Tag Archives: Raila Odinga

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.

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.

how do we force them to resign?

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Tomorrow’s Sunday Nation opinion pieces are full of complaints against the ever growing culture of impunity among the ruling class in Kenya. We have become a nation in which cabinet ministers remain in office even when suspected of having ordered the killing of Kenyans a year ago, or turning a blind eye when public corporations were being looted by their cronies. The police chief, the Attorney General and the justice minister still remain in office even after a UN-sanctioned report blamed them for allowing extra-judicial killings to take place in Kenya. The entire judiciary is one giant sty filled with corrupt judges and officials. Everybody knows this but no one wants to do anything.

This may seem naive, but I am kind of surprised that Hussein Ali and Amos Wako are still in office. Especially Amos Wako. He is the man who is responsible for most of the rot in the judiciary. Under Moi he did nothing as the former president and his friends bastardized the judiciary. Kibaki probably kept him on on the request of Moi so as to protect himself and his friends against potential law suits. I say it is time Amos Wako went. He has been Attorney General for far too long with very little to show for it. During his tenure corruption has ballooned like no one’s business but with very few people ever being brought to court.

And about our corrupt cabinet ministers…. Where is the supposedly vibrant Kenyan civil society? I think it is time they took Philip Ochieng’s advice and started agitating for the sacking of certain people implicated in the many scandals that have rocked the country in the last several months.

getting to the bottom of the maize scandal

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So it turns out that Ababu Namwamba’s sensational claim in parliament that first lady Lucy Kibaki was linked to a company that illegal traded in maize for Kenya’s starving millions was based on false documents. And the same is also true of Bonny Khalwale’s accusations of agriculture minister William Ruto. Whether this is the truth or not we may never know. Kenyan politicians have a going price and retractions of statements (true and otherwise) have been made before. And why accuse the first lady and a whole cabinet minister with false documents? Messrs Namwamba and Khalwale are not village idiots. They must have known what they were talking about. For now I shall remain skeptical of these retractions and say that where there is smoke there is fire. If Mr. Ruto wants to clear his name he should tell us who traded in the maize, it is his ministry after all. And if the president wants his wife’s name cleared he should also tell us the truth. Everyone high up in government must know who these thieves are.

Millions of Kenyans face starvation if they don’t get relief food and so it galls me when I read that people are stealing the same relief food and being allowed to get away with it. Since when did we come to accept that Kenyan lives – no matter how poor our citizens may be – are worth sacrificing so that an already filthy rich cabal of thieves can continue enriching themselves? Where is the anger in the media, in the church, on the streets and among the civil society? Do we realise what we are doing to ourselves? Kenyans are dying!!!

Does it cease to be a crime just because someone who speaks your language did it? Does it cease to be a crime when it is Kibaki and not Raila or Ruto and not Michuki or vise versa? I don’t think so.

We need the truth NOW.

when will we have lasting political parties?

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True democracy is not just about holding elections every five years. It is also about having a constructive deliberative process. A process that focuses on issues. This is only possible with the creation of important institutions to mediate this process. In a true democracy, political parties are just as important as the legal provision for loyal opposition. Disorganized and unarticulated opposition is just as bad as, if not worse than, having a single party state. It breeds instability and degenerates into politics of contingency.

Sadly, Kenya’s democratic experiment is once again emerging as having failed. With the formation of PNU and ODM, I was hopeful that these two parties would consolidate and dig in their heels to become the peddlers of policies to the people. But sooner than later PNU started unravelling. Now we have ODM going throught the same trials. Members of parliament from the Rift Valley are threatening to quit the party – on what appears to be purely tribal grounds.

That Kenyan politicians are tribalistic is not a secret. It baffles me how nearly all MPs from a given area can always have the same positions on issues. Kenyan politics is such that just by knowing someone’s last name you can accurately predict their position on any political issue. This is total buffoonery. Absolute insanity. And at the very least extremely shameful.

I am disappointed in William Ruto. For a while I thought that he would be the man that detribalises the Rift Valley. While appreciating the concerns he may have over the implementation on the Waki report, he should not have come so publicly against it. He could have been more subtle and negotiated with the government – which he is a part of – from within.

Strictly speaking, I think the members of the Rift Valley have a point. The youth that were detailed for having engaged in violence were mere pawns of the political class. They should be freed. The people that should be in jail are the leaders who incited the youth. And Raila, Kibaki and Kalonzo should own up on their mess. Kibaki for not providind Kenyans with an open electoral process and Raila and Kalonzo for reacting to Kibaki’s mischief with mischief of their own.

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.

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.

kenyan talks suspended

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A statement from Kofi Annan, the mediator in Kenya’s post election negotiations, has said that the talks have been suspended for the moment so that he can meet with the two principals – President Kibaki and Hon. Raila Odinga – to try and find a quicker way to arrive at a solution to the main contentious issue of duties and powers of the proposed Premier.

The two sides have agreed, in principle, to share power through the creation of the post of Prime Minister that will be occupied by the opposition leader Raila Odinga. However, both sides have bitterly disagreed as to what powers the proposed Premier would have. The opposition group, ODM, that claims it won last December’s election insist that the Premier should have executive authority and some autonomy from the president while the ruling PNU want the creation of a ceremonial Premier position with no more power than the secretary to the cabinet and who is directly answerable to the president.

Meanwhile, it emerged, as expected, that majority of those killed in the post election clashes in Western and Nyanza provinces of Kenya died of gun shot wounds. Throughout the violence the opposition had maintained that the police was using live rounds to quell violence and in the process was killing innocent civilians – including young school children. While I am averse to speculations, it is interesting to note that these two regions are perceived to be opposition strongholds. In the Rift Valley however, where most of the killings occurred, most of the dead died of machete and arrow wounds. It is puzzling why firearm force that was widely used in Western Kenya to stop mere looters was not used in the Rift Valley to stop real  murderers from both sides of the “tribal” divide.

I will not blame this on tribalism. I blame it purely on gross incompetence on the part of Gen. Hussein Ali and his men. He and his police force owe Kenya more than their erratic, uncoordinated and extremely amateur response to the violence that nearly tore the country apart.

So the talks remain suspended. Kenyans continue to live with heightened tension. Economic progress both in the country and in the region continues to be stalled. And all because of a few wealthy individuals who cannot decide which group among them will have the power, over the next five years, to steal from the Kenyan people. God have mercy on Kenyans.

annan threatens to leave Kenyan talks

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Kofi Annan has threatened to leave the Kenyan talks if no progress is made soon. Mr. Annan has been leading talks aimed at finding a lasting solution to some of the problems that caused and/or were results of the flawed elections held in the country last December. According to an aide to Mr. Annan, the former UN boss lamented that he had put a lot of important things on hold to be a part of the talks and that if it emerged that the negotiating parties were not willing to reach a compromise soon he would leave.

The talks, according to recent media briefings, have reached a critical stage. Both the government and the opposition have agreed on the creation of a prime minister’s post that will be occupied by the opposition leader Raila Odinga. However, the problem has been whether the prime minister should have some executive powers or not. The government insists that the current constitution allows for the creation of a non-executive premier while the opposition wants an amendment to create the position of an executive premier and also for an equal share of cabinet positions and other appointments.

I hate to be pessimistic but things look really bad for this East African country. With the imminent collapse of the talks, the government will probably get marginalised by the international community, a situation that will make it even more autocratic and impervious to the wishes of ordinary Kenyans. Inevitably there will be more tribal bloodshed because the opposition remains adamant in its insistence that it won the elections held last December. Plus the post-election violence has divided the country on tribal lines so much that any national reconciliation will necessarily need ODM and PNU to come up with a political solution and possible a broad-based transitional government.

Kenya is steadily turning into the Ivory Coast. The latter, a former third biggest economy in sub-Saharan Africa, descended into civil strife soon after fraudulent elections were held following the death of long time strongman Houphouet Boigny. Kenya, like Boigny-Ivory Coast, was relatively stable during the iron fisted reign of Daniel Arap Moi for nearly a quarter of a century. However, after last year’s fraudulent elections that saw the return of the incumbent Mwai Kibaki, violence erupted that resulted in the death of more than 1000 people and destruction of property worth billions of shillings.

Both sides of the political divide seem not to have the interest of ordinary Kenyans at heart. The business community and the rest of the civil society seem to have taken a wait-and-see stance. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of Kenyans remain displaced in IDP camps without enough food or medication.

Three months ago no one would have predicted that Kenya would become yet another African statistic to be mentioned in the same light with the likes of Ivory Coast, Somalia, Zimbabwe …….. and all the others.

There may still be time to save the situation. But as things stand, I think the country is still in the eye of the storm – with more trouble to come before sanity returns. I just hope that Kenya and Kenyans are strong enough to endure through all this and emerge as an even stronger country.

Kenya’s elections

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With just under four days to go, there is still no clear front-runner in the upcoming general elections in Kenya. According to the latest opinion polls, there is a statistical tie between the incumbent President Kibaki and the veteran opposition politician Raila Odinga.  Many observers have acknowledged that this is going to be a very closely contested election and therefore there is need to keep it absolutely free and fair because whoever wins will not do so with a wide margin – unless we have been fooled all along by the opinion polls, a fact that is not entirely implausible since statisticians have been known to get it wrong some times.

Statistics and opinion polls aside, the whole world is watching; which gives Kenya an opportunity to demonstrate that true democracy can flourish on the continent of Africa. The onus is on the electoral commission of Kenya to ensure, as they have guaranteed, that there are no irregularities in the December 27th poll. Only then will the losers of the election concede defeat respectfully and allow the country to move forward with whoever gets elected as president.

Even though the two major parties do not differ much in terms of their ideals and the contents of their manifestos, I think electioneering is still an invaluable process because it gives a sense of empowerment to the majority of voters since it makes them engage their leaders and feel as part of one country, even if just for the brief period of campaigns and emotionally charged political rallies as we have witnessed in the last three months.

May Kenya emerge on the 28th of December a united and peaceful nation state ready to move forward with a sound development agenda.