The Government Spokesman Dr Alfred Mutua resurfaced on Fri- day, June 7 on NTV’s new programme The Trend, hosted by James Smart. But he denied having disappeared from the radar. He has been very much around, only that the media had ignored him because he hadn’t said anything controversial.
Like the Kenyan politician he is slow- ly morphing into, Mutua dramatically threatened to storm out of the studio when Smart announced he would play an old video clip showing the spin master saying that no one had died of hunger in Kenya during a serious famine. Mutua protested that the clip had been mischievously edited to show him in bad light. Smart should play the en- tire speech he delivered at the press conference, he demanded.
We waited for Mutua to make good his threat, or Smart to buckle. Neither of that happened. Smart played the clip. Mutua stayed in his seat. Now, wasn’t Mutua’s demand absurd? He is supposed to be a journalist and a communications scholar to boot. If every news source demanded that their speeches or statements be reproduced in full by the media without the usual professional packaging, what would the news look like? Mutua attempted some convoluted explanation about what he had meant in that briefing. He also denied asking famine-stricken people to send an SMS to his office about their plight. Mutua never said people should dig wells “with their hands” to solve their water problems. And so on...
Instead, he was very concerned about women and children who die from preventable diseases and the youth who have no jobs. He is very sad about the street people. He knows what it means to go to bed on an empty stom- ach, etc.
Why Dr Alfred Mutua has not set up an NGO or a foundation to solve these problems afflicting Kenyans defeats us.
But he has a grand idea that will solve youth unemployment in a few short years, he told James Smart. There are about two million registered com- panies in Kenya. If half of them offered a job to a young Kenyan, even if it meant losing money on the chap, a million youths would have an income, pap! If these are the kinds of minds to be found in the corridors government, God help us. What crap!
What exactly is the cause of youth unemployment in Kenya? How best can this challenge be realistically addressed, based on the causes, not on puerile River Road imagination?
And this is the same Mutua who, we hear, aspires to be the governor of Machakos County. Or is it senator? He did not deny the rumour, but said, like a real politician, that he would make the announcement at the right time. Mutua had other things to deny, how- ever. He is the spokesman of the entire government of Kenya, not half of the grand coalition. No, he had nothing to do with the Artur “brothers”. Those were very bad people who should never have been allowed into the country.
