Parting Shots, 2013

New dawn for Kenya happened this year and with it came new expectations or are we still striving to achieve that has been elusive these past fifty years?
The youngest heads of state, in our history, were elected just as the nation was unwrapping a new constitutional dispensation and with the double offering, the nation started with a heightened sense of optimism. In the past fifty years we have shown disdain and mistrust of our electoral processes and the last one we held was no different. It left nearly half the population feeling that all was not well and I guess that is the way with all competitive scenarios where a winner and loser have to be declared. None the less, we have to work hard and improve some simple systems that let us down- like electronic data transmission. This in a region that prides itself of being the in the vanguard of mobile transactions in the whole world.
When we first raised the national flag fifty years ago we aimed at eradicating poverty, disease and ignorance. As soon as the flag started flapping in the winds of hope, jubilation and expectation, we lapsed back into complacency and learnt to live with these three yokes round our necks. Fifty years down the line, we are still treading on the wine-press with them and other serious ones added onto our necks. We have added, among others; corruption, ethnic mistrust, social imbalance, and generalized ineptitude in affairs of state. This time around our huddles are higher and too close together- we have a different constitutional format with new aspects to be implemented, tested, evaluated, modified, implemented again and so on. The room for error and failure is wide and expansive but the spirit of benevolence which is encompassed by the whole nation militates and mitigates for success. Let us all ride this wave optimism for the sake of us, Kenya.

Needed are whistle blowers and mandatory reporters to keep the powers that be on their toes. The likes of Assange of the wikileaks fame, the gentleman of ‘Transparency International’ of the “Our Turn To Eat” fame, have always come under criticism which most of the times have been wrong. Millions of innocent people have suffered through the years because of unethical, questionable and many times criminal activities by people in power and others placed in positions of public service. Like these whistle-blowers, we need to be bold and balanced and call out our own who go astray. We need to acknowledge that we are the very people who elect the corrupt politicians, we are the the ones who suffer when the politicians only focus on their own selfish needs in parliament- like inflating the government wage bill or meddling with devolution of resources. We have broken our own record (money value) of national intrigues for three administrations in only nine months of Jubilee reign. We need us (whistle blowers) more than ever.

There is need to de-link the day-to-day running of state affairs from the politics of the day. Politicians are contract personnel, contracted only for a period while state administration is an on-going, operation that stops at nothing, be it elections or high water. National development is part of administration and not a politician's project. Contracts entered into for developmental projects ought to be independent of the political powers that be, they ought to be guided by the supreme law of the land and not the whims of some politician who could be as temporary as an electoral period. It is simply disgusting to read of power plays within the administrative corridors between big companies fighting to position themselves for lucrative projects that may have already been assigned to other companies that get sidelined when we change our elected politicians.

A look at the Kenya Railways, failed to manage its business,at a time when it had a near monopoly in the freight haulage sector, as much as this may have been the doing of a different quasi-criminal cartel in a different political outfit, fact remains that this corporation has been abused once and the sudden 're-animation' of a de-facto 'transportation ghost', resurfacing to dip its bonny fingers into the public coffers for a grab of several hundred billions of shillings is simply stinky. A derelict cash-cow that has been re-invented to provide a conduit for more asset-stripping?

So, how come the outfit that ran on generational change, youth recognition and ‘kubadilisha namna ya uongozi’ platform cannot find new blood to fill the state parastatals’ chief officers? They started with hiccups at the get-go when they recycled some die-hard politicians into the supposedly technocratic government ministries and nine months down the line, they are fetching them from retirement. The world over, politicians have the unwritten code of conduct of rewarding loyalty with all sorts of freebies and mostly it’s positions of influence that is dished out. This however doesn’t make it right and it is my humble submission that if they had to do this, then they should have employed some sort ‘sophistication’. We are witnessing a lot of ‘analog-ness’ in a supposedly ‘digital’ outfit. I put it that the group that most needs to be rewarded is the rank and file voter and the only way to reward them is being- or being seen to be- sensitive to their wishes. However difficult it is to please the masses, don’t ignore the wisdom of the masses. Wanjiku and Otonglo just need to be assured that they are being listened to.

The media has been put on the pedestal and found wanting. Though they rank high in the public list of trusted entities, they are still very wanting. They still churn out half investigative and speculative news leaving the consumer to do their own analysis- in these categories, omit ‘Jicho Pevu’ and a few others. Anchors and reporters never seek opinion from ‘experts’ or ‘analysts’ from specific fields but instead fall for the loudest or most ‘outlandish’ by-stander or spectator around for a description of the events, the ignorance of the interviewee notwithstanding. One recently explained how a bus collided with a truck, he had the details up to the point where he had the ‘verbal’ chalk outline of the vehicles involved - ‘lori ikapinduka ikachora saba’…This accident had occurred at an isolated section of the highway and in the dead of the night. And why don’t they read the items in a soft naturally flowing tone, without necessarily having to emphasize a syllable or a word here and there? We would still believe them?

The clergy? Well, these were mostly missing in action.

As we discussed and promulgated the present constitution, the feeling was right and the spirits were high. Kenyans had finally taken the opportunity to own their own destiny. They had finally triumphed in the second liberation. This year ends however, with dark clouds hanging above us, strong hurricane winds blowing in our direction and streaks of lightning lighting the fearful skies. Signs of a people just about to be overrun by phantoms they have created themselves. We are so helpless against our own politicians that they have no motivation whatsoever to consider our plight. We have to grab Kenya back from them. We need to steer our nation in our direction of choosing. We should be holding the steering wheel or the rudder of this vessel Kenya.

Salvage Army?...National Shame.

So what was in the paper-bags? If anyone has evidence that the bags contained looted goods, they should present it to the parliamentary committee or the nearest police station for further investigation....

Is this a reflection of our national image? This is simply how badly we have fallen! Those were not our galant soldiers? So many questions un-answered! So much explaining yet to be done. We bleed more from these than from the wounds inflicted by the four or so wayward boys who held up Westgate mall. Tusijindanganye!

Who's To Blame?

Reading Kenya's pleas to the rest of the world to join her in the war against terrorism, one would be tempted to think that the war has just begun and that Kenya is the frontline. This statement has a part which is true and one which is erroneous.
Kenya is smarting from the recent attack in Westlands and was rudely reminded about the 1998 attack in Nairobi. This recent episode has particularly reflected quite badly against Kenya's reaction to acts of terror; the security agencies have come out as a bunch of blundering, fumbling and inefficient outfits, quick to ignore intelligence on criminal activity only to rush to the site of an attack and mess up the clues and evidence. After the attack in Westlands, unsubstantiated reports indicate that at least one of the attackers walked out of the mall among the rescued civilians and walked away despite the warnings from one of the survivors who saw the terrorist change his clothes to mingle with the victims.

Without being deliberately sub judice- there is a parliamentary inquiry on the recent attack going on- information in the public domain indicate that information as credible as from a Senator had been passed on to the relevant agencies regarding the attack long before it happened. What they did about it, we might never know.
In the recent past, criminal activities in Kenya, both in the rural and urban areas have taken a metamorphosis that ought to have woken the security agencies to the dangers and the face of the terrorist. Ordinary Kenyans now know the look of a grenade, they know the sound of one exploding, high powered guns, improvised explosive devices, widespread attacks on crowds without theft of property-these have become the calling card of the terrorist today. The police have witnessed this metamorphosis but have remained rooted in the past methods of crime detection and fighting, the immigration department have gone on their duties without regard to the dangers they pose the whole country. It is an open secret that foreigners (especially those with questionable backgrounds) find it easier to acquire identity documents (birth certificates, IDs or passports) than indigenous Kenyans. Our ports of entry and departure have primarily been charged with stopping Kenyans from venturing out of Kenya and welcoming all and sundry (criminal or otherwise, legal or illegal) into and out of Kenya. Criminals find Kenya a very suitable hub to connect to their destinations. Others find it convenient to transform themselves into Kenyans then move on to other countries.

Attacks in the public places, in churches and on police stations had increased but the security agencies did not seem to notice any difference. They did not change their tact and kept on the age-old pleas for the public to surrender any arms they could be harboring. They offered and kept extending amnesty periods. They refused to acknowledge that the animal they had been hunting had changed and that they were now the prey. Pronouncements from militant groups especially after operation 'Linda Nchi' did not seem to be related to the proliferation of military style grenade attacks carried out haphazardly all over the country.

When the rest of the world was fighting the war against terrorism, Kenya slept. Now, that slumber has catapulted us to the frontline of that war and we are asking the world to fight with us! We need to stay awake, work hard to catch up with the rest of the world in this war. We need to change our national psyche and start being proud of our nationality, to guard and jealously protect it. We need to develop and nurture national accountability-relevant agencies need to have relevant information in their domains. The government needs to streamline all databases for smooth information flow, correlation of such information as ID card, passport and electors registries, PIN  cards, registries of persons, motor vehicles, companies, etc just to name a few could so easily be synchronized especially due to the advanced information technology available today. Just a casual monitoring of such databases could deter acts harmful to our national security, but there is a catch here: these databases have to be there, and be accurate. This is why all players have to be accountable. The citizen needs to be registered, ID card obtained, property legally registered, residence known, etc. None of us needs to relax and it is noteworthy to remark that organization of this information could help steer national development. We keep re-tarmacking and rehabilitating old narrow roads and call them highways, instead of widening them and adding more lanes or restructuring them into dual carriage ways in synchrony with the increase in heavy large vehicle traffic on our roads-and then we go about passing blame after killer traffic accidents.

A bribe at the local registrar of persons office affords a terrorist an ID card and the said criminal sets up shop in your neighbourhood because the land-lord did not verify the source of cash that was offered for long-term lease without a bargain, and the house next door becomes a bomb or munitions factory. Your brother leases or sells a vehicle to terrorists unknowingly because they are able to pay for it dearly without a bargain. Without being patronising or seeming to praise things American, one cannot show up at a bank in the US with large amounts of cash to deposit without raising questions from the bank as to the source of the cash. Accountability is very vital to national security, and it starts from the individual all the way to government. As we go about looking for who blame for our failures, it would be prudent to look in the mirror and throw what blame is due to the person looking at you. The security agencies failed, yes, but the essence of their failure could be traced back to ourselves. When the president demands that the world ought to join Kenya, we need to realize that the world we are asking to join us has been awake and fighting terrorism all along, as we dozed off on the job. We played a role in frustrating their efforts by our slumber, we nurtured terrorism by our corruption, government ineptitude and official criminal impunity. We need to go to confession and seek our penance, then join the rest of the world.

Kenyans In The Diaspora

The present regime in Kenya might not be the one to streamline the contribution of the Kenyans in diaspora and the regime's appointee to deal with this issue is, in my opinion, not the right person for this purpose.
First off, the Kenya government is approaching the diaspora issue in a knee-jerk manner of response. They have done very little ground work to get their facts straight. They have no clue whatsoever as to who the kenyans in the diaspora are, where they are, and what they need. The government's pre-assumed conclusion is that there is a group of Kenyans, a large one at that, a group with no idea of what is happening in Kenya,  with lots of money to spare and they would like to send it to Kenya.

So they have appointed a propagandist and a social media romantic,-according to his twitter handle,  Director Digital,New Media & Diaspora. Executive Office of the President-'to deliver the Digital Promise & Connect Kenyans to the Presidency!' and  coordinate the affairs of the diaspora? One is forced to wonder just what happened to Duncan Ndirangu, Public Communications Officer-Social Media Manager at the Office of Public Communications/Government Spokesperson?

Did the powers that be request and receive a policy statement from the appointee showing his grasp of the task at hand and was this appointment competitive?
Matters diaspora, like the coffee industry or tourism constitute a very potent sector of the national economy to be relegated to a politician or a government apologist.  It is still very fresh in the memory of Kenyans abroad that they had been promised to take part in the last elections. It turned out too late in the hour that the government had no idea or clue as to the magnitude of the task. They did not know where and how many Kenyans were located at any given point.

At this time the Jubilee regime ought to be laying a firm foundation to tap the resources represented by the diaspora. The same way they have planned the framework of the government ministries and appointed so-called technocrats to head them, the diaspora fits to be a ministry if not a major department in one of the ministries (probably one dealing with economic planning) This is not the time to fumble with national policy. This is time to set up the systems that may very well determine the success of Vision 2030. It is my humble submission the the diaspora is a major player towards this end.

We and Them

Capitalism as a form of economic development or lifestyle and economic domination of the majority by a minority is on the downward trend. Recent upheavals in global economy especially affecting the highly cut-throat super economies of Europe and the Americas is a sign of underlying malaise that will eventually bring the system crashing down.

This is so because the stop-gap repairs applied to 'heal' the economies never, and are not addressing the real ailment(s) and the leaders/technocrats either have no will to rectify a sickened situation or simply have no political impetus to do so. In fact, the short term measures being bandied around as cure are simply further exasperating the situation by fatally bruising the majority poor populations. The austerity measures laid out in Europe, the half hearted stimulus packages in the US, watered down by governance gridlock only goes as far as alienating the political elite from the masses.  The majority being left to wallow in abject poverty, debt and unemployment and the few who are employed have to work two or more jobs to make ends meet-resulting in dysfunctional families. The 'Occupy' movement, the empowered 'Tea Party movement,' the rise of cult-like militias all over the country and the general feeling of powerlessness and mass paranoia are a result of this impasse.

The world over, especially in the capitalist democracies, strange crime patterns in the scale not previously known is a common occurrence today. The decay, compounded by under-funding of social structures starting at the family level is contributing to dysfunctional societies. The poor individual in the ghetto has nowhere to go for refuge. The poor are getting poorer as the rich are getting richer, in the developing countries and the same holds true in the developed ones. In Kibra, Nairobi, Kenya; in Dharavi, Mumbai, India; in the favelas in Brasilia to the Highland Park (HP) in Detroit, USA. The poor are being pushed to the fringe of humanity, to the edge, into a tight corner , and it is just a matter of time the pressure will build up, and when the explosion goes off, capitalism as we currently know it will be gone. As the saying goes; fluids have a way to find their own level.

The current displeasure with, and apparent shift from, the West by developing nations in Africa as indicated by the rift between Senegal and France or Kenya and Britain/The US in favor of China and Russia in the case of the latter while the Senegalese are open for any 'non-Francosphere' player may seem like a slap in the face on capitalism but that is simply not a panacea for the ills of mass marginalisation of the poor in the world. The moneyed elite will form new cartels to fleece their nations and impoverished masses with multinationals from the new trading partners - case in point is the apparent rise in illicit ivory trafficking that seems to be unstoppable since the Chinese got involved in infrastructure rehabilitation in Kenya. There is some positive aspects in these moves, especially when one considers the facts that; The Senegalese could only get bottled water, processed milk among other basic necessities from France! So one can only guess as to the scope of deprivation the country's poor face. Nigeria, a major crude oil producer in the powerful league known as OPEC, is a major exporter of crude oil but also a major importer of processed petroleum products! The Congo-Namibia-Niger (as a region) is a primary source of diamonds among other rare products like uranium but here lives some of the most deprived populations in the world.

The loop-sided game of grabbing from the earth's resources is just about to reach maximum saturation. The 99% are waking up from a reverie of hundreds of years. The waking up is taking various diverse forms but they are waking up. The Tiananmen Square uprising, theTwitter Revolution in the Persian gulf, the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, the 'liberation struggles' happening in Africa, the Cochabamba water war in Argentina, struggles that have rocked Bolivia, the Amazonian natives' struggles against loggers and non-native farmers - though all seem to be still-births at best, the implication is clear. It is them against us. It is the slow stirring of a powerful, sleeping giant. The rumbling and spewing of steam by a powerful volcano about to erupt.

To Amend Or Not To Amend....That's The Question.

A national constitution-or any constitution for that matter-is not meant to be a static contract but a dynamic one that evolves with time and circumstances. The only hustle is that to effect evolution to constitutions, all the parties, or the majority, must concur with the changes-and herein lies the hard task; lobbying and persuading this majority to agree. In our situation as Kenyans, there is the added trick that once a suitable population is persuaded to go along with constitutional amendments, the legislators have to come in and deliberate on them. Our legislators have made a mark and proven time and again on how they go about deliberations on national issues. Issues that do not touch on their personal finances.

The current clamor to amend the constitution as it now stands, spearheaded by the CORD politicians may be misinterpreted by the opposing side but it may have in itself, good merit. It is a statement that our constitution is not rigid. It may be ill-timed (and I stand to be corrected) but it most certainly has merit. I, for one felt that the clause(s) that touch on methods and timing to recall sitting legislators either in County, Senate or National assemblies should be amended. This was even before the politicians had displayed their insensitivity to Kenyans' feelings in the houses. Before they treated us to the drama of selfish maneuvers to enrich themselves and to position themselves in their perceived order of power, all while the ordinary citizen was crawling under the burdens of abject poverty and insecurity. I felt pinched enough to call for an amendment before giving the constitution time to prove itself fit or unfit to guarantee good governance.

The CORD politicians may be rushing the gun to call for their referendum and/or amendment-especially when their targeted clauses are those that deal with power and positions of power, the sound-bytes being emphasised too give a strong message of 'former powerful, now stripped of power', 'fearing political oblivion'.Theirs may be interpreted to be 'seeking a short cut to power', seeking to 'get back to power by back-door', scheming to 'keep the government side-tracked and distracted' so that they can accuse the said government of non-performance. The gridlock that manifested in the early days of the 11th parliament was truly saddening to the sober observer. The only issue the legislators were able to compromise-actually to agree on-was their salaries and allowances! It is my honest submission that anything should be tried before being rejected, and going by my earlier stated feeling of frustration with the recall clause, I would be inclined to sympathize and empathize with those calling for amending the constitution. My only prayer is that we approach this with sobriety and clear minds, the same way we went about the initial referendum culminating in the constitutional writing. Let us not loose sight of the fact that some opponents of this constitution finally ended up supporting it and are now deemed as benefitting unfairly. Some proponents lost in the last election and are now smarting from the apparent rejection by the electorate. None of this is static, our politics is highly fluid and the dynamics may change radically before the next polls. At this time we may not know who (or what) will generate the next euphoria.

Could we as a nation cultivate the ideals of entrenching constitutional structures and the general respect of the law? So much of our energies is wasted on personality cults, personal vendetta, parochial scrambling and activism that at the end of the day, the sum total of our struggles is who ate how much and how could we eat more than them the next time. We are now accusing the government of reneging on devolution yet we know very well that devolution is demanded by the constitution and so the law enforces it, but because shouting that the government is unfaithful scores more political points we chose it instead of preparing the legal way to push it or simply giving it time to see what they are planning. Some of the counties have not come up with credible budgets to warrant funds disbursal. Why do we want tax payers' money poured into bottomless pits without accountability? These counties without funds may be serviced by the central government until they are accountable enough to take care of their own business-No services ought to be denied of the people just because their county governments are limping. Could we as a nation disengage the gear of campaigns and engage that of nation-building. Our national heritage is still being plundered by crooks- animals killed by poachers, scrap-metal dealers cannibalising any structures put up , our law enforcement officers are still being hunted down by thugs, our sick still unattended in the hospitals and at home unable to go to hospital, we still have thousands in IDP camps and others in informal settlements, our youth still unemployed are still over-indulging in illicit liquor and drugs. We need to hit the pause button in our politics and pay more attention on more pressing issues of the day.

101_0242

101_0242 a video by kahura on Flickr.

As eccentric as the builder, this castle stands testimony to man's heights of peculiarity.

Please, first things first.

In the ongoing tussle between the citizens of Kenya and the government which is trying to raise its revenue while the mwananchi is trying to survive, the two positions are totally understandable. Government needs to raise funds to cater for services, but then again, it needs to be frugal in its expenditure. It would be in order to point out some pertinent issues that need not be obliterated by the dust that is bound to be raised by all the busybodies who are clamoring to be seen to represent the cornered mwananchi. I'm holding my breath to see how the Jubilee coalition in the National Assembly is going to help check the government and the complementary maneuvers from the CORD coalition.

When the politicians promise wananchi 'goodies' during electioneering periods, they are cheered on and no one goes the next step to question how the 'goodies' will be paid for or whether they are 'freebies'. The last electioneering period offered us a very appropriate forum to interrogate the candidates and their policies, unfortunately most of us were fixated by the very idea of being able to question the aspirants and lost sight of the intended objective. We dwelt too much on the hype of the moments during the debates and gave little or no attention to the core issues at hand-income versus expenditure in our national and county budgets.

The Jubilee coalition had promised laptop computers to all children entering Std One once elected and most of us cheered them for this but did not question them how they were going to fund this project. We even lost sight of the fact that the said children were mostly starving or on the verge of starvation. They are studying under trees for lack of classrooms and are poorly sheltered at home. Surely, had we been a little sober in our deliberations with our leaders, we would have sought to feed, cloth and shelter these kids before giving them the laptops. We would have learnt that the Jubilee two did not have a concrete strategy for funding their policies without increasing the taxation base and this does not in anyway imply that their CORD opponents had anything better or credible to offer.

During the debates, everything was painted rosy red, honey yellow, and all the other colours of the competing coalitions. The resulting kaleidoscopic display dazzled and hypnotized most of us into the euphoria of voting without thinking. Now, we are all bitter that the first order of business by the newly elected leaders was to raise the national and county wage bills without disclosing where or how the funds will be obtained. We are witnessing a near-dysfunctional nation due to supremacy turf wars between the National Assembly and the Senate, get-rich-quick leaders bent only to lining their pockets before the next elections,  and inoperable county governments due to direction-less county executives and representatives.

While the mwananchi is being forced to dig deeper into pockets that are already empty, just to feed and cloth, we see blatant extravagance by both national and county governments; spending nonsensical figures to pamper retired leaders with freebies while we are paying hefty retirement packages, the fuel guzzlers of yesteryears are back on our roads ferrying the leaders, We need to tax all items of luxury fullest, including the unnecessarily expensive vehicles used by our politicians before even considering taxing the basic necessities like maize meal, rice, 'mafuta taa', farm inputs, etc
And could someone please correct the spelling on the Deputy President's podium..

Let's All Be Vigilant

Ours is an affiliation of convenience-By this I mean our nationhood. Our state-hood. When the partition of the African continent was carried out by the European powers, they did not care who was separated with whom and who was bunched with whom, as long as the lines put the necessary resources on their sphere of influence, traditional enemies were  bundled together while cousins were separated by a simple line later on referred to as the international border. The large, expansive Cushite peoples were split into Somalis in Somalia and Somalis in Kenya, Somalis in Ethiopia, etc. The Teso were split into the two nations later on known as Kenya and Uganda. Mt Kilimanjaro was offered as a gift to a Germanic monarchy by the British one and by so doing, the Wa Chaga and other peoples like the Wa Pare were split into two foreigners with their Kenyan counterparts.

We have always had our ethnic identities since time immemorial and we will always do. There is nothing we can do about this and the soonest we learn to appreciate the benefits-and there are many that come with it,- the better. Diversity has been embraced positively all over the world and fruits are visible to all who care to see. It has also, unfortunately, been abused in nearly equal measure and again, the bitter fruits can be seen all over the globe. Our biggest enemy is negative ethnicity. Negative ethnicity feeds and breeds on itself. It forces peoples into a rut, a vicious cycle that is very hard to get out. It promises benefits and at the same time denies benefits and the victims are put in a perpetual carrot-in front-of-donkey situation. It creates lords and serfs. It is immoral.

Sadly part of the reasons- and they really are not reasons but excuses-for ethnic reasoning  which leads to negative ethnicity is the endemic corruption that we have all perpetuated. We have become immune to the pangs of corruption as long as it is being practiced by 'our brothers' or 'our people'. As long as 'it is our turn to eat', then it is not corruption. We even use corruption to try and keep 'others' out of power and when others effectively lock us out of power we start shouting that they are the most corrupt. We only see corruption when practiced by 'others' and we brand them and their ethnic group en masse, as corrupt.

This rut that we all have been driven into becomes most obvious every five years when we hold our general elections. Our systems have been set up such that one has to be nominated in ones local region to run for any seat. If one misses the support of the local community, then it's an uphill task to get nominated therefore one starts by convincing the local masses who are usually ignorant of national issues that their chance of ever getting the 'fruits of governance' is by electing him/her. Usually the targeted population is the most marginalised and under-informed, usually living in abject poverty and misery. These are the gullible citizens who form the grassroots support base. These are the fodder that fuel the fires of 'euphoria' that the politicians rely on to get elected, the same troops that may be used to create a voting block by eliminating any opposition by either ethnic cleansing, or simply intimidation of voters or competitors. This sadly leads to our general elections looking like an ethnic census and methinks they will for a long time to come. What we need to do is to use what structures we have in our constitution to neutralize any negative effect this may bring about by instilling the philosophy of winner-not-take-all after our elections. Our elections should not be zero-sum affair between ethnic groups. We already have some entrenched in the constitution and we ought to give them a sober evaluation and re-evaluation while crafting other useful ones, working on our constitution to serve the majority of citizens rather than the small political class.

It may be true today that the government is more 'of all peoples, by all peoples and for all peoples' than has ever been in our history of self governance. It is not perfect as has been brought to light by the acts of the 11th parliament, some commissions of the reformed judiciary, and to some extent too by some acts of the executive-both national and county. Some might be wished away as 'teething' problems but some are fundamental flaws-unforeseen, I hope, and need to be dealt with with the urgency of now. We should not sit back and let entrench a corrupted contract of governance. The masses need to be educated and re-educated on ways and needs to engage government everyday of the five years and not merely to sit back in complicity waiting for the next general election. All those that voted for the government and those that did not are together in affiliation of chance. It is our shared responsibility to check our agencies of governance because in the final analysis, when all the dust has settled, it is them against us. It is their turn to eat and it is still our turn to be eaten. Sote tukae macho.

Why The Senators?

The line being spun by the Senators is that by ignoring, or for that matter contemplating abolishing the senate, is tantamount to killing devolution at birth, those grand masters of Kenyan politics of greed and selfishness are simply playing on the ordinary mwananchi's ignorance of the new constitutional order.
They will not point out that devolution is demanded by the constitution and is not pegged on an individual's (read the current president) whims and desires. In fact the current regime is held accountable by the constitution to implement all the laid down clauses, chapters and schedules and this will be the yardstick that will be used come the next elections-which I suspect the current principles will be expected to run.
Truth be told, and this is my opinion, I feel the senate was an unnecessary addition to the peoples' representatives, I feel we are over-represented and then taking the fact that our representatives don't seem to be 'adding value' to our lives, I would agree with the abolitionists. Let's do away with the Senate and also let's streamline the rules of engagement between the National assembly and the citizens.
The spirit of the constitution was that if the people were dissatisfied by the conduct of an elected member they could recall them by simply having a given number of voters sign a petition and forward it to the speaker. That spirit was rubbished by our not-so-worthy parliamentarians, most of whom who are now hiding in the Senate and the citizen was left the looser.
The same ease with which the politicians can get nominated and elected into office, the same ease should be the procedure to get them out of office- especially since such a need would be precipitated by acts or omissions bordering on criminality.

First Things First...

My feelings on government (UhuRuto) promises have featured elsewhere on this forum before- even before the 'Jubilant government' had landed the job officially . I have strictly no problem with the said promises but my feelings are that we as a nation need to deliberate and come into some form of consensus on our priorities.

Job creation is certainly a good objective because it is a backbone for affordable livelihood for most Kenyans living in abject poverty. Security, both national and civil is another goal that we need not loose sight of. Kenyans are hard working and it waters down their aspirations if they create fear among themselves simply by working hard to alleviate their circumstances. We do not want a situation where people are forced to migrate from certain regions simply because they are targets of marauding gangs who target well-to-do citizens, be it in the Northern, North eastern, Coast, Kiambu, Bungoma, Kisumu or Baragoi. We all need to feel safe wherever we are, whatever we are doing or whatever our standing in society.

With attainment of adequate job levels- and we need to make sure that jobs created fit all strata of society- citizens will be able to afford basic livelihoods. There should not be the consequent mass migration by a cowed population to apparently secure regions like urban centers. Let us feel safe to live and work in all regions.

When most of these (goals) and others that Kenyans definitely will come up with are attained, our school children will be studying in proper classrooms equipped with basic amenities and facilities of learning, roofs probably fitted with functional solar panels and bore-holes (or artesian wells) supplying clean running water. Trees and rocks will be subjects of study not shelter and furniture in the schools. Well-fed and dressed children will be playing on well maintained and manicured fields in the schools, chasing and kicking real soccer balls not 'sodom apple' fruits between two rocks on a dusty, stony field. Then, and only then will they be nearly ready for a laptop apiece.

One wild card agenda I would like to throw out there for consideration- because I am a thinking Kenyan like most of us- is that instead of the direction we are taking towards nuclear energy (a certain American president could not differentiate it from 'new killer' energy), and that was before Fukushima Daiichi, how about working on either acquiring an eye in space that would maintain surveillance on our region round the clock so that we can see stuff, like cattle rustlers herding thousands of livestock across large expanses of terrain, scores of marauding gangs ransacking villages, swarms of locusts, among other national disasters that we seem so helpless at 'seeing'. We could either lease one of those up there or we could launch one of our own- Now this may be a far-fetched idea but it is my submission that we have not fully exploited the available sources of energy in the region to warrant venturing into nuclear energy.

Waiting To Exhale

The nation is literally waiting to exhale.
For all those Kenyans who voted either way because of fear of domination by the other parties (or ethnic communities), shame on you. For all those who voted for the winners, let's hope they will be haunted by images of you on the queues, like refugees, heavy laden with your hopes and dreams wrapped in the jubilee banners, let us hope that they will not tell the difference between you and your fellow refugees-because thank God, all refugees look alike.

These 'new' leaders will be walking into offices crammed with lots of junk in the closets. There are myriads of skeletons lurking behind closed doors in those offices. Some of these skeletons were stashed away by regimes that these leaders participated in, others were thrown in before they were born Our prayer is that the government of the people will prevail and no more skeletons will be made. That these old skeletons will be pulled out and circumstances surrounding their existence addressed to finality. The landless peasants, the displaced IDPs, the impoverished masses  need a hope for tomorrow. The marginalised communities in the far-flung corners of our beautiful country still seek inclusion in all matters of nationhood. They are tired of being foreigners in their own country. For those that did not vote for you- and they are legion, we ask that you try to prove their fears ill placed. They had their own reasons for not trusting you and the onus is now upon you to prove them wrong. Corruption was given a passing mention in the campaigns, just like an afterthought, and it is our humble submission that it bears a very heavy responsibility in the situation we find ourselves in. We would like this addressed towards creating an open, clean and transparent form of government.

These new leaders all rode on the tide of the new constitution and unfortunately some seeds of doubt were scattered that some people did not have the plan to implement it. We pray that these seeds do not gain root. It is our hope that having passed this en mass, it is ours and all we ask of you is to respect and implement it. Any portions of the contract that you do not like, please ask us about any changes but do not at any moment conspire behind closed doors and boardrooms to alter it. Let no one creep into the constitutional bodies we formulated with the aim of subverting or privatising our aspirations. 

About the promises you made during the campaigns, we know you may not be able to keep all but we only ask for your indulgence to keep us informed of any failures and hardships you encounter. We are a knowledgeable masses and are quite aware that priorities are dynamic, they may change from day to day-just as we might suggest that you feed the children before giving them laptops, and of course guaranteeing security to all- parents and children!.Just remember that we hold these promises against you and we will always ask you what you are doing about them. Just as we are waiting to exhale, we are watching you. Do not let us down.

Peace because of ICC?

Justice and peace are indeed complementary. True. Is it injustice for individuals to plunder their nations and stash the loot in Geneva and other Western capitals while their citizenry suffer in abject poverty? ICC, USA and other demigods, are these not crimes against humanity too?
Millions of poverty stricken masses the world over are dying and perishing because an individual or a number of them emptied their national coffers and banked it all in private accounts in Europe and other Western capitals, others have actually invested in these foreign nations with these foreign governments paying a blind eye to it.
Selective application of justice and paying lip service as shown by the West only makes their enemies more vibrant and incensed. The US does not hold any moral high ground to either advice or comment on activities of the ICC and the ICC, its staffers or officials has no business litigating or commenting on cases pending in court, to the media. I could be wrong but this is sub judice.
'...They say what we know is just what they teach us,.....that we are so ignorant and...whenever they want they can reach us through political strategy...' These words by Marley should provoke our conscience and remind us that we should strive to shape our own destiny.

Rome....Day One.

When the dust finally settles and the eating class get down to their age-perfected science (or is it an art) of eating our national cake, we Kenyans have always gotten back, and we will, to our honest task of baking the cake. I have referred to it elsewhere on this forum, as 'treading the wine-press' and I believe, with my own frail wisdom, that these are one and the same. We bake the cake-they eat it. We press the grapes, they drink the wine. They do the shooting, we do the dying, we do the voting, they do the looting, what's the difference?
My take from what we just concluded with the ruling from our Supreme court is that though we are not out of the woods yet, there is a ray, nay, a glimmer of light through the tunnel. Our salvation is not far, our liberation match is so close the ground is literally shaking and those who cannot feel the tremor will surely be trampled when the stampede gets here. And it is soon.
I pray that as we embark on our daily tasks of 'nation building' as our leaders (curiously this rhymes with eaters?) always beseech us to, we ought not loose sight of the milestones we have gained. We now have the precedent of contesting an electoral process in court and though the outcome this time around may have been hampered by the time constraints, we ought to work on the mechanisms laid down by the constitution so that next time around, our justice does not suffer the 'hands tied' syndrome again.
We now have a body that is a little close to what we envisaged as to what an electoral prefect should be. We don't have a perfect one, but I dare say and hope this one is malleable and ductile. We ought to put it under a microscope, identify the defects and put it back on the forge and fix it. It can serve us better the next time around. We have the time to do these things, all we need is sobriety and patriotism, and we can summon these. Our electoral prefect, like Caesar's wife, ought to be impeccable, it's duties; transparent, free, fair, accurate to an acceptable margin of error, verifiable and accountable. Before the next electoral process, we ought to accomplish this.
As we continue building on the gains we have made so far, let us agree to perform a post-mortem of the last election with the sole purpose of holding a better process next time, let us know exactly where our systems, be they human or automated, failed us. Let us without apportioning blame or imputing ill motive, take that electoral process back to the lab and analyze it. The next one should find us better prepared. It took more than one day to build Rome.

Our Hope, Kenyans..

It saddens me to see the hope in our eyes, the hope of a better tomorrow devoid of all that ails our country today, but alas! We look at the wrong direction from where our help comes from. Today, we peg our hopes and aspirations on our new constitution, on the new government elected on the backbone of this constitution, on our newly elected leaders who shouted on the rooftops that they will manage and uphold the said constitution, and they did not let slip the secret that they had already started to sculpture the document around their own dreams and aspirations, that their main goal for re-election was to go back and complete the job.

We screamed at and cursed these lot at the close of the tenth parliament, held mock funerals for all of them and then come election day on 4th of March, we queued hours on end to re-elect these same individuals to higher seats in the Senate and executive offices, both local and national. We forgot that we had buried them, we forgot that these same chaps had fleeced our national coffers with scandal after scandal, awarded themselves hefty remuneration and retirement packages, refused to pay taxes. We had forgotten.

And that's what our main problem is. We forget too easily. We forgive and forget. Our new constitution might not help us because the people we entrust to implement and safeguard it is simply interested in other things all together. They will shred it, emasculate it, trash all that which guarantee our liberties and retain the skeleton of the structure that ensures their entrenchment onto power. We have, as we have done since the inception of our nationhood, entrusted wolves and hyenas to herd our cattle.

We need to re-think our collective national ethics, borne, tested and tried through millennia in our customs and traditions. We need to realize that though we pride in our various mother-tongues, that is all that is different between us- and that is something to be proud about, not be ashamed of. We are all the same. If anything, there is just two of us, two distinct peoples-those treading the wine-press and those sipping the wine. We just need to look at the posturing and jostling going on at this time, them positioning themselves at vantage points to reap the best in the next regime. Toasting each other with the finest of wines. The same vigour and artistry they displayed when they were coalescing and splitting just before the March polls, forming and re-forming coalitions on hourly basis. The vitriol they poured on each other on the campaign trail has not even dried and they are best of buddies now. These are them. They will never come to our aid. Because we are us. We exist for their benefit. It's never two ways.

Our day in the sun will however come. The day we will embrace what our traditions embraced, respect of oneself, ones neighbours and their property, refrained from the vulture attitude of grabbing anything that is hanging loose, respect of public resources, cut-throat greed, treating our local thieves as the thieves they are and not protecting them as if their heinous activities were communally sanctioned. We will one day see through the veil of ethnocentricity and pick a government of the people, for the people. The wine-press will grind to a halt and we will all take a break, each with a glass of wine in our hands and we will toast each other, and then we will go on treading the wine-press to national prosperity.

Let's Sing Our Own Song

The West has its own skeletons in their closets and due to the near-perfect propagation of information today, nearly every village on earth knows the unfair power-play, ills, corruption, intrigue and political manipulations/machinations that is Western democracies and the decadence eating away at the Western way of life.

Recent(or historical) events like the civil rights movement in the US, the subsequent assassination of MLK, then later on-JFK, the stealing of (or rigging of) the 2000 elections for GWB, the acrimonious vitriol after the election of BHO in 2008 and 2012, the disfunction of the US style of governance as currently established are all well in the public domain.

The escapades of the likes of Berlusconi in Italy, DSK (formally of the IMF) in France or is it NYC and others have left the West feeling vulnerable. The mainstream press in the West has also shown its true colours as far as objectivity or manipulation of views is concerned. A while back, the Murdoch news house in the UK opened up a can of warms they would have rather remained un-opened. Recently in Kenya, CNN uncovered or covered a militia comprising of one fighter displaying how ready Kenyans were to unleash violence onto one another after the recent elections. This is after the US president advised western journalists about the dangers of visiting such places like Syria or Kenya!

The West has lost the moral high ground to patronize developing nations. As Bob Marley once sang, '…We refuse to be what you wanted us to be…you can't educate 'us' for no equal opportunity….'

That is the reason they are fidgety about the developments in Kenya and other developing countries. They would like to control more the happenings there but they are aware the people know this and are alert. They are stumbling on themselves trying to position for individual and national points of advantage-yet retaining the noninterference attitude expected of them. They know what resources are in the offing to be exploited, and they know too that being seen as too eager to control the events may draw animosity from the populations. They cannot afford to antagonize the local regimes, yet they need to exert their influence in the outcomes of the political maneuvers going on.

We and Them..

We head to the polls to vote for them, win or lose they go back to drink wine together and we go back to treading the wine-press.
Ewe Maulana nguvu yetu, ilete amani kwetu. Utushawishi kwenye mwelekeo wa utu bora

Maisha Bora

Kenya is developing and if indicators of this phenomenon are scarce, one just needs to remember the recent presidential debates and some governorship ones to see what I mean. Kenyans, both candidates and spectators carried themselves with maturity and decorum and left some of us wondering if maybe Kenya has finally come of age.

All is not rosy however, and we still have traits that we need to get over to realize that elusive dream of a mature nation. We need to remind ourselves daily that we do not need to be micromanaged and prompted all the time to live and act positively. We are still dying in scores on our roads mainly because we still board either overloaded vehicles or unroadworthy ones. We are still rushing towards overturned fuel tankers to collect spilt fuels for crying out loud! We litter our environment without care and pollute our rivers knowing very well that our healthcare is still wanting-we ignore the simple teaching that hygiene could keep dangerous and expensive (to treat) diseases at bay. We are still inclined to crossing the super highway not over the 'monkey bridges', but on the road itself- we are too much in a hurry to get to the other side- In more mature societies, low speed traffic is prohibited on super highways let alone pedestrians!

We witness unscrupulous wananchi/public officers giving and receiving bribes and go about our business as if all is normal-'ni kama vindeo, ni kama ndrama!' We watch as thugs harass us day in day out and go on our way as if it's our noble obligation to be harassed. We watch politicians play with our national psyche, cheat us in generating our national income and at expending of the same. We watch helplessly as our national pride and national heritage is degraded and defaced by a few with criminal intent-our wild life is threatened with extinction by poachers and road signs/street lights are stolen by scrap metal dealers. We really do not need by-laws to practice what is right. We do not need Michuki rules to avoid unroadworthy or overloaded vehicles. We just need a more positive and realistic self-evaluation.

Valley of Decision

Kenyans, as we approach the month of March need to stop all and ponder the coming elections. We have very many times in the past been told that we are at the cross-roads and this time around, I really believe we are there- We don't need to be told.

We are going into the polls in a completely new constitutional framework. We are fresh from a murderous violence spree which we all can attribute to the greed and manipulation of our legislators and their goons. We have all been made to feel the pains of mass betrayal and have grown wiser.
Come polling day in March, the demographics demand that the youth of yesteryears have outgrown themselves and need to be replaced. All our traditions dictates this. The Kikuyu nation (c.f tribe) call theirs "Ituika".  This when the elders acknowledge the coming of age of their sons and abdicate their authority to the sons. The "Riika" called Irungu hands over authority to the Mwangi. Other nations (c.f tribes) in Kenya have their respective practices but with essentially the same purpose. This has happened since time immemorial. Customs and tradition demands this. From the national perspective, all those with direct linkage to the independence politicians need to be retired en-masse. Their gimmicks and gymnastics  in the recent past has shown that they have no principles or ideology geared to better the citizens' lot. All they are interested in is securing their positions of power and wealth, that is why they have been aligning and re-aligning themselves without so much as any consideration of the plight of their constituents.

The force that should be dictating our political choice come March should be in recognition of the advancements Kenyans have attained in the technological, and information realm. Historical, generational and demographic movements dictate that Kenyans reject Kanuism/Kenyattaism/Moism and their derivatives. The repugnant isms that have misruled the country since the colonialists left. The schisms created by these isms have been too painful to perpetuate. Let us commence the task of genuinely uniting the nation of Kenya. This is the watershed year and jubilee only means 50 years- Golden jubilee.