From a tough Knut lion to a weeping spectator ion

If this were chemistry, one of the subjects Mr Wilson Sossion taught in his days as a secondary school teacher, we would say the nominated MP is now being asked to be a spectator ion. Such ions, as he used to tell his students, do not take part in a chemical reaction, even when they are present.

Going by what Mr Collins Oyuu, his successor in the secretary-general seat at the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) told Mr Sossion on Friday, he is now supposed to imitate those ions. Or rather, Mr Oyuu wants Mr Sossion to cease being the gas that explodes in flames as far as Knut matters are concerned and be the noble gas that doesn’t cause any effect on a firebrand or even a glowing splint.

“If we want him, we will talk to him and tell him to come. He should not be a busybody addressing teachers’ issues in the media since he is no longer an official,” charged Mr Oyuu.

It was also a confirmation that there wasn’t so much chemistry between Mr Sossion and Mr Oyuu, the erstwhile acting national chairman of Knut.

Since resigning from the secretary-general post on the eve of the June 26 national elections, where he dramatically wept, Mr Sossion has had a couple of media interviews in which he has denied things, offered suggestions, aired his ambitions, among others.

How will you end the bad blood between teachers’ union and TSC?

Teachers leaving Knut

“Did you back out of the election because you feared losing?” NTV presenter Salim Swaleh asked him on Monday.

“I don’t dread elections,” he replied. “Even now, if you do a survey in staffrooms, I still have confidence levels of almost 100 per cent among Kenyan teachers.”

Then there is the small matter of teachers leaving Knut in droves. They were once as many as 187,000 but by the time of Mr Sossion’s departure, there was a round 15,000. Monthly incomes remitted to Knut had also reduced from Sh144 million to about Sh15 million.

“Saying they (teachers) left is a lie. It is the government’s spin. We saw members being forced to leave by the government through TSC. They didn’t leave and they didn’t plan to,” he told NTV.

In another interview with the Nation last week, he asked the new Knut leadership to be aggressive in its negotiation with the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) in negotiations that are to continue this week.

“I don’t believe in a weak union. You must always put pressure on government,” he said, following up in what he had told NTV: “If parties will have to go the strike route, let them not be ashamed.”

Sossion wept

But Mr Oyuu has already indicated that he has dropped the hard-line approach by past Knut leaders. In chemistry terms, Mr Oyuu is steering Knut from the left side of the periodic table to the less reactive right, and Mr Sossion doesn’t seem to like it that way. He likes to see change on the litmus paper. He prefers effervescence, flames and all.

Mr Sossion says he was in the bad books of the National Security Council, which saw him as a threat to national security. And some thought there was more than meets the eye when opposition party ODM nominated him to Parliament at a time when he was a bitter critic of the government.

But to Mr Sossion, an ODM life member, politics and trade unionism are like the bonds that allow atoms to combine and form molecules – they are joined at the hip.

“Working with the National Super Alliance was my own individual endeavour as a Kenyan,” he told NTV. “I’m not ashamed of it at all.”

Mr Sossion wept at the resignation press conference as he remembered the teachers in Bomet who “took me from the classroom to shape education in the country”.

With the Bunsen burner that is the 2022 General Election not too far away, will he have another reason to weep, for joy or otherwise? It is a wait-and-see.

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