must override emotions. Around 147 ambitions were cut short. You will not understand the pain unless I drag your mind into imagining that one of the casualties was your college-going relative.

We also heard about the butchering of Kenyan soldiers in el-Adde in January 2016 and Kulbiyow in February 2017. The government said 21 were killed in el-Adde and 68 in Kulbiyow, but rumours, as wild as it is, counted over 100 in both cases. Like I promised, I’m not here for statistics. A single life lost is enough to drop the sky on my head.

In relation to the deaths and many more that are not captured here, this is why I think Jubilee should take us through another five years. I am not going to repeat the cliché that in serious countries, leaders own up. I just want to let you know that those who lost their loved ones are still in pain. They are walking with tonnes of sorrow on their heads. They probably will not register as voters. When they see people going for political rallies, may be, they close their doors, stare at their gone people’s photos and cry as long as their bodies remain hydrated.

Now, as a caring brother, is it not fair that these people share their suffering with us? Don’t we need to give Jubilee another 5 years so we can have enough deaths that will make the already sad families feel that we are at par? Is this not a better way of spreading the pain, breaking sorrows into small pieces and apportioning it to as many families as five years will allow? Is a problem shared not half solved? Is it not written in the book that you will never suffer alone? President Uhuru must rule again. Only he can implement what he introduced.

Jubilee must govern till 2022.

So our media houses cannot run out of news. During the days of Kenyatta (not Uhuru, I mean Kenyatta the founding father of tribalism), there was no serious news other than the deaths of Pio Gama Pinto, Tom Mboya and Josiah Mwangi Kariuki. The kicking of Oginga Odinga out of government was a small thing. He deserved it. The self-regarding manner in which settlement of natives who were displaced by whites was carried out was just a short lunch time bulletin.

The days of Moi were also not rewarding, in the strict terms of journalistic business. Apart from the 1982 attempted coup, there was nothing for the reporters to take to the editing rooms. Most media guys were declared redundant. The few who retained their jobs were lucky to have the death of Robert Ouko to talk about. But even this was a minor issue especially after the world later learnt that Ouko was not assassinated but actually hanged himself before committing suicide.

Kibaki only gave us Aglo-leasing, two referenda and post-election violence in which only a small number of 1,300 died.

But Uhuruto?

Within only four years of rule, Kenya has consumed so much information. We heard of NYS saga and cat-walking. There was the story of inflated cost of SGR construction. We should not bother anyway, we need the train. There was Eurobond whose use CORD supporters cannot see but whose purpose, of bettering the lives of Kenyans, Jubilee enthusiasts can articulately and comprehensively explain. An interesting country this is. I know you don’t like lengthy posts but, kindly, allow me to add a few more to the list. The Karen land saga, the tunnels of death, hustler’s jet, laptop tender, and Afya House Scandal and many more.

This is why we still need Jubilee. So we cannot run out of news. So our media houses do not retrench workers. So we cannot be idle, with no noise to make. Only Jubilee can deliver on this agenda. It is captured at page 213 of their moneyfesto.

Uhuru tena.

So private hospitals and institutions of learning can make good money. Their public counterparts are not helping the country with anything. Government employed teachers and physicians are ever on strike, making all manner of demands yet we all know they do not perform at work.

And since Uhuru promised to rebuild an economy which he found moribund, it is right and just to support serious entrepreneurs. In fact, robust investment in private institutions will be of great benefit to the country. It will go a long way to ensure no Kenyan flies out to India to seek medication or opt to study overseas. We will be cured within our borders. Our academic dreams will be incubated in our own tropical soil.

And what more? If the private hospitals do not deliver better health services, Jubilee has promised to bring home less demanding Indian medics. What a progressive nation that gives opportunity to all races! Haven’t we ever wished to be attended to by a foreign hand, to be nursed by a pink Indian woman? Jubilee is overworking. They must stay.

Jobless youth need Jubilee more.

According to World Bank, 40% of Kenyans are unemployed. What this means is that close to half of us need someone to call boss. But with the government focusing on fighting El Niño and drought at the same time, it will be very difficult for the state to create employment opportunities. The best it can do is to ensure the employed youth are fired so they do not intimidate their poor compatriots.

And only Jubilee can do this. Indeed it has done it as can be seen in an article published by the Standard Newspaper on 29^th November 2016. It reads, in part:

Kenya Airways sent home 600 workers making it the biggest job-cutter. Standard Chartered Bank has sent home 300 employees, Equity Bank 400, Sidian Bank 108, Family Bank, First Community and NIC 32. Other companies that have jumped into the retrenchment bandwagon include Telkom (500 employees), Flower farm Karuturi (2,600), Kenya Meat Commission (118), Airtel (more than 60), Sameer Africa (600), Portland Cement (1,000), and Uchumi (253). Also, this year Kenya Flouspar Company shut its operations and sent home about 700 workers.

I am not going to do the donkey work of explaining this, you must be an adult. What I must reiterate is that Jubilee is overworking, especially in bringing about economic equality.

Lastly, I nearly forgot this, Uhuruto have the best advisers whose intelligence we cannot do without as a country. The president’s counsellors are right about the critics of his administration. It is true that those critical of Jubilee’s leadership are not asking for better decisions to be made on their behalf. They are haters, jealous faultfinders.

And don’t we still need the ‘liberal’ Jubilee supporters who acknowledge the rot in the government – especially in terms of corruption and tribalism – but who will never make the only needed choice of fighting the scourge – voting Jubilee out.

We need another 5 years of Umoja, Uchumi and Uwazi. See you at the ballot.

 

JIM ASUDI

Making Good Use of the Alphabet   

 

 

 

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