In one of his laugh-a-minute skits, American humorist Mark Twain reminds us of something we should already know from both Ecclesiastes the Preacher and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
It is that, although wisdom always cries out in the street, nobody ever regards it. But, clearly, Kenya’s county chiefs are anything but wise.
Were our county governors sagacious, they would know a hundred times better than to constantly and noisily call the public’s attention to themselves by swaggering in borrowed clothing which — as the great English Bard points out in another tragic play — hangs loose upon each of them “… like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief …”
That is the question. In exactly what way do our county chiefs excel? The answer depends, of course, on what you mean by that verb.
Coming from the Latin excellere, it means to be outstandingly good at your work, to surpass all your competitors in a given task, to perform better than everybody else in your category of service.
Do our county governors excel? Is that why every one of them demands to be called “Your Excellency”? Do they perform better and with greater moral vision and sense of proportion than all of Kenya’s other administrative officials — all the way from the President to the filing clerk and the office cleaner?
Yes, of course, they excel in many things. In the field of grubbing, I know no caterpillar more excellent. In the arena of disrespect for accounting, no jackdaw has ever coped. In the field of strutting, the tausi (peacock) in your garden is far too drab. As a braggadocio, Kenneth Grahame’s Mister Toad was but a debutant.
Blaise Pascal — I think it was — who noticed that, at each meal-time, it takes “more than a little” (plus q’un petit) to fill a European monarch’s belly.
But, even when spurred by the voluptuous Marie Antoinette — the nationally loathed Autrichienne — King Louis could not compete with any of modern Kenya’s county administrators.
The governor is veritably excellent. He excels not only at the “talk show” but also, much more importantly, up-table in the dining room.
There is thus no denying the excellence of His Excellency. And I say “His” only because I am not aware of any woman in the sanctum sanctorum of the headquarters of any county.
What can be denied — and must be condemned — is only the county chief’s shameless parading as a manifestation of excellence his own daily attempt to equate his greed and showmanship with the interests of those who voted him into office. Does your governor excel?
Is he characterised by abnegation, selflessness, moderation both in language and at work? Does he excellently demonstrate intellectual ability, social knowledge, technical skill and the human warmth necessary in imparting these? In short, would you gladly choose the governor as your role model?
What has he recently said or done in the political arena that, to your mind, might rapidly help the county’s mass out of its perpetual smarting in penury?
Can you remember any initiative he has recently taken to ensure that all parents in the county can feed and clothe their children and take them to school and hospital?
If not, doesn’t it raise questions in your head that, at the same time as your conditions are sinking, the governor’s family resides in a house looking like Elizabeth Regina’s palace; he drives a car more sinuous than Phoebus Apollo’s; his family eats four square meals a day; and his son probably attends an aristocratic school in England?
The only reason he demands the epithet “His Excellency” is that he shares the title governor with a Caucasian tyrant of colonial infamy once upon a time imposed on Kenya by another world.
That is why Kenyans must reject this bloated arrogance by individuals whose excellence lies only in their ability to grub.
