RETIRED PRESIDENT MOI MUST NOT TALK SENSELESS AND WRITE HIMSELF OUT OF REPUTATION.

Dear Sir/Madam, I must admit that I have never seen the wisdom in the leading media houses affording retired president Moi acres of space to comment on socio-economic and political issues affecting this country. The media must realize that Moi will never ever tire of media attention. He will gloat. Believe me you, he will blubber. The media knows this weakness. It also knows too well that it is a mistake to keep on haunting him out of his peaceful retirement. What is not clear though is why they (Media) have kept on accosting him in his retirement. Why increasingly let the man blubber himself out of any iota of reputation? It is not hard to tell. The media is affording him acres of coverage perhaps with a view to making him believe that at 85, his mind is far much better than anyone`s else. To the mainstream media, it is sweet music to hear Moi say that in his reasoned opinion, the excision of the Mau complex for tea farming is the only novel idea for conservation of our water towers! According to the senior Moi, the on going Mau conservation effort is bound to fail ostensibly because the Government is holding the wrong side of the stick. You see after many years of his word being above reproach, he still thinks the government of the day is made up of idiots. This is because it is expressing reasoned opinions which are different from his. After all, he is an expert. Yes, an expert who has made all the mistakes that could possibly be made in his 24 year reign. This is the repertoire of wisdom that characterized Moi`s 24 year executive fiat. This the wisdom that he employed in the creation of today`s Mau executive squatters: To establish lush tea estates in this water tower. Today, he must be wondering why the Government of the day is unwilling to “fuata nyayo.” Why is the government unwilling to drink from his pond of wisdom? To keep the story short, the senior Moi is simply asking the Government to allow him continue his tea business in Mau. As far as he is concerned, it is the Government`s headache to deal with the illegal Mau evictees as long as his lush tea farm is untouched. Herein lies the trap; if Moi stays put, so will his coterie. The conservation exercise will definitely have flopped. Obnoxious as this may sound, yet it is a testament to the fact that his opposition (as well as that of many others) to the Mau evictions was not about the welfare of the hapless and helpless illegal settlers but for his own selfish interests. The bitter truth is that the illegal Mau evictees are but mere pawns for the peers of the realm. Moi and his coterie literally “imported” gullible Kenyans from Kericho, Bomet and Baringo and put them in the Mau to act as a shield against any future threats of evictions from successive regimes. That is why today, they troop back to their ethnic enclave and make the loudest noise from the roof tops to scare away the Government of the day from undoing their ecological plunder. This clever ploy about tea farms conserving the water tower is only aimed at spreading confusion so as to ensure that the Government of the day is kept off balance. They do not want to let the ruts get deeper than they already are. My exhortation to the government is that it must never allow itself to be derailed from this noble conservation exercise. Instead it must do everything in its power to get rid of this wicked form of opportunism and propaganda in our midst. As for retired president Moi, let him take counsel in the words of Oliver Cromwell, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken” on this noble conservation exercise. TOME FRANCIS, BUMULA CONSTITUENCY. http://twitter.com/tomefrancis