Last weekend we woke up to a sobering article in the Sunday Nation . Meru Governor Kiraitu Murungi, who had been missing in action for a while, came back to announce that Covid-19 is a liar, and so is its father and mother-in-law.
We must congratulate him for single-handedly kicking Kenya’s enemies out of his body, even though his political enemies claim he received a little help from taxpayers’ money.
It is not daily that you come across public officials walking to the 7th floor chewing gum and having a clarity of thought at the same time.
Most of them are worn down by the heavy burden of public responsibility showing in their stomachs, and prefer taking the elevator to save themselves from mingling with suffering Kenyans sweating their way up.
When the government banned political rallies and told politicians to use alternative means of communication to keep their people informed, Governor Kiraitu chose to meet his people inside a newspaper unlike those who didn’t go to Alliance who cannot innovate to save their lives and those around them. Not many politicians who were born when smoke signals were the only means of communication can trend on social media. For that we give him an A for Erudition.
For a long time, Kenyans have been pleading with Covid not to come close to our loved ones, but it has now seen for itself what happens to those who dare touch our prized political assets. It didn’t need to learn its lesson the hard way, but Covid now knows that those who survived the trenches during the brutal Kanu crackdown aren’t its age mates.
As we ask God to continue coming to him in a vision, we hope the sobering article he wrote on the vanity of political office is going to see him bring about a new change in the way things are run in this country.
Kenyans have been asking for change on how this country is run, and finally we got to see someone who isn’t a shopkeeper offering to extend his hand out to give back.
Governor Kiraitu did not need to fall ill and be put on life support for him to say the same things Kenyans have been telling politicians for ages.
No Kenyan wants to see a governor in distress, because every life lost is more painful than paying taxes for people in government to steal. However, the story of how he cheated death at an ivy-league private hospital should have been narrated with a little empathy to poor Kenyans who only see medical life-saving machines on television.
Health is a devolved function, and the buck here stops squarely with county governors. The national government is on record as having given Covid-19 funds to counties to set up facilities so that everyone can access Covid treatment at their doorstep.
The Meru governor had a chance to demonstrate first-hand how prepared his county is in managing the pandemic, but he chose to not even go to the Meru Teaching and Referral Hospital, and we hope it isn’t because he doesn’t trust their temperature guns.
If the governor has no faith in the healthcare facilities that he set up, how would he convince his people that those things are good for them?
If those given money by the government to put a fence around Covid are running away when Covid approaches, what will happen to those without the money nor a medical fence around their homes?
Kenyans will continue asking these difficult questions not because we don’t mean well for our leaders, but because we don’t want to get tongue-tied on Judgment Day when God will ask us why we let our leaders go to hell when we could have done something about it.
