Of unsustainable lies, strikes and power hikes

Someone once wondered how all the news of the day fit in the day’s newspaper. There are times when I almost can’t think of what to send to my editor and then there are times like these when there is so much to talk about I feel like writing pages and pages of stuff, but my editor wants consistency.Consistency has not come easy for some other people lately. And in situations where consistency fails, lies that have long been passed off as truths are unearthed. The other day, the Federal court of Canada concluded that Leon Mugesera, a Rwanda Genocide suspect should be deported back here to face trial in connection to the role he played in fuelling the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. I guess his fabricated truths could not hold anymore. However, by the time of writing this piece, he was trying to delay, what looks like the inevitable, by appealing to court on claims that he would be tortured if he returned home. I wish he had thought this same way before uttering his inflammatory speeches in 1992. Forget Mugesera’s antics of collapsing and being taken to hospital. The release of the report on the judicial probe into the downing of Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane produced two interesting reactions among people in the social media world, particularly on Twitter. There was clear jubilation from those who always knew what judge Marc Trevidic had to say, after all, the Mutsinzi report had said precisely the same years ago. To them the report was a confirmation of what they always knew as the truth. Meanwhile the ‘experts’ on Rwanda almost had nothing to tweet about as the lie rug that they had been standing on for years had literally been pulled from under their feet. Moving from Kanombe to Nairobi, another man failed to hold on to his fabricated truth and was roasted by those who knew better. When the Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF) picked their guns to go and fight Al Shabaab in Somalia, their spokesman, Major Emmanuel Chirchir didn’t. Instead he picked a Twitter handle and a tech gadget and started tweeting about the war. However his online pastime took a beating when he tweeted pictures said to be of a Kenyan Al Shaabab convert being stoned to death. The thing is, this was not really true. The pictures he had posted were taken way back in 2009 not 2012. His propaganda stunt was undressed by a Somali-American journalist, Mukhtar Ibrahim. For a military spokesman, this blunder is a big dent, not just to his ego, but most importantly to the credibility of his war reports. Before he could even recover from his day on the pedestal of shame, militants suspected to be Al Shabaab attacked an Administration Police camp in Wajir killing six people and abducting others as well as taking with them a cache of weapons. Now for the rest of this article, I really wish it was all lies but I am afraid it is not. In Kampala traders went on strike closing their shops in protest at what they consider to be exorbitant interest rates on bank loans. What I don’t understand is whether all the traders have bank loans. The other day they were lamenting at the unbearable price of the US dollar. Even before the problems of the traders could be solved by a president who almost starved while in South Africa (ANC hospitality), it was announced that starting today (Sunday 15) domestic and industrial power consumers will pay between 36 to 69 percent more for every unit of electricity. As if that is not such a bad truth, it was also announced that regular load shedding should be expected to resume. I know some of you are now saying, Oh poor Ugandans and their UMEME woes. Please leave room in your pity boat to include my friends in Tanzania where electricity tariffs have also been increased by 40 percent. Tanzania also has issues of insufficient power. We now have two places where electricity is more expensive but not more available. When I think of the Nigerians protesting over fuel yet they are oil exporters, I wonder why electricity is so expensive and not even enough in the East African Community. Isn’t this the same region sometimes referred to as the Great Lakes region? Considering all the hydroelectric potential the region has you would think the fact that R. Nile is found within this region is also just a lie. Unfortunately it is not. Email: ssenyonga@gmail.comBlog: www.ssenyonga.wordpress.comTwitter: @ssojo81