JAMILA'S MEMO: Don't mix your voter and medical cards

Impeachment here, impeachment there… This one is impeached, and the other one is waiting to be impeached. All around Kenya today, impeachment is the buzzword.

You may just recall last week in this memo I persuaded that as Kenyans we must learn the art or science of multitasking. I argued that we must embrace multitasking as a national survival skill. Well, last Tuesday, we all needed that skill. For those who took that tip-off lightly, you might have missed the rollout of the new health insurance scheme, SHA, because that was the same day as the elaborate tabling of the motion of impeachment against Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua. You may have found yourself in a moment where you couldn’t tell apart your voters' cards from your medical cards.

Now, brace yourselves for an avalanche of a kind that might confuse you even more. In Kenya’s national life, many things happen at the same time. Sometimes by accident, and many times by design. That’s why multitasking ni muhimu hapa Kenya.

The next two weeks will be very busy for us. We have public participation in an impeachment motion. So, multitask! This one is for Parliament and, no, it’s not about asking where your NHIF card is or whether it’s still working. That’s done—SHA is here. This public participation is about impeachment, not your health coverage.

For the next 14 days, expect impeachment information overload. If we were to borrow from mobile phone technology, a dual SIM setup should be our main prayer item. We need an impeachment SIM and an SHA SIM, both active. We just need a way to make sure important things don’t slip through our fingers, just in case that’s the intention of the designers.

A section of Kenyans, for example, has argued that impeachment is something of a national cover-up or smokescreen aimed at making people forget that the Adani Group could soon be taking over Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. And their concerns are valid, considering that many Kenyans prefer not to bother with too many national issues at the same time. So, it’s reasonable to expect that a vast majority will be sufficiently distracted for at least the next 14 days. This means hard work for those driving the transition from NHIF to SHIF; our ears are busy processing impeachment. Weka kwa hiyo simu ingine!

Speaking of which, is CS Wycliffe Oparanya still looking for Hustler Fund defaulters? Haya, usiweke kwa hii simu for the next 14 days.