Our cabinet may be many things but by and large they are not orators.
The top dog himself, Mwai Emilio Kibaki would do well to stick to reading speeches because when he ventures off the trodden path what he says makes one want to grab the top of one's head to keep it from exploding. When he's not forgetting the country he's just come from, he's talking about letting the delegates at Bomas make the constitution and everyone else without exception return to what they do best - farming. Or he's telling jobless people to look for jobs. And if they do not find jobs, they do the jobs they have. This last gem, unleashed during Madaraka Day celebrations visibly gave the British High Commissioner Edward Clay a headache.
Transport Minister John Michuki has great difficulty looking a camera in the eye, in a manner of speaking. He jerks alarmingly from left to right during the course of any coverage. If you see hapless cameramen jogging from left to right and back again be assured the are on the track of this gentleman.
Local Government Minister Karisa Maitha leaves little doubt when he opens his mouth that his acquaintance with education was but a fleeting one. This is the kind of cat that can tell you there are two cars by counting the wheels and dividing by four. Charity Ngilu generally believes that articles such as 'a' and 'the' are relics of the colonial age and refuses out or principle to use them. "They are trying to destabilize NARC Government". When emotionally charged (read: daily), the good lady's incoherence is peppered with nonsensical expressions like "separating old wine from new wine in new skins". Huh?!
Lord Byron and Keats could learn a thing or two from Roads Minister Raila Odinga. When the man is not reducing hapless novices like Danson Mungatana to the status of barking hounds, he's coining phrases like "mistaking a wet lion from a cat" that leave those addressed unsure whether they are being insulted or praised You have not lived until you've heard one Kiraitu Murungi, Minister for Constitutional Safaris attempt to say constitution. It comes out very merrily as KONTUSION. His vocabulary also appears to be unencumbered by the letter L. His counterpart at the Education Ministry is no better off. Good old George Kinuthia Saitoti cannot bend his tongue around government what comes out when the good old professor is before a microphone is GARMENT
Environment Minister Newton Kulundu had better be very careful the next time he's in the Olduvai Gorge, site of discovery of the ancestors of man. His physical attributes, manner of speech and general demeanor place him at a very high risk of being grabbed by the collar and presented at an anthropologist's conference as the missing link, and the one before it. |