Reshuffles are a normal thing, Mr. Rudasingwa. Don’t get overly excited

This week has given me a wide variety of topics to write about; so many things have happened and I would be short-changing my readers if I stuck to just one measly topic. First of all, I want to congratulate all the new ministers and government officials who’ve been given the opportunity to serve the country. Sadly, some people are making the reshuffle a bigger deal than it really is. Enter Mr. Theogene Rudasingwa. I’ve written in reaction to some of his comments and I honestly I’m sick and tired of doing so. I’ve usually ignored his rants, thinking they are simply the musings of a man disconnected, confused and possibly senile. However, his comments about the cabinet reshuffle are surely too much and therefore deserve a response. It confuses me when someone who once occupied some position of responsibility in my country behaves in a way that can only be called juvenile. How he can call a cabinet reshuffle evidence of “deep crisis” and simply a way to give the impression “Rwandans and the international community that things are changing” is beyond me. Just the other week, President Barack Obama reshuffled his cabinet, moving Gen. Patraeus to the CIA and former CIA chief Panetta to the Pentagon. Was the US government is “crisis” as well? To claim that the reshuffle is a response to “pro-democracy voices, notably Rwanda National Congress (RNC), FDU-Inkingi and other pro-democracy voices” as he puts it is hubris. Mr Rudasingwa, don’t get me wrong, I am all for accountable leadership and all that, however, if my president made decisions based on your band of merry men, I would begin studying my exit strategy. I simply won’t allow myself to be led by people of your ilk. Obviously you must be imbibing some kind of illegal substance; you can’t actually believe some of the things you write. Let me quote you on some of the things that you wrote in your most recent piece of writing, ‘Shuffling chairs on a sinking Titanic’. You say that Senator Aloysia Inyumba is “being retrieved from a long period of marginalization”. I don’t know what alternative universe you live in. Where the rest of us normal folk live, being a Senator isn’t to be sniffed at. I wouldn’t mind marginalized if I got a seat at the Senate in return. Dr. Charles Murigande, former Education Minister, now ambassador to Japan, has begun, if we are to believe you “his final journey to complete retrenchment after a long period of marginalization”. Politics, and the manner in which people like you see it, is totally foreign to me. The notion of a ‘super minister’ i.e. one that is too important to retire is undemocratic and, honestly, condescending to the rest of us in the queue. I was reading the Daily Nation the other day and lo behold, William Ole Ntimama was on the back page, inaugurating some project or other. He’s been a minister, in some capacity, since the day I was born. And I have to mention that I am on the wrong side of 30. Is that what we want here in Rwanda? Decrepit old men, wheezing about and falling asleep in their chairs as they hold meetings? I certainly hope not. No man should be bigger than the institution; not a mayor, not a minister and certainly not a president. If that happened, it would be the death of our nascent democracy. Mr. Rudasingwa, I have to ask you, why are you insulting your own intelligence? Your latest rant is, dare I say it, your most lousy yet. Up your game kind sir. On a totally different topic, I cannot understand some of the conversations being held in the media as a result of the Bin Laden killing. Some people are complaining that he wasn’t given the opportunity to exercise his right to a trial. Have they lost their minds? This man, in my estimate, got out the easy way. Good riddance to bad rubbish. sunny_ntayombya@hotmail.com