By CLAY MUGANDA

Turning to the young man sitting next to me during dinner at the spirituality centre where I spent my weekend, I asked, â€Å"Who is in charge of the Ministry of Special Programmes?â€Â� â€Å"I don't know,â€Â� he said, and then asked, as if rhetorically, â€Å"Has he/she has done something wrong?â€Â� He did not wait for an answer. â€Å"If he/she had done something wrong, probably I would have known whom she is.â€Â�

Yeah. In Kenya, we always get to know our leaders for all the wrong reasons. Whenever they do something wrong, which is often, they hog the limelight, and they seem to be taking advantage of that. The only way to be in the news, or to stay relevant, is to be irrelevant. We had almost forgotten about Danson Mungatana. He was fading from our memories until a story about his bouncing cheques made him bounce back in to the headlines.

Where is Mike Sonko, Joshua Kutuny, Peter Munya, and the whole bunch of the youthful MPs who represent everything that is wrong with youth, all in the name of representing the youth? Well, something will soon happen, and everyone will come out. Fast. And start running around the country addressing rallies, standing by their â€Å"leadersâ€Â�, barking, shouting, shooting their mouths off, shooting from the lips… about The Hague or other infractions that they think have been committed against their allies.

'Ally' is such an abused word. Much more like the youth who are used and abused and dumped and forgotten about... until there is a public rally, a welcoming party, a prayer meeting…. Why are those leaders who were running around the country some months ago telling us about how sovereign a State we are? Why are they not rallying Kenyans to come out to support the dying, the famished?

They trooped to Europe to â€Å"give moral support to their alliesâ€Â�, but none of them is spending as much energy visiting areas affected by famine and drought to offer moral support or give donations. But, considering that the GoK has also been saying that there is a problem of logistics â€" because of bad roads or whatever â€" maybe The Hague is nearer than Northern Kenya.