President has himself to blame for appearing exhausted lately

“Too much circulation makes the price go down: The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear.” — Robert Greene, 48 Laws of Power

In the late 1970s, the then Attorney General Charles Njonjo declared discussions about the health of the President of Kenya an act of treason. Back then, village rumour mills were on overdrive with speculation about the health of President Jomo Kenyatta. With one roadside declaration, Kenyatta’s top lawyer put an end to the nonsense by reminding Kenyans that the President was not their age-mate and should therefore not be the subject of common gossip.

Jomo was lucky to have Njonjo, even luckier that social media had not yet been invented at the time. Had it existed then, the poor old man would probably have suffered a heart attack triggered by the kind of common balderdash that President William Ruto is currently facing.

For example, despite publicly declaring that he is alright, and that the only reason he appears to have lost weight is because he is following a healthy dietary regime by eating less than his political opponents, social media doctors (and witchdoctors) do not seem impressed.

Remarkably, very few of these social media doctors and witchdoctors are offering prescriptions to restore our President to the gym-toned figure of the early days of his presidency.

Still, it is not difficult to understand why the President has lately appeared exhausted and strained — he has been trying to be everywhere and everything, or what my grandmother used to call “being all over.”

From Monday to Sunday, barely a minute passes in Kenya without the President being seen or heard somewhere, or without his name being mentioned, whether in whispers or whimpers.

He has become the air we breathe, the food on our tables, the roofs over our heads, our children’s education, and, most recently, a permanent presence at every filling station in the country. Why, it would not be surprising if a motorist in a hurry or a fuel attendant confused “a litre of fuel” with “a Ruto of fuel.”

And with the government said to have allowed lower-quality fuel into our cars because clean fuel has become too expensive — a logic akin to adding poison to a baby’s feeding bottle because milk has become too expensive — it follows that the President now controls the very air we breathe, or at least its quality.

In the same breath, the President’s name has been popping up in all manner of awkward conversations, from tattoos to paternity disputes and mysterious heart attacks.

In hospitals, the President haunts the wards, where patients trapped by unpaid bills and the shenanigans of the Social Health Authority feel his figure looming over their beds.

In schools, the President is part of every staffroom conversation. Indeed, his name is likely to surface during every break-time play activity among children, often in less-than-flattering contexts.

One explanation believers in the supernatural sometimes give when they wake up exhausted is that someone dragged their spirit out of bed to perform hard labour in the spirit world. Perhaps our President faces the same predicament.

He may not realise that he is being overworked in every imagination, every distress, and every anxiety unfolding in this country. It does not help matters when he seems comfortable making himself so omnipresent that no aspect of Kenyan life can go on without him.

When he has to be present in every conversation— from petrol prices to drawings on matatus, from family wills to doctors’ prescriptions — when his name becomes the judge, the police officer, the teacher, the nurse, the petrol attendant, the local pastor, and the jailer, then the President has no one but himself to blame for appearing so haggard and tired all the time.

But the greatest danger of trying to be everywhere at once is that Ruto is breaking at least four laws from The 48 laws of power, which advise leaders to occasionally and deliberately make themselves scarce, or risk becoming soft targets for every Tom, Dick, and Harry.

Mr Muchiri is a media and public communications consultant. muchiri.karanja@gmail.com