When the Hosni Mubarak regime was on its last days in Egypt, one of the clearest signs of weakness was how badly it handled criticism and how quickly government communication turned into endless denials, counterattacks and attempts to answer every uncomfortable story.
The state stopped controlling the national conversation and started chasing it.
That is the danger I see with the Ruto government today, where almost every strong accusation is followed by a hurried response from MPs, government bloggers, senior officials or political allies who appear more interested in answering critics than telling Kenyans what the government itself is doing.
That kind of communication makes a government look nervous, because instead of choosing what the country should be discussing, you allow other people to choose the topic and then spend the rest of the day defending yourself.
A serious government should not wake up every morning waiting to hear what an opponent has said before deciding what its communication teams will talk about, because that means the people attacking you are already controlling your day.
When every criticism requires an emergency rebuttal, every accusation gets a press conference and every political attack sends MPs running before cameras, the public starts seeing a government that is rattled rather than one that is firmly in charge.
The lesson from regimes that reached this stage is simple, once communication becomes permanently defensive, adding more spokespeople, bloggers and MPs rarely fixes the problem, because the weakness is no longer the number of people speaking.
The problem is that the government has stopped setting the agenda, lost the people and is very UNPOPULAR.
Jambo @LarryMadowo
Being a CNN journalist gives you a profession, not immunity from civic accountability. Kenyans hold you to the standards you represented, and presence speaks just as loudly as reporting.
In that presser Kimani Ichung’wa has the demeanor of a guilty person, a guilty person so frustrated by the truth and encumbered with guilt, that the lies coming out of his mouth are self evident.