Dikembe: Gov. Mutua reminds me of Mr. Rip Van Winkle
By Dikembe.
Machakos Governor Dr. Alfred Mutua was the government spokesperson throughout President Kibaki’s tenure. To cry today because Kamba is not developed is to take Kambas for fools.
Why did the government he passionately defended even to a point of insulting President Obama (then visiting as a senator) not develop Ukambani? Back then, Obama had told the government to stop corruption and end negative ethnicity.
Are these not the evils that has led to uneven development of this country?
Mutua should know if devolution is developing Ukambani then he contributed to the poverty of the region by supporting a government that was corrupt, tribal and anti-devolution.
Mutua should go back to his years in government and pull to us a clip on any day he uttered the word ‘Ukambani development’ in those days he was a big government vegetable.
Devolution or ‘development for the regions by the regions’ was an idea violently contested by the political class Gov Alfred Mutua spent every Wednesday defending.
There was never a single day Mutua lost sleep thinking that if power and resources are devolved; then Machakos would be the ‘place to be’.
He protected the status quo long even when it was very clear the quo had lost its status. In fact, he only jumped off the ‘status quo’ bandwagon when people who loved Kenya more than himself and put the last nail on the coffin of status quo with a new, irreversible constitution that promised a new way of doing things.
Alfred Mutua is a very recent historical artefact. He appear to know so little about where this country has come from, including Ukambani.
One of the biggest trade-offs for LDP (and later ODM) during the the 2010 constitution (and even earlier in 2005 constitution) making process was to either get devolution and lose parliamentary system of government (weakened presidency) or get parliamentary system with centralised, single national government and lose devolution.
So heated was this debate that Dr. Odhiambo Mbai, the devolution committee chair for constitutional review was murdered for it. So high were the stakes on this issue that government left Bomas for Kilifi.
Mutua is a toddler. He is two years old. For people like Mutua, devolution started in 2013 after winning a governorship election in 2013.
That’s when he realized Kambas need maendeleo chap chap.
He forgets he was part of government bureaucrats who did everything to scuttle a new constitution with its promise of development for the regions.
Mutua gets away with so much because he has bamboozled mainstream media with his theatrics. He is lucky he lives in a media bubble with idiotic (historically shallow) journalists many who’ve not been part of any struggle and and know nothing about the teargas canisters and the cold murders, the gives and the takes, the compromises and the ‘red lines’ that people like Raila Odinga had to draw to ensure that people like Mutua would today do their ‘maendeleo chap chap’ in Machakos, not Nairobi.
Gov. Dr. Alfred Mutua should stop sideshows. He reminds me of Irvin Washington’s fictional legend Mr. Rip Van Winkle.
Dikembe is a pro-CORD blogger. He comments on politics and ethnicity in Kenya.Â
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