the stakeholders in a particular sector and conveniently ignoring their protests . Kenyan doctors in public service work in deplorable conditions and forever complain about their pay package .
It appears to us that if you paid the local doctors what we are willing to pay the foreign imports ; we will attract locals to the profession . What is even more crucial is the government ’ s ability to ensure that the health infrastructure can actually take care of Kenyans .
We see that universal health provision is among the four pillars that are on the president ’ s agenda . What we don ’ t seem to remember is when a stakeholders meeting was called to map out our needs . He needs to be pragmatic about it and involve us , the consumer otherwise called the patient .
The other day our beloved foreign son and a former US president Barack Obama , paid us a courtesy call , en route to South Africa where he was to deliver a key note speech at the Nelson Mandela ’ s birthday bash . That is what former presidents do .
What should have been a country PR coup ( Brand Kenya please note ) ended up being a county affair of political squabbles and family feuds , more concerned about
whose ego was not massaged properly and who was closest to our famous son .
Those that planned Obama ’ s visit forgot a cardinal rule in marketing that Obama is now a formidable brand and gone are the days that he could make a private visit to Kogelo as a student and as a senator . The brand is owned by Kenyans and not Kogelans , if that is what they are called .
To leave out the other Kenyan stakeholders and purport to have a private function in a corner of Kenya is to invite envy and ridicule from those that are left out . In this instance even those that thought they were insiders felt left out .
Another problem we have as Kenyans is to ignore that first and foremost Obama is an American and that he does not owe Kenyans anything except friendship and that he is at liberty as an individual to point out what he finds amiss in Kenya .
When he is speaking in public he is first an American and a global statesman and we should expect that his world view is different from our parochial view . Mandela is owned by South Africa just as Obama is owned by America , let us repeat , he is not Kenyan .
But as Kenyans we can draw many benefits by association and attract goodwill with the Obama brand because we have a historical and current connection to an American who broke the glass ceiling . We fail since we like to feel special by excluding others rather than implementing an inclusive strategy .
We cannot confirm this but we think that Kenyans must have invented the VVIP designation given that we believe that even among the important people there are more important ones . Resonates somewhat with the animal farm where some are more equal than others .
We are not going to build a nation if we keep pushing our exclusion agenda and refusing to take into account all the stakeholders that must be addressed in arriving at any decision . We just end up performing sub-optimally and wondering why we are always struggling .
We have stated this before , Kenyans have no problem with each other but politicians do , or appear to . The biggest stakeholder in Kenya is us , the citizens and we let our wishes be known through a representative system that we actually control . Demand to be included by always voting wisely !