Explosions hit a NO rally in Nairobi Sunday evening. The rally was attended by those opposed to the proposed constitution. The authorities have not yet released any information on whether they have leads to who might be behind the blasts.
This is a worrying occurrence, given the goings on in Somalia. I hope the blasts were isolated freak accidents and not organized acts of terror designed to intimidate those opposed to the draft constitution.
The two decade-old clamour for a new constitution in Kenya has not been an easy ride. One is reminded of the saba saba rallies from the early 1990s. Most vivid of all was the shocking image of Rev. Timothy Njoya being clobbered by armed police men. Then came the Bomas constitutional conference under the NARC Administration that produced the document that was rejected at the 2005 referendum. The current constitutional review process also seems to have acquired a lot of enemies. On the surface – and this is what the mainstream Kenyan media seems to trumpet – it appears that those who are politically opposed to the draft are wary of the massive head-start that a YES victory would grant Premier Odinga in the 2012 presidential election. I beg to differ.
Me thinks that most of the political opposition to the document are founded on distributional concerns. The new set up will take a lot of power from the centre and redistribute it to the people. This will significantly alter resource allocation processes, including the management of land. It will also render obsolete the patronage networks that we call the provincial administration. It is not a coincidence that the biggest opponents to the draft also happen to be the biggest landowners, including former President Moi, among others. Imagine this for a second: President Kibaki is on the YES team, but the treasure continues to dilly and dally with the allocation of money for civic education… how can this be?
Mutahi Ngunyi has a different, but interesting take on things. Kwendo Opanga, shares his thoughts on the same, while Mutua tackles the rather risible decision of the courts to declare the current constitution unconstitutional!
Following a petition by former MP Reuben Ndolo (of the “weka tire” infamy), Lady Justice Kaplana Rawal has nullified the election of Dick Wathika as Makadara MP in the 2007 general elections. Mr. Wathika becomes the 5th sitting MP since the chaotic 2007 vote to lose after an election petition in court. The 2007 elections were marred by irregularities that almost plunged Kenya, previously an oasis of peace in a turbulent part of the Continent, into civil war. 1300 people died before a power-sharing agreement was brokered between incumbent Mwai Kibaki and his challenger Raila Odinga. Given that most Kenyans voted “three piece”, the apparent widespread irregularities at the constituency level must be highly correlated with those of the presidential vote. Neither PNU nor ODM can claim innocence. The real culprit, however, is one Mr. Samuel Kivuitu. The former boss of the electoral commission presided over a sham election with a straight face and got away with it. Shame on him.
Former Agriculture Minister William Ruto has been demoted to the Ministry of Higher Education. This is certainly linked to Ruto’s position on the draft constitution. Mr. Ruto has been the most vocal minister in the Kibaki cabinet opposed to the draft constitution which is due for referendum in a few months.
In other news, I love this idea of cattle registration. The government is touting it as a security and rule of law policy but one of the (un)intended consequences will be ease of taxation of cattle owners. Someone at Kenya Revenue Authority must have come up with this idea. Anything that establishes an accountability chain between farmers and the government (be it through transfers or taxes) is always good, as far as I am concerned.
Registration (and taxation) will also have the added benefit of incentivizing protection of property rights by the government. I hope that the revenue from this scheme, however little, will be used to further develop productivity in Kenya’s northern districts.
Muthoni Wanyeki has this cool piece on the ongoing debate over the draft constitution.
I share in her surprise at how low the church has decided to sink in its opposition to Kadhi courts and the so called abortion clause in the draft constitution. Firstly, abortions are but a symptom of greater social problems (marital rape, poor sex education policies, the church’s intransigence over contraceptives, etc etc). People do not carry out abortions because they are baby-killers. Can someone please point this out to these men of God?
In any case personal morality is not a province of the state. People’s “moral failings” are a reflection of the church’s inability to instill in them the values that they consider to be ideal. Sending millions to their graves and creating even more orphans on the premise that God does not endorse the use of contraceptives is simply absurd. If I ran the Daily Nation I would print rates of contraceptive use and fertility rates in Rome, Canterbury and the great evangelical centres of America in the front page to make this point.
I say this knowing that Kenyan conservatism is not necessarily because of Christianity. But we don’t hear traditional elders screaming about these two issues. If the church wants to remain relevant it mus realize that before we all go to heaven we have to live through real life on earth.
And on the issue of Kadhi’s Courts. Who cares? Doesn’t the current constitution have this already? And isn’t it ironic that the same people who want to legislate personal morality on religious grounds are the ones opposed to Muslims having the option to use an Islamic judicial system? And do they even know that these courts would still be subordinate to the country’s secular court system?
Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki has announced that he will resign and call snap elections. Mr. Kibaki cited wrangling within the cabinet and the failure to tackle corruption and poor governance as his main reasons for seeking a fresh mandate from Kenyans. It is unclear which party ticket the president will run on since his party, the PNU, has since disintegrated into its constituent coalition partners. The Prime Minister’s party, the ODM, are currently holding a meeting before issuing a statement in response to the president’s move.
Read more here
Occasionally I come across news that make me think that Kenya is still on the right track. The circus that is the current debate on the review of the constitution is definitely a reminder that the east African nation has a long way to go. But things are looking better elsewhere. For one, more Kenyan businesses (which include some of the noisemakers in parliament and their relatives) are lending to the central government. This is encouraging news in two ways:
First, it means that more people are investing in Kenya Co. and therefore will have incentives to make sure that the country does not go the way of the Ivory Coast.
Second, it means that more of the idle capital will get utilized in the provision of public goods, albeit inefficiently. They may have been late and not smartly implemented but I was quite impressed by the Finance ministry’s counter-cyclical policies to alleviate the effects of the slump. Job well done.
Now if only we could find a way of pooling all the cash that routinely gets used to over-subscribe to IPOs and package it in order to meet the treasury’s minimum requirement for investment in public debt. It would be kind of neat to see millions of wananchi investing in their own country. In this way they can indirectly pay taxes while at the same time strengthening the social contract because they will have incentives to monitor how government spends the money they loan it. Just a thought.
The Church in Kenya has every right to lobby for a pro-life amendment to the draft constitution. But that does not give them the right to completely rubbish the opinions of women leaders. Women like Gender Minister Esther Murugi are not crazy child-killers. They are reasonable people who do not want the male-dominated constitutional review process to usurp too much of women’s reproductive rights. Demanding for women’s reproductive rights is not being pro-abortion. And if the church leaders are so concerned about abortion perhaps it is time they eased their opposition to contraceptives that limit the occurrence of unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
The fact that the Kenyan clergy feel the need to legislate morality is a clear pointer to their failure to do their job right. If you do not want people to have premarital sex or use contraceptives, preach to them from the pulpit. Do not seek to make this into law. In any case, Kenyan society is already conservative enough when it comes to things like abortion and sexuality. What we need is not a constitution that pushes us further into paranoia about these issues but one that protects our mothers and sisters from the tyranny of the men from 10,000 BC who run our country.
This quote from Hon. Murugi captures the absurdity of the amendments being proposed by the anti-women’s rights team: “Let us have a reproductive health bill where all other issues are addressed. For instance, women are using morning after pills after sex. Are you going to put us all in jail?”
I am sure none of those opposed to the amendments is into the idea of killing the unborn. All that Kenyan progressives want is a law that does not take away women’s rights to choose what is good for them. Reason demands that we should not legislate morality. This will only lead to more kienyeji abortions that will continue to kill many Kenyan women each year.
It is fascinating how the conservative types (in both ODM and PNU) that ordered policemen to shoot rioters or organized militias to kill fellow Kenyans in early 2008 are the same ones at the forefront of the faux pro-life campaign. May their efforts to go against reason fail.
The Kenyan Draft Constitution seems to have hit a snag. A section of parliamentarians are opposed to the section of the proposed constitution that gives all counties equal powers via their elected senators. I agree with them. The to-be-formed senate, as currently constituted, grants too much power to sparsely populated counties. Theoretically, this should not make any difference because people could just move to better served, over-represented counties thereby balancing everything. But we all know that this does not happen in Kenya. The country remains divided into various “ethnic homelands” that are more often than not inhabited exclusively by a single ethnic group.
I hold the opinion that part of the reason why we currently have a corrupt and unresponsive political class is that those who actually pay taxes – and therefore feel the pinch of mismanagement of public funds – are grossly under-represented. For instance, Nairobi only has eight members of parliament even though it generates a huge chunk of Kenya’s tax revenue. Let us not worsen this by creating an even more powerful senate whose members will bribe their way into office with a few bags of sugar and flour per voter and then proceed to steal millions of urban Kenyans’ hard earned cash. I am not advocating for an urban-biased senate. What I am saying is that the constitution should, at a minimum, respect the principle of equal representation. Nairobians and other Kenyan urbanites should make it clear that they are not into the idea of taxation without equal representation.
The alternative would be to have independent incorporate urban districts that elect their own governments and have greater control over the collection and expenditure of their tax revenue. I don’t particularly like this idea though because places like Suba and Maragua still need Nairobi, Eldoret, Kisumu, Nyeri,Mombasa and others, to pull them up.
That is my peni nane opinion on this.
So the government and dairy farmers are not too happy with the current milk oversupply. Prices have gone down dramatically due to the milk glut, causing farmers to want tighter regulation of the dairy industry to protect local dairy farmers.
First of all, advocating for a contraction of the industry in order to boost prices is a silly move. Why don’t we export that milk to Uganda and Southern Sudan instead, or even down south to Tanzania? And there is also the minor detail about starving Kenyans in the Northern arid areas (why doesn’t the Kenyan government treat food insecurity in these parts of the country with the seriousness it deserves???). Why not increase output in order to provide enough even for these people at a lower price? Falling prices can be mitigated through higher output. Scale might be the answer.
What I liked:
What I did not like:
And in other news, Kenya is still among the most corrupt countries in the world. The new TI corruption perception index ranks Kenya at 146 out of 180 states. This is one more reason to fire Amos Wako, Kenya’s Attorney general since forever. And while we are at it we should also get rid of the Chief Justice. Mr. Gicheru has not lived up to expectations. He was appointed to clean up the judiciary but ended up in the pockets of the powers that be.
The New York Times has a story on the security situation in Nairobi. In the interest of full disclosure, Nairobi is my home town. I was there this summer and would like to point out – just for the record – that although Nairobi may not be the safest place in the world, it is not the most dangerous city in the world either. The city has 4 million people, give or take. Income inequality is off the charts. The city’s economy cannot provide enough jobs for its youth, most of whom do not spend enough time in school and therefore resort to petty theft to earn a living. This summer there was a wave of kidnappings. Some were by real criminals. At least one that got exposed was by a young woman trying to get money from her father by pretending that she was kidnapped.The Nairobi city council is run by a bunch of clowns.
I agree with Gettleman that the incidence of crime in Nairobi is way too high. That said, Nairobi is not Jo’burg or Kabul. It is still very much a live-able city – as evidenced by the many NGOs and UN agencies that have set up shop in there.
Nairobi is currently playing host to delegates from all over the Continent and the US attending the 8th AGOA conference. I had time yesterday to listen to Sec. Clinton’s and President Kibaki’s speeches (President Kibaki, please fire your speech writers and hire a speech therapist). Despite the embarrassing delivery, President Kibaki’s speech struck the right tone. The US should open up more to African business and Kenyans (and Africans in general) should be quick to take advantage of the existing trade opportunities – even as they continue to tackle governance problems (which, contrary to Premier Odinga’s comments, is a major road block to African development).
I felt like Clinton’s comments were a bit too vague. It is high time the US stopped treating trade with Africa as something that only happens at the pleasure of Washington (for more on this see Aid Watch). The one thing that hit home in the speech was the call for an increase in intra-continental trade. The last time I checked this accounted for a paltry 10% of all trade on the Continent. Poor transcom infrastructure is to blame. But political risk (read deplorable governance) is also to blame. I hope the many African delegates present took this point seriously.
I don’t know what deliverables come out of such AGOA gatherings so I will wait till the end of the conference to comment on its relevance. For now I am happy that United Parcel Services (UPS) has pledged to buy staff uniforms from the Kenyan market.
Almost two weeks into the NGO world and I must say that I am liking this work. Last week we had a capacity building workshop on advocacy skills training. It was largely successful and I got to meet members of interesting Kenyan civil society organisations (CSOs) from across the nation. My take on the workshop was that Kenyan civil society exists, what’s lacking is clout. They need to have some say in what decisions are made in parliament or state house. This they can only achieve by increasing their membership and general public awareness and by raising cash.
And in order to make these same CSOs more democratic and representative, donors can come up with a system of conditioning their aid on the CSOs raising part of their monies from Kenyans. In this way, the wider a CSO’s Kenyan donor base, the more money they should get. There should of course be exemptions for emergency relief, education, public health programs, among other critical areas. The assumption here is that most CSOs are involved with the political aspects of development.
Tomorrow I head out into the field for a monitoring and evaluation exercise in Eldoret and Burnt Forest – areas that were affected by the violence that rocked Kenya early last year. I will write a post on the developments concerning peace initiatives there.
It was a few minutes after seven o’clock. The radio was on kiss fm – a popular local radio station – and the presenter (the very much likeable Caroline Mutoko) was talking about the envelope that Kofi Annan gave to Moreno Ocampo, the ICC chief prosecutor. The envelope supposedly has names of leading-light Kenyan politicians who organised the bloodshed that followed the botched 2007 presidential elections. We were discussing what this means for Kenya as my dad navigated the congested roads of Nairobi – the number of vehicles in this city keeps increasing but no one bothers to widen the roads. There are no lanes on most of them, and pedestrians – like the woman who almost got run over by my dad – do not care for the barely functional traffic lights and rare zebra crossings. Everyone plays games with the many traffic policemen stationed at junctions and roundabouts.
My dad had his sights ahead and to his left, trying hard not to be scratched by this very loud matatu that was trying to squeeze into the (imaginary) middle lane when all of a sudden some woman jumped into the road from the right. My dad instinctively hit the breaks, but it was too late. The front right tire hard caught the woman’s left shoe as she tried to jump back onto the pavement.
The craziest part of all this is how calm everyone involved was – including me. My dad reversed, the woman removed her shoe and then kept walking – like nothing had happened. I am convinced that Nairobian pedestrians are the toughest in the world.
kenopalo.com 