Terrified Panic.

I am not the prayerful type, except when my hide is on the line and panic has gripped my innards in its icy cold grip. In those moments of sheer terror, what little brain function that is not dedicated to calculating the odds of either a flight or fight response is usually dedicated to, "O, Please God!" over and over. When the terror passes I usually make light of it all. But there is usually a bad aftertaste that lingers for hours, sometimes days.

We panic over many things. Over some we have control; over many more circumstances are such that control is limited to how we control our reactions, hence fight or flight...and prayer. I get the feeling that the Government of Kenya is like us: panicky and terrified of most things that it has brought on itself and when terror strikes, and panic sets in, the Government of Kenya is likely to be found responding with varying degrees of flight responses or fight responses - and lots of prayer. We even have a National Prayer Breakfast these days, at which the Executive, Judiciary and Parliament pray for the soul of the nation.

George Muchai's killing is an example of the panicky fight-or-flight-and-prayer mode that the national Executive adopted since his remains and those of his bodyguards and driver were retrieved on Saturday morning. The National Police Service doesn't know whether to blame the late Mr Muchai's also-dead bodyguards for dereliction of duty, or to conclude that the people responsible for the killings are professional assassins who were tasked to assassinate Mr Muchai, the other also-deads being collateral damage. The Ministry of Interior is unable to conclusively state that the much-ballyhooed single-sourced security cameras system  works and if it does how it did not record the killing of the four men. Evans Kidero's City Hall can't explain on what the half-a-billion for traffic cameras was spent because the traffic cameras do not seem to record anything.

All of them are in panic fight-or-flight mode and they are praying hard that Kenyans' notoriously pigeon-like memory will kick in perhaps on the back of Dennis Ole Itumbi's love life, or why Bob Collymore's Safaricom suffered an outtage, or whether Mumo Matemu's commission will take a stab at following up on the Ouzman & Smith convictions in the United Kingdom, or whether children in school (who are very, very randy) should be given free - someone will have to pay for them - condoms by the Government of Kenya. (Just so you know, I think they should; abstinence is a hoax going by the number of babies fathered by teachers with their students these days.)

You can see the panic and terror every time Asman Kamama appears on TV demanding answers, by how suddenly invisible Maina Kamanda and Kanini Kega have become since they made their demands on Sunday, by how silent Evans Kidero is over his half-billio shilling traffic camera system. This panic, this terror is built into the system; it is what makes the system function in such a schizophrenic fashion; sometimes generous, others swinging batons wildly striking at everything in its path without thought. That is no way to govern, but when it is lesser men who govern there is little we can expect of them except panicky terror every time something happens, whether good or not.