Governor debate for city was fantastic, I wish we had more

The Nairobi gubernatorial debate on KTN recently was a revelation.

If being bold and a smart-mouth were the basis for electing a governor, Mr Miguna Miguna would go in with a landslide.

As a matter of fact, I’d be surprised if he hasn’t picked up support as a result of his performance.

INTEGRITY
I might actually vote for Mr Miguna. I like his promises, I liked the way he had done opposition research and I admired his courage in speaking some of the things that may have been in the minds of his audience but none would dare speak them loudly.

Governor Evans Kidero sought to stick to a prepared agenda: The things he has done and the things he plans to do, which is all very clever, as you would expect.

But significant issues about performance and integrity were raised that required a credible rebuttal.

POPULARITY
Mr Peter Kenneth looked limp and wasted. His mood, which was stubborn but lacklustre, mirrors his collapse in the polls.

Against him, Mr Miguna also raised issues of integrity which, to his credit, Mr Kenneth addressed robustly, if not particularly convincingly.

Sadly, I missed most of Mike Sonko’s contributions but I don’t think that was his night.

The night belonged to Mr Miguna. Sonko has a very good chance of beating Mr Kidero.

The polls show the two tied. Now, if Sonko becomes governor, then interesting things will happen to the city.

SONKO'S BACKGROUND

We will have moved from Muthaiga Country Club, where we got the incumbent, to the depths of the city’s matatu underworld, which is where Sonko came from before he became MP and finally senator.

I am not predicting that Sonko will make a bad governor if he wins, but he will be different.

He has friends who chew miraa and others who ostentatiously carry satellite phones and appear to be in businesses of various degrees of legitimacy.

But I think the most outrageous assumptions by the city elite is that Sonko will run city politics and allow his deputy, Mr Polycarp Igathe, a free hand to run the city.

IGATHE AND SONKO

They forget that it is not Mr Igathe they are electing, it is Sonko.

Secondly, I have never met Sonko but from following his activities in the Press, I don’t think he is the kind of guy who stays in the background and allows others to gobble the limelight.

I fear Mr Igathe will end up as just any other deputy governor.

And if he insists on exercising powers he doesn’t have, I’d not be surprised if one of Sonko’s miraa-chewing friends doesn’t pull a gun on him, or lock him up in the City Hall kitchen as major decisions are taken.

On the other hand, I could be wrong and the two unlikely partners could strike a partnership that allows an efficient technocracy to run the city while Sonko does his coloured-hair thing.

But the debate was fantastic; I wish the city had had many more of them.

|****|
I am astounded, aghast, dumbfounded. President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has been cruelly misadvised.

Someone, most probably a jealous woman, has told him to ban sexiness from the Ugandan public service.

What, pray, is Uganda without sexy women? Doesn’t the Pearl of Africa reputedly have the sexiest women in East Africa?

SKIRT LENGTH

The government wants women to use make-up “small small”, perhaps even not to wear any at all.

It wants short nails, no open shoes because, obviously women’s toes and nails are sexy, no bright-coloured hair, no transparent blouses and absolutely no cleavage on display.

But the worst is all skirts must run below the knee. Where will they find skirts which go below the knee?

FASHION

They would have to refer that problem to that sect from Kiambu, absolutely the only people in the region who have secured a source of long, pleated skirts.

But why stop there? Why not issue them with floor-length kanzus to hide their shapes as well? Why not prescribe headscarves?

Speaking like the father of many daughters, I think Mr Museveni has committed a crime against beauty.

He wants to reduce the Ugandan civil service to a grey, drab, covered-knee land where there is no happiness.

BEAUTY

He should reconsider that bad advice, failure to which we shall ask the East African Community to consider the relevant action.

And here I was thinking Mr Museveni was a man of good royal blood.

I take back my admiration of him as a protector of African beauty and, as Ugandan men will claim, trained and skilled in the art of romance and the sciences of building a stable, respectable family.

RELOCATE

I can’t think of a way of bringing Winnie Byanyima and romance in the bush into this story, only perhaps to request that she criticises Mr Museveni for this bad decision and demand that it be reversed forthwith.

Finally, Kenyan men should hold a harambee and raise bus fare for the women of Uganda to come across the border and leave Mr Museveni to his skirts to live in loneliness.

[email protected]