If You Live in A Glasshouse Don’t Throw Stones

Media personality Gabriel Oguda is an ardent critic of the Kenya Kwanza administration.

From morning to evening Oguda with a following of close to one million on X (formerly Twitter) bashes the government with snide, well-crafted remarks that are more often amusing than insulting. His posts actually fall in the realm of literature as opposed to the obnoxious personality attacks by regular bloggers.

His satirical style often makes the message more palatable as can be seen from the engagements he receives even from UDA Party bloggers.

In short Gabriel Oguda is a professional on a mission and his impact in shaping public opinion and official policy is a given.

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British journalist Stephen John Sackur who hosts Hardtalk on BBC once verbalised the germaine truth by saying: “While constructive criticism of government is a necessity, propaganda and misinformation often leads to fear, underdevelopment, genocide and intermittent warfare in the Third World”.

Both Sackur and Oguda are trained professionals capable of spicing their prejudices (if they have any) with logic and humour. Definitely the terrain they walk is far above blogging but all the same allow me the indulgence to use their exemplary work to drive a point home about the situation in Siaya.

Whereas governments must be held accountable by public criticism, it defeats the purpose when we mount personality attacks on individuals and not the institution.

Running personal data of officials on social media is criminal and if the law has not caught up with offenders, it will, in due course.

Worse still is teaming up with a disgruntled politician and a political activist to discredit the Governor and his entire team of Executives. This is witchhunting and it will be defeated.

It is in the public interest to know that most of the bad press Siaya is receiving is from a cabal of extortionists who are soon going to be held accountable. It is also in the public interest to know that the County Government of Siaya itself has not been doing very well in matters public relations.

Criticism of government often comes when information is sanctioned. The Orengo administration now needs an open-house policy particularly with regard to regular media briefings, hiring of PR spin-doctors and sprucing up the classical image of corruption.

Before I go, the Luo have a saying: buoch odak adaka ni aasero nyar ng’ane!  [No translation needed]. Why would any sane person spend their entire time racking up muck (including reproducing nursery school certificates) on other people unless they themselves are deficient in those areas?

Be wary of people who are always talking about others’ deficiencies — they have worse problems. 

Yes, if you live in a glasshouse; don’t throw stones. 

DalanewsKE

Editorial Monday 8 April 2024