Mr President, please do not come visiting

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US President Barack Obama delivers his victory speech after being re-elected for a second term at McCormick Place on November 6, 2012 in Chicago, Illinois. Photo/AFP  AFP

By CLAY MUGANDA
Posted  Monday, November 12  2012 at  20:00

IN SUMMARY

• Mr Obama, there is no place in the world where you are loved more than in Kenya. We love to talk about you (but don’t we love to talk about everything?)
• When you failed to visit during your first term, our political analysts concluded that your no-show “raised questions”
• Well, the political analysts did not quite say what questions your failure to come raised, but now they are swearing that “President Obama will visit Kenya because he is serving his second term”
• There are numerous reasons why you should not come to Kenya, but the main one is that we are tired of traffic gridlocks

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Dear Mr Obama, even though you have already gone back to work, congratulations are in order.

Unlike four years ago, the man you once described as one who “used to be my father’s boss” did not declare a national holiday to celebrate your re-election.

However, the people in the village where your father was born must have had a holiday, and slept for several days thereafter. Hardly surprising, considering that they stayed up on election night and broke into song and dance when the results were called in your favour.

Once again, that village was in the limelight, what with all sorts of journalists being there to record, for posterity, your impact on the world.

For a moment there, the dream of Kenya’s numerous tourism bodies was being realised since they had always tried to tell us the village will deliver us from our economic miseries because tourists from all over the world and other planets will troop to the place.

There is no place in the world where you are loved more than in Kenya. We love to talk about you (but don’t we love to talk about everything?).

When you failed to visit during your first term, our political analysts concluded that your no-show “raised questions”.

Even though this time the talking heads have not been very loud on your re-election because they do not understand how you did it, political strategists (these are talking airheads who are a notch higher on the con-manship game because they get paid by hapless politicians) were all over social media platforms saying how the policies of the Republicans “always favour Africa”.

They are probably right, but the problem is, they do not even know what the policies of their clients are.

Well, the political analysts did not quite say what questions your failure to come raised, but now they are swearing that “President Obama will visit Kenya because he is serving his second term”. That lame reason just shows you how fickle they are, but that is how we roll in this part of the world.

When you visited Kenya as Senator Obama, you were castigated because you insulted our religion, corruption, and the political activist who was in the Kenyan Embassy in Washington labelled you a “junior senator” and implied that you should not be taken seriously.

But when you won the elections, a whole government delegation travelled to your country to stay in a five-star hotel for days just to watch your inauguration on TV.

That shows you how our elected, selected and appointed officials are always idle and how we always have the money to waste. While you are struggling with balancing the budget and avoiding the fiscal cliff, in Kenya, there is always money to be wasted.

We revise our budgets upwards faster than you can drop zingers during presidential debates. Oh, we just did that recently with the cost of biometric voter registration kits.

While you went to work immediately after your re-election, our politicians could have gone around the country in a spending spree to hold victory and home-coming parties.

While you know the problems US citizens face and you can drop numbers faster than a comedian drops a microphone before leaving the stage, here, the comics talk about inflation, unemployment, taxes, revenue and Gross Domestic Product without mentioning any figures.

Every joker who dreams of becoming a president — and that is our nightmare — talks about increasing or reducing those indicators, but they do not know their current levels, hence cannot say what levels they will be increased or reduced to.

Yeah, we are living up to our national motto of a Talking Nation. We talk everywhere, even in our sleep. Our elected, selected and appointed officials travel abroad as much as they talk. Since they are poor learners, the only thing they get from those travels are Frequent Flyer Miles and designer clothes.

We have been more concerned about your visit, or failure to visit us, because we think you are as idle as we are.

After your last visit, your name was on the lips of every political joker and after you won, they thought that you woke up from a drunken stupor one day, declared that you were running and before your hangover was over, you got elected.

Since your last visit, we have killed each other over elections, and we will probably kill each other again, considering that insecurity is at an all time high, we are still food-insecure, we are steadfast in our religion of corruption, and we got a new Constitution and, two years later, still cannot understand more than half of it.

Actually, we are pretty much the same as we were and in the event that you visit, you will see more of the same things you saw previously.

However, I beg you not to come because, if you do, whatever you say will be misconstrued and we will spend days talking about it and saying that we are a sovereign state that should not be told what to do.

We will call each other names over your utterances because we will box you in to a tribal corner, and will definitely say that you are aligning yourself with a particular group of politicians, or a tribe.

There are numerous reasons why you should not come to Kenya, but the main one is that we are tired of traffic gridlocks.

Currently, we experience them for at least one week when our Head of State moves out of the State House meeting room to the State House lawns to bask in the sun, when the PM is going to tell riddles and when the VP goes out to tell voters how indecisive he is.

Thus, when your heavily-guarded self visits, we will spend months in traffic gridlocks, not to mention that your visit will provide an opportunity for our elected, selected and appointed officials to steal more of our money in the name of hosting you.

Thank you for not considering visiting Kenya.

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IEBC, remember that my vote is my future

The country’s biggest Cry Baby is at it again. This so-called Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission is an embarrassment, considering that it just cannot get anything right.

After fumbling and bumbling with the BVR kit tendering, now it has gone for single-sourcing of ballot papers and its reason, nay, excuse, might sound very genuine: Lack of time.

It could have gone for competitive bidding, but there is just not enough time because it has a deadline to beat and elections to hold. Where did all the time go to, you may ask?

“Everything was in place until the BVR tender was terminated.... If that had not been we would have had time.... We cannot wait any longer, training has to go on.... All this has to go on,” the IEBC spokesperson has said.

Enough time and money has been wasted and the only thing Kenyans are getting from IEBC are excuses, lame excuses, far too many lame excuses and it does not seem like they will end soon.

From the look of things, it might even be cheaper to do away with this IEBC office, the whole kit and caboodle, and get another team which can do the job, otherwise we might end up with another set of excuses come March.

A minute for Gor

It must be very painful to be a Gor Mahia fan! This season, they were almost sure that the Kenya Premier League trophy was theirs.

But other teams were also ready to take it home, what with a one-point margin that put them in a precarious top position.

You can pity the fans who were readying to celebrate in a big way.

While you are at it, spare a thought for those poor road users who just happened to be at the right place at the wrong time in the history of Gor Mahia.