Tag Archives: ODM

ruto is a disappointment over mau

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Leaders are meant to lead – to set the agenda and make people believe that what is good for them is exactly what they need. On this count, Agriculture minister William Ruto has failed as a leader. On the issue of Mau Forest, he is increasingly sounding like a mad populist out to gain political mileage at the expense of millions of Kenyans – including those that he is purportedly protecting.

That deforestation in the Mau is causing the drying up of vital water sources – 12 rivers included – is no longer contested, not even by Mr. Ruto himself. I therefore do not understand why he is still against the eviction of those who illegally acquired land in the forest. The government has already agreed to compensate small holders (with title deeds) who were cheated into buying land in the forest. But wealthy Kenyans who acquired land in the Mau due to their connections to the Moi Administration should not be given a cent. In any case they should be investigated.

I say it is time that Mr. Ruto acted as a leader and made the case to his constituents that saving the Mau is in their best interest. This is the least he can do if he really aspires to be seen as a respectable national leader rather than an over-glorified tribal chief.

the ICC debate is a major distraction

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Two weekends ago I ventured into Siaya in Nyanza province of Kenya to visit family. On the way there, I saw for the first time the consequences of the violence that rocked the country early last year. More than a year later, whole families are still living in tents at the Molo junction. Many more have had to endure life in make shift houses, still unsure of whether they will be able to return home permanently.

But in Nairobi, the issue of resettlement of Kenya’s IDPs is on no one’s radar. The hot topic right now is which ethnic chief is on the list of suspected instigators of the post-election violence that killed more than 1300 Kenyans and displaced hundreds of thousands. The political class has completely forgotten about the people who did their dirty work or suffered the consequences of the same.

It is a shame that the mainstream media in Nairobi has bought into the distraction tactics of Kenya’s (very mediocre) ruling class. As much as we should know about and debate whether to try suspected plotters of the violence here at home or in the Hague, we should continue focusing attention on those that are still suffering in tents away from schools, hospitals and their farms. These Kenyans deserve better than they are currently getting from Nairobi.

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.

the pros and cons of having a local tribunal

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Kenya’s Justice Minister, Mutula Kilonzo, has made it clear that the government does not want the architects of Kenya’s post-election killings to be tried in the Hague. He instead wants to create a local tribunal. Previous attempts to establish a local tribunal were defeated in the Kenyan parliament.

A local tribunal is both symbolic and practical. It is symbolic in the sense that it reaffirms Kenya’s sovereignty in the eyes of the international community. It would show that we are neither Somalia nor Chad (although we might be getting there if things go unchecked) and can take care of our own mess. It is also practical because Justice is political and sometimes the pursuit of justice may need to be subordinated to political expediency in order to achieve better results. It is no secret that some of  those who organised the killings early last year are the same ethnic princes (both in ODM and PNU) running the country right now. Dislodging these buffoons from power may end up creating even more instability in the country. Better have a local tribunal in which those behind the killings would be exposed and perhaps forced to pay some fine while preserving the current state of cautious stability.

But there is also a case for an international tribunal. 1500 (more or less) human beings, with families, were killed. They were denied the basic human right to life. Someone has to pay for this. Political expediency, it can be argued, should never guide the administration of justice. Only an international tribunal would guarantee an apolitical trial of the cold-blooded killers who planned and executed the slaughter of  hundreds of their fellow Kenyans in Nairobi, Nakuru, Naivasha, Kisumu, Mombasa and other urban centres.

Either way, I think it is time that Kofi Annan leaked out the names of those implicated in the organization and execution of the killings. Expose them now Mr. Annan.

3% growth is a recession, Mr. President

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Kenyan President, Mwai Kibaki, said today in his Madaraka Day address that things were not as bad as they seem to be for most Kenyans. He assured Kenyans that the grand coalition government was intact and operating smoothly (Mr. Kibaki mistakes most Kenyans for ignorant Martians, I guess) and to buttress his point reminded the country that Kenya’s economy would grow by 3% in the year 2009, up from last year’s projection of 1.7%. Mr. Kibaki also added that his government was in the process of looking into how to create 300, 000 jobs in an effort to arrest Kenya’s crazy unemployment figures.

Like most of the President’s speeches of late, his Madaraka day address seemed like an exercise in speculation and the voicing of half-thought-out wishes.

The coalition government is ineffectual, expensive and divided. 3% growth in a country where income per capita is less than US $2000 is a recession. And about the 300,000 new jobs, I would bet a cow that the president either misread what was in his speech or it was a clerical error – like the one at the treasury that nearly cost Kenyan tax payers KSHS. 10 b – or the president just felt like telling us what he wished was the case.

Kenya is 46 this year. Most Kenyans are lucky if they live to be 46.

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.

out with these ‘regional’ leaders

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A while back I contemplated becoming a life member of KANU. This was when Uhuru Kenyatta was a rising star in the party and seemed poised to change the direction of the country and its politics. Although I could not vote in the 2002 election, I outwardly supported the NARC alliance but secretly hoped for a KANU victory. I simply had a bias for younger leaders. But Kibaki won. And many Kenyans seemed pleased by the outcome. Almost seven years on and we are yet to see real change take place in Kenya – but that is another story for another day.

For now let’s talk about the regionalization of our young leaders. First it was Uhuru Kenyatta, openly showing that he wanted the title of leader of Central Kenya. And then it was William Ruto, a man who has been having a lot of trouble lately, openly admitting that he is first a leader of the Rift Valley, national responsibilities come second. These new developments have left me jaded. I always used to think that this regionalism was an idea of the Moi-Kibaki-Raila generation. But it seems to be creeping into the Ruto-Uhuru generation as well.

These two men are shamelessly being tribalistic right now. Ruto is hiding from the corruption cases in his ministry and power struggles in ODM by receding back to his ‘tribe’. Uhuru is doing the same in order to sideline Karua (kudos to Karua though, she seems to have a more national outlook to politics, at least that’s how I see it from this end).

What this means for Kenyan politics is that we shall continue having tribal political parties and regional leaders. Every single politician will keep fighting for his ‘people’ at the expense of the national agenda. Meanwhile more Kenyans will remain hungry, sick and uneducated. To borrow from Achebe in his book The trouble with Nigeria: The trouble with Kenya is simply and squarely a problem of leadership, although sometimes I wonder if we are getting our just deserts because of our having disengaged with the state.

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.

the waki report, political expediency and the denial of justice

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The Kenyan Premier, Raila Odinga, has bowed to pressure from within his party and made a hasty retreat with regard to the implementation of the Waki Report. (This report was compiled by a commission set up to investigate the post-election violence that nearly plunged Kenya into civil war early this year). This is a huge disappointment and a blow to the pursuit of justice in Kenya. About 1500 died. Hundreds of thousands were displaced, many of whom still live in IDP camps. Don’t we owe these people a public acknowledgment that they were wronged?

Members of both the ODM and PNU have been implicated in the report. Predictably, a cohort of PNU parliamentarians already roundly rejected the report. Now ODM, for the sake of unity (its members from the Rift Valley province threatened a mutiny), has decided to do the same. This means that the Waki Commission will probably join the list of the myriad useless commissions the country has set up since independence to investigate all manner of wrongs and provide recommendations – recommendations which were then rubbished and never implemented. What a waste of time and money!

But there is still hope. And it lies within the Kenyan civil society. The law society of Kenya, among other such civic organisations, should pressure the international court in the Hague, through Kofi Annan, to prosecute those named in the report, unless the government agrees to set up a Kenyan tribunal. The culture of impunity has to be stopped. This report could have been used as a tool for national reconciliation and regeneration. It is sad that political expediency has once again come before justice. It is doubly sad that ODM, a party that has claimed to be for the people, is the same party denying justice to the people.

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.

the new kenyan cabinet, bloated and expensive

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President Kibaki and Premier Odinga are two men without much of a strong will. This is evidenced by their capitulation to the demands of their cronies and allies in the naming of the new cabinet. 42 cabinet including the president and AG was announced by these two men. And this in a country that struggles to feed its people, educate them and keep them alive. Did we really need separate ministries for medical services and public health and sanitation? or education and higher education? And what exactly will the minister for fisheries development do that the minister for agriculture or water cannot do?

It’s insulting how these two men turned a completely deaf ear to the calls made by Kenyans for a leaner, cheaper cabinet. It’s tax payer’s money you are spending Messrs president and premier.

I understand that there was need to please as many people as possible following the events of February, but at the same time I do believe that there could have been a cheaper way of doing this. Perhaps having a more transparent system of government where ministers did not run their ministries like personal fiefdoms would have made people feel included in the government and obviated the need for tribal representation in the cabinet.

And now that we have a cabinet, it will be interesting to see how it actually functions, given the animosity that exists between the ODM and PNU and the rest. I can speculate that there will be a lot of mission creep across amorphously defined ministerial portfolios resulting in intra-cabinet power struggles. I can also see the members of the cabinet continuing in their bad habit of addressing each other through the media like they don’t have each other’s contacts (I seriously think that the media should give such exchanges a black out to teach these men and women a lesson).

Oh, and on all those promises of better government, a new constitution, land reforms, prosecution of corruption, roads, schools, hospitals ………. etc : I am not holding my breath.

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.

is this love-fest for real?

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The ODM leader and Premier-designate Raila Odinga has lately been on a charm offensive. Raila has met with former opponents Karua, Kiraitu, Kimunya and on Friday was hanging out with Jimmy Kibaki and Fidel Odinga. The thawing of relations which was at first just between Raila and Kibaki seems to have spread to the surrogates of the president.

That said, I am still not convinced that things are going to be fine. One Francis Muthaura has already thrown some spanners into the works by his “clarification” the other day and I am sure the naming of the new cabinet will further reveal the differences that these two sides seem eager to hide. I am also not convinced because the love seems to be directed at only Raila and not the other top members of the ODM. For this thing to work it should not be just about Raila. The whole of ODM was aggrieved by the results of the elections and therefore all of ODM should be part of the ODM-PNU alliance.

Increasingly it seems like Raila is hogging all the attention as the rest of ODM hold their breath waiting for the cabinet appointments. I suspect that after the cabinet has been named cracks will start appearing in ODM if Raila is not seen to be fully inclusive of his pentagon colleagues in his engagement with PNU. ODM, although still very rough on the edges, is a promising political party with a national reach. If the party bosses want to be around for some time, they should use this time to cement institutionalism within the party and avoid the culture of personality politics that continues to render our political parties mere vehicles to power, devoid of any ideology or values.

not yet a democracy, kenya’s false starts

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Three times Kenya has toyed with the idea of becoming a fledgling democracy and failed. The first time was the immediate post independence republic. Back then Kenyatta found it convenient to co-opt former president Moi and his KADU apparatchiks,  thereby rendering the country a de facto one party state and putting off full democracy for later. After the Limuru ouster of vice president Oginga Odinga and his lieutenants, the former VP emerged as the chief leader of the opposition but his party was too weak to provide any credible challenge to the independence party, KANU.

Moi made Kenya a de jure single party state after taking over from Kenyatta in ’78, a situation that persisted until the democratic wave of the 1990s swept away section 2a of the Kenyan constitution thus making Kenya a multiparty democracy. This was the second attempt. But 1992 did not create a true democracy. What Moi did was to ensure that the opposition was divided and muzzled to make them too weak to pose any serious challenge. On occasions he even co-opted the opposition – like was the case with Raila’s NDP in 2001. Through these means the man from Baringo managed to hold onto power until December 2002 when he was pushed out by a constitutional limit to terms.

2002 marked the beginning of the third attempt. KANU was in the opposition and Kenyans were in high spirits. A few months into the Kibaki presidency tragedy started to strike. MPs died in freak accidents, Kenya lost one of its most illustrious sons in the name of Michael Kijana Wamalwa. And NARC fell apart. The NARC fallout created so much animosity and mistrust that the LDP faction had to opt out. ODM was formed in the process. KANU, or a section of it, was co-opted into the Kibaki government. The official opposition party was severely weakened.

With the resultant level of mistrust, Kenyans headed for the 2007 general election. Kibaki (or his lieutenants) was (were) determined to stay in power. With the all powerful Moi out of the picture, Kibaki and Raila were political equals and thus were determined to fight it to the bitter end. For a moment it seemed like Kenya was a true democracy. No one had any significant undue advantage. The playing field seemed level enough.

But something was missing. In a true democracy where the outcome of elections can be tight and highly uncertain, there is need for very strong institutions. This was lacking in Kenya. You had a case where neither of the contestants in the ring could deliver a knockout punch to be the outright winner and so you needed a win by points – the only problem was that the officials were all compromised, making it impossible to know the real winner. This third time Kenyans had put the cart before the horse. Competition was high but without the necessary supporting institutions. Kivuitu and his commissioners let their country down.

The system thus gave in, unleashing a wave of killings that shocked many across the globe. The third attempt became yet another failure.

And now we are back to square one. After Raila and his ODM join the government, Kenya will be a de facto one party state. Although ODM may survive the marriage, I highly doubt that any of the other parties will. I foresee a scenario in 2012 in which there will be yet another hurried creation of a party like the PNU for political expediency. And the cycle will continue – more ad hoc political alliances without any principles, ideologies or values……

Looking at the current battle withing the US democratic party, I can’t help but wonder when we shall have strong enough parties to withstand such gruesome intra-party competition without defections and political re-alignments, let alone have a free and fair presidential election.