mantle of the failed many like moths
are drawn to the light.
Sonko is a darling of the Nairobi
people and is synonymous with the
Sonko Rescue Team that is the catch
phrase in the informal settlements
of Nairobi. He has served as an MP,
a senator and may very well be your
next Governor in this brown city in
the trash.
You know him for his mad antiques,
he has sprawled himself on the roads
leading various protests and had
been filmed punching walls to vent
anger at authorities. His hairstyles
rival those of a street punk and
has routinely been thrown out of
parliament and the senate.
His academic background is vague at
best and it is very hard to believe he
actually went to school because there
is no direct evidence of it. But he
has all the requisite certificates and
diplomas to allow him to gun for top
office even if he can hardly express
himself in English.
His link to the infamous and chaotic
Matatu trade that has made our
roads death traps only seems to make
him more popular and he is always
fielding accusation of involvement
in the narcotic trade which he has
denied vehemently but nobody seems
to know his source of wealth.
Then you have baba, the opposition
‘‘ If our last word is
to be about the good
of the country, that
is service before self
then we have to snap
out of this deadly
fascination with the
bad boys of society
and realize that all
that they do is to
take us on a thrill
filled journey to our
destruction.’’
stalwart whose grip of the Luo nation
is near fanatical. You may not have
ever heard of a full speech from him
even when he was a prime minister
but you surely will remember his
vitendawili’s.
There can hardly be a politician in
Kenya who has been in detention
as often as him and it never ceases
to amaze us that the more times he
was thrown in the more popular he
became. Few people know the former
notorious Nyayo house as intimately
as he does.
When you start to check on his
educational background things
start to get murky and it is not even
clear if he had a connection to the
communist east or not because he
espoused capitalistic tendencies to
great effect but that rebel label just
adds to his bad boy mystique.
Since opposition is his middle name
he is the only politician who has built
a career on a negative platform and
survived. Fear him or love him he
embodies revolution; he was linked
to a coup attempt and is a fascinating
thorn to the establishment.
On the international scene no one
occupies the bad boy mantle better
than the Philippine’s President
Rodrigo Duterte. His rating in the
country has been at all time high due
mainly to his unorthodox the devil –
may – care attitude.
He has routinely lambasted the
leaders of the free world with
unsavory language and is known to
shoot from the hip and say whatever
he feels like. This has landed him in
diplomatic impasses but as he really
does not care what you think about
him, he soldiers on.
He has singlehandedly taken on the
drug cartel and issued a shoot and ask
questions later edict that has created
an international human rights furor.
But he has ignored the international
pressure to end the extra-judicial
killings and vowed to rid the island of
the drug menace.
With all his in-your face braggadocio,
the bad-boy image, his offensive
demeanor and total lack of courtesy
has endeared him to his electorate
who have more or less given him a
carte blanche to tackle the ills of the
island as he sees fit.
We cannot talk of the bad-boy image
and leave out Donald Trump who
was elected into office for all the
wrong reasons. The openly racist and