President Uhuru Kenyatta’s dissolution of the government committee that proposed a Sh2.5 billion budget for celebrations to mark Kenya’s 50 years of independence in the second week of December gave the distinct impression that the final figure would be considerably less than the one he apparently objected to.
Showing the Mutea Iringo Committee a wide open door, President Uhuru remarked, that the team was "out of touch” with the prevailing financial mood in government.
Among other things his statement noted: “By suggesting such an astronomical expenditure on celebrations, the committee clearly showed itself to be out of touch with the financial mood in government.
“Fifty years of Uhuru is an important landmark in the national calendar and offers occasion to reflect on how far we have come and the challenges that lie ahead in terms of our shared commitment to grow our country and spread prosperity to all.
“But celebrations should and must be done within the context of a frugal government sensitive to the difficult economic conditions that currently prevail around the globe.”
Even as the President sounded this eminently pious and pragmatic note, the announcement came through, too, that Sh2 billion had already been disbursed to parliamentarians, all 290 of them, for the purpose of luxury-car loans. And this, mind you, for a House whose members face a re-election test that many of them will not survive in barely four-and-a-half years’ time.
World will be watching
The Kenya at 50 fete, which will be spread across at least three days, culminating in the parade, entertainment and speeches at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani, will be very much a global stage affair.
Like the inauguration, it will be hour-on-the-hour news right around the globe, for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons will be all the wrong ones.
It will be reported by every news outlet outside Kenya, in the same breath as mention of the 50th anniversary, that the two members of the Kenyan presidency sworn in at that selfsame Kasarani back in April are now in-the-dock suspects of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, in cases that will then have well and truly begun.
Indeed, exactly a 30-day month to the day before he inspects the Golden Jubilee Celebrations Guard of Honour mounted by the Kenya Defence Forces, on December 12, President Uhuru will have stood in the dock at The Hague for the start of his trial on November 12.
And Deputy President Ruto will have preceded him in the dock at the ICC by two months and two days – and likely have another appearance scheduled in the course of what remains of 2013 or very early in the New Year.
When Mombasa senator Hassan Omar Hassan , formerly of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights alongside other ardent activists such as Maina Kiai, was interviewed on a televised breakfast show on Tuesday morning, he was clearly delighted to make two interesting points.
Grinning broadly, this arch enemy of UhuRuto said he was well aware that he is a prime target of the ICC defence once the cases get going (a reference to the duo’s insistence that witnesses have been unduly coached and comprehensively compromised and corrupted).
And then Hassan described the outcome of the cases as a fait accompli (the Cambridge Dictionaries Online define this as “something that has already happened or been done and cannot be changed”).
Saying that the suspects would be tripped up by witnesses whose evidence had a much lower burden-of-proof threshold than some of the more spectacular charges and the evidence of witnesses who have already opted out, a simpering Hussein gave the impression that their goose was pre-cooked.
The PR and branding factors
Even without being tormented by the haughty Hussein, as any public relations, advertising, marketing and personal branding practitioner could tell President Uhuru and Deputy President Ruto, given the extraordinary circumstance of the start of the ICC trials, stinting on the spectacle of the 50th anniversary fete is out of the question.
As the disbanded Iringo committee had intimated in the minutes of its first and only meeting, about 40 heads of state will be invited to the Jamhuri Jamboree. Indeed, the climax of the golden jubilee festivities will be grander by far, whatever committee rolls them out, than the inauguration itself.
But the shadow of The Hague will loom large. Almost paradoxically, it is neither the government nor the people of Kenya who will be on trial at the ICC – it is the two top men in this government who also happen to be the national leaders, by virtue of office, of these people.
With the atrocities of the 2007-2008 post-election violence ascribed to each man by the prosecution having been rolled out in detail anew at the start of either case, and pleas taken, in the full glare of worldwide multimedia coverage, the duo could well find themselves confronted by a protocol and PR problem that was unseen as recently as the nullification of the Iringo committee.
Now that the trials would have started, fewer than the full complement of 40 invited top VIP guests might want to be in Nairobi in the period of December 10-12, or indeed until further notice.
No nation stints on its half-centennial, centennial or bicentennial celebrations, unless it is in a state of collapse as complete as Somalia’s. These are once-in-a-lifetime national rites of passage in the public space.
Even Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Anniversary celebrations in 2012, the same year London staged the XXX Olympiad, gave no hint of having been left entirely to bean counters.
In June last year, the Guardian newspaper of London reported: “Despite the years of planning and countless hours spent budgeting, rehearsing and finessing, no one seems quite sure how much all the Diamond Jubilee celebrations have cost – nor who will eventually have to foot the bill.”
The Guardian approached London’s Metropolitan Police, the Department of Defence, and the Department for Culture, Media and Sports (responsible for co-ordinating the government’s role in the celebrations), but no one would cite a figure beyond a vague estimate of £1.2 billion (Sh161bn).
Even the British Broadcasting Corporation , which bore the burden of the costs of producing the diamond jubilee concert, was non-committal on exact figures, telling the newspaper only that it would plow all the profits of selling the production around the world to the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust.
Only the Thames Diamond Jubilee Foundation, responsible for the cost of a single event, the massive pageant down the river, disclosed it cost £10.5 million (Sh1.4bn).
After the Diamond Jubilee was over, it emerged that Britain had spent at least £3.6 billion(Sh483bn). The ferocity of the internet debate among Britons that followed would shock even the most hardened Kenyan political bloggers. Suffice it to say that President Uhuru's point, made more than a year later in faraway Kenya, about being sensitive to the difficult economic conditions that currently prevail around the globe, was made by many an irate and anti-Royal Family Briton in no uncertain terms.
Jamboree feeding frenzy
The 50th Anniversary fete will be Uhuru's first real chance to bring the country together, however briefly. Above all, he must avoid creating the impression of the golden jubilee being more of a Jubilee coalition after-party than a genuinely national festival.
Also to be kept at bay by all means are the opportunistic profiteer, the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, who can only deliver a Mickey Mouse product or service but charge millions.
The festivities will include a media feeding frenzy in terms of multimedia advertising and Kenya branding. Consultants, contractors and all manner of other operatives are no doubt sharpening their knives to carve themselves a piece of Kenya’s birthday cake.
According to the Telegraph newspaper of the UK, local councils spent around £550,000 (Sh73 million) each on their own celebrations of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee jamboree, but encouraged participation by inviting local groups to apply for funding for activities. Others organised parties in streets and parks or planted trees.
The State House committee should also look for funding from private, mostly corporate or charitable trust foundations. Finally, although the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee was hardly a world model for frugality in hard economic times, Nairobi could borrow a leaf in government communications strategy from London.
For instance, it is actually a directive of the British Prime Minister’s Office that government communications must deliver, not just procure; use digital channels wherever appropriate; use owned and earned media before paid-for media; work more in partnership; and ensure value for money through effective evaluation.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment