Tag Archives: Kibaki

it is time more districts translated into wider taxation

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President Kibaki has created about 180 districts over the last 6 years. The logic behind the creation of the many districts, according to the president and his men, has been that there is a need to bring government services closer to the people. One obvious question then is what government services? Are we talking about registration of births and deaths, motor vehicle registration, licensing, issuance of title deeds, judicial services and all that stuff? Because these services are still mostly highly centralised, requiring one to travel either to Nairobi or to far off provincial headquarters. Critics of the new districts have oftentimes highlighted their high cost and non-viability (The president thinks such critics are “backward”).

It was therefore welcome news when yesterday the president announced the halting of the creation of new districts – citing financial reasons. For some reason this fact (high costs) never crossed the minds of the president’s advisers somewhere between new district # 1 and # 180.

And now that we have over 180 new and expensive districts – most of them dished out for political reasons and “people’s demands” – I think it is time we require the new districts, being local governments, to do what governments do: TAX EVERYONE. Each district should be required to raise a percentage of its expenses from local populations (it is quite unfair for Nairobians to pay for non-viable districts in remote parts of the country created purely for political reasons). This minimum requirement need not be uniform across the board – people in West Pokot need districts too, you know – but should be geared towards making local people bear some responsibility for their local governments. With local funding for local districts, Kenyans may be persuaded to care more about who gets appointed to be DC and what their DC and the many district committees do. And to add to the positives, the DC’s will have an incentive to promote local economic activity to generate revenues.

Eventually, one hopes, this idea of local taxation for local services will make Kenyans demand that they get to elect their local DC’s instead of having State House appoint them.

This may sound like a pipe-dream but there is hope. Given parliament’s increasing assertiveness and power-grab from the executive and judiciary it is conceivable that such an idea can successfully be passed into law by the august House. Does someone know a crafty MP with nothing to lose who can champion this cause?

ps: I never thought I’d ever say this but I am actually missing the Standard online edition. What happened to them? Can’t they afford a website?

Ali’s exit was long overdue

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In an ideal world the ranking of an institution as the most corrupt in a country is enough reason for the head of that institution to resign or initiate radical reforms to mitigate the situation. But this has never been true for the Kenya Police Force. Every year,  the Kenya Police Force has emerged as the most corrupt institution in the country without serious repercussions at Vigilance House. It therefore came as welcome news when the president announced today the replacement of Major General Ali with Mathew Iteere as Police Commissioner.

Ali tried to rein in organized crime and to tame the proscribed Mungiki sect. The executive lacked the political will to let him finish the job and Ali lacked the spine to take the fight to those who stood in his way. He was also anti-reform, which must be the main reason why the president has chosen to show him the door. His legacy will forever be tarnished by the force’s extra-judicial killings that took place on his watch. But he will also be remembered as the no-nonsense commissioner who moved the force from the backward days of the Nyayo era police state towards a force befitting a quasi-democracy. Many would agree that for a reformer he lasted for too long at the helm and therefore failed  (kind of like what will become the fate of his former boss, President Kibaki).

Mr. Iteere, from the paramilitary GSU, comes in at a time when the force needs urgent structural and operational reforms (as recommended by the Ransley report). I know nothing about the man but I hope he is strong enough to stand up to the president’s  men (and increasingly the Premier’s men too) who might stand in his way. We wish him well.

kenyan cabinet remains deadlocked over violence

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For the second straight week the Kenyan cabinet remains deadlocked on the way forward in the effort to bring to book those who planned the post-election violence that killed over 1300 people early last year. Several cabinet ministers are opposed to the creation of a local tribunal – which is the official position of the government – and want the suspects be investigated and tried by the ICC’s chief prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo at the Hague. Their position, they argue, is informed by the sorry state of Kenya’s judiciary which for all practical purposes is usually in the pocket of whoever occupies state house.

It is widely believed that a number of cabinet ministers were significantly involved in the planning of violence after the disputed election. Indeed the government funded Kenya Human Rights Commission last week released a list of suspects that was populated by cabinet ministers and members of parliament. Ministers and MPs from both sides of the political divide criticised the move and vowed to take the human rights body to court for defamation.

My two cents on this is that those that plotted the violence at the very top should go to the Hague. The middle level and small fry should be tried by a special court within Kenyan law. And as this goes on we should have a truth and reconciliation process. That way, the people at the top will know that Kenyan lives are not the expendable commodities they imagine them to be and thugs who killed innocent women and children will be punished. And above all, the truth and reconciliation process will start the process of healing among Kenyans.

on the new constitution: wanjiku doesn’t care

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The committee of experts charged with steering the process of giving Kenya a new constitution has come up with two contentious issues that they think should be ironed out before Kenyans can finally have  a new constitution – after over 20 years of waiting. The issues are:

1) whether to have a presidential, parliamentary or hybrid system  of government

2) whether the term of the current parliament should expire with the adoption of the new constitution.

To resolve these issues, the Attorney General, Amos Wako, wants Kenyans to submit their suggestions to his office. I say this is nonsense. The original idea to involve Wananchi in the writing of a new constitution was a mistake (I agreed with Moi, even back then as a high school kid) and any further involvement of “wanjiku” will remain an exercise in futility. Some of the best constitutions of the world – like the American one, for instance – were drafted by experts. Villagers in Siaya or Maragua do not care whether we have a presidential or parliamentary system. These are issues only in the heads of Kenya’s power-hungry ruling elite. All Wanjiku cares about is the number of sufurias in her kitchen. Period. Whatever system promises more sufurias she’ll be for it.

For full disclosure, I am not a fan of either PNU or ODM. President Kibaki is a living example of the excesses of an all powerful presidential system and a form of government lacking any separation of powers – the president and all members of his cabinet are also members of parliament. PNU wants to perpetuate such a system judging by what its talking heads are voicing.

That said, I think ODM’s call for a parliamentary system of government is also misguided. Kenya is a young democracy that needs stable government. Parliamentary systems, especially in fractious states like ours, are highly unstable. Look at Italy, Israel and Lebanon. They hold elections almost every few months and take forever to form governments. We need a stable and functional executive if we are going to accelerate Kenya’s economic development.

My two cents on this is that the solution lies in having a presidential system strengthened by a complete separation of powers. The president should be head of the executive and not a member of parliament. His cabinet ministers should also not be sitting members of parliament. Parliament should be independent. To acknowledge the ethnic realities of the country we need to have a two-tier legislature. The lower house should be composed of representatives from constituencies. The upper house should represent Kenya’s ethnic mix, with equal representatives from the major ethnic groups and regions.  The judiciary should be independent of the executive without any compromise whatsoever. Judges should have life tenure and have their pay regulated by an independent public servants remuneration commission.

And on the second point. 2012 is close enough. Let President Kibaki serve the rest of his term and go in peace.

we may be on a sinking boat

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A friend of mine keeps telling me how deranged I am whenever I wax lyrical about Kenya’s preeminent position in East Africa. Being a perennial optimist on most matters Kenyan, I have somehow managed to convince myself that the current political troubles rocking the country are but transient – a necessary step on Kenya’s path to being the region’s top dog. But even I am beginning to get worried.

The recent fallout between Premier Odinga and President Kibaki is not a good sign. My worries have been further compounded by reports of the existence of militias being trained and armed by politicians. And forget about being the region’s top dog. Uganda seems to have successfully annexed Migingo Island. And without even having to fight for it. Just when did the rain begin to beat us so bad???

Things seem to be getting worse by the day. Corruption is off the charts. Nepotism and tribalism seem to be the norm in the public service. Kenyans continue to die of hunger like it is 20,000 BC (the Kenyan food jokes are not so funny anymore).  The President and his Prime Minister are reading from different scripts. The country remains as divided as ever. And worst of all, the vast majority of Kenyans still live in a pre-industrial world where an obscene number of children die before they are five and those that survive have very little to hope for.

President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga are failing Kenya. They have it in their power to sack corrupt ministers. They have it in their power to impose civility on the civil service. They have it in their power to use the current crisis as a chance to craft social policies that will finally catapult Kenya into the 21st century. I am disappointed that instead of doing any of these things the two men have chosen to run the country like a village kiosk.

is it time we had fresh elections?

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So the weekend retreat in Tsavo of the big-wigs in Kenya’s coalition government failed. Instead of addressing real issues (reforms, corruption and Kenya’s land problem), the discussions veered into side-shows – like the Premier’s salary and the opening remarks of the president and his prime minister.

I am beginning to think that the coalition government has outlived its purpose. I am beginning to be persuaded by those who have been calling for fresh elections – most notably the clergy. The coalition government, as currently constituted, is dysfunctional at best. The prime minister and the president (and their respective camps) seem to be pulling in opposite directions on just about every issue. May be it’s time we went to the polls and gave a mandate to a single party instead of having the collective tyranny of ODM and PNU. I think we have a better chance with just one of these parties in power. May be then the government can act more responsibly on reforms instead of having cabinet ministers constantly pointing fingers at each other and blaming the other party.

On a different note, I hear rumours that Martha Karua might quit the government if she is not given more space in the Justice ministry. I hope she gets what she wants, i.e. more space to implement her brand of reforms in the judiciary. Hate her or love her, I think Martha Karua is one of the few Kenyan leaders who speak their mind and who have the balls to implement what they believe in. I remember reading somewhere that the problem with African politics is the lack of ideology. Many leaders act like blind men in the dark, constantly wandering around without any direction.

African social organization and politics have mostly been driven by contingency rather than ideology. The only country that ever produced a true ideologue on the continent was Tanzania. And for all its faults, Ujamaa helped Tanzania a great deal. God knows where the country would be had it not been for the commodity crises of the seventies and mandated structural adjustment programs of the eighties (yeah Gordon Brown, down with the Washington Consensus). I think Martha Karua may be Kenya’s real ideologue, and for that she is increasingly becoming one of my favorite politicians, even though she and I may not see eye to eye on her actual policies.

read more on the maize scandal

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I just read this interesting post by Ory on Kenyanpundit.com. According to the post, there seems to be evidence that people high up in ODM may be implicated in the maize scandal that has rocked the country, even as millions of Kenyans continue to live on wild fruits and dug up roots (are we in 200,000 BC????).

It makes you wonder whether we really need the coalition government. As things stand, it seems like these clowns running the country know that they can get away with everything because no one wants to break up the coalition government. Martha Karua (the Justice Minister) herself admitted that ODM and PNU politicians would rather remain in the coalition than seek a fresh mandate from wananchi. Raila and Kibaki should be bolder than they are being and face those stealing from Kenyans, be they big men or not. The two of them can garner enough support from their bases (I don’t mean just central and Nyanza but rather their supporters from across the country) to run the country without having to compromise on issues of corruption and incompetence. Kibaki can make a name for himself as the man who saved Kenya and put it on the right path. And Raila can earn some political capital that he will need for the 2012 election. I am not a die hard fan of either man, but I think right now they are Kenya’s best hope.

mps should pay taxes…… and look at the poverty figures

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I was not particularly surprised when I read that Kenyan MPs had yet again threatened to cripple the government by denying it funds if the Minister of Finance mandated them to pay taxes. I was not surprised because our MPs are mostly selfish, vision-less clowns. They are leaders by name and nothing else. Kenya is a third world country with a dismal economic record and yet they earn salaries comparable to those of MPs in the developed world. And it is not a question of rewarding talent. These clowns do not show up for work most of the time. Many of them are not particularly smart – judging by the nonsense they constantly spew on tv and by their lifestyles. They have failed to forge a national identity or patch up a Kenyan national narrative to make us all feel like we are one people with one teleological trajectory.

I am disappointed at Raila and Kibaki. These two men have sat on the sidelines and let the MPs refuse once again to pay taxes. They can raise their salaries at will but refuse to pay taxes. It is time we took away their power to pay themselves or determine whether they paid taxes or not.

And as we do that we should make sure that all of them have an idea about just how poor Kenyans really are. I don’t think these clowns have an idea about this. Otherwise they would be ashamed into doing something about it. If they knew Ruto and Raila would not be talking at each other through the media like they do not have each other’s phone numbers. If they knew PNU would get its act together and finally serve the people instead of having weird power plays four years out of the next election. If they knew God knows they would bury the ghost of tribalism once and for all. But they don’t. They really don’t. And because of that 97% of members of Turkana Central live below the poverty line. The figures from many other districts are not any different. It is a sad dystopia we live in.

the waki commission and the need for total truth

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I have previously stated my sympathies for William Ruto. But on this one I think the man from Eldoret North is going a bit too far. For a whole minister to go on record and rubbish the work of a highly respected commission is indeed deplorable. I hope that soon enough Ruto will realise that the more he continues to shout from the roof tops about the uselessness of the commission’s finding the more Kenyans will start pointing fingers at him.

It is true that the Rift Valley was the hotbed of the violence and that most of the perpetrators may have been Ruto’s adopted constituents. It is therefore expected that someone from the Rift Valley would come out and defend the perpetrators. But this is not how to go about it. The systemic problems that caused the flare up last January will not be solved by the commission’s prosecution of the perpetrators. I hope Kenyans realise that and that the commission appreciates this fact in its recommendations – I have downloaded a copy of the report but because of a term paper and other commitments haven’t been able to read through it (plus it’s like over 500 pages long!). In light of this fact, I don’t see why Ruto wants the truth to be swept under the carpet this early. He ought to let the truth come out and then we shall deal with the truth as responsible citizens who want a united future for Kenya.

If the people of Rift Valley and their leaders killed innocent Kenyans, Kenyans deserve to know. The victims need to know who these people are. From here we ought then to proceed to why these atrocities were committed and if we are true to ourselves we shall realise that the solution is not retribution but honest reconciliation. It is no secret that land was the issue in the Rift Valley. On this basis, some form of amnesty and redistribution of land can be worked out – but only after the truth has been put out there.

So Mr. Ruto should not be afraid, this only betrays his guilt – whether apparent or real. He should instead advocate for a responsible handling of the reconciliation process. This is his only realistic way of navigating through the tricky issue of the violence. If he however choses to confront the rest of the country by rubbishing the report, he will lose face and his own party might throw him under the bus. More importantly, Kenya may end up further divided with residents of the Rift Valley feeling alienated and marginalised. Nobody wants that. I hope this is clear to William Ruto.

may i politely disagree with Ruto

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So the other day William Ruto, a prominent national leader, proposed that parliament, instead of Omondi, Kamau and Muchama, should elect the president. His rationale was that the presidency has grown into a divisive rather than a unifying figure. That Kenyans have come to view competition for the post as a do or die, as was seen earlier this year when supporters of Kibaki and Raila killed, looted and maimed in the name of their respective candidates.

To some extent Ruto is right. The Kenyan presidency has been bastardized by the way the last elections were handled. It is because of the presidency that more than 1000 Kenyans died and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes. The country is yet to fully recover from the polarizing effects of the events that followed Kivuitu’s sham of an election. So may be if we took away the winner-takes-all nature of the presidency we can reduce the risk of having another fiasco like we did in Decemeber of last year. Then we can have a very decentralized form of competition for constituency seats and then the party with the highest number of seats can form the next government. We shall in effect have a parliamentary system, with parliament having the power to recall an ill-performing president.

I have nothing against the above argument. I believe that the more checks we have the better. And we can kind of tweak Ruto’s suggestion a bit to have a Premier with executive powers elected by parliament and a president with ceremonial powers – either elected by the same parliament (but with a longer tenure) or by the people (again with a longer tenure than the Premier).

The only problem with this proposition is that I don’t think Kenya is ready for this yet. Our MPs are as corrupt as they are mindless and irresponsible. What stops them from being bribed to change governments every two days? Plus such strict parliamentary systems are highly unstable. Look at Israel and Italy for instance. They change governments every few months. This is the last thing we need in a highly tribalized young democracy like Kenya. We need stability in our politics and economic policies. Only a stable presidential system can provide this, for now. May be when we are more stable economically and have credible, stable and transparently run political parties we can flirt with the idea of having a parliamentary system.

do we really need this circus?

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The back and forth tussle that has become of the negotiations between Kibaki and Raila over a coalition cabinet is very unseemly. More than twice, the two men have met and agreed on a deal only to have their mouthpieces issue statements on the contrary.

What surprises me is how PNU is acting like they did not know what they were getting into by signing the Feb. 28th agreement. By agreeing to share power with ODM, they essentially admitted guilt to the shady mess that was the previous December’s general election and thereby allowed ODM to put one foot into government. If PNU thought that ODM would be contented with the ministry of fisheries and such then they were way off the mark. Like any political party these people want power and they will not settle for less.

What Kibaki ought to do now is just give them what they want and then control them via the Finance Ministry. The two most contentious posts seem to be Foreign and Local Government Ministries. Kenya’s foreign ministry is not that big of a deal. Who cares about summits and talk shops around the world? Plus it’s not like the country has any coherent foreign policy that would be severely changed by an ODM apparatchik in the post. And with the ministry of Local Government, I say give it to ODM. It’s not like the major towns and cities – outside of the wider Central region – are not pro-ODM already. Having to fight councils and city residents selling tomatoes in the streets might even make them unpopular come 2012.

My two cents on this is that the tussle is about nothing really. The president can continue to run the entire cabinet through control of the treasury and concentrate power in the hands of the Finance minister. Kenyan ministers are not an ambitious lot so I don’t think any of them will want to do anything revolutionary simply because they are now in charge of local councils or the ministry of heavy industry (I can’t believe they are actually creating these superfluous ministries).

So save us the drama Mr. President and name a cabinet already. Your government will be a joke anyway, with its 40 cabinet posts. Kenyans will pay over 500 million Shillings every year paying for the bloated cabinet and expect and get absolutely nothing in return. Shame shame shame.

I put it to you that what really matters to Kenyans is not what post some fat cat gets in your government but the stuff that increases the number of sufurias of ugali in their homes : equitable economic development.

do not forget about Kenyan IDPs

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Right now Kenyan seems to be holding its breath eagerly waiting to find out whether politicians from their “ethnic homelands” will be appointed to the cabinet. Lost to most Kenyans, and sadly this includes even the mainstream media, is the case of the hundreds of thousands of Kenyans who still haven’t been able to go back home after marauding gangs of murders killed their kin and drove them out of their homes simply because they spoke a different language.

Frankly speaking I did not expect the politicians to remember the plight of those who fought and even lost relatives and property in their names. Kibaki and his cronies got the violence to stop and calm return. Raila now eagerly awaits the plum post of Premier and his colleagues in the ODM can expect cabinet positions. All well and good.

The average Wanjiku, Atieno and Nafula can go to hell for all these people care. They got their rewards and that is all that matters to them. After causing the mess that killed more than 1500 Kenyans, the best this group of leeches can do is be seen on pool sides in Mombasa’s South Beach where most of them are spending their Easter Holidays. Forget about the little Muriukis and Omondis in IDP camps who are yet to return to school and who will have a very miserable and hunger-filled Easter. Or the old lady from the Rift Valley who after having spent her entire adult life in Nakuru had to flee to a strange land called Murang’a simply because she does not speak the language of the supposed “ancestral owners” of the land in the Rift Valley.

The same politicians are talking about having 34 expensive ministries. Can you believe this??!! 34 ministries!!! And this in a third world country where most people live in conditions that are utterly dehumanising.  Conditions very close to stuff that should only be experienced in anthropology text books about human evolution. These politicians act like they have never been outside our failing continent to other parts of the world where government is based on rational-legal processes and not myopic ethnic balancing acts that only serve to cement ethnic divisions.

I do not care if the MP for Alego, one Mr. Yinda,  gets a cabinet post or not. What I care about is whether the people of Alego, Nyeri and Mandera will have to continue living in embarrassing conditions or whether the political class will finally get its act together and come up with a development agenda to develop the entire country equitably and de-ethnicise it in the process. That is all I will ask for from Kibaki and Raila and their associates.

Why aren’t we seeing the faces or reading the stories of Kenyans suffering in refugee camps and contrasting these with those of politicians in expensive cars or on beaches? The lack of attention to the current suffering of Kenyans in IDP camps will only cement the idea in politicians’ heads that Kenyan lives are expendables that they can use any time to get what they want. Our continued silence will just prove true the adage that societies get the leaders they deserve, for our leaders are, in most cases, a true reflection of who we really are as a country.

kenyan parliament passes bill creating the post of prime minister

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In an extraordinary session of parliament attended by the president himself in his capacity as member for Othaya, parliament unanimously passed the bill to create the post of prime minister, expected to be occupied by Hon. Raila Odinga. For the first time in Kenya’s history a sitting president attended parliament to contribute to a debate on the floor of the House. The president sat in the spot reserved for the official leader of government business in the House.

Members from both ODM and PNU expressed their support for the bill, the most notable contribution being from Hon. Martha Karua, who had previously been adamant that Kenya’s crisis be solved within the existing constitutional order. Hon. Karua, while contributing to the debate, said that “The law is made to serve man, not the other way round.” The thawing of relations even on the floor of the House is further sign that the political leadership in Kenya might be genuinely committed to reform in order to herald a new post-tribal Republic. I would, however, not hold my breath. The real test still lies ahead in cabinet appointments. Ethnic balancing vs. rationality will be the big fight and it will be interesting to see how Kibaki and Raila choose to juggle the two.

For now Kenyans can afford to be hopeful that things might actually change. This hope for change should not be just about power sharing at the top but be accompanied with genuine reforms in the public service and government policy. The culture of mediocrity has to stop. Leaders must openly and courageously face the task of modernizing the Kenyan Republic. No more Kenyans should ever die of hunger. No more Kenyans should ever have to live in dehumanizing conditions as exist in slums and in vast swathes of the countryside. May rationality and decency prevail from now on, however hard it may be.

kenya’s 10th parliament officially opens

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The official opening of Kenya’s tenth parliament took place on Thursday afternoon amid high expectations of national reconciliation and healing. The president’s speech laid emphasis on the need to urgently amend the constitution in order to create the constitutional framework for the implementation of the deal that he signed a week ago with arch-rival Raila Odinga (It is important to note that since last Thursday these two have become bosom buddies, they are always smiling at each other in public. I hope this love-fest persists and extends to their lieutenants as well).

The ball is now in parliament’s court. The MPs need to expedite the enactment of the relevant laws to ensure that Kenyans have a speedy return to normalcy – the most needy now being the hundreds of thousands of IDPs who have been moved away from where they used to call home. I still think that it was a big mistake for the government to move people to their “ancestral homelands.” The government should have provided security for the people wherever they were even as the land problems are being addressed.

After the land issue is cleared (yeah, I am gonna be delusional for a moment), those that legitimately owned land should be guaranteed a right to return even though they may be returning to areas inhabited by people that speak a different language. I am also looking forward to reading the ethnic equality bill that is being rumored to be in the works. I hope they’ve designed so that we can finally do away with all the tribes and just have one nation of rational, law abiding citizens.

And as parliament looks at these issues we hope that they won’t be tempted to award themselves hefty pay increases primarily because Kenya already has too big of a government – and one that will increase with the creation of the post of a premier and two deputies.

kibaki and raila sign deal

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Emerging from a five hour meeting between president Mwai Kibaki and Hon. Raila Odinga, Kofi Annan said that the two had managed to reach an agreement that will effectively end the post-election standoff that has so far led to the death of more than 1500 and displacement of hundreds of thousands.

Details of the deal between Kibaki and Raila include the creation of the post of a prime minister which will be occupied by the leader of the party with a majority in government – in this case the ODM led by Raila – and two deputies that will come from both ODM and PNU. The Premier will supervise ministers and will be part of the cabinet. His security of tenure will be guaranteed unless he loses a motion of no confidence in parliament.

The deal also guaranteed representation in government relative to parliamentary strength. This will see many ODM parliamentarians appointed as ministers since ODM has a slight majority in parliament relative to the PNU and its affiliate parties.

President Kibaki announced that parliament will resume next Thursday to enact the details of the agreement into law.

Kudos to Kofi Annan, Presidents Kikwete and Mkapa of Tanzania and former South African first lady Graca Machel for making sure that a deal was reached sooner than later.

Kenya is not out of the deep end yet. ODM and PNU do not like each other. I am just wondering how they are going to form a joint cabinet and follow through a joint agenda in parliament and elsewhere once this grand coalition takes shape. But for now lets all celebrate sanity and rationality. Congratulations to Raila and Kibaki for minding the welfare of Kenyans.