Stop Baseless Attacks on Orengo Administration

The Merriam-Webster eleventh collegiate dictionary defines the word resign as quit, leave or voluntarily retire from a job or position.

On Wednesday 28 February 2024, the Siaya County Assembly unanimously approved the nomination of CPA Leonard Ochieng Jaber as Chief Officer of Finance and Economic Planning. That alone did not make Jaber an employee of the Siaya County Government, but it significantly paved the way for the Governor to formally appoint him into office.

Before he was appointed, however, Jaber (for reasons best known to himself) declined the job offer. Does that translate to resignation?

No. CPA Leonard Ochieng Jaber has never been an employee of the Siaya County Government and therefore he can’t have the privilege to quit, leave, or retire from the position of Chief Officer of Finance and Economic Planning.

Whoever is driving the narrative that Jaber’s “resignation” is tied to some ominous plot on the part of the Governor only has a fertile imagination.

But that is not the crux of my concern.

Misinformation and peddling propaganda is a tool of political warfare that predates the formation of the Siaya County Government.
The crux of my concern this morning is the youth being misused to drive this obvious attack on the Nyalore administration. Some of them are unemployed and currently in the job market.

What they sincerely don’t understand is that in this age and era potential employers would routinely scrutinize an applicant’s online activity as part of the job interview.

Just pause for a moment and think about an international conglomerate wishing to employ you opening your Facebook account and right there find the meme of a public officer or politician with the wording cartel in bold red print.

Of course, the employer knows from your resume that you don’t have the investigative, moral, or official authority to call anyone a cartel without substantiation and therefore the conclusion is that you are the worst kind of miscreant to roam the planet Earth — a rumourmonger.

Pause for a moment and think about the government investigative agencies such as DCI and EACC to whom you might have submitted petitions on behalf and signed up as a resident of Siaya finding you peddling rumors on social media about the same person or people you have petitioned to be investigated!

It’s a clear sign of mischief. It’s only a lunatic that feels proud exposing his father’s nudity.

Having said that, nonetheless, governments must be kept in check, otherwise, they mutate into ogre’s, and as Senior Counsel James Aggrey Bob Orengo himself once famously said: they consume their own.

How can we keep the Siaya County Government in check? Is it by posting propaganda on social media, attacking individual officers with half-baked accusations that can seldom pass legal interrogation, or organizing street demonstrations?

Is it by labelling subsidized fertilizer as soil being distributed by the County Government when the facts point at a larger scam nationally? Or is it by spending endless hours searching backgrounds of officers of the Orengo administration so that we can expose the skeletons in their closets?

The Fourth Estate is a powerful tool that in certain circles is aptly referred to as the fourth arm of government after Executive, Judiciary, and Legislature. Journalists are trained to observe modicum in critique. In essence, they can say bad things about your mother without necessarily using derogatory epithets or rousing your temper.

Maybe it’s time to look at the efforts of Siaya’s own Dalanews website in a new light. Inasmuch as we continue holding accountable the County Government of Siaya, we, however, do not allow the sovereignty of the precious ladies and gallant sons of Siaya to be besmirched by negative press, especially misinformation by individual(s) on Facebook. We know that social media memory is endless and so is the damage it can occasion.

We therefore call for a cessation of this sponsored, unwarranted and unsubstantiated attacks on the Orengo administration.

DalanewsKE

Editorial Saturday 6 April 2024

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