If Keyboards Could Talk

The blogger is back. Brace yourselves ladies and gentlemen. Many people are tired of politics but allow me to mention a thing or two on the same. Today, I want to speak about the recent effects of the elections. I want to address the international community. I want to give the international media (especially the Cable News Network) a piece of my mind. I want to talk about the IEBC. I want to talk about the petition. I also want to address the current trends on social media, especially the ‘online violence’. I also want to talk about the International Criminal Court!

To those presidential candidates who gloriously conceded, thank you. They fought a good fight but that good was not good enough. To me, Dida came out on top! He made history by surpassing the iron lady, having been known for less than a month to the polls. This is when I get the chance to brag a bit. That man taught me in form 3T, class of 2009, Lenana School. I will not lie about how I used to carry chalk for him or rub the blackboard when it was his time to teach. He was very good at skiving!

This whole election process has taught me a thing or two. I have devised another hook up line that might get me the one! It goes like: “Hey babe! I am planning to run a family; can you be my running mate? Would you take my contact and save it as FH (Future Husband), hoping one day you will knock F out”

I deeply sympathize with any foreign journalist who was intending to cover an award-winning story on March 4^th. The Maasai Mara is open for you. We have wildlife here. The national geographic channel could do with a few footages of carnivorous animals devouring the herbivorous and that kind of thing.

THE SUPREME COURT AND THE ICC

The highest court on the land is going through a litmus test.  The global audience is waiting for that ruling. The ruling will leave an indelible mark in the history of this country. The case before the bench has substantial gravity in and around our borders. Instead of only the attorney general requesting to be considered in the hearing as amicus curiae (friend of the court), methinks the Supreme Court could do with a little help from the telescopic vision of one Paul Muite who has the ability to see right through that evidence presented before the judges constituting the bench and determine it’s validity within just a glance! This will save the country a great deal of time, resources and butterflies in the stomach. I doubt whether it is humanly possible for six people to comb through thousands of pages in two weeks and have the time to deliberate on the issues raised exhaustively. Isn’t it too just too hectic?

What the election free and fair again? We may want to see things not as they are but as we are and that will be a bad intellectual mistake. I will not speculate. Let us all wait.

FOREIGN INTERETS

In my humble opinion, I guess it’s time the Hague-based court gave us a break! Can’t we put our house in order? Do we need to wash our dirty linen in public? Aren’t we a sovereign people?

Prior to the poll, European envoys had issued statements that clearly suggested which side they were on. Does Britain still want us that badly after we divorced back in the 60’s? Why do they still want to bully us around every now and then? What does “essential contact” mean? I’m not only talking about Kenya here, I’m talking for Africa. Do we interfere with affairs of our envoy friend’s from UK, France and Switzerland?

The international community (read UK, the Embassy of Finland, the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Kenya, and Germany among others) is waging a form of warfare against Kenya’s electoral results. If you have the slightest shade of doubt, visit the website of the civil society group (www.africog.org/content/funders-and-financials) that unsuccessfully sued the IEBC to stop the vote tally following the general election, and now is part of a civil society lawsuit to nullify the results of the presidential poll.  That group is almost wholly funded by the aforementioned. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Now, more than ever, the social media platform has changed the game from manual to digital. Status updates and tweets have become the new machetes, arrows, G3’s, AK47s and the like.  I will sincerely give up any Facebook and Twitter “friends” and “followers” engaging in this criminal behavior.

I’m even considering changing my username.  Stereotyping is at an all time high.

 Just because my name suggests my ethnic background, it does not automatically imply that I subscribe to a particular school of thought. I am, and will always be a critical, autonomous and most of all, a free thinker. Yes I have my reasonable level of prejudice and bias but please, resist the temptation to assume my political inclination. If you are that kind of person (perpetrating negative ethnicity) and you are in my friend’s list, I’ll cut you off so quick without you even knowing it, delete your number today and hit you with a “who is this?” tomorrow. I’m saying that I will purposefully refuse to remember you. Call it deliberate memory loss.

At the end of the day, whether it is jubilee or cord that ascends to the mantle of leadership and the house on the hill gets a new occupant, we need each other badly. Remember Raila and Uhuru are in a political competition. It is highly likely that they will be swilling champagne and cutting business deals in the same members’ clubs. Clubs you and I cannot afford to lounge in! Do not throw all caution to the wind and put yourself on the line out of some misplaced sense of ethnic comradeship. Let not the violence shift from the keyboard to an actual machete.

On a lighter note, social media ethics have dwindled. Many are times jokes and ideas are copy pasted without acknowledging the source. Fan pages duplicating each other every other time is quite boring. Well, I’m quite aware that no one has the monopoly of ideas or jokes for that matter but it is sufficiently annoying. Plagiarism must be discouraged.

PARTING SHOT

What’s up with this new advert that pops up just before prime time news? It is clearly encouraging cheating. It used to be “wacha mpango wa kando”, now it is turned to “weka cd mpangoni”. The society is working with some dynamics I have no clue about. Is the ad in bad faith or is it plainly realistic?

Over and out!