AUGUST HOUSE

By Dominic Odipo

How come somebody has not told Mr William Ruto that there is a great difference between the way one speaks at a public rally or a funeral and the way one speaks in the confined and cosier chambers of Parliament?

Speech, as I understand it, is supposed to be geared not just to the audience but also to the circumstances and the setting. At a public rally you can let loose, flail your arms in the air, bang the nearest table, shout or even cry to carry your audience along. Within the more reflective parliamentary chamber, especially in these days of live television coverage, you indulge in these rhetorical luxuries at your own peril.

If you shout and flail your arms in the air in the chamber, the impression you convey is that you are an angry, combative, uncompromising and driven person determined to have your way no matter what. When these images are beamed live or later, ordinary people watching television literally see an angry man shouting or gesticulating at them in the privacy of their own sitting rooms.

Ruto is an intelligent man but this intelligence seems to be getting lost in his anger, combativeness and concomitant belligerence as was clearly demonstrated in Parliament last week.

During the final exchanges of the constitutional review debate on Thursday evening, Ruto stood up and raised what was clearly a major and seminal point. Wasn’t there something, Mr Speaker, wrong with a provision, which requires a 65 per cent majority to go one way and only a simple majority to go the other way? Of course there was something manifestly inconsistent here.

But in his seeming blind fury, Ruto apparently failed to note the finest and most fundamental point regarding this provision. As the Speaker gleefully pointed out to him, this provision, with all its strengths and weaknesses, was the law as had been passed by Parliament itself.

Speaker’s intelligence

Left unsaid was the point that if Ruto did not like this provision, he should have opposed it at a much earlier stage, before it had been passed into law. As soon as the Speaker ended his ruling, Ruto knew he was beaten and never rose to utter another word.

My take was that Ruto was beaten not by the extemporaneous and fluid intelligence of the Speaker, but by his own seeming inability to keep a lid over his emotions and inner drives. If he had held his emotions in check and thus kept his political blood pressure lower, he would not have given the Speaker that golden opportunity to knock him out cold.

And the bigger problem for Ruto was that this high octave, high risk political drama was being enacted not just in the closed chambers of Parliament but, via live television, in front of a national audience.

If you have been watching the live TV coverage of the constitutional debate that ended last Thursday, you will have noticed one or two intriguing and curious things. You will have noticed that the Speaker often does not pick the first MP who stands up to contribute. He judiciously looks out for those MPs who can make the most informed and valuable contributions at that particular time.

You will have noticed that there are certain MPs who appear so well grounded in both the law and parliamentary procedures that others stand up to oppose them at their own peril. You will have noticed that there are certain MPs, like Prof Anyang’ Nyong’o, who are so intellectually intimidating that if they take one on an intellectual point, blood could very well flow when they are through!

You will have noticed that there are some MPs who stand to contribute simply so that their constituents or friends might be able to see them in newspapers or on TV. To paraphrase William Shakespeare, their contributions illuminate nothing and signify even less!

You will also have noticed that there are certain MPs who never seem to catch the Speaker’s eye for the simple reason that they never try to do so. They remain seated all the time they are in the chamber except when they have to visit cloakrooms.

Man of the moment

Finally, you will have noticed something about Mr Speaker, especially when he happens to be Kenneth Marende, as was the case last Thursday. Love or hate him but Marende seems to have taken to his job with the sheer mastery of a virtuoso. Watching him in full flow, you cannot fail to notice the presence of a master performer.

The man appears to have both the intellectual depth and dexterity and the raw bravura of his Banyole people to menacingly back it all up.

If there is a public officer out there performing, it surely is this man. If there is a man of the moment, that man is Marende.

—The writer is a lecturer

dominicodipo@yahoo.co.uk