#VPMeetUP: What a Boring Engagement Where Even the VP’s Son Complained

In the morning I did a post about the Kenyan Social Media Ninjas and the Politicians. And this evening I was proved right when I attended the #VPMeetUp which was basically a circus run by some psycophants in the name of moderators. From the start I knew that the Vice President was not running the @SkMusyoka account on Twitter. It was very obvious who the faces behind the account were.

So AlKags realised who the people behind the event were and might have chickened out. So Tonee Ndung’u took over and it was instant disappointment. The guy is such an ass licker. The guy basically shoved questions down the throat of guys and thought that he must ask 4 questions for every one question put forward by anyone at the event then when you see the same guys present at TEDxNairobi, iHub and other events, you think we have a less chauvinistic generation. We have a disaster here.

When I arrived I found the Vice President being introduced and I thought it was ok and David Mugo aka @RaiDarmax was in charge of the introductions. After the introductions it was time for Kahawa and the VP came to our table being walked around by David and Kaplich his spokesman was there. I spotted Dr Luvedi Chweya the VP’s Office PS was also present in the room though not wanting to show his face much.

Then when the Vice President sat down for the question time to start, the disaster started and David Mugo was having a list of those he wanted to ask questions. The whole randomness was ignored and it was basically you know who. I never relent in asking questions and I have asked sitting UN Secretary Generals, Presidents and this was not going to be my first engagement with a leader nor will it be the last. After 3 questions, Tonee Ndung’u decided that no questions would be asked and the VP had to deliver some “speech”. jeez!! Where did that come from? A Speech!! For what?

The Vice President was struggling with the wordings of the speech and it seemed to have been written by someone among the Nailab group and it was meant to massage egos with very irrelevant mentions of how Kalonzo met Waibochi, saw “ushahidi work in haiti”, or even see good software the developers were making. It was basically a speech written for PR and it completely fell flat on that function. The meeting was suppose to be informal and the people present were suppose to be given a chance to engage.

Even the Vice President’s son was heard complaining that the event was poorly organised and overly exaggerated. I think the intention of the event was basically to rubber-stamp the people strategically placing themselves to run the social media accounts for the local politicians.

Attending the event I thought I was going to understand the VP for once but even the likes of @sickolia who got a chance to engage with him could not even get satisfied and still called him to his face “kigeugeu”.

I just think that it was wrong to handle the event the way it was done but the biggest let down are those who claims to be the leaders of tomorrow. Even Kalonzo had to be very cautious with anybody he thought was Luo and when someone with a Kalenjine sounding name asked him a question, he had to call Kaplich (his communication officer) and tell Kimutai who was asking a question and was from Bomet how he had Kalenjins in his team.

All in all I found the VP as someone who has no strong stand and also would be a bad opportunist using the points like tribalism to seek sympathy. You know the stand of Kalonzo immediately after the 2008 elections on ICC and his stand now. What really pains me is that you could see him influence the young people.

In fact from the group moderating you could actually pick who did that propaganda video the VP was walking with all over the world to beg countries to support Kenya’s case of not wanting to cooperate with ICC. He was with us in the room and he is for quick small money from the vice-president.