Female Police officers during the Budget reading of 2020/21 at the Parliament buildings, Nairobi. [Elvis Ogina, Standard]
A new police uniform is set to be unveiled this morning, apparently in a bid to boost their morale. That makes a lot of sense; when one lives in a tin-shack but they’re prim and proper when they step out of their hovels, they’d have a completely different mind-set. I didn’t mention the big black boots, shined to a point of catching one’s own reflection, erasing the memories of mud and dirt they waded through the previous day.
Sceptical Kenyans, however, say this has got something to do with procurement, who is procuring the fabrics, from where, and at what price, and who’s trundling on the sewing machines, at what pace and price per spin.
I can’t blame Kenyans because just about everything has been politicised, including teachers’ deployment that now happens at the State House. This is what it means to craft a State in one’s own image, as Prezzo Ruto seems so determined to.
But I don’t think we’re being fair to the government when every intervention is filtered through the lens of corruption. For once, we should be happy that gangs of goons that have been wearing blue uniforms have been defrocked.
This calls to mind another story that I heard on the grapevine about a certain politician who had accumulated stashes of cash that he hoped to launder in a General Election. To put him out of business, that legal tender was invalidated.
That’s the simple way of saying when you see something being unveiled in our country, there is a backstory of something more base, rather than a genuine response to our troops, such as the asinine explanation that the uniform change was prompted by complaints that the old blue hue resembled a certain church denomination.
I’d recommend home clothes for our police officers for a change because most prefer that. In any case, their uniform has lost considerable authority and public trust in the advent of goons that Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen defers to. He said whenever he receives intelligence that goons are on the rampage, it’s best to steer clear. That’s the enormous power that those lawless hoodlums enjoy in our country.