By S O
I was here when Anne Waiguru was the ‘most performing’ CS so the ‘performance’ of Matiangi cannot scare or silence me.
I’m seeing some minions deeply annoyed that some of us are questioning the credibility of the just announced results.
This is the problem with exam cheating by and large. It gives rise to people who can’t think on their own. People who take everything at face value. And worse, people who use the “peripheral route” when analyzing new message.
The peripheral route, popularized by Caciappo and Petty (1986), is observed in people who process information based on other cues (likability, race, tribe, money, authority etc) rather than the strength and content of the information they are receiving.
It is our old debate on ‘form’, rather than ‘substance’.
In other words, because Fred Matiangi is being perpetuated by the mass media as a ‘performer’, we must believe everything from him because he is a ‘performer’. Period.
He recently released exam results where thousands of students are now being seen as ‘failures’ but we shouldn’t ask any questions because the results are ‘credible’ and he is a ‘performer’.
What makes results credible? Less As and more Es?
You find those whining about my misgivings of Matiangi results don’t necessarily attack the strength of my arguments and seek to expose weaknesses in them. They all see me as attacking a ‘performer’ and it is therefore their religious duty here on earth to defend and protect a ‘performer’. Scary.
Some have gone to fish my political stance…ooh, he is oppositionist…never see anything good in/with government.
Reminds me of a story Hassan Omar once told me of a kikuyu man who once accosted him saying he was bringing ‘their’ government down. Kibaki was the President. Omar was then a commissioner with KHRC. He was exposing human rights violations in the post-2007 era. So Omar tells this guy to come and walks him to where he has parked his vehicle. He asks him what number plate is this? The man replies GoK. He again asks him if he understands what GoK means. The man replies “Government of Kenya”. Then Omar asks what “their government” was he talking about. The man is dumbfounded. He can’t understand how someone driving a GoK vehicle, with a GoK assigned driver, and a GoK assigned police guard and a medical scheme billed on GoK can be so ‘bad’ as to expose expose the extra-judicial killings that were painting the government in ‘bad light’.
Every day I meet (here online) people who take the defense of Jubilee regime so personal you’d think it is the single source of the oxygen they breath. To some it is; to many it isn’t.
Back to Matiangi results; already many parents are challenging the results. They are not saying their children automatically excelled. All they are asking is for an independent review; something the education ministry is furiously opposed to. These parents are being told to accept and move on. Pata potea.
Guys, Kenya is a democracy and in a democracy it is the plurality of voices that matter. If you want a linear top-down system you can suggest amendments to our constitution to make this country an absolute monarchy, complete with a King, a Queen, Queen mother, King mother, lords and princesses etc….if anything, we already have characters who behave like Kings around.
End of rant!
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