By OTIENO OTIENO
Posted Saturday, February 18 2012 at 20:15
Posted Saturday, February 18 2012 at 20:15
Yippee! It was about time someone went eyeball to eyeball with Prime Minister Raila Odinga on the floor of the House on anything.
You see, the biggest favour the Prime Minister’s chief political opponents tend to do him is to bark at him from the safety of prayer meetings, or hide behind some lightweight or wobbly proxy in Parliament.
Where we have tuned in to watch the mighty William, we have had to make do with the cheeky Isaac instead.
If, like me, you love a good fight, you have certainly found the occasional sparring between Mr Odinga and someone like, say, Mr Joshua Kuttuny quite underwhelming.
Dr Boni Khalwale looked the real deal for a long time until the daily drama got a bit too monotonous.
The problem with such half-hearted efforts by Mr Odinga’s rivals is that he has often got away with murder by simply dismissing their rhetoric as “the croak of a frog that won’t stop a cow from drinking water” or “the bark of a dog sent by its master”.
And we, the watching public, have got a raw deal.
So, forget the substance of the argument on Wednesday. Mr William Ruto’s decision to tense up and summon the courage to confront the PM over utterances related to the electability of politicians who opposed the Constitution in the referendum was very refreshing.
Even when the exchange veered dangerously off to the ICC trials, I still sat back and waited for the PM to finally get his comeuppance.
I leave it to either cheering squad to declare the winner in the subsequent epic clash of prayers.
But I thought the victims of the post-election violence, who unfortunately got caught in the crossfire, sadly came off worse — again.
Their dignity needlessly took a beating from two politicians seeking to score points against each other for fun.
Mr Ruto wouldn’t even bring himself to referring to them as “victims”. In this emotional battle of the titans, only two characters mattered — Ruto and Raila. Not “the other people” out there.
In a quickfire response to the PM’s jibe that nobody was holding meetings to pray for the victims, the Eldoret MP shot back: “Why is he bothered about those being prayed for? Who has stopped the Prime Minister from praying for other people?”
It would appear that everything about the post-election violence still sounds very much like a movie.
jkotieno@ke.nationmedia.com
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