SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 2014

OCHIENG: Raila has never been ready to hang up his boots

ODM party leader Raila Odinga (left) flanked by other Cord leaders during a joint press conference on January 10, 2014 at the Serena Hotel in Nairobi. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU

ODM party leader Raila Odinga (left) flanked by other Cord leaders during a joint press conference on January 10, 2014 at the Serena Hotel in Nairobi. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU  NATION MEDIA GROUP

In Summary

  • That was what we gathered from the "splash" headline of one Nairobi daily the other day. It wrote: "I'm ready to step down, says Raila".

  • In Kenya, if the name is "Raila" or "Odinga", then — even when he merely swats a fly — it is certain to send the ragamuffins of Gor Mahia all over the country into a frenzy of excitement and the newspaper edition carrying it will sell like hot cakes.

By Philip Ochieng
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Is it Raila Odinga's job to spoon-feed newspaper editors? Will the erstwhile prime minister really quit politics — especially the Cord leadership — of his own volition and at any time soon?

That was what we gathered from the "splash" headline of one Nairobi daily the other day. It wrote: "I'm ready to step down, says Raila".

Yet Mr Odinga used a phrase which should have warned any reporter, chief sub-editor and managing editor that there was no story.

According to the newspaper itself, Mr Odinga said: "I am always ready to hand over [the Orange Democratic Movement's] leadership to the youth when the time comes." Note my italics.

If he is always ready, it means he was ready 10 years ago and will be ready even after the second coming of the Messiah — in which case, once again, there is no story.

For, despite Uhuru Kenyatta's recent short-changing of the youth by filling key public positions with Palaeolithic men — Mwalimu has long ago advised us that kung'atuka is the best policy.

The word ng'atuka — which belongs to Julius Kambarage Nyerere's Zanaki mother tongue but has since ensconced itself into Tanzania's Kiswahili — refers to the pre-colonial African practice of progressively stepping down from positions of social responsibility in favour of the next generation.

But Mr Odinga is a latter-day politician. His statement excellently portrays liberal double entendre. The obsolete French phrase double entendre refers to the Western politician's habit of uttering something which can be understood in two opposite ways — so that you cannot later pin him down by insisting that this, and not that, was what he meant.

By means of a simple verbal trick — when the time comes — Mr Odinga has called back and nullified his own stated "readiness" to hand over to the youth. It was a neat trick. But it was not new.

Whenever the liberal democrat uses the phrase when the time comes, he means: "Never".

CUT IN STONE

Custodians of our official treasuries have an even more captivating version of it: A frequent question in Parliament is: "When will the government tarmac the road from Ikowapi to Popotepale in my constituency?" Like the Mosaic Ten Commandments, the ministerial answer is always cut in stone: "when funds are available."

That answer has been given to the same question every year ever since independence 50 years ago.

That is why to those of us concerned about real information, the meaning of the phrase "when funds are available" is unmistakable: "Never".

The wonder, then, is not that Mr Odinga can take a whole thinking nation up the garden path in this way. Every politician, priest and even parent gets away with it every day that the sun rises in the east.

No, the only wonder is that the very institution which speaks the loudest — and is even now at daggers-drawn with the government — concerning real information is the very one which dutifully imparts to its customers such dangerous non-information as Mr Odinga's as its page-one "splash".

But those grown up on newspaper fare know exactly what is going on. In Kenya, if the name is "Raila" or "Odinga", then — even when he merely swats a fly — it is certain to send the ragamuffins of Gor Mahia all over the country into a frenzy of excitement and the newspaper edition carrying it will sell like hot cakes.

Karl Krauss called it "the pseudo-facts of newspaper headlines…" I have in this column called it cheating with headlines.

But, of course, a newspaper can persistently cheat with headlines only in a national situation where editors know that the newspaper readership is composed of mental Lilliputians.

That is one reason Mr Odinga and many legislators are so miffed with the Fourth Estate: How can we, in that estate, daily pontificate editorially against cheating and other social iniquities when we, in the Fourth Estate, are among Kenya's most accomplished cheats?

ochiengotani@gmail.com