Diary,
Back in 2012, there was a failed proposal to change the country’s marriage laws and consider married any couple that had lived together for more than six months.
Whatever your reasons for its failure, I have mine, and it has nothing to do with that baloney about dating long-term to know your partner. Kenyans like informal trial marriages. Period. They like to browse before they buy. To taste before they partake. To sample before… You get the idea.
In that vein, the foregoing campaign period and its resultant division of the country dang in the middle, has me thinking. I’ve listened to the camp claiming one aspirant was a continuation of the status quo and another contending the other runner was a project. Still, there is the AGIP (Any Government In Power) faction that maintains nothing will change but the person at the helm.
It got me wondering: should we have trial presidencies? Maybe we could have a mini-election, where we hand one candidate the reins for six months and gauge his performance. Another six months to the next contender. Whoever passes muster gets our commitment for the next five years, with provisions for a quick divorce in case they don’t deliver as expected.
In the course of one generation, every one of our 42 tribes will have had a go at the presidency. Even other tribes that might come up. I mean, with all the divergent sexes these days, people might start choosing which tribes to belong to, or create entirely new tribes.
If people can date for years, end up separating and no one goes to jail for wasting his or her partner’s time, I don’t see why we should surrender the leadership of our county to a governor for a miserly Sh200 and the perennial promise of tap water and kazi kwa vijana.
Then again, I have to confess that as I do all this wondering, I am drunk from partaking in the destruction of half a bottle of Gordon’s Gin, and someone’s daughter lying next to me has invaded my privacy for the second day in a row because she left her toothbrush in my bathroom last night.
What are her intentions, I wonder? No way she’s staying at my place for a week, much less six months.
I am also wondering, “If this Gordon fella can make such fine liquor, why don’t we elect him President?”