It’s almost official, President William Ruto has become the meme lord of Kenya’s social media. And he is a bottomless pit of content for the meme creators. His actions and words make it easy for him to become the butt of jokes, some hilarious and others plain derogatory.
In recent weeks, the memes have come out portraying what appear to be the unending promises, some really ridiculous, by the President.
All presidents have always had nicknames. It is in fact the nature of citizens to generate monikers for leaders at all levels. Many such nicknames for Kenya’s past presidents were generally affectionate in nature.
For this current President, nearly each name that comes up appears derogatory or almost always created from one perceived character flaw or another. Indeed, it is not difficult to see why this regime and this President are and will be treated different.
On many occasions, President Ruto has come out to express his admiration for President Mwai Kibaki. According to him, the country grew economically and politically under Kibaki because of what Ruto perceives as Kibaki’s decent and honest leadership.
But the first marked difference that Ruto would note if he looked closer was that Kibaki appointed ministers, gave them space to work and shunned unnecessary public appearances.
In contrast, one hardly gets to see Ruto’s Cabinet Secretaries CSs because the President seems to be everywhere, issuing policy declarations, making economic projections, promising one thing after another and is practically in front of a microphone every day.
In fact, one would be forgiven for forgetting that CSs like Simon Chelugui, Aisha Jumwa and Florence Bore still serve in this regime, given how long ago they were prominently in the public eye. For the latter, I’m sure what many media watchers can remember is her nasty fight over a house with a sitting member of Parliament, rather than her official duties.
In an environment where CSs seem curtailed as the President runs rings around their ministries, the unintended consequence is that many pronouncements that should come from ministries’ accounting officers and Cabinet level leadership are being made by the head of state. And the person receiving the ridicule for the failures of such pronouncements, or their outrageous nature, is the country’s chief executive. Ruto may be a Kibaki admirer, but on this, he is as far away from the Kibaki model as anything can be.
I don’t envy the people who handle diplomacy, communication and public relations in this regime. I can imagine how difficult it is to wake up to news that the boss has promised citizens that hundreds of thousands of jobs are available for Kenyans in Saudi Arabia and Germany, or that the shilling will rise to 120 against the dollar, or such other unfounded hyperbole.
Because this is not the kind of President who will take back his words or tell his subjects that he was wrong; technocrats handling the dockets on which he makes these ill-informed promises obviously have to bear the tag of incompetence, without the public ever finding out whether or not these roadside declarations are first shared with them.
The consensus across the country is that President Ruto likes to micromanage things. It can get to embarrassing levels for those who run these dockets. For instance, we have seen ICT-related business being transacted in Washington and in Nairobi, while the CS in charge, Eliud Owalo, is in Rarieda meeting local political delegations.
In this sort of scenario, it is difficult to see how the CS is meant to set the agenda for his ministry, while seeming clueless about the President’s activities related to his docket. Indeed, the fact that the relevant CS can miss a function that falls under his portfolio may not only be a pointer to the Ruto’s obsession with micromanaging government but could in fact confirm that he sees CSs as mere figureheads in the ministries.
It is possible to deduce that part of the problem is that the head of state has failed to transition from a sunroof politician on the campaign trail, promising voters anything and everything, to the role of management required in the Office of President. Instead, confronted by national issues he hadn’t had a chance to see before taking power, he has opted to run with campaign-level make-believe as a tool for governance.
Except that at this level, citizens do not only have expectations, but rightly assume that whoever accepts the mandate and takes the oath of President will rise to the occasion and confront real problems with real solutions.
The shilling is on a free fall. Life is difficult. The citizenry is despondent. Even people in zones previously considered solid Kenya Kwanza areas are bemoaning the difficult times. Social media users may use jokes to mask the depth of the pain, but ultimately, we all regularly raise our heads out of the water to acknowledge just how tough the times have been.
Yet the impression one gets is that the regime’s default position is to react to every economic difficulty with more proposed taxes. While throwing new taxes at every emerging issue, the regime has effortlessly managed to alienate a large portion of the public, and lacking ways to protest the state of affairs, many Kenyans have headed to social media to turn it all into a national joke.
I am concerned about this largely because, in my view, when the population turns the presidency into a joke, they are in a way also expressing a certain feeling about the holder. We have always taken it for granted that the President is the symbol of national unity and the custodian of all our aspirations. But the memes that are coming out lately suggest that in just one year, President Ruto has managed to transform what was previously a respected institution into the most sustainable butt of jokes in the country.
I submit that the social media memes are actually a sign of underlying disrespect that Kenyans have developed for the institution of the presidency, and that’s a really bad sign, because it speaks to a disturbing detachment from the deep reverence that the office used to hold in the hearts of the masses.
I have no idea who advises the President and I have no intention of knowing. But if any one of them ever listened to me, my only advise would be that when a country faces the myriad issues ours does, the leader doesn’t need to be everywhere speaking a hundred different things at once. Faced with adversity, the more compelling style would in fact be to go off the radar, seek sustainable solutions, deploy those solutions and let your work speak for itself.
Visibility does not translate to delivery or work. Indeed, being too visible, while not appearing to provide solutions to national issues, just ends up making you sound vain and empty. In making more and more promises to citizens without seeming to deliver on them, the President may be engaged in empty monologue, while the populations only hopes for better times and a change of fortunes.
A greater method would be to speak less and appear less in public but deliver on the promises, while creating the impression that things are working out. That way, the President wouldn’t end up being a meme lord, but would retain the respected tag of symbol of national unity.
Political commentator