NAIROBI, Kenya — The president snoozes in his office by a tottering stack of papers in his in-tray. The prime minister lounges in a toilet with a red carpet leading to its door. Cabinet ministers take pot shots at each other in a High Noon-style showdown.
The stars of Kenya’s smash hit TV show are puppets — but it’s the nation’s politicians who are providing the punchlines.
For many of the millions who tuned into the debut of “The XYZ Show” last week, the scenes of excess and ineptitude are only slightly more outlandish than the everyday antics of their real-life leaders.
“It’s a true picture of what’s happening,” said bookseller Chan Bahal, quoting lines from the program. “These are their true colors. . . . If they keep pushing this, it will be wonderful.”
The show’s creator, Godfrey “Gado” Mwampembwa, said he hopes it will force Kenyans to take a critical look at their elected leaders, who plunged the country into weeks of bloody riots last year.
“We’re trying to get people to laugh and then stop and think: ‘This is our life,’ ” said Gado, whose biting political cartoons in the independent newspaper Daily Nation have earned him both widespread popularity and the occasional death threat.
The latex-puppet caricatures in “XYZ” were inspired by the British television show “Spitting Image” and the French “Les Guignols” — cult programs whose send-ups of politicians have immortalized their eccentricities and scandals.
Kenyan politics provides plenty of bitter punchlines.
There’s President Mwai Kibaki, who often appears befuddled in public and whose sole news conference since his disputed election in 2007 was aimed at quashing persistent rumors he had taken a second wife.
Prime Minister Raila Odinga has been ridiculed for loudly complaining that he lacked a red carpet and separate toilet at a recent government event — even as scandals over money and missing food reserves severely strained the coalition government that ended election violence.
Bickering between the president’s faction and the prime minister’s was at one point so bad that Kenyan women announced a one-week sex boycott to try to pressure the men to speak to each other — a move Odinga’s wife said she enthusiastically supported.
The finance minister’s April supplementary budget was found to contain an extra $120 million — something he attributed to a typing error. It was nevertheless passed intact by Parliament, whose members are among the most highly paid in the world.
After days of hostile headlines, the legislators demanded a forensic accounting of the budget.
The show’s creators say no subject is off-limits, and they insist they will stand firm in the face of any official backlash.
