Palaver 17.01.11

As VP Kalonzo Musyoka picks up where Dr Alfred Mutua left off and confirms the Treasury will pick up the tabs for Maj Gen Hussein Ali and Mr Francis Muthaura, the gaunt faces of unsettled internally-displaced daily stare at a tone deaf Government from newspaper pages and TV screens.
The past two weeks has seen the faces multiplied by the emaciated hunger-stricken citizens — who must have cast their ballots in 2007 — as the Livestock ministry laments the lack of money to buy dying livestock in the arid and semi-arid lands, NCPB fails to buy maize to stock up national reserves and the word ‘borehole’ remains a river in Egypt.
Bar and busaa den owners are being cautioned by Naivasha MP John Mututho and National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse against flouting the so-called Mututho Rules.
The man is even threatening street demos to retain his rules. And he has very firm support of an annamed group calling itself Murang’a County Initiative, from the town hosting the ‘offending’ court case. Wonder who will blink first.
As William Ruto and allies lead defectors from their party leader’s ODM kraal, former President Moi is also beckoning his wayward and prodigal members back to Kanu. But that is just on the homefront. Pope Benedict XVI is also leading a defection of disaffected Anglican bishops into a section specially created for them known as the ‘Ordinariate’ in the Roman Catholic Church. Starting with an initial three bishops willing to become mere priests, the pontiff is ‘resettling’ those who oppose the ordination of women priests and bishops in the Ordinariate, a corner that will also be open to married priests.
And finally...
Elections in Zimbabwe and Kenya resulted in the opposition being forced to accept a ‘power-sharing’ deal with the sitting president, even though most observers thought the opposition had swept the podium.
Cote d’Ivoire’s Laurent Gbagbo learnt well and threatened violence to snag a power-sharing arrangement. But how will the Sudan one play out in a north and south divided by culture, religion, ethnicity and long-standing conflict? Will an EU-style ‘sharing’ address the non-existent infrastructure, oil revenues, and political instability in a country that has over 130 dialects — and still counting — now that they have added Kiswahili?
—palaver@standardmedia.co.ke