Jubilee reportedly has 36 bloggers. I can’t quite put my fingers on where the name came from, but somehow it stuck. Never mind no one knows all their names.
Cord bloggers on the other hand do not have a fancy name to accompany them, but they are the most vocal. On every issue, every day, there’s a new hashtag telling us how ‘Kidero has cleaned Nairobi’, or about ‘Joho’s smear campaign’.
Sometimes you might encounter ‘Uhuru jails doctors’, or ‘Garissa Heckles Ruto’.
I don’t know if any money exchanges hands, but if it does, Cord bloggers, as opposed to Jubilee, earn their keep.
I have no problem with this kind of hustling for the youth, but what I dislike is people/bloggers who pretend to be intellectuals and neutral independent thinkers, who never point out when the government does good or when the opposition does bad.
If you are an influential Kenyan on Twitter, and someone looks at your timeline and it’s all about the nasty things the government has done, not a single mention of corruption in Nairobi or other Cord counties, or that time Baba came out guns blazing to offer his support for a corrupt governor, or that time a foreign businessman in Kisumu accused top ODM leaders of frustrating his business, come on… stop taking us for fools and announce yourself an opposition blogger already.
We will not hold it against you because from then on, we’ll understand that it is your job to put the government on its toes and play blind to the happenings on the other side.
Purpose of that intro was because of some screenshots doing rounds.
For instance on Monday, I couldn’t believe that Ben Carson commented about the doctors’ strike calling the Jubilee government ‘pathetic. Well, I’m sure he couldn’t believe it either because the last time he tweeted was on December 31st.
You see, Cord bloggers earning their keep.
Then yesterday Jubilee’s 36 bloggers, for once, earned their keep. They uncovered an old Facebook post by Kenya Medical, Practitioners and Dentist Union (KMPDU) Secretary General Ouma Oluga.
Apparently, the guy is not very fond of Kikuyus.
Though it’s not a very nice thing to say in our current environment, he got his mathematics (probability) right. Sooner or later there will be a non-kikuyu president.
Honestly, I did not think much of the screenshot until Cord bloggers (and the ones pretending to be independent thinkers) came out and rubbished it as fake. The same ones who were silent on Ben Carson’s screenshot.
I’m not stupid. I know there are many apps to fake social media posts, and I actually dismissed it too as a fake. However, loyal Jubilee lieutenants Oliver Mathenge and Dennis Itumbi, were one step ahead of everyone.
They foresaw this outcome and acted.
Lol!!! The guy recorded the screen with a shaky phone, browsing through Ouma’s Facebook account, right on the exact post with many comments, just in case the post got deleted. There is no app for that.
Actually. Let’s do this now. I want to ask Oluga and his people how I managed to create this page with all the comments. pic.twitter.com/qBY2DIfZBj
— Oliver Mathenge (@OliverMathenge) February 16, 2017
Surely, one must be so deep in Cord’s a$* to still shout fake or photoshop.
With the Twitter supremacy war out of the way, I can touch a bit on the doctors’ strike.
Doctors know they are critical in a country, and they are using that unfairly in my view.
Most of the other issues in the CBA are bullshit. They put it in so they don’t look like the greedy fellows they are. From what we’ve heard, the doctors’ leaders rarely bring up these other issues during negotiations. The only talk is about money. If for example the government bows to their demands and gives them the 300% pay rise, but declines all the other issues, you can bet the strike will be off instantly.
Picture yourself holding a knife to your boss’ neck, and ordering him to increase your salary threefold. You know well that salary increments are never that huge, but you are the holder of the knife.
Our economy has not even grown threefold since the last review.
When teachers strike, students can always catch up with the syllabus a few months later. When casual workers strike, many services can wait. But when doctors go home, you can’t say you’ll be treated tomorrow, or next month.
And herein lies the knife. They’ve got the government and public by the balls, and are using that to force their way.
I’ve heard many times that MCAs are paid better than doctors. It’s not an ideal situation, but the MCAs did not vote themselves in. If the MPs are also increasing their salaries every week, it is the prerogative of both Uhuru and Raila (if they have Kenyan interest at hearts), to whip their respective party members of parliament to stop it.
And if I may add, Kenyans should not be fighting to increase salaries to unsustainable levels. If the biggest driving force is the example set by MPs, we should be fighting to bring their salaries down. In related news, I’ve heard that the voter registration period has been extended again.
On the brief jailing of doctors’ officials, I think Kenyans were played, plain and simple. Talk everywhere was how Jubilee has jailed doctors. Some even called it the lowest point in this government’s tenure. But who really jailed the doctors?
The suit was brought about by the Council of Governors, where unlike parliament, tyranny of numbers does not favour the ruling.
When Raila led an entire battalion of Cord politicians to court, to sympathize with the doctors… good political strategy but at the same time a bit hypocritical. Raila could have at any time picked up the phone and instructed his governors to drop the suit. I doubt anyone who wants an ODM nomination in a few months time would dare defy Baba.
But you don’t get to Raila’s level by not knowing when and how to play politics.
And then when everyone was up in arms against Jubilee for jailing doctors, condemning them and counting their days, I think we forgot to thank the same Jubilee for releasing them a few days later. Please… let’s understand the roles of each branch of government.
We all want doctors to be paid well. All I’m urging is they be reasonable with their demands and understand Kenya is a very poor country. World Bank, IMF and others have constantly warned us that our wage bill is too high, and here we are pushing it up again.
For f*** sake, the lowest paid doctor currently earns Sh140,000. You are already some of the best paid people in Kenya. On top of that, majority of you earn much more through private practice.
I’m not saying you are bad or anything, but we know most of you leave nurses and clinical officers to do the job during working hours, while you work in private hospitals or operate your own private clinics. Yet collect your government paycheck every month like clockwork.
If you do get your 300% pay increase, then the lecturers get the same, and teachers strike for a similar treatment, plus other public servants, what money do you think the government will build roads with? Or will you fly your cars?
If you continue holding a knife by the government’s throat, they’ll probably give you another unrealistic CBA, to be postponed for the next president and government.
The above article is the writer’s opinion and not this blog’s position.
