Trees and forests.

Uhuru Kenyatta need not "break his silence" on Moses Kuria and his legal troubles. That is the job of Johnson Sakaja, Onyango Oloo and the nawabs of The National Alliance. Mr Kuria is their headache, not Mr Kenyatta's. After all, Mr Sakaja is the party's, and Mr Kuria's, chairman, and Mr Oloo is the Secretary-General. If a decision is to be made on how to proceed with TNA's enfant terrible, it is the chairman and secretary-general who carry water.

While we have been distracted by the antics of the Gatundu South representative, Kenya is hosting Matteo Renzi, the Prime Minister of Italy, and a bunch of billionaires who have jetted in ahead of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit scheduled for the end of the month. Mr Renzi will hold talks with Mr Kenyatta on bilateral issues including anti-terrorism and investment, issues that are at the heart of the Kenyan situation. The billionaires are looking for "investment opportunities" in Kenya; whether those opportunities will lead to greater employment, technology transfer, creation of wealth at home and reduction of poverty are matters that should concern us all.

Yet the most important subject of discussion, grounded on the pettiness of the political scene, are the alleged words of incitement uttered by Mr Kuria and broadcast by Kenya's quisling news media. To my knowledge Mr Kuria is not know for promoting anti-terror, investment, employment, wealth-creation of poverty-reduction policies or legislation in parliament. He is renown for his abrasive and combative nature in the mudpit of TNA v Cord bullshit that keeps his name in lights.

We have gone along, by and large, with this state of affairs. We have focused to an overwhelming degree on the flash-bang of the political arena, living under the delusion that political mudslinging is all that matters. Meanwhile, portentous decisions about our natural resources, our safety and our security are being made behind closed doors with foreign powers without us being involved in the decision-making process. When potentially calamitous legislative proposals are debated in parliament, our minds are engaged in whether a politician attempted to strip naked another one or whether a politician's obsessions run to another politician's penis!

Mr Kuria is important if only to remind us that we must focus our attention on political questions that matter. For instance, no one should object to additional resources being allocated to the National Youth Service as it implements its Five Point Transformation Agenda. The NYS was once a valuable institution in inculcating marketable skills to scores of Kenya's young people. Even with the kleptomania that defined Kenya's second government, it somehow still managed to produce many tradespeople whose skills have been sought after as far afield as South Sudan, Tanzania, Botswana and Malawi.

But just because it was great once, and this government claims that it intends to make it great again, could the additional resources allocated to the NYS have been allocated somewhere else more deserving? The cash transfer programmes initiated by James Nyikal when he was a permanent secretary have proven to have a great positive economic and social impact than the Economic Stimulus Programme of 2008-2011. More elderly persons over the age of sixty have become self-sufficient because of the cash transfers than under ESP.  Could an expansion of that programme have been more beneficial than the allocation of the additional twenty five billion shillings made to the NYS? I don't know. But it would have been an important national debate to have if we hadn't been distracted by Moses Kuria and his pangas. Unless you know the difference between the two, you will never see the forest for the trees.