Operation: Rudi Nyumbani, Jakom!

There is a feeling of dread among the youthful members of society. Many have sacrificed, in their own way, to attend institutions of high or technical learning. Many have spent hundreds of thousands of borrowed funds to finance efforts to "persuade" one personage or another to guarantee them spots in the ranks of the police, NYS, the defence forces or any of scores of public agencies. They listen to the Salaries and Remuneration Commission and the leading lights of the Cabinet led by the President saying that the public service is too bloated, that there is a hiring freeze, that salaries are too high, and their hearts sink.

The Inspector-general and the Director of Criminal Investigation have labelled half the yuthful population of our major towns and cities as a public safety threat; the youth are the ones, in the fevered imaginations of the police top brass, who swell the ranks of criminal gangs, outlawed quasi-religious sects, and cross-border-inspired terror organisations. The private sector, such as it is, especially that part that requires skilled manpower, is bitter at the degraded quality of lawyers, engineers and architects flooding the market with degrees and diplomas. It complains, through chairs of the manufacturers' association or that of the employers' federation, that the cost of training, and retraining, these "graduates" is raising the cost of doing business and depressing their profits and, ultimately, preventing them from reinvesting in new equipment or other capital goods.

While the Jubilee regime is busy patting itself in the back for all its achievements over the past twelve months, and the CORD-led Minority Party is planning the same "very soon," young people get the feeling that they are about to be royally shafted in 2014. If the government is not hiring, and if the private sector is only hiring if it can keep salaries and benefits low, where will the young people go for jobs? The National Executive's penchant for "funds" has not been a rip-roaring success; few of the "entrepreneurs" have managed to escape the poverty trap they were in before the borrowed funds from the national government for entrepreneurial activities for which they lacked training or experience in over 60% of the cases. While the National Executive says no jobs, it unleashes the national police and intelligence agencies on the youth to keep them from "becoming enemies of the people" and committing crimes or terror attacks.

This is the calm in the eye of a tornado. We've suffered the turbulence of the past twelve months with relative calm, even when outrages have been perpetrated against us by the State, the Shabaab, the matatu industry, doctors, teachers, university lecturers, nurses, teaches again, and county governments. By his absence Raila Odinga demonstrates that Kenya is always in ferment when he is around. Look at the quality of public political discourse and you know this to be true: without Raila Odinga as a lightning rod, even the Jubilee regime finds itself unsure of what to do. Mr Odinga must wind up his Boston holiday post haste and hurry back to Nairobi. Without his larger-than-life presence, both the Jubilee and CORD ships are floundering in the ocean. It is time he came back home!