Wednesday, August 10, 2016

What is Miguna's plan?

The following statements about Miguna Miguna were made by Sarah Elderkin in 2012:
...a person with deeply worrying issues and insufficient personal morality...a man with a good brain [who is] tortured and destroyed by emotions he cannot control, so that he ends up a victim at the mercy of his own self-destructive inner turmoil...overbearing ranting and raving...[Judge] Warsame said that Miguna was a man “who exhibits mental and emotional fits in his defence of issues”...[Judge] Warsame added, “He is described as a man living in [a] mental darkroom”...His actions have [...] everything to do with Miguna Miguna, his lack of balance, and his distorted sense of self.—Daily Nation, July 16, 2012
I had a few questions for the independent candidate in Nairobi's 2017 gubernatorial race. What happened next took me completely by surprise. Mr Miguna's online team challenged the foundation of my previous post on the basis that I was a supporter of thieves, the corrupt, the incompetent and drug-dealers, which is how the describe the incumbent governor of Nairobi City, the Cabinet Secretary for Water and Irrigation, the Member of Parliament for Dagoretti South Constituency, the Chairman of The National Alliance Party, the Senator of Nairobi City and the former Member of Parliament for Starehe and Bishop of the Jesus is Alive Ministry.

For the record, I do not intend to vote for Evans Kidero, Eugene L Wamalwa, Dennis Waweru, Jonson Sakaja, Mike Sonko or Margaret Wanjiru if they offer themselves for election as Nairobi's second governor. Mr Kidero has failed to do much to stay the rot in this city, Mr Wamalwa is a carpetbagger, Mr Sakaja is a lightweight, Mr Waweru doesn't seem to do much except act as a cheerleader for his party leader and Ms Wanjiru has demonstrated previous lapses in judgment that were quite troubling. However, let it also be abundantly clear that simply because I will not vote for them does not mean that I shall automatically vote for Mr Miguna. That is not how the game s played. Mr Miguna and his team seem to have missed this basic fact of retail politics that at some point I feared I was a target in Ashton Kutcher's erstwhile eponymous show, Punk'd.

The basis for my inquisition of Mr Miguna is his three-part screed on Facebook that he and his team call a "vision" which he published in April, 2016. Other than its erudition, I did not find it that much different from similar "vision" statements made by candidates for high office. Mr Miguna claims that he is the best candidate in 2017; on Twitter, I challenged him and his team to prove it. The proof was not to be based on what the other candidates had failed to do or were incapable of doing but on what assets Mr Miguna possessed that made him better than the rest if not the best. Again and again, I was reminded that Mr Miguna's assets are "Integrity, Vision, Honesty and Competence" in that order.

I have no doubt that Mr Miguna and his team believe that he is honest and competent, a man of integrity who has a vision for Nairobi. Those are mere words. They are not assets in the true sense of the word. Mr Miguna was an advisor in the defunct Office of the Prime Minister. He headed a secretariat on coalition coordination. When he was suspended, he was accused of
...refusal to sign Local Agreement forms, harassment, intimidation and use of abusive language to colleagues and misrepresenting the Office of the PM.Business Daily, August 11, 2011
My tweef with Mr Miguna and his team revealed a shocking lack of understanding of the constitutional, institutional and administrative arrangement of government, both at the national and county levels. I didn't expect Mr Miguna's online team to have a nuanced or sophisticated understanding of Article 96 of the Constitution or section 43 of the National Government Constituencies Development Fund, 2015, but I expected better from Mr Miguna. I was disappointed in Mr Miguna's and his online team's reasoning on both.

But what gave me pause was Mr Miguna's response to a series of questions regarding his plans for Nairobi. his was his response:
My Manifesto will not be influenced by your Tweets. It will be a Manifesto, not a LAUNDRY LIST!
Then he blocked me from reading his tweets. Mr Miguna faces a daunting task in 2017. Mr Kidero may be incompetent, Mr Sonko may have the CIA's allegations hanging over him, Mr Waweru and Mr Sakaja may be scrambling to fend of Mr Wamalwa's riposte while Ms Wanjiru may have her own skeletons to deal with, but none of all that means a hill of beans for Mr Miguna if he alienates voters. Most of us have no problem with his arrogance or acerbic tongue, but we are not children either. If he cannot engage patiently with an inconsequential blogger like me, I imagine that he will fare no better than the self-entitled residents of Nairobi who don't give two shits that he is a barrister, solicitor, poet and author. If he can't persuade us, his campaign will be akin to the one described by Miguel de Cervantes in 1605.

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