Mr Moi spoke out of turn
The story goes that a hungry fox noticed a juicy bunch of grapes growing high on a vine. He leaped. He snapped. Drooling, he jumped repeatedly to reach them, but try as he might, he didn't succeed.
Disappointed by the fruitless efforts, he said, with a shrug: "Oh, they were probably sour, anyway!"
Without putting too fine a point to it, this seems to be the delusion that retired President Moi is struggling under when, of all the criticisms he could have made of the Narc Government's first year in power, he attacked its highly successful free primary education programme, dismissing it as a failure.
At the weekend, the former President, who as a one-time teacher should know better, said the programme could not be referred to as free, yet parents paid two-thirds of the total cost.
He said, perhaps with some justification, that the high enrolment of children in primary schools had lowered the quality of education, especially as some classrooms had to accommodate as many as 100 pupils.
In the 24 years Mr Moi was in power, he was often accused of lowering educational standards with his experiments such as the introduction of the 8:4:4 system and the massive university expansion. He never really tried very hard to introduce free primary education.
While it is true that the free education project could have done with a little more forethought and planning before implementation, it is also true that 1.5 million more children now have a chance of attaining a better future.
To a man who says he loves children and youth, surely this cannot be a bad thing.
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