By Gilbert O Kenya
It’s only in Kenya where political appointees, such as CS’s and chairmen of commissions, behave like demigods. Some of them throw their weights around like horny rhinos and feel that they already actually arrived.
They think that they’re only answerable to the appointing authority and not to the larger public – yet article 1 of our constitution is clear that all sovereign power belongs to the people of Kenya! Their impunity is appalling, to say the least.
Take for instance CS for Tourism Najib Balala. After ordering translocation of rhinos from the Tsavo, against the previous Tourism Board’s advice, 11 of these endangered animals are already dead. As if their mysterious deaths aren’t enough, some of their carcasses and horns have decided to disappear into thin air!
Then the CS, with his blocked nostrils accent and darkly dyed hair, has the audacity to stare into the cameras and tell Kenyans who have been questioning his disingenuous decision to “go to hell!”
Wait a minute. But the only person who deserves a one way ticket to hell here is this arrogant idiot in charge of the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife! Yet he’s telling people to go to hell or go hug a cactus!
He is lucky that he isn’t a CS in a country like China. By now he would probably have been hauled before a firing squad – in a public arena – and had several bullets pumped through his thick head.
Tourism is such an integral sector to the Kenyan economy that playing around with our rare wildlife – one of the main tourist attractions in Kenya – is playing poker with the very livelihoods of the Kenyan citizenry.
A few days back we were treated to a bizarre press conference in which an arrogant chair of the NLC was lecturing journalists like a school principal does to form one students.
This is another imbecile who should have resigned like yesterday. But like a typical Kenyan “BIG MAN”, he has sworn not to resign over the Ruaraka land saga.
Remember Kimunya’s famous “I would rather die than resign” quip, in the height of the Grand Regency Hotel scandal, during the Kibaki era?
We remember Kimunya holding to his job steadfastly till the bull fighter (then chair of PAC but currently confused) had to literally run him out of town!
Well, that is the “BIG MAN” mentality and spirit of most Kenyan political appointees. They always think that the office they occupy belongs to their mother.
Mohammed Swazuri has not only been incapable of purging the rot in the Kenyan land business but he has instead helped to entrench impunity and corrupt cartels in this all important sector.
But, perhaps, the biggest embodiment of impunity in the Jubilee cabinet is the semi illiterate Sports CS Rashid Achesa. I have never figured out how exactly Uhuru Kenyatta ran out of options until he had to appoint a man whose only credentials are a birth certificate and a national ID as his CS for sports!
It is obvious that the man understands Nada about the responsibilities of a Sports CS. He still reasons like the political mercenary he has always been.
I doubt whether he even knows that it’s against the law for a CS to openly engage in politics. The man has been playing confrontational politics in Western Kenya, every weekend, since the first day he was appointed!
I always ask myself this question; why do we always end up with nincompoops, who are too full of themselves, heading very sensitive offices in this country?
But then again I remember that Kenyans actually allowed ICC indictees to run this country. So what do you expect?
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