Commentary (by Owino Opondo) - President’s speech writers need new tricks

Ref: http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=2&newsid=119604
Story by OWINO OPONDO
Publication Date: 3/23/2008

A speech writer is one who is retained to prepare speeches that will be delivered by another person.

The writer is charged with the duty of packaging thoughts into fine presentations made to different audiences: public rallies, annual general meetings, weddings, parliaments, product launches ...

Professional speech writers often have a broad understanding of subjects, enabling them to simplify what would otherwise have been complex socio-econo-political and policy issues. Here, again, the level of education, expertise, experience and expectations of the audience decide the language use, tone and flow of a speech.

Ideally, the speech writer must go yonder and conduct in-depth research into the broad framework of points or messages that whoever has retained him or her wants to cover in the speech.

In a number of cases, witty and pithy speech writers include quotes from other living and dead leaders and authors whose wisdom resonated with their times and audiences.

Then, if time allows the prepared speech is given to whoever is to deliver it to make a mock presentation, together with bracketed indicators on gestures and tone variation in a session called “dry running.”

Here, the speaker will be reminded to pause should his audience respond to a line in his speech with applause. It lets the message sink.

It is a pity that, unlike elsewhere in the world, most colleges and universities offering communication studies in Kenya don’t emphasise on speech writing as a core subject.

To confirm how real this problem is, one only needs to listen to speeches by President Kibaki, Cabinet ministers and top company executives. Many times, they are long, dull and boring tales loaded with statistics to a point of almost throwing fatty sheaths of mystique around them.

It is now a settled argument that most speeches delivered by the Head of State and business leaders in this country are double-spaced products of monologue that do not respond to the aspirations of the audience at hand.

Indeed, journalists who covered former President Daniel Moi knew that the story hardly came from the prepared speeches. We knew his headline-capturing story usually came from off-the-cuff speeches, often delivered in Kiswahili.

In many ways, President Mwai Kibaki has kept this tradition. It is a universal proof that speeches which are seen for the first time by those delivering them on the podium share one nasty notoriety: They chain speakers to a strange mindset, forcing them to be plastic about delivery, gesture and tone, leaving in their wake bored audiences.

Perhaps a more poignant vindication of my position happened in Parliament last Tuesday when President Kibaki contributed to debate on power sharing in his capacity as the MP for Othaya.

Standing by the Dispatch Box, he exhibited a unique degree of ease, alertness to issues at hand, and intellectual flamboyance only associated with him before he was first elected to State House in 2002. He was the first sitting President in post-independence Kenya to contribute to debate in the House.

That feat aside, President Kibaki debated the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill, 2008 with the astuteness of a statesman.

He chose not to enter the sanctum of complicated and high-sounding legal and so-called-jurisprudential arguments MPs with lawyering background had confined the debate. Instead, President Kibaki added life and relevance to the debate by using simple examples and analogies.

He expressed his personal joy that the country had come from the jaws of self-destruction it visited on itself following the announcement of the disputed presidential polls results last December.

Then he reminded the House that the long and winding two decades Kenya had haggled over constitutional review without success was largely caused by personal egos and selfishness on the part of the political elite.

In his view, Kenyans knew whatever needed to be changed in the Constitution, and proposed that Ugenya MP James Orengo or a select team of a few of our educated countrymen could as well finish the work within three weeks!

Only one coming from planet Mars would question the common argument that land was at the heart of the post-election violence that led to the killing of 1,000 and displacement of 35,000 others.

In all parts of the country where communities rose up against each other, the underlying cause was land. It did not matter that those who were given marching orders had bought the plots where they farmed and lived. Legal tenancy and purchase were given a wide berth. The law of the jungle took over, resulting in the mess of spontaneous landlessness.

In his contribution in Parliament, the President poured cold water on Kenyans’ fixation with land, and summed up the inanity of it, thus: “Let us stop these primitive thoughts about land. Yes, you own the land that your father has left to you, but he does not own the world.”

I knew his messages were instantly and warmly received by all the MPs present in the House from the pitch and longevity of foot-thumping and applause.

One who watched the President’s contribution from the floor of Parliament - which was also broadcast live by national and private TV stations - would agree with me that the man was up to the occasion and proved that he has his fingers on Kenya’s collective public heartbeat.

His themes were cogent and timely; delivered when the country was looking up to Parliament to steer the country out of the post-election mess and communal friction.

The President’s speech writers should learn a number of lessons from that event. One, that the Head of State is also a Kenyan and would like to inspire the country during troubled times such as we were in. His prepared speeches should, therefore, bear a human face, with anecdotes to tickle his audiences.

Secondly, never again should the President’s speech be loaded with unnecessary facts and figures sounding as if the Head of State were in a court of law to defend his leadership performance.

In short, President Kibaki’s speech writers must urgently overhaul their world view to resonate with the country. Or they risk being fired.

Owino Opondo is Nation’s Parliamentary Editor.