There is a deliberate attempt by statehouse operatives to brand Mombasa Governor Ali Hassan Joho as a rebellious, defiant and disrespectful person especially to the authority of the national government and national government functionaries.
HOW Uhuru Regime is Frustrating Governor
For several months now, government elites, using the plaint Mt. Kenya press (Nation, NTV, Citizen, 36 bloggers, K24,etc) have attempted to either connect the Mombasa governor to illegal contraband trade or make him constantly appear to be fighting one state institution or the other.
No governor has suffered the kind of intimidation by the national government than Ali Hassan Joho. At some point in the past, to make Mombasa County workers and residents rebel against Joho, Treasury would release funds to Mombasa County in the last weeks to the end of a financial year, several months after other counties had received their shares.
Mombasa County staff would go unpaid for months. Essential services would grind to a halt. In the meantime, he was everyday in court, either fighting charges that his certificates are fake or his very election was fraudulent.
Then there was Nelson Marwa, each day plotting how to bring him down. Each day sabotaging him, sometimes even amassing the very functions that a governor should do.
And WHY Frustrate the Governor?
The reason for all these is because the government want Joho to support it. Because he has refused; now he has to be sabotaged, destroyed completely, by all means.
Governor Joho isn’t a defiant person. I have seen some media house claim he ‘stormed’ Mombasa Police Division office. He didn’t.
Whenever a citizen has a problem with any state office/institution; they often go to that institution to seek remedies. That is not storming.
This media creation that whenever opposition leaders visit public offices to seek services they ‘storm’ those offices has everything to do with poor public/political journalism training.
A few weeks ago when the opposition visited IEBC offices, one journalist even had the audacity to ask if they were invited there or they ‘invited themselves’. To some journalists and media houses, it is an offence to go to public institutions to seek information/assistance/remedies without being ‘invited’.
Back to Joho. At the Mombasa Urban Officer Commanding Police Division, Francis Wanjohi’s office (Wanjohi is the one who ordered withdrawal of his security) all Joho asked was this: “If you wanted to withdraw them, why did you not do it officially the way you did when you were giving [them] to me?” Is this being defiant?
Isaac Mwaura recently narrated an incident which happened in a lift/elevator. He happened to share a lift with then powerful CS Anne Waiguru who was ‘very uncomfortable’ during the whole ‘journey’ in the lift. In Waguru’s office, she had a private ‘secured’ lift, only meant for her use. The other day, Waiguru, now powerless, was begging for ‘protection’.
The government of President Uhuru should secure all. The nature of our multi-party, competitive democracy is that one group is in government and the other in the opposition and all abide by fair rules of plural politics and more especially, our constitution.
Our constitution scorns discriminative practices. Ni hayo tu.
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