STONE COLD HAVEN

I have a deep rooted cynicism for politics, notwithstanding the fact that I don’t trust politicians as far as I could spit the fuckers.

You always know it’s election season when they start gallivanting around the UK purporting to reach out to the Kenyan Diaspora and pretend they care. It’s the twisted rendition of them visiting rural areas to hand out lessos and bags of sugar to the hapless electorate who are supposed to be thankful that the politicians are coming to their village to listen to them.

I mean, these are the same folk who literally hijack burial services because it’s one of the most sure fire ways of reaching a captive audience. They don’t even give a damn about the deceased and instead shamelessly preach their tribalistic nonsense.

The game has changed with dual citizenship a reality. It gives politicians access to campaign funds from Diasporans abroad desperate to maintain a link with politics at home. It gives them potential access to votes if the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission can get its shit together. It gives them a platform to spew their diatribe and tired political messages.

Kalonzo Musyoka is already at it with his entourage of dodgy ministerial lackeys and civil servants. And guess what their carrot is. Kenyans in the Diaspora should lobby for a seat in parliament.

Forgive my cynicism, but if the Vice President was serious about representation of Diasporans in the Kenyan parliament, he should have pushed for the creation of such a presence before the constitution was sealed.

What point is there jerking off excitable Kenyans in the Diaspora with the tantalizing prospect of a seat in parliament instead of presenting it as a bill for law change in the said parliament and having it debated. The parliament building is in down town Nairobi and not in East London.

All Kalonzo and other politicians and their hapless bus boys and girls are interested in is exerting influence over the Diaspora to gain advantage before the election next year.

The Vice President should stop being a manipulative punk and stop taking people for idiots. The government can’t even sort out the issues around the ICC and the criminal case against the Occampo 6, and he’s here promising a seat in parliament for the hundreds of thousands of Kenyans abroad? Does he think we walked into this election season from the cotton fields?

The irony is that Kenyans abroad are directly responsible for 5.3% of Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product. That’s a budget segment even bigger than the budget of most ministries in government. And all the punk can offer is a single solitary seat in parliament? What’s he going to give us next, a meal for our Diaspora MP every time he or she attends parliament?

If Kalonzo wants to impress us, get the president and prime minister to create a full blown ministry of Diaspora affairs to channel the human, social and financial capital and absolute clout that Kenyans abroad can bring to bear for the development of the country. You don’t need any Kenyans in the Diaspora to lobby that one for you – you’re the vice president, convince your bosses.

Kalonzo should stop this cheap ass politicking and cock teasing of Kenyans in some back water in East London. Go back home and get us some real shit in government.

And in case you were wondering where my contempt for Kenyan politicians comes from, have a look at this article I wrote quite a while back about the Rapists Of The Kenyan Spirit. Believe me, these guys don’t do themselves any justice – but I have to tell you, I blame all of us Kenyans for collective gross negligence and deriliction of our civic responsibilities by the reckless and irresponsible way we keep voting these punks into parliament.

And don’t forget the shot gun wedding that Kibaki and Raila had to endure. we still don’t know who’s children will survive this marriage..

If you haven’t yet, follow us on twitter. You might even get the chance to help us get Larry Madowo laid.

Loss leading is as old as the concept of marketing itself. Whether it’s the freebies provided to promote a new lager at the local bar, or the free samples of cosmetics and fragrances dished out at beauty stores, or the good old fashioned buy one get one free – inducement to invite custom are part and parcel of our business world.

It’s unsurprising then, to find a storm brewing between groups of commercial sex workers in Copenhagen and the Mayor’s office who are determined that none of the working girls are going to have an early Christmas. What with the whole world descending on Copenhagen, it’s naive at best to assume that horizontal refreshments aren’t part and parcel of the ’entertainment package’ available to delegates at the climate and environment conference just beginning in the Danish capital. Just because it’s not on the official programme doesn’t mean that it’s not available.

So when the Copenhagen Mayor’s office issues a formal communiqué that blatantly says ”Be Sustainable, Don’t Buy Sex” and distributes it to hotels, the response from representative groups of the working girls is emphatic.

Conference delegates who show the official “Anti-prostitution postcards” being distributed at the conference and in hotels, in conjunction with their official conference delegates ID cards – are being offered free sexual services as a retaliatory measure against the move by the Mayor’s office.

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A quick scan through history provides a fascinating insight into the downfall of some of yesteryear’s (well – centuries really) global powers and their gradual and sometimes dramatic fall from grace.

Take for example, the Order of the Knights Templar – arguably the world’s first multi-national corporation who were pretty much responsible for inventing the banking system. They may have had their day between the 12th and 14th centuries – but during their time, they wielded unprecedented power through their economic resources that would rival the combined economic power of the so called G8. Of course they had their very own militia to boot, who operated with the ruthlessness of any fighting force known to man – but we’re not going to suggest that these “soldiers of the temple” were a bunch of thugs sanctioned by the Catholic church now, are we?

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Today marks the first anniversary of the shot gun wedding that the Kenyan political establishment was dragged into, kicking and screaming. The choices following the chaos of the discredited 2007 general election ranked somewhere between impossible and improbable, and if only to stop the killing, violence and lawlessness, the two main protagonists had little choice but to commit to political matrimony.

If it wasn’t tragic enough, you could almost picture it:

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In an early episode of the fictional hit TV drama The West Wing, the show’s President Jed Bartlett vents his fury at his Director of Intelligence. In the plot of this particular episode, the intelligence folks fail to pick up hundreds of thousands of Indian troops and their war machinery marching aggressively towards the Kashmiri Pakistani border in a clearly provocative move that will not bode well for the two nuclear armed neighbours.

In disbelief, Jed Bartlett angrily berates his intelligence chief by pointing out that his motorcade can’t move from K Street in the middle of DC to Connecticut without being picked up on a weather satellite. Aaron Sorkin and his production team obviously did their research well in coming up with a realistic depiction of the plot that is the challenging project of moving the most powerful man in the world from location A to location B.

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