By PHILIP OCHIENG
Posted Saturday, January 7 2012 at 19:49
Posted Saturday, January 7 2012 at 19:49
The headlines this week should tell Raila Odinga why it is so dangerous to harbour so many cheer-leaders in his Orange Democratic Movement.
One thread runs through them all. Whenever the sky is rosy, Mr Odinga is the apotheosis. It is only when things turn against them that they threaten “to reveal all”.
To apotheosise, by the way, is to deify a human being. After end of the second millennium BC, when patriarchy overthrew Mother Right in the region, any man who exhibited extraordinary talent and achieved extraordinary things was likely to be transformed into a god (often even before he died).
Of course, a few such things can be said of our Prime Minister.
Pharaonic house
The ancestors I share with his acolytes were famous for it.
For instance, Thoth, the Nilotic god of magic and technology, was an apotheosis of Min or Men, the Nubian hero who, by conquering northern Egypt, created the pharaonic house.
Thus every pharaoh thereafter carried the epithet “God”.
Indeed, Min became a religiously compelling name throughout the Mediterranean basin, especially after Danaos quarrelled with his brother Hekaptah (“Egypt”) and fled the Nile country to overrun Crete, Peloponnesus and Colchis.fain
That was how the Cretans adopted Min as Minos – the founder of the Minoan Empire – the Peloponnesian Greeks as “Menes” and the Colchians as Minya.
“Armenia” – as the last Coptic colony came to be known – is but a corruption of Har Minya (“Minya’s mountain”).
But let that be enough in the way of history. The question (for those who once apotheosised Mr Odinga but have now fallen out and would now fain Satanise his name) is: What is this “all” that now needs to be “revealed”?
That is an important question because, after the “all” has been “revealed”, the “revealer” himself will be the one standing stark naked.
For when the “all” was being perpetrated in Mr Odinga’s office, the present would-be revealer was an insider.
Indeed, he was more central even than certain ODM Cabinet ministers and MPs. We know it because he used to write a newspaper column which, as bloated as it was, could only come from inside knowledge.
Either he was a major instigator of the policy and a central participant in the implementation of the “all” that the ODM or the Prime Minister’s office or the PM himself is now guilty of or, when he was the scribe, he chose to be silent on the sordid side of what he calls “all”. That is why some of us will read the “revelations” with Great Expectations.
Easily excited
Those not easily excited by rhetoric will expect the pages of the Great Revelation to school us precisely on what role the revealer played in the perpetration of the “all”, why – if it so disgusted him – he did not resign in protest, why he waited inside till somebody chucked him out, whether he would have wanted to “reveal all” if the fallout had not occurred.
If the “Great Revelation” avoids these and a thousand similar questions, the author should know in advance that every thinking Kenyan will reject the “revelations” – not so much because they love Mr Odinga but, much more importantly, only because they demand a modicum of reason and logic from those who grab the headlines by purporting to speak for Kenya.
As I have said here many times before, Mr Odinga will probably be an effective president – but not if he continues to surround himself with those who happily sing alleluia only so long as Moses is delivering manna in Sinai, but who threaten the god-man with the direst consequences as soon as the wind of change begins to blow.
It is high time Mr Odinga began surrounding himself with intellectually honest people who tell him the truth, even when it is bitter, because, only from a position of knowledge can he serve the people with justice and generosity.
ochiengotani@gmail.com
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