As the saying goes, politics is a dirty game. Bad publicity is a fact of life in politics, every candidate or government with some perceived past indiscretion, negative view, or statement taken out of context will likely raise the candidates’ or governments’ negatives. In the face of negative publicity or political scandal, one has three options. The first option entails letting the scandal die a natural death. The reasoning here is, the scandal will eventually blow over with time. This strategy rarely works, if anything, opting for this approach forces one to constantly dodge the subject matter of the scandal, take for instance President Uhuru Kenyatta’s sister’s company being listed in the same group as the disabled, enabling it to get preferential treatment for tenders reserved for the youth, women and the disabled. As President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Government remains largely silent on the matter, this will remain a very contentious issue in his re-election campaign. Sitting on the sides waiting for the issue to be forgotten rarely works, at least not without doing major damage to one’s reputation.
The second option entails either denying or passing the blame to someone else. We constantly see government officials point fingers all the time. A recent example was witnessed in the State House Anti-Corruption and Accountability Summit, where different government agencies responsible for the prosecution of corruption blamed each other for the continued government failure to contain the vice. In my books, this is a poor approach in preserving one’s self-esteem and self-image. Falsely denying and passing on the blame is not only dishonest and destroys relations, it prevents learning. If something isn’t your fault, then there’s no reason for you to do anything differently. In all probability, you will continue to make the same mistake in the future that will lead to more blame passing. This perhaps explains why corruption remains a largely unresolved challenge facing Kenya today, a PR disaster for this Government.
The third approach entails transforming the negative narrative into a positive one by reviewing one’s response, getting out there and addressing the issue directly. Though complicated, this entails mastering the issue and then skilfully moving everyone – the media, the voters and opponents – back to the campaign and back to thinking about the issues that matter, and away from thinking about the negative issue. Mombasa Governor Ali Hassan Joho’s latest press conference on his academic papers forgery claims is a classic application of this approach. In a country where, despite the elimination of public school tuition fees, the burdens ranging from extreme poverty to cost of uniforms are keeping children out of class. Joho’s story of childhood days as a casual worker who struggled to raise school fees for his education resonates with millions of Kenyan, especially the youth and parents, who constantly have to struggle to raise little resources to get themselves or their children an education to better their future. Joho’s pride in his high school D-minus grade and life accomplishments despite failing in high school, he surely serves as an inspiration to the over 183,200 2016 KCSE candidates who will miss university slots after scoring D minus and E. Joho reminded Kenyans that getting a poor grade in school isn’t the end of the journey. His statement won him the sympathy and admiration of the people by portraying a titan, charming leader and philanthropist who is facing persecution from a system that seems to refuse to be held accountable and appears to look down on those perceived to have lesser academic grades.
Emerging from foe to darling of the people calls for understanding and resonating with your constituents to transforming the negative discourse as early as possible in order to shape the public narrative by moving away from the bad press and getting back to generating positive headlines.
“Public-relations specialists make flower arrangements of the facts, placing them so the wilted and less attractive petals are hidden by sturdy blooms.” – Alan Harrington