Post by maina on Jan 31, 2006 1:16:43 GMT 3
The Kibaki - Bush Ministry
When African art objects (for example) are shown mounted in a Plexiglas case beneath hot incandescent lights in the sterile environment of a museum outside Africa or against colored backdrops in a printed text, most of the work of art created by the artist and performer is missing. The art Africans create is living art: it addresses current issues, solves pressing problems, it represents living spiritual beings et cetera. Slides alone, even context slides, cannot convey the drama of mask performances for example. Multimedia technology brings these objects back to life, combining explanations of culture with pictures of the objects, music, and video of objects used in these cultures. All of this enriches the study of African Art and enables one to develop an appreciation of how Africans make, view, and use the art which they create.
The passage of important political life events are also marked using art and its objects. Art is in consequence perhaps the most eloquent statement a people can make about themselves politically, and serves particularly well as a tool for exploring the life and culture of their area and scope.
At the American Museum of Natural History in Astoria, sketches of the impact of past Presidential dogmas, mandates, and obloquies (of course) were exhibited recently, surprisingly for the general public (they are usually circumscribed for research, reference or educational purposes). In order to have understood their implications and concept, one has to comprehend the dispensation of American politics thereupon. You see forasmuch as Washington has been Republican propelled and doubled over in donkey’s years, New York on the other hand is and has been monomaniacally Democrat and extremely contumacious. Now, with that in mind, I don’t need to recount what or who the rendition brought out. I solely deprecate the Republican angels and bleeding hearts who may be athirst for it. However, it was excessively arty in totality.
It is this artistic knockdown that impressed upon me to examine President Kibaki and his administration. I began to dream up the president’s incumbency in this context. I realized that not only does his reign illustrate artistic production, it will also be etched in memory as such. Moreover, I also tumbled upon the quaint reality that Presidents Kibaki’s and Bush’s manners and methods are indistinguishable, if not comparable! A write-up titled KIBAKI IS A MASTER POLITICAL COMEDIAN” (to be found right here within JUKWAA), also helped to buck up my efforts because through his headwork, the author presents the corrupt Kenyan president in an artful style. As much as the two are both great national daddies they are also atypical. This might help us (Kenyans) understand our President.
Anyhow, Emilio Stanley Mwai Kibaki and George Walker Bush are somewhat anomalous in their ways. However, they are without question geographically and culturally torn asunder. They are both big-time and big name men who dictate polities albeit in different arenas. The one is of down-and-out, countrified yet cultured African decent, the other of well-to-do, urban yet boorish, and of the Star-Spangled Banner types. Kibaki’s line of kin had no previous political rearing while Bush antithetically comes from a family with a tradition of public service – the Bush home was a smoke-filled room. Also, Bush is a first born while Kibaki, the youngest of sons, is the bona fide gramps between the two.
While still young and shooting up, Kibaki was mathematically brainy, had the makings of a debate whiz, and above all astute, and comparable to a virtuoso if indeed not one. He was also as clean as a hound’s tooth. Bush on the other hand is said to have had some smarts which he leisurely applied in history and general knowledge studies. His mien is said to have been characterized by slipshoddiness. He was also stuck-up.
Although they are as different as chalk from cheese, they are also as alike as two peas in a pod. There homogeneity and parallelism is terrifically bewildering and puzzling and more so prolific - a preoccupying inference that I seek to get into.
They both attended distinguished and reputable schools. We know that Kibaki went to Mangu, Makerere and the London School of Economics & Political Science. Bush went to Yale and Harvard. Their ensuing interests and ventures would call them up to work at attaining their respective presidencies albeit with operose perseverance. Kibaki would stomach two “Moi-rigging-rackets” before extemporizing on the Narc strategy to power. Bush, while having worked on his father’s first successful presidential campaign would retreat into reviviscence after a doleful loss to Bill Clinton in the second campaign. By the way, and as we are aware, there was a colossal preponderance of supporters that endorsed and elected each of them president.
The two presidents, being fully cognizant of the benignity and overwhelming support of their voters, hammered out their administrations and conferred the weighty institutions to their alter egos. For Bush though, it was child’s play because the American dispensation does not compliment coalitions. All the same, the two are known to have spouted about their beautiful support with gasconade. Bush, while pitching his programs at a White House press briefing, referred to his superabound palm as “political capital” which he attributed to his being “misunderestimated”. Kibaki is analogously recorded as acknowledging his “economic and political goodwill” in the same context.
Sure enough, their authentic makeup would soon be unveiled. The two presidents would aggressively and dogmatically carry out their “preconceived agendas”, once in power. I have argued with colleagues in Africa and in N. America that both Presidents Kibaki and Bush are the masters of creating and controlling their public images, by crafting themselves into the images that the public can relate to and accept, particularly at times of need. I also argue that their intimidating and crafty qualities were as much ubiquitous in their personalities as ordinary citizens, as they are as leaders today. Before his presidency, Kibaki was known to be exceptionally humble and imperturbable (thus the epithet General Kiguoya). These qualities were vividly clear when negotiating the power-sharing MOU, for example. Bush, purposefully came across as folksy and, like any American rather than cerebral, intimidating and crafty, in his campaigns. Both presidents were depicted as extremely honest and trustworthy, notwithstanding.
Bush campaigned as a "compassionate conservative," – particularly during his presidential campaign for first term; meaning that he stood for fiscal conservativeness in terms of budgetary discipline, but at the same time cares for protection of the poor, weak and marginalized. Compassionate conservatism is portrayed to uphold and respect social issues like the environment, privacy and education.
Since the beginning of his first term, Bush’s agenda has been more right wing than moderate, increasing his support within the strong conservative wing in his party. Many thought that the tentative mandate he received in his first term would force him to take a more moderate path in order to appeal to the majority of voters. Instead, he took the exact opposite path, moving forcefully to implement a dramatic conservative agenda, supported by the far right wing in the party.
He prohibited USAID from supporting reproductive rights groups that include abortion– even for rape and incest victims – as part of their strategies to deal with family planning, rape, and HIV/Aids. He appointed his key advisors from the far right. He pushed for tax cuts that are overwhelmingly in favour of the rich (like him). He also abolished the "inheritance tax" which reduced the amount of assets that rich people inherited from their parents or guardians.
Second, immediately after filing a brief opposing affirmative action on the basis of race in a case before the Supreme Court, he announced plans to increase funds from the US to fight against HIV/Aids in Africa (including Kenya) thus implicitly challenging suggestions that he could be racist.
His second term is no different. He has continued to alienate himself by sticking to his deep conservative agenda. His appointments to key positions in the Cabinet, judiciary (Chief Justice and judges), Federal Reserve and military have all been met with stiff oppugnancy in their nominations. It is thought that Bush makes his decisions based on the confirmation of his Presidential Council. He is also condemned and slurred for his bold and unalterable war strategy in Iraq which continues to empty the treasury. His laisser faire policies on economic development and sustenance have continued to fail with the corresponding impact on the ever increasing budget deficit. Some have argued that it will take decades before civil society can entirely entrust an administration, more so with matters pertaining to war. Worst of all is the imminence of serious corruption allegations that have continue to be directed at his administration, explicitly towards his closest advisers. Some of these advisers (Scooter Libby, Abramoff, et alia) albeit facing serious criminal charges have been appointed to government funded think tanks!
Kibaki’s style is astonishingly similar. He doubtlessly makes his decisions reportedly under the watchful eye of his kitchen cabinet. Not one single appointment in the Kibaki administration (as is the clear case with Bush), is not subject to public denunciation. His policies are harebrained and goofy, beyond any doubt. Worst off, he continues to run aground with the salient yet litigious matter of the constitution even with the elucidation of existing evidence of humorless and austere corruption. I have heard many Kenyans in Nairobi wonder how they got bamboozled into electing Kibaki for president. The same question lingers in the minds of many Americans today with respect to their President.
Citizenry in both countries are in continuous wonderment of how the two presidents bamboozled them into electing them. Many a people are now admitting to the certitude that the two presidents are inherently cavalier and parlous. A friend put it very well recently – she said that Kibaki’s true self is what we do not want to see – President Kibaki himself. In other words, and to paraphrase her, she said “For every man in a tuxedo, there’s a man in T shirt wanting to get out.” You see the tuxedo (called tux in short) was adopted by rich people as the symbol of celebration, good times and special occasion. It was designated by the motion picture industry as its symbol for high society, class and elegance, and the tux even became a symbol of hope for better days during the depression days of the 1930s. It was also defined by the tastemakers and standard-bearers as the appropriate garb for those events in an individual's life when only a tradition of elegance would do. Thus in its official first appearance in 1886 at the Tuxedo Club in Manhattan, it was also referred to as “the disguiser”.
Consonantly, Kenya was duped and subsequently horrified, astounded and confused by the President’s “flip-flop”. The truth of his “complexion” had soaked in. Inasmuch, Kibaki perspicuously took off his tuxedo as soon as he was sworn in! The DP kit and caboodle is way too over-ripe and as a result, its offshoot is offensive, polluted and noisome.
It is therefore risibly absurd to come across the “naïve” types who reckon that Kibaki is still “the babe in the woods”. They somehow blame the president’s failures on his kitchen cabinet. The preconceived notions of his health (due to his pre-election accident), his anitquatedness as well as his religious faith, are also perceived as contributing factors. Talk of him being weak-kneed, yielding and submissive is becoming rampant. And as if it’s a mistake to point fingers at the president, I heard a DP junkie yesterday reckon that we (Kenyans) need to support President Kibaki at the present time while he figures a way out of the deep grave he’s dug himself into. Even newspaper reports are rife with astounding and outrageous advisory expositions of how Kibaki must fire/sack corrupt officials. That he (Kibaki) is not the guy behind the guy behind the guy! I painstakingly disagree. This is about him, period! Why not wholeheartedly and holistically fix this mess? One does not argue that because an unrotten banana peel resting at the top of a decomposed and rancid dump is also fresh!
C.S. Lewis was right in his Reflections of The Psalms when he posited that, "Every poem can be considered in two ways - as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes." President Kibaki is prudently and pertinaciously loyal to his own. In other words, he is just as unethically rotten and corrupt as his rat pack is – they are one and the same! Birds of a feather have always and will always flock together.
Kenya needs to immediately prepare and head for a snap election and rid itself of this crooked, debauched, perfidious, two-faced praetorian mercenary!
I have heard emotional and emphatic sentiments about the impact of “shocking the system” but it is ingeniously inevitable at this point and avoiding it would be indubitably artless. We need a new administration and the time is now. In order to demonstrate Kenyan prowess and artistry, KIBAKI MUST GO!!!
-unedited-
Maina.
