How to fly Kenya flag on governor’s car with impunity

Sic....the power hungry Governors will soon debate the colour of bathroom tissues they are entitled to are not good enough....Mashariaz Gitonga.

By PETER MWAURA

It’s funny how a piece of fabric can arouse such strong emotions among the newly-sworn-in county governors. But the Kenyan flag is not simply a piece of cloth. It’s a symbol of power and prestige, depending on who is using it, where, and for what purpose.

When Olympic record holder David Rudisha wraps himself in the flag, the tricolour represents patriotism, national honour and pride. But when governors crave to fly the flag on their vehicles, the tricolour represents a symbol of control and superiority.

Similarly, when the Minister in charge published the regulation in 1965 restricting the categories of officials who can fly the flag on their vehicles, the tricolour became a symbol of exclusionary power.

The regulation said only the President, the Vice-President, the Chief Justice, the Speaker of the National Assembly, a Minister and the Attorney-General can fly the flag.

The regulation restricts the use of the tricolour as a symbol of power and prestige. When Attorney-General Githu Muigai made the announcement that governors cannot fly the national flag, he was pointing out what the law says.

But the announcement was interpreted by some as an attempt to stop the governors from using the flag to increase their status.

Indeed, if Prof. Muigai had not made the announcement, probably nobody would have noticed the illegality and flying the flag would have become customary for governors.

Symbolic value

Prof. Muigai was also seen as protecting the exclusionary value of flying the flag. There are 47 governors and if they all flew the flag, that would debase its symbolic value. The value of the flag as a symbol of power and prestige decreases as the number people flying it increases.

The 1965 regulation is a subsidiary legislation, meaning it is a rule made by the Minister in charge, not Parliament. The Minister can change it with another legal notice.

But will he? Politics of the day will tell.

In the meantime, there are many ways of defying, and going around, the regulation.

The most obvious is to continue the bold front put up principally by Kiambu County Governor William Kabogo and Uasin Gishu County Governor Jackson Mandago. They have told the world they will continue flying the flag.

“He is the Attorney General of Kenya and he needs to know how things work. Is he aware that the Transition Authority gave the flags to us? We are elected leaders and that’s how things are,” Mr Kabogo is reported to have said.

That brave face might prevail. In any case, who is going to arrest a governor on his own turf? And even if he is arrested, the fine for the offence, a mere Sh2,000, is just lunch money. The only problem with such defiance is that it’s bad news for the rule of law.

The second option is to keep the flag attached to their cars but folded so that it does not fly and flutter, thus technically obeying the law while keeping the flag.

As a last resort — if they are that desperate to wrap themselves with the flag — the governors can symbolically “fly the flag” by wearing flag patches on their right shoulders (still keeping the protocol of attaching the flag to the right side of a vehicle).

It might also be of some comfort that the Attorney-General is rumoured to be whipping himself every night since the day he made that announcement — as a bodily penance to show remorse for being so politically incorrect as to evoke the flag law.

gigirimwaura@yahoo.co
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