Without Muthaura Raila is ruling Kenya

Francis Muthaura is an incapacitated man. As the Permanent Secretary in the Office of the President, the Secretary to the Cabinet and the Head of the Public Service, he is an extremely powerful man. But his health has let him down and he had to be flown to South Africa for an urgent heart surgery followed by an inevitable bed rest that has kept him away from his office for well over a month. Meanwhile Prime Minister Raila Odinga, apparently with the full backing of President Mwai Kibaki, has moved in full force to reduce Muthaura to his proper protocol size of a civil servant who is obviously quite subordinate to the Executive Prime Minister.

The move was celebrated by an astounding pomp and pageantry of public launching of the Strategic Plan for the Office of the Prime Minister 2009-2012. Spearheaded by no less a person that President Mwai Kibaki himself, the fanfare that marked the occasion was an elaborate endorsement by the Head of State of the of Raila’s undisputed Constitutional powers to guide Kenya through the most sensitive endeavors since the establishment of a coalition Government. The only person who would have challenged the constitutionality of the whole exercise is Francis Muthaura, who, very soon, is about to be relegated to the position similar to that of the Permanent Secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister, Dr. Mohammed Isahakia.

Though The Standard newspaper saw the whole exercise as a clever move by Kibaki to set political traps for Agwambo, Raila clearly explained during the launch of the plan, that he had directed his officials to draw up a Strategic Plan that gave Kenya the strongest possible opportunity to make sure serious reforms took place. He explained that it all started with his Constitutional mandate of coordination and supervision of the operations of Government. In view of what many people thought about Government, that was a huge task which he took “very seriously”. He further elaborated that the quality and efficiency of Government affected Kenya’s prosperity. It also influenced how the people cared for each other, and the services were received. According to the Prime Minister the citizens needed to know that Government was there for them when they needed it most. This was why it was so important that the public sector worked smoothly and effectively.

Could The Standard Newspaper by any chance be correct in suggesting that Kibaki wanted to make “political minced meat” out of Raila through the plan? Is it possible that all of a sudden the President is outmaneuvering Kenya’s most reputable political acrobat in living history? After all Raila has always outsmarted the Gema group led in the Raila-Kibaki Government by Muthaura. Agwambo himself does not agree and he does not mice his words. He openly told the country: “His Excellency the President and I share the conviction that Kenya can be a more prosperous, unified and secure nation. We stand together in wanting a government and public service that works well for Kenyans and that steers us towards the aspirations set out in Vision 2030. As the President and I stand together, the Nation must stand together -- in unity and harmony.”

Those words must have hurt a lot of people who have always benefited from the political differences between Kibaki and Raila. Since the President’s visit to Nyanza where he virtually endorsed Raila’s Presidency, the working relationship between the two leaders has drastically changed. Today Agwambo tells the country in the presence of the President that he will endeavour to make sure “that there will be enough food to eat, decent housing for our people, a sustainable environment, enough water to drink, energy, modern roads, railways and ports to grow our economy; and, above all eliminate corruption and insecurity which threaten to poison our society and to tarnish our reputation around the world.” Wow!

These are not words of a politician campaigning to get elected. There are words of a leader planning to develop his country at whatever cost. When Kibaki takes a backseat and let Raila run the show, it clearly indicate that the Nyanza Declaration to hand powers to Jaramogi’s son is practically being implemented now. Enemies of Raila-Kibaki plans will shout loudly to try and change the trend but the undercurrent is just too powerful for them. The Kibaki-Raila political plan is a tsunami which will sweep a lot of people into permanent political oblivion very soon.

The eight priorities listed by Kibaki and Raila as the Prime Minister’s Strategic Plan could be seen by the enemies of the two politicians as a trap to politically finish Agwambo. But any optimistic Kenyan would see them as necessary challenges for any development conscious leader. Priority Number One concerns challenge of Infrastructure which is intended to improve roads, rail links , ports and Information and Communication Technology, which according to Raila will result in better movements of food and other important goods, improving business opportunities and leading to economic growth. If Raila fulfills this goal he will be the most popular politician in East Africa because the beneficiaries will be the entire population of the region. The achievement of this goal cannot come about without the creation of many jobs which will again make Agwambo the most popular leader. Kibaki could not give Raila the responsibility to oversee the achievement of these goals with the aim of destroying him politically.

Priority Number Two concerns environment protection and climate change , which according to Raila is critical to safeguard natural resources , as is being done in Mau Forest, and other water towers, and because ecology brings the country prosperity through tourism. This is a challenge which has unfortunately been politicized by the Kalenjin Members of Parliament because very important people from that community, including the former President Daniel arap Moi, have illegally allocated themselves huge junks of land by destroying the forest. Now they don’t want to be told to get out of the forest even though the consequences can be seen by the entire country.

When , rather than if, Raila succeeds in moving the illegal settlers out of Mau he will make a few political enemies from among the Kalenjin tycoons, who illegally grabbed the forest and destroyed it. The rest of the country will consider Agwambo a true nationalist and the political mileage he will get from that is an assured two term seat at the State House. He is very aware of this fact and that is why he proudly says he is willing to pay “the political price” that will accompany the evacuation of the squatters at the Mau forest. When tourism prospers as a result of climatic change, Raila will always be remembered down at the Coast and among the Maasai communities.

Priority Number Three concerns upgrading slums and informal settlements which according to Raila will ensure that all Kenyans have decent housing. The Prime Minister happens to be the MP who represents people in the poorest habitats. They voted for him from their ramshackle homes. The people of Kibera can today see wonderful houses being built for them. As usual some corrupt characters are trying to use the legal system to try and stop the legitimate slum dwellers from moving into the new houses. Needless to say, that will be done over Agwambo’s dead body. Knowing that his political future depends on eliminating slums from Kenya, the Prime Minister will spare no efforts to grab the chance of upgrading slums in Kenya. His political enemies will see that challenge as a trap to finish him politically, but there is very little doubt that he will soon prove them wrong.

Priority Number Four concerns food security which Raila says will make sure that no Kenyan goes hungry for lack of planning of or distribution. According to the Prime Minister, Kenya has the knowledge and skills to prevent recurring maize crisis and the talent will be mobilized. Food, or lack of it, is always a political bomb and when it explodes heads always roll. No one knows that better that Raila, who recently was almost shouted down at Kibera when every word he uttered was drowned by shouts of “unga!” Naturally Raila knows hungry people can be angry mobs; but when he is given the responsibility of feeding the hungry he can easily turn the anger into very useful votes. Rather than trap him, Kibaki has given Raila all the votes he needs to become the next President after 2012, by giving him the responsibility to feed the hungry.

Priority Number Five concerns improving Governance and fighting corruption which, according to Raila, is the real power. Every time Raila has asked for more powers, he was dying to punish the corrupt in Kenya. Believing that the country’s resources belong to all Kenyans, Raila has been given by Kibaki the key to jailhouses in Kenya where he will pile up all the corrupt people who have so far been untouchable sacred cows. Raila knows that is the way he to win the love and the popularity of the underdogs of Kenya who are his voters. By giving him the responsibility to improve governance and end corruption in Kenya, Kibaki has actually handed Raila the key to State House.

Priority Number Six concerns the implementation of Kofi Annan’s Agenda Four which is Raila’s pet subject. It concerns Constitutional, institutional reforms, land reforms, poverty inequality and regional imbalance, unemployment, particularly among the youth, consolidation of national cohesion and unity, transparency, accountability and impunity. In other words, all the things Kenyans have been crying for. If Raila has the powers to get them for the people of Kenya what reason will they have to reject him in 2012?

Priority Number Seven concerns youth employment, popularly known as Kazi kwa Vijana Programme. According to Raila the youth of this country are the future. The success of Kazi kwa Vijana programme must be sustained and replicated. Anybody who can get jobs to the young people of Kenya is sure to get their votes in the next elections. Kibaki has just given Raila that chance.

Priority Number Eight concerns transformation of public service which according to Raila underpins the achievement of these priorities. He says the Public Service must be exemplary in supporting Government and in serving citizens. As he prepares to oversee the implementation of the eight goals he actually takes over all the responsibilities of Francis Muthaura; and to make matters worse, he does so with the full backing of Mwai Kibaki.

Raila admits that this is an ambitious plan. According to him it would take hard work and commitment to working together across the Government and with all of the stakeholders, to achieve success. “In all priority areas the Government will move forward as one, measuring and reporting progress in making Kenya and its citizens stronger and more prosperous,” he says. His enemies must be wondering how he will do it. The Cabinet has already cleared 250 billion shillings to build Kenya. This time Raila and Kibaki mean business. And they have the international backing!

Gitobu’s Bill sure to go through

Gitobu Imanyara’s Bill to amend the Constitution is sure to go trough Parliament and become law. It is the end of the road for post election violence planners and financiers who turned Kenya into a cesspool of tribalism . This is so because ODM has announced it will back the cantankerous Imenti Central politician’s determined move to put the culprits behind bars. And ODM controls Parliament. Yet this time ODM is backed by a number of other parties in calling for the establishment of a powerful and independent, internationally recognized tribunal to try the mass murderers of post election violence. There is no way the butchers of Rift Valley can escape the law this time. When Martha Karua brought her two Bills – The Constitution of Kenya Amendment Act of 2009 and The Special Tribunal of Kenya Statute of 2009 – before the House, Imanyara led a battalion of backbenchers to reject them. His reasons at that time were very solid.

The Bills had serious loopholes. The loopholes were the fact that the Bill did not clearly say that the President had no powers to pardon a person found guilty by the tribunal. It did not say that the Attorney General had no powers to enter a nolle prosequi when certain important people are prosecuted. The Bill did not say that the Chief Justice could not transfer Judges who appear to be incorruptible in the serious cases. For these reasons Gitobu mobilized the parliamentarians to reject Martha’s Bills and instead called for the trials of the suspects to go to The Hague where neither the president, the Attorney General nor the Chief Justice could interfere with them. Gitobu wanted Luis Moreno-Ocampo to prosecute the suspected Kenyans who include high ranking Ministers in the Kibaki-Raila Government.

Though backed by the majority of the people of Kenya, Imanyara’s rejection of Martha’s Bill was seriously criticized by the international community led by Kofi Anna, who issued a statement saying he was disappointed that the Constitution of Kenya Amendment Bill 2009, which would have paved the way for the establishment of a Special Tribunal in Kenya, was defeated in Parliament. According to Annan this development was a major setback to the implementation of the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry into the Post-Election Violence (CIPEV).

He believed it was also a blow to efforts aimed at ending the culture of impunity in Kenya, which was a central objective of the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation process. The respected international diplomat said ending impunity was critical to addressing the root causes of the crisis that engulfed Kenya last year. Despite this strongly worded statement, Imanyara and his group in Parliament, backed by the ordinary wananchi, were still calling for Moreno-Ocampo to step in. The suspects were too powerful to be tried in Kenya without the interference of the President and the Attorney General plus the Chief Justice.

This was the stand of the country until the American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton visited the country and clearly explained to both the leaders and the wananchi the importance of conducting the trials locally. It was after this explanation that Gitobu Imanyara saw the light and drafted his Bill which among other things ensures that national immunities including the exercise of the prerogative of mercy shall not bar the Tribunal from exercising jurisdiction and further that the power of pardon shall not be exercised in respect of persons convicted for crimes under the Act. In particular the Imanyara’s Bill ensures investigative and prosecutorial autonomy for the Tribunal by excluding the Attorney-General’s powers under Section 26(3)-(8) of the Constitution. Under this section of the Constitution the Attorney General has powers to institute and undertake criminal proceedings against any person before any court, other than a court marshal, in respect of any offence alleged to have been committed or to take over and continue any such criminal proceedings that have been instituted or undertaken by another person or authority and to discontinue at any stage before judgement is delivered any such criminal proceedings instituted or undertaken by himself or another person or authority.

In her Bill Martha explained to MPs that she had brought the Bill before Parliament as the result of the deliberations of the National Accord and Reconciliation Committee formed after the political crisis triggered by the disputed elections held on 27th December, 2007. She said the Committee held its deliberations under the auspices of the Panel of Eminent African Personalities comprising the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, His Excellency Kofi Annan, His Excellency Benjamin Mkapa, former President of the United Republic of Tanzania and Her Excellency Madam Graca Machel. She elaborated to the MPs that her Bill sought to implement the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry into Post Election Violence submitted to the President on 16th October, 2008 (“the Waki Report”). The Bill proposed to introduce a new section 3A to anchor the Statute establishing the Special Tribunal for Kenya in the Constitution in order to insulate the Tribunal against objections on grounds of unconstitutionality.

Imanyara’s Bill takes care of that by making similar proposals. It is actually the work of Imanyara himself, Marta Karua and Mutula Kilonzo which shows clearly the group of people who are likely to support it.Raila could not afford to tarnish his name as a person backing impunity. His statesmanship was under scrutiny.So he has now mobilized everyone to back Imanyara's Bill. These will be the ODM, the Narc Kenya and the PNU. Those likely to oppose the Bill will be Kalenjin MPs led by William Ruto who will see it as a move to push the Agriculture Minister over the cliff. The result of the passage of the Bill through Parliament will be a serious security threat by the Kalenjins who will threaten to rise up in arms in defence of their tribal leader. Last time they were in the same mood was just before the 2007 elections and they were quite prepared, some would say even trained, to attack the Kikuyu community whether or not ODM lost the election. This time their threat will be against the rest of the country since the Bill is likely to get the support of everyone apart from the Kalenjins and Uhuru Kenyatta and his very few friends in Parliament.

The second group in Parliament that is likely to oppose the Bill, it is quite easy to guess, is that of Uhuru Kenyatta and his friends. The reason is that Kenyatta is said to be one of the suspects on Moreno-Ocampo’s list.These are the same people exposed by the KNCHR who the people would like to see fired by Kibaki and Raila . Short of that the people would like them to resign while waiting for Moreno-Ocampo. The passage of the Bill will anger the Mungiki terror group who are said to be on his payroll, and were used to create havoc at Naivasha during the post election violence. The question is who will the Mungiki threaten this time when the Bill seeks to punish those who attacked the Kikuyu community after the 2007 elections.Though Raila has his own way of dealing with the Mungiki gangsters, this time they have been caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea and the manner in which they will react to the Imanyara Bill, remains to be seen. So far the Kibaki- Raila Government has not prosecuted any Mungiki members who took part in mass murders of Naivasha where they were to have “retaliated” to the Kalenjin – Luo attacks. Will they escape the sharp eye of the independent investigators set up by the Imanyara Bill? Time alone will tell.

United PNU weaker than divided ODM

PNU is trying to unite before the 2012 general elections. In the party, however, are bitter rivals, all interested in the seat at State House after the next general elections. The just ended Mombasa meeting showed a possible coalition between Kiraitu Murungi and Kalonzo Musyoka, who are likely to be PNU’s running mates. The unity between the two politicians will probably bring together all the Kambas and the Meru’s as a powerful voting bloc. The team is also likely to be joined by a section of rich Kiambu Kikuyus under the leadership of Beth Mugo and Njenga Karume.

The most conspicuous absentee at the Mombasa meeting was the Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta who is said to be contemplating some form of unity with the Agriculture Minister William Ruto. Uhuru can be very unpredictable when forming coalitions with other leaders. In the last elections he tried to team up with Raila without much success. Behind Uhuru are most of the young Kikuyu voters from Kiambu who are said to be Mungiki followers. If , by some miracles, Uhuru manages to bring Ruto and his Nandi and Kipsigis supporters into this camp, the problem will be how to divide posts if , in the unlikely event , they form the government after the 2012 elections.

If they can agree to make Kalonzo their Presidential candidate with Kiraitu as his running mate and Ruto as the Prime Minister, this will be a very strong team for Raila to beat. The team will have Uhuru Kenyatta to satisfy and it may be quite likely that the first President’s son may accept to hold the same position of deputy Prime Minister as he does today. To try and get some votes from the Coast, the team may consider Chirau Ali Mwakwere as the second Deputy Prime Minister. This shaky arrangement is likely to be opposed by George Saiototi, whose presidential ambitions have never been quite removed from his head. If all these leaders can agree to back Kalonzo in 2012 then Raila will have quite a strong team to fight to succeed Kibaki as the country’s next President.

Despite the threat by William Ruto to pullout all the Kalenjins from ODM, the party is still strong throughout the country and remains in the forefront as the sole institution to form the next government without any coalition. For that to happen, however, Raila will not only have to keep a very close relationship with Musalia Mudavadi, who will most likely be his running mate, but he will also have to cajole Martha Karua and her Narc Kenya to accept the position of the next Prime Minister with Danson Mungatana as the next Deputy Prime Minister and a Minister in charge of Youth Employment.

As the most popular politician in the country Raila is likely to disband tribal grouping in political parties; but that step can only be taken when he is already the President of the country with a lot of Executive powers after 2012. For the time being, he will have to join the bandwagon of tribal political leadership of indispensable leaders in his new ODM after the departure of William Ruto, who is most likely going out of the party with rich Kalenjins from his own Nandi tribe and highly enlightened Kipsigis tycoons. The rest of the Kalenjin communities, particularly the Elgeyos, the Endorois, the Marakwet, the Pokots, the Saboat, the Terik and the Tugens, who have all not benefited much from Ruto’s present tribal leadership, are likely to remain in the ODM. When he pulls out of the ODM, Ruto cannot possibly move with all the three million voters that the Kalenjin ethnic group controls.

According to the Wikipedia encyclopedia, most of these people are pastoralists and very much like Raila’s own Luo people are said to have migrated to their present location from Sudan more than 2,000 years ago. If Kalonzo Musyoka’s dream of uniting PNU comes true the country is likely to end up with a fight between two , rather than three , political parties . It so happens that his own ODMK did not particularly differ constitutionally with Raila’s ODM. The two parties’ manifestos were also more or less the same as the PNU manifesto.

If tribal political parties have to end in Kenya then Political Parties Act has to be amended to prohibit political parties from copying constitutions of other political parties. The law should make sure that the country’s two major political parties actually stand for distinctly different ideologies from which the people can choose. It is common knowledge that the PNU stands for a unitary State of Presidential system of Government while ODM stands for Majimbo federal government structured in a Parliamentary system. No matter what type of the Constitution Nzamba Kitonga drafts the final decision about whether Kenya will be a federal State or will have a unitary Government will be determined by the people through a referendum.

After that the country will still have to choose between PNU, which will probably be fighting for a strong president and a weak Prime Minister and ODM, which has always fought for a strong Prime Minister and a figurehead President. Whereas the two parties will have to abide by the new Constitution, they have to come up with very different philosophies which don’t confuse the electorate.

According to Section 12 (1) of the Political Parties Act, parties are formed in Kenya to further purposes which are not contrary to the Constitution or any written law. Subsection Two says any citizen of Kenya who has attained the age of 18 years, subject to the provisions of this Act, has the right to form a political party. I believe this section needs to be amended to prohibit people from forming political parties that are ideologically similar. The duplication of political parties that are more or less the same ideologically has encouraged the formation of many tribal political parties that are similar except for their leadership.

Such political parties should be discouraged in Kenya. Steps to arrive at a situation where the voters of Kenya will stop thinking it terms of their tribe should be taken now that the leaders are thinking of electoral reforms. As far as possible the 2012 elections should be organized in such a manner as to have leaders who seek voter from the people based on the differences in political philosophies rather than differences in tribal or clannish origins. That however is building castles in the air, which is the wishful thinking of many Kenyan idealists.
The truth of the matter is, very sadly, that the 2012 election will be as tribal as most Kenyan elections. This will mean that the Kambas, Merus, Nandis, Kipsigis and rich Kiambu Kikuyus will vote for the PNU and the rest of the country will vote for Raila Odinga’s ODM which will form the next Government in this country.

Kenyan electoral reforms empower electorate

Power is about to be handed to the people of Kenya. They have been exploited by power hungry dictators since the country became independent in 1963. Jomo Kenyatta’s number one preoccupation was to change the Constitution to make himself lawfully a dictator who controlled the Executive, the Judiciary, the Legislature and the Media. When Daniel arap Moi took over, he systematically changed the law to make himself an even worse despot than Jomo.

He made Kenya a one party state with himself as the undisputed leader of that party. The dictatorial regimes of Kenyatta and Moi were made possible through the legitimization of sham elections which put the two leaders in office with the consequences of untold economic, political and social miseries to the people of Kenya. The situation is about to change as the country begins to think about reforms. One of the most important of these reforms will be the electoral reforms. It therefore is extremely important for the leaders to examine what have been the major weaknesses of Kenya’s electoral system. For Kenya to have free and fair elections in future, power must be handed to the people to enable them to truthfully participate in the complete formulation of an electoral system and also actively participate in the entire electoral process.

Three important steps have to be taken to make sure the country succeeds to make those achievements. The first one is a thorough examination of the Constitution to make sure it establishes a truly pluralistic culture that allows the existence of true multiparty democracy in the country. The second step is to examine the electoral commission to make sure that both its form and structure are in keeping with the new democratic Kenya that believes in handing the power to the people. The third step is to make sure during the future elections there will proper accessibility of all the candidates to voters and all the voters to the candidates. Voters must also have the accessibility to all the relevant information about the entire electoral process including campaigns, manifestos and all the relevant activities of the Electoral Commission.

There can be no hope of electoral reforms in Kenya unless a number of changes are made to the current Constitution. The first change has already been made by the establishment of the IIEC made up of credible people who were appointed in the most transparent manner through Section 41 of the Constitution.Nzamba Kitonga must make sure the draft constitution he is preparing for Mutula Kilonzo to submit to Parliament will make the provisions in Section 41A of the Constitution a permanent form. Before that part of the Constitution was changed, it gave the powers to appoint members of the Electoral Commission to the President and the President alone.

Memories cannot be so short as to forget the manner in which Mwai Kibaki abused this part of the Constitution, just before the last elections when he appointed people with the sole responsibility of rigging the elections in his favour. Today the country is eagerly waiting to see how the IIEC implements Section 41A which gives the new team the responsibility to reform, the electoral process and manage elections in such a manner as to institutionalize free and fair elections in Kenya. The new team will probably find it a bit difficult to do so without controlling the primary elections which are still conducted by political parties controlled by individual politicians with dictatorial tendencies of running those parties as personal properties. The new team may have to look at the Political Parties Act of 2007 with a view of recommending changes that will give the IIEC the responsibility of conducting regular party elections as well as party nominations before any general elections of by-elections.

Elections cannot be free and fair when nominations are conducted in such a tribalistic or even clannish manner. After all Section 14 of the Political Parties Act prohibits the Registrar of political parties from registering any political party which is founded on an ethnic , tribal, gender , regional , linguistic , corporatist, professional or religious basis or which seek to engage in propaganda based on any of these matters. The new team, which the country has yet to know how it operates, will find it extremely difficult to perform its duties effectively with political parties they cannot control. One of its duties is to conduct and supervise elections efficiently. According to Section 41A (f) the new team is expected to develop a modern system for the collection, collation, transmission and tallying electoral data. This can probably be done most effectively by making sure voting in future will be done electronically. As a matter of fact electronic voting should be introduced in the country in all political parties during the nomination stage of elections.

The third challenge of the new team is that of accessibility. One of the greatest weaknesses of past elections was the fact that voters elected leaders purely on tribal loyalties.The call for majiboism made Kenyans think of themselves as members of their own tribes rather than their nation. The challenge is to make political parties come up with original party manifestos that create meaningful debate during the election campaigns. As things are today, Kenyans vote for people simply because they come from the same villages. The level of party and electoral democracy will rise quite considerably when both leaders and voters begin to think about issues, rather than personalities, during elections.Until today, for example, people think of PNU as Kibaki's personal party instead of a party of the people.It is the fight to personalize the ownership of ODM that created an unbridgeable gap between Raila and Kalonzo Musyoka.

The time for campaigns through hype and hoopla should now be replaced by a thorough examination of party policies and individual leader’s ability to meaningfully interpret those policies before an inquisitive audience. Platform sharing during both the primary and national elections should be the IIECs number one agenda in reforming eletions as an essential prerequisite to get nominated as a party candidate and finally be elected as a Parliamentarian. Kenyans must have followed the last American election intimately because of Barrack Obama. By now they know how the new American President had to go through a very rigorous Democratic Party nomination through very well organized Primary Elections. It is time Kenya introduced countrywide Primary Elections to be organized by the IIEC. The second most important lesson for Kenyans from the last American elections is the manner in which the new President works very closely with his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, after going through a period of bitter rivalry for party nomination. This is the kind of mature politics Kenyans should be planning for through electoral reforms.

May be the forth step that the new team needs to consider seriously is to establish a very effective interactive website that will cater for both the public and the entire Fourth Estate.The manner in which the media covered the 2007 elections showed a number of professional weaknesses which the IIEC can help to eliminate through media workshops before, during and after elections . In the next election the IIEC should organize regular press conferences to inform journalists and Kenyans everything there is to know about the entire electoral process.And when journalists are given such opportunities they should master the ethics of covering election in a free and fair manner. The IIEC should also organize the platform sharing between both Presidential and Parliamentary candidates and make Kenyans follow the debate through television and serious interactive town-hall debates rather than through public rallies which encourage hype and hoopla and the game of strategy rather than the substance of elections. The ball is now in IIEC’s court.

Kenya’s IDPs exposed to war

Kenya’s tribal leaders are preparing for war. If they succeed, the people who will suffer most will be the remaining internally displaced people, whom the politicians have now forgotten and the Government is doing nothing to resettle. Instead, political leaders in Kenya are engaged in a bitter war of words in preparation for the 2012 elections. At the centre of the verbal conflict are tribal leaders who won the 2007 elections by mobilizing their ethnic groups into militia forces that engaged in ethnic conflict that saw the death of over 1,000 people and the displacement of over 300,000 others. That bloody trick by the tribal war lords has now been fully exposed by the international intervention that has brought the ICC’s prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, into the picture. The internationalization of the post election ethnic violence in Kenya has opened the eyes of Kenyan voters who now seem to realize the folly of being manipulated by ambitious leaders, who only want to use the people as clusters of tribal cocoons, for their own selfish political benefits.

The next election, therefore, will see the ganging up of tribal leaders against nationalists who have the interest of the country at heart. Among the tribal leaders are William Ruto, who will try to mobilize the Kalenjin people against the Kikuyus in the Rift Valley, and Uhuru Kenyatta, who will try to terrorize whoever opposes him in the Central Province by the use of Mungiki terror gangs. The outcome of that will be a surprising rejection of Ruto by the Kalenjin and a total rejection of Uhuru by the new forces of Gema leadership under Marta Karua.

As the country’s political mobilization against the repetition of the post 2007 election violence gains momentum, terrible mistakes of forgetting the fate of the remaining IDPs have been made by all the Kenyan political leaders. While the debates of reforms in the police are prioritized, no steps seem to be taken in line with Kofi Anan’s Agenda One to enhance security and protection of the population. His recommendation of measures to increase police presence and rapid response measures to protect the vulnerable groups in the IDP’s camps, don’t appear to be visible to independent observers.

According to Anan’s report on status of implementation matrix on progress, between February 2008 and today, 35 new police stations have been constructed in the affected areas of the Rift Valley. But this has not led to the protection of the Kikuyus IDPs from getting constant threats from Kalenjin, who are still frustrating the returning of the farmers to their destroyed homes. The farmers in the IDP camps are particularly scared of returning to their pre 2007 election homes because their Kalenjin neighbours who destroyed their properties after the elections are still there enjoying the country’s impunity and inability to prosecute post election violence offenders. Despite the noise made by politicians about the need to return the country to peace and prosperity, the IDPs are suffering in silence and without any defenders.

The current preoccupation of the debate on whether or not Moreno-Ocampo should start prosecuting the planners and financiers of post election violence soon has made the whole country forget Kofi Anna’s Agenda Two which called for immediate measures to address the humanitarian crisis and promote national healing and reconciliation. The report on the status of implementation shows that the Government ignored international guidelines on establishing a framework for national responsibility to resettle the displaced people. Though the Government raised 1.96 billion Kenyan Shillings of the required 31.4 billion Shillings budget, the resettlement programme is still hindered by inter-ethnic hostility and sporadic violence in some return areas of the Rift Valley.

There are also allegations of the use of force and corruption in administration of IDPs’ funds. The report says the resettlement programme focused on IDPs who were land owners and in camps to the exclusion of integrated IDPs and those from several other ethnic communities apart from the majority Kikuyus. Although 295 of 296 camps are officially closed there is a proliferation of what is known as “transit” sites in return areas by IDPs who are unable or unwilling to return to their farms because of insecurity.

According to the progress report of the fate of IDPs, hawkers, squatters, business people, landless IDPs without start-up capital or prospect to lease land or premises, remain in closed camps. The report also says that self-help groups of IDPs have established their own camps in safer areas. But these camps lack any basic service which leads into the proliferation of slums or what the report calls ‘new cities’ exclusive to IDPs. The report says the closure of official camps is not an end to displacement and that there is a need for a strategy on transit camps, since displacement is becoming more protracted.

When the country is as politically alert as Kenya happens to be, politicians will never get away from the tidal wave of evolutionary change that is currently witnessed everywhere. The catalyst of this change has been the visit of the American Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, who has elaborately identified a number of Anan’s Agenda Four reform items, which must be accomplished before the next general election. But even more serious than the Agenda Four items are items in Kofi Annan’s Agenda Two on humanitarian crisis caused by the post election disputes. The continued suffering of people in the remaining IDP camps is the most shameful thing to happen in this country. Now hat the country is facing very difficult times caused by drought, which will most likely be followed by food shortage, Agenda Two must be taken very seriously. When that horrible situation of countrywide hunger comes, the people in the camps will suffer even more.

The progress report says there are too many transit camps which are so remote and too far apart making the delivery of aid difficult or impossible. The report also says other emergencies resulting from drought and food insecurity, and high food prices have diminished the significance of IDPs as a vulnerable group in need of special assistance. It says attention to IDPs is on the decline yet transition from emergency to early recovery has not been easy due to abrupt closure of camps and inability of IDPs to fully return to their homes.

The report recalls that after the signing of National Accord the President and Prime Minister made symbolic tour of the Rift Valley and called for peace. At that time the principals and various groups of politicians and Government officials preached peace at various functions. Unfortunately the importance of the joint peace rallies was reduced by protocol wars between the Prime Minister and the Vice President. Since Raila has now established his importance as the country’s most functioning and relevant leader, the protocol wars have ended. Given the fact that his relationships with Mwai Kibaki have considerably improved, the peace rallies should resume with a view of demolishing transit camps so as to fully resettle the IDPs. If Ruto does not join Kibaki and Raila in these peace missions, then he will be committing political suicide and should be given a long rope to hang himself.

Tribal Militias still threaten Kenya

The hired hooligans who terrorized Kenya after the 2007 elections are still there. They could emerge from their hibernation anytime when their paymasters tell them to do so. The dogs of war can bark and bite whenever they are unleashed by the merchants of death who are about to be exposed by Moreno-Ocampo. The trouble is that the moment the ICC prosecutor touches them, the hooligans are likely to strike again. This time even more deadly than before. The unsubstantiated story goes that AK-47 guns have been purchased from Somalis and the hoodlums are only waiting for orders from their wicked commanders and financiers. The most disturbing thing is that some of the commanders sit in our Cabinet and they have been responsible for frustrating all efforts to punish organizers of the post election bloodbath.

When the country was in real mess we called in Kofi Annan to remove us from the political quagmire we sank ourselves into. Though not so conspicuously, we seem to be still sunk there. One of the first steps he took was to establish unambiguous steps which smoothly pulled us from the cesspool of tribal confrontation. He actually named the steps as agendas. Today Kenyans are preoccupied with Agenda Four which concerns long term issues and solutions involving Constitutional, institutional and legal reforms; land reforms; poverty, inequality and regional imbalance; unemployment particularly among the youth; consolidation of national cohesion and unity; transparency accountability and impunity. These are all extremely important hurdles for the country to jump before we can really claim to have sorted out all the latent causes of the 2007-8 post election conflict.

Be that as it may, it is Agenda One that poses a great threat to Kenya’s stability today. The Agenda was concerned with the immediate stoppage of the violence that tore the country apart. Though the bloodbath as it occurred after the 2007 elections has stopped, the country can hardly be said to be peaceful. The animosity between certain tribes of Kenya, fanned by the paymasters of the hooligans now threatened by Moreno-Ocampo’s possible criminal charges, seems to have gone underground. Some of the paymasters are holding Cabinet portfolios which grant them an automatic audience with the people wherever they go. Using their ill-gotten powers, they continue to agitate xenophobic feelings among members of their tribe in preparation for the day they will meet their fate with Moreno-Ocampo.

When Kofi Annan stepped into the scene in January 2008 he identified Agenda One as immediate action to stop violence and restore fundamental rights and liberties with the aim of stopping all incidents of political violence. By March 2008, the Ghanaian diplomat had succeeded to substantially end all political violence in the affected areas.

Today his own office reports that while widespread rioting arson and killings have stopped, political conflict at the national level tend to trickle to the local level resulting in renewed threats of violence, particularly against IDPs. The respected diplomat’s report says the end of political violence has not translated into a violence-free society and gang violence and armed crime has increased.

This is an extremely worrying situation. Talking about Agenda Four may be extremely important, but leaving the problems of Agenda One not fully solved still leaves the country in a political quagmire. Our leaders don’t seem to be concerned with that problem. Instead they are so preoccupied with their own self-interests even when they are talking about ICC or the TJRC. Kofi Annan’s office clearly says new forms of violence in the flashpoints beyond post election violence affected districts such as cattle rustling, cross border incursions from Somalia, Uganda and Ethiopia still occur. And he warns that new political violence is likely to repeat similar patterns in the same regions may be caused by subterranean tensions of an ethnic character. This is an extremely disturbing situation; yet our leaders, the President and the Prime Minister included, are tightlipped about it.

Agenda One was also concerned with the disbandment of illegal groups. These include the Mungiki, Taliban, Kamjeshi and Chinkororo a Machuma. Everyone in Kenya knows that these are terror gangsters in the payroll of politicians, including some sitting in the current Cabinet. Those who are in powers in Kenya today know they won party nominations through violence and they ended up in Parliament through violence and got themselves appointed in the Cabinet through violence because everyone knows leaving them out could end up in another bloodbath since they all have gangsters with chilling names that constantly threaten peace and security in the country.

Because organized gangsterism in Kenya has proved to be an important political ladders to power and prosperity, no one in the political class want to dismantle them. They are a guarantee to power and unquestioned village despotism which is the prerequisite of national dictatorship. So no one in Kenya’s political power wants to even discuss the number of such gangsters in the country. The chances are that every Member of Parliament has one in his or her constituency. This makes it extremely difficult for the subject to be sincerely discussed in Parliament, leave alone the Cabinet where some well known Minister are said to be the highest paying masters of the most heinous terror gangsters. Talking of the demobilization of such gangsters in Kenya is building castles in the air.

In his report Kofi Annan says so far no organized gangster group has been disbanded due to political support. The crackdown of Mungiki in 2004 showed some success but in March 2008 the group was revived. The report says military operation to clamp down on SLDF in Mount Elgon in March 2008 saw 92 suspects arrested in post election affected areas. The report says groups for political hire have hibernated, but members are reorganizing autonomously into criminal gangsters.

The reports adds that between August and September 2008 human right bodies released accounts of torture by the military in Mt. Elgon and systematic execution of the suspected members of an illegal group by police “hit squad”, and since the release of the report the groups seem to have reorganized and their presence poses a dilemma for everyone concerned with human rights – rights’ defenders advocate for sanctity of human life while ordinary citizens seem to support extra-judicial killings of suspected illegal group members. The report further explains that arrests kicked off amnesty debate as civil society groups raised concern that suspects from one community which organized retaliatory violence were not arrested. The details of these activities will come up during the ICC trials at The Hague, so Agenda One issues are far from exhaustion.

What is most shocking about Agenda One is that none of the groups have been disarmed. As a matter of fact it is believed they are more armed with heavy weaponry obtainable in Nairobi’s Eastleigh area where the Somalis have established a little Mogadishu in the city. Kofi Annan’s report says no arms have been recovered from political gangsters in Kenya. The report says between 2008 and March 2009 there have been 2,800 firearms recovered from civilians.

It further says in February 2009 there were five arms caches intercepted in Nandi but none of these arms was specifically recovered from illegal political groups, which did not use firearms in the post election violence but instead used peacetime agriculture or kitchen tools. According to Annan widespread allegations of increased armaments among the ethnic groups in preparation for future violence have been reported. All this is extremely bad news for the future of political stability in the country and clearly indicates that Agenda One’s goals are far from being achieved. Yet our leaders are saying nothing about the matter. What a terrible shame!

Hillary’s ICC warning rocks Kenya

Luis Moreno-Ocampo couldn’t be happier. His work has been made a lot easier by the American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who visited Kenya and stirred up debate about the trial of the suspected planners and financiers of the post election mass murders. No sooner did the Secretary of State jump into her plane than backbenchers, led by Gitobu Imanyara, announce a plan to introduce Mutula’s Bill, which the Cabinet had rejected, to Parliament through the back door in the form of a private members’ Bill. The Imenti Central MP told journalists his Bill had borrowed heavily from Mutula’s.

Whether Imanyara’s Bill goes through or not, it proves there is a major rift that has developed between Parliament and the Cabinet. MPs seem to have their ears on the ground and their eyes on their constituencies. Many of them now know the Cabinet in Kenya is as unpopular as George Bush was at the end of his term. The reason for its unpopularity is the stand it has taken on Moreno-Ocampo’s efforts to prosecute some members of the Cabinet for plotting and financing the post election murders. The people are behind Moreno-Ocampo. And the backbenchers have joined the people with their new Bill which, among other things, also wants the planners of the post election bloodbath to face the ICC in The Hague. Few people have read the Bill, but Imanyara says he plans to put it on a special website which the backbenchers plan to launch.

All these new developments seem to have taken place when the American Secretary of State engaged Kenyans in an open debate about the trial of the planners of the conflicts. Her visit achieved many things and among them is the exposure of our MPs who have no time to discuss anything with the people they represent in Parliament. No wonder Imanyara now wants to launch a website to discuss his Bill with the people. Without Hillary Clinton’s visit that set that example, Imanyara’s move would not have been possible. Hillary has removed MPs from their artificial ivory tower and completely changed politics in Kenya.

It was all started by her candidness when she told Kenyan politicians that the International Criminal Court prosecutor was on his way to charge suspect of post election violence planners and financiers. While she was visiting Kenya to deliver the keynote address at the AGOA conference, she took advantage of her presence in the country to talk to the Kenyan politicians about the importance of prosecuting the suspects locally. But then she discovered, to her horror, that the leaders had a plan to forgive the suspects through a stage managed trial by the newly established TJRC. She had to go public and tell Kenyans that there was no way the culprits could escape the long arm of the international law.

Before she did that, she came to Kenya convinced that the Kenyan Government was making efforts to establish a local tribunal that would have given the country an opportunity to solve its own problem. Soon she discovered that the Cabinet was badly divided with some people systematically planning to make the whole post election violence forgotten through the TJRC. This group must have argued that prosecuting senior political leaders would make their followers rise up in arms. It didn’t take her long to realize the TJRC solution was being championed by some of the suspects in the Cabinet. Mrs. Clinton, therefore, didn’t buy the TJRC story. But she also realized there were some leaders in the Cabinet who wanted post election trials to go to The Hague as Kenyans had lost all respect for the local courts.

Addressing a press conference in Nairobi she said she had been told by Kenyan Ministers that there was a constitutional impediment to creating a local tribunal outside the ordinary judicial system, and that there was required to be a constitutional amendment in order to create a local tribunal, which had not passed the Kenyan Parliament. Though the Secretary of State would have preferred Kenyans to establish a credible local tribunal, it seemed there was no escaping the ICC. Then she added: “I know this is not easy. I understand how complicated this is. It’s complicated, in part, because politically how do you go about prosecuting the perpetrators without engendering more violence from those who are supportive of the positions or the affiliations of the perpetrators. So it does take a lot of political will and leadership.” Those words must have made Imanyara and his growing number of backbench supporters start thinking of hijacking the Mutula Bill, which in fact had absolutely nothing wrong with it except the unacceptable suggestion to the Gema group that the President losses his immunity when it comes to the post election violence prosecutions.

Mrs. Clinton said America continued to believe that a special local tribunal was in the best interest of Kenya, so as to avoid having outsiders determine the outcome of such trials. But she reminded Kenyans that Kofi Annan and the people working with him had handed a sealed envelope of ten names to the ICC, which had a lot on its plate. The ICC was not acting immediately, of course, because there was hope that Kenya would resolve this matter on its own, and that was certainly the American hope as well. That too made Imanyara start working on the Mutula Bill to make it provide for the use of both local tribunals and The Hague.

The manner in which the former American First Lady presented her case clearly indicated that she knew quite a bit about what was going on in Kenya. The perpetrators had followers who were probably planning to cause more trouble in the country should their leaders end up in court facing murder charges. With that knowledge in mind she obviously easily understood why the majority of Kenyans preferred the matter was taken to The Hague. The hope the Secretary of State had in wishing Kenyans to establish their own local court to try the perpetrators changed when she addressed a huge crowd at the University of Nairobi the next day. There she said she had seen a poll which indicated that the majority of Kenyans agreed with the Waki Commission which suggested that the final solution should be at The Hague. She then added: “And in my conversations, even with ministers in the government who understand how important it is to deal with this matter, they too have said that probably that is the only road forward.”

As an outsider, Mrs. Clinton said, that was not something that she could play a role in, but she thought it was important that a decision was made. And If there was not going to be a special local tribunal that had confidence of the people, then she thought the people deserved to know that someone was going to put in motion the process to hold people accountable, and it may well be that that was the ICC. It took the Secretary of State less than two days to know that Kenyans have no confidence in the courts and that the only hope of justice being done was in the ICC. After that Imanyara started the ball rolling. Soon there will really be political drama in Kenya about the trials of the post election violence planners. It is the moment Moreno-Ocampo was waiting for. Undoubtedly he is bound to strike very soon.

Hillary’s Kenyan visit exposed wounds

Hillary Clinton’s Africa visit was a great success. Nowhere was that success more visible than at the University of Nairobi’s discussions dubbed Open Dialogue. Meeting students from various universities and leaders of the country’s civil society, the Secretary of State managed to stir up nationalistic emotions throughout the country when she candidly gave Kenyans an impressive shopping list of things to do to end impunity and corruption in the country. The most worried group of people listening to Mrs. Clinton must have been the Kenyan political leaders who are the obvious stumbling block to Kenya’s political, social and economic progress. The cheering audience was pleased to hear the most powerful woman in the world saying that from now onwards, America was planning to target individuals who planned and financed the post election violence that saw the death of over 1,000 and the displacement of well over 300,000 homeless men women and children.

In the audience was another prominent lady, Wangari Maathai, the 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who touched a nerve when she asked a question about China’s involvement in Africa today. Coated in the most diplomatic language the question to Hillary was what America was planning to do to salvage Africa from neo-colonial exploitation, which is being done by China through corrupt business partnership with powerful political leaders. That question let the cat out of the bag. It exposed the fact that the big Chinese developmental projects of building roads, hospitals and housing schemes are all hiding corrupt deals between Shanghai and African leaders. The big question is: Who are the African leaders engaged in the crooked contracts with the Chinese? Obviously billions of dollars are involved in the deals, though roads are in the end built and other assignments are finally done.

From the Hillary visit has come out this shocking revelation of corruption organized between African countries and the newly established global economic giants such as China. This is the one type of corruption which journalists have to expose. It involves billions of dollars and is spread in almost every African country. Obviously Wangari Maathai has stepped on an extremely sensitive toe and she is likely to be met with formidable opposition from extremely powerful people. Journalists in Kenya should not let her fight that important battle single handedly.

Hillary’s theme throughout her most stimulating discussions was the question of Governance covered by the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation principles on long term issues and solutions, commonly known as Agenda Four. She let the cat out of the bag when she said America believed there were some Kenyan leaders who were genuinely committed to reforms in the Constitutional, electoral, judicial and the police matters. The manner in which she came out openly defending Prime Minister Raila Odinga when a critic tried to ridicule him for rejecting American “lectures” on Governance , clearly proved that the leaders she had in mind were in ODM spearhead by Agwambo.

As the Secretary of State was entering the University campus she read a sign board saying “You are now entering a corruption free zone.” That gave her the words she used in her opening remarks at Open Dialogue when she told Kenyans to make sure the slogan expanded throughout the country. The challenge she was making was to the civil society and to the youth of Kenya who all were posing their questions to her in such a manner as to beg for financial assistance to help their various NGOs.

In the audience there were no conspicuous leaders of any trade union organizations and no religious leaders but the academicians and professionals at the University’s Taifa Hall paused such anti-government questions that clearly indicated they were thoroughly disgusted with the current leadership in Kenya. They were all asking for American assistance to engage in sensitization crusades to educate Kenyans about their political rights. Hillary had a few hints to the Kenyans. They could use the present vibrant Fourth Estate to make sure corruption among the leaders and other evils in society were regularly exposed. She virtually asked journalists and the civil society not to give up the struggle as that was the manner in which her own country was liberated to an extent of having a black man at the White House today.

Hillary Clinton had two very important examples that she gave to Kenyan journalists about what to write about. The first one was from Botswana, where the discovery of diamond had benefited all the people through visible progress in infrastructure and other developmental projects. And the second one was what was happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is the complete opposite of what is happening in Botswana. In the Congo, which has one of the richest mineral resources in the world, people were still slaughtering one another for wealth. Nigeria, for example, still imported oil products when it was the world’s fifth producer of oil. All these were good stories which showed the importance of good governance in Africa.

Hillary found herself in a minefield when she was answering a question from a student of conflict resolution from the DRC who wanted to know what America was doing to stop multinationals from financing the war in Goma. Needless to say among the multinationals came from her own country. She had to admit those were the kind of exposes journalists were expected to do to draw the attention of the world about international crooks who help Africa under develop.

The discussion at Taifa Hall will most certainly change the political landscape in Kenya. It has helped young Kenyans realize that they have to do something to reject the current corrupt and obsolete political leadership in the country. Hillary’s hint was clear – something has to be done to establish truly democratic political parties in readiness for the next elections in 2012. After all it is through the formation of tribal political parties that Kenyan leaders have taken over power in the country. Kenya is extremely lucky to have a very large number of highly educated young men and women who are ready to play more realistic and meaningfully effective roles in the economic, social and political spheres in the country.

A young lady from Mombasa asked the Secretary of State an extremely sensitive question about marginalization of Muslim women in Kenya. It was a sensitive question because Kenyan Muslims do not want to be criticized no matter what evils thy do in the name of Islam. Hillary was so moved by the question from the Mombasa girl that she asked for particulars of the questioners, with a view of building bridges with her. At the end of the discussions it was very clear that the Secretary of State had hit the nail on its head. She had virtually mobilized young Kenyan to lawfully fight for their rights. The result of her visit to Kenya will become visible in 2012 when, hopefully, all the Agenda Four reforms will have been achieved.


Posted by I am a at 5:42 AM

Hillary Clinton's Agenda Four shock

Hillary Clinton is in for a big shock. When she visits Kenya as President Obama’s Secretary of State she will discover that Kenyan leaders say one thing and then do the complete opposite. Armed with the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation matrix of implementation agenda , the American politician will be eager to see what progress the country has made in implementing Agenda Four; and when she talks to various Kenyan leaders she will discover they have no plan whatsoever to practice what they preach.

Among the first promises broken by Kenyan leaders, concerns constitutional reforms. Mrs. Clinton will obviously be aware that Kenyans had promised to enact a Constitutional Review Statute that would have included a clear time table indicating when the country was to get a new Constitution. President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga will not be short of words when describing to Hillary that every effort was being made to achieve the goal of getting the country a new Constitution “as soon as possible.”

The two leaders will even tell the Americans the country already has a referendum law that will enable Kenyans to either reject or accept the Constitution the experts will draft. Raila and Kibaki will tell Hillary that Nzamba Kitonga is dealing with the matter of drafting the new Constitution but hey will not tell the good lady when Nzamba will finish his task. The good story that Hillary will hear about the new Constitution is that the new Minister for Justice , National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs, Mutula Kilonzo, is a no nonsense man.

Secondly the American leader will be interested in knowing what progress Kenya has made in reforming the Judiciary. Mrs. Clinton will know in advance that Kenyans had promised to make Constitutional changes to introduce a number of measures affecting the Judiciary including its financial independence. She will want to know what has been done to introduce transparency in the Judiciary which will include merit based appointment of judges.

The American Secretary of State will be shocked to know that nothing so far has been done to bring about any meaningful changes in the Judiciary. She will also be shocked to know that no disciplinary measures are being taken against the suspected corrupt judges who have yet to prove to be committed to human rights and gender equality. Mrs. Clinton will also be shocked to know that the country has done nothing to reconstitute the Judicial Service Commission to include other stake holders and enhance independence and autonomy of the Commission.

Mrs. Clinton’s biggest disappointment will be the story she hears about reforms in the Police Force. She will learn that nothing has been done to establish an independent Police Commission which was expected to review and define the role of the Administration Police. She will be dismayed to know that no review laws have been enacted in Kenya concerning security and policing to establish an independent complaints commission that will give citizens an oversight of police services. Such a law would make Kenya join the international league of modern democratic norms. Kenyan leaders will not have a satisfactory explanation for failing to recruit and train more police officers to raise the police-to-population ration to the UN standard. Though the timeframe for this recruitment and training is expected to be 2012, there is no evidence today that the exercise has started.

The other institution reform Mrs. Clinton will be concerned with will concern the Civil Service. Whatever Raila and Kibaki tell the Secretary of State, she is bound to discover that the Kenyan authorities have done nothing to review the Anti-Corruption and economic crimes Act of 2003. The two Kenyan leaders will have a hard time to convince the American politician that the Public Officers Ethics Act of 2003 is all that Kenya needs to fight corruption in the Civil Service. The Secretary of State will most likely discover that Kenya has done nothing to review the legal framework for the declaration of incomes, assets and liabilities with a view of establishing an efficient and devolved administrative, compliance and analysis institutional framework.

Kenyan leaders will explain to the Secretary of State that Kenya has already taken steps to facilitate parliamentary vetting of senior public appointments. They will give the examples of the manner in which members of the IIECK and the TJRC were appointed. But Kenyans will have no convincing argument to show Mrs. Clinton why no appropriate constitutional and legal reforms have been undertaken to facilitate similar parliamentary vetting for all other senior public appointments particularly permanent secretaries and ambassadors. Mrs. Clinton will be shocked to know that Raila and Kibaki have taken no steps whatsoever to bring about new legislations on whistleblowers protection or freedom of information and the operationalization of the Witness Protection Act of 2006.

The positive stories that Raila and Kibaki will tell Mrs. Linton will concern reforms in Parliament Standing Orders which have been reviewed to enrich quality and output of Parliamentary debate. Strengthening of multi-party democracy in Kenya, however, has not been achieved as political parties still belong to individual politicians though some MPs have shown signs of rebelling against their political parties. Though Kenyan leaders will proudly tell the former American First Lady that Kenyans enjoy live coverage of Parliament, they will have nothing to tell her about electronic voting in Parliament.

Though the Kenyan Parliamentarians have yet to succeed in enhancing oversight role of the Legislature over the national budget, impressive steps have been taken to strengthen organs of Parliament such as the Parliamentary Accounts Committee and the Parliamentary Investment Committee to promote transparency and accountability in the utilization of public resources. An important step that Parliament has yet to take and about which Mrs. Clinton is bound to ask, concerns steps to be taken to improve transparency of MPs by creating a register of interests and opening up Parliamentary Committee works to the public.

In view of the ongoing debate on Mau Forest, Mrs. Clinton is bound to ask what progress has been done on land reforms. She will be disappointed to know that nothing has been done to make any Constitutional review to address fundamental issues of land tenure and land use. She will also be shocked to learn that nothing has been done to develop and implement land policies that are intended to take into account the linkages between land use, environmental conservation, forestry and water resources. May be the biggest shock for the Secretary of State will be the discovery that nothing has been done about land ownership document replacement for owners affected by post election violence.

When Secretary Clinton asks Raila and Kibaki what has been done about the country’s poverty, inequality and regional imbalance she will be shocked to realize that nothing has been done to ensure equity and balance are attained in development across all regions including in job creation, improved income distribution and gender equality. The President and the Prime Minister will most certainly draw Mrs. Clinton’s attention to Uhuru Kenyatta’s budget which made a major attempt at achieving some form of devolution but there will be little that the two leaders can show Mrs. Clinton how they have implemented policies and programmes that minimize the differences in income opportunities in the arid and semi arid districts, urban informal settlements and pockets of poverty in high potential areas.

The Kenyan Government will not be able to show Mrs. Clinton what is being done to improve wealth creating opportunities for disadvantaged groups and regions through increased infrastructure spending in roads, water, sewerage, communication, electricity targeting poor communities and regions.

Another Agenda Four topic that will shock Secretary Clinton will be about unemployment, particularly among the youth. Raila and Kibaki will be quick to tell Mrs. Clinton about their “Kazi kwa Vijana” programme but they will not be able to prove to her that the programme generates an average of 740,000 new jobs each year from 2008 to 2012. Clinton will want to know how youth polytechnics have been revitalized and expanded in all districts to facilitate the training of young people in technical, vocational and entrepreneurial skills to equip them with relevant skills to participate fully in productive activities. Apart from failing to answer that question adequately the two Kenyan leaders will not be able to show the Secretary of State any youth empowerment centres which they have either rehabilitated or established in all constituencies.

About Consolidating national cohesion and unity, the two Kenyan leaders will have a lot tell Mrs. Clinton about the Ethnic and Race Relations Bill; but they will not be able to tell her anything being done by the Government to establish and operationalize a policy and institutional framework for a piece-building and conflict resolution programme (PBCR) and an early warning mechanism on social conflict including a PBCR monitoring and evaluation system and a restructured Secretariat, and enactment of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Bill.

Raila and Kibaki will have a hard time to convince Mrs. Clinton that something is being done in the country about transparency accountability and impunity. She will want to know what specifically is being done to strengthen the policy, legal and institutional framework for increased public transparency and accountability, anti-corruption, ethics and integrity, including through the development of national anti-corruption policy, enactment of necessary legislation, and systems and capacity enhancements to strengthen the National Audit Office. The two Kenyan leaders will have no satisfactory answer to that question.

Though her stay in Kenya will be so short and she will be busy doing vital AGOA assignments, Mrs. Hillary Clinton will be extremely disappointed with Kenyan leaders’ efforts to implement the now most demanding Agenda Four which the international community would like to see operationalized in Kenya. Yet Kenya’s future depends entirely on how that agenda is adopted and adapted.

TJRC’s headache will be assassinations

The TJRC is in a tight corner. The country, led by the Cabinet, seems to have left all of its political problems to the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission. No justice will ever be done through Bethwel Kiplagat’s Commission unless the bitter truth is exposed. May be among the most unpalatable truths that Kiplagat will have a hard time trying to expose will be political assassinations that have taken place in the country since independence.

The real number of Kenyans who have lost their lives for political reasons will never be known. Neither will the reasons ever be exposed. One of the explanations for political assassinations not to be fully exposed is the fact that the murders were either committed by very powerful people in the Government or extremely influential people outside the Government. Some of the people concerned may be still alive and still in power. For that reason the country does not quite know the inside story of the assassinations of Tom Mboya, Pio Gama Pinto, JM Kariuki and Robert Ouko.

The big question is: Will Kiplagat’s team have the courage to expose the real planners and executors of these murders? Time alone will tell because the manner in which Kiplagat gets the answer to that vital question remains to be seen. It is that answer however that will determine whether or not the TJRC is worth respecting, trusting and spending money on.

Shot down on the then Government Road exactly 40 years ago on 5th July 1969, Thomas Joseph Mboya, was easily the most popular politician in Kenya. There was very little doubt that he would have easily stepped into Jomo Kenyatta’s shoes as the country’s second President following Kenyatta’s death, which was expected at any time, as the old man was not particularly healthy. Mboya's death, through an assassin’s bullet, stunned the country and automatically united all the Luos in Kenya who had previously been torn apart by the Tom Mboya-Oginga Odinga rivalry.

The man who was arrested and tried for Mboya’s murder, Nahashon Njenga Njoroge, was found guilty and hanged so fast that he had no time to tell the real story behind the killing. The abruptness in which all events concerning the murder, trial and the execution clearly indicated that the powers that be were trying to hide something. This was particularly the case when Nahashon Njenga told the people arresting him to “go for the big man”. During the trial no one really wanted to know who the “big man” was. Will Kiplagat’s team get to the truth and reveal “the big man” behind Tom Mboya’s death? Time alone will tell. Whether Kiplagat will have the courage to summon all the living “big men” of Kenyatta’s time, remains to be seen.

Another mysterious political assassination in Kenya is that of Pio Gama Pinto which took place in Parklands, Nairobi on 25th February 1965. The man arrested after the murder was Kisilu Mutua. A very quick trial, followed by an even quicker execution through hanging, took place at the speed of lightening. Nobody had ever heard of this man before, but he could have been hired by Pinto’s many enemies. As a real communist who understood the dogma’s theory and practice, he was an enemy of the British colonialists who had detained him on Manda Island during the state of emergency in Kenya.

If the British eliminated Pio Gama Pinto they must have done so to make sure communism would not spread in East Africa. Before his assassination, Pinto was very concerned with the brainwashing of the masses. He helped Jaramogi Oginga Odinga establish the Lumumba Institute which was only concerned with teaching Marxism to young Africans. The money to establish the institute came from Eastern European countries which made Jomo Kenyatta’s kitchen cabinet very disturbed.

Because Pio Gama Pinto was popular with all the other pro-Jaramogi members of Kanu he easily got himself nominated to both Parliament and the East African Legislative Council. As a founder of the party’s newspaper Sauti ya Kanu Pinto was very determined to spread Leftist theories and principles to the wananchi of Kenya. This must have disturbed Tom Mboya, James Gichuru and Jomo Kenyatta himself; but were they so angry with the Kenyan Goan as to get rid of him through an assassin’s bullet? Kiplagat’s team will have to tell us. Are there any living people who know the inside story of Pio Gama Pinto’s assassination? TJRC will have to find out. Will it succeed? Time alone will tell? Is there any hope of ever getting to know the truth about the death of Pio Gama Pinto? That remains to be seen.

Another political darling of the people murdered during Jomo Kenyatta’s regime was Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, known to everyone as JM Kariuki. He was mysteriously killed by unknown people and his body left on Ngong Hills for hyenas to feed on. A badly mutilated body was discovered on March 2nd 1975. Infuriated by the death, Parliament appointed a Commission to investigate on the real causes if the brutal act under the chairmanship of Elijah Mwangale.

Though the report named several senior police officers as the murderers of JM, not a single person has been taken to court to face charges of killing JM. The questions Kiplagat’s team has to try and get answers to are: Who were the cruel killers of JM and who sent them to do that dirty job? While trying to get those answers it is not difficult to imagine who would have liked to see the popular politician out of the way. First of all the man was extremely rich and no one knows where he got his money from. All that is known is that he was among Jomo Kenyatta’s first private secretaries when the old man was released from detention by the British just before the country’s independence.

The story goes that old Jomo sent JM to some East European countries to collect a “gift” for him. He passed through London on his way back home and opened a bank account in which he deposited for himself half of what he was given. How true is this story? Kiplagat’s team will have to find out. Will they succeed? Time alone will tell. Is there anybody who knows the truth about this story and is willing to expose everything? That remains to be seen.

Apart from that story, JM was a fearless Member of Parliament who specialized in exposing Jomo Kenyatta’s exploitation of the poor in Kenyans. He used to organize other members of parliament to oppose Jomo’s efforts to make himself the undisputed despot of Kenya. He once gathered scores of MPs at his Gilgil farm where they made the famous Ol-Kalau Declaration to oppose Jomo in Parliament. Did Jomo Kenyatta eliminate JM? Kiplagat’s team will have to find out. Will they succeed? Time alone will tell. Are there some people willing to tell the truth about that matter? That remains to be seen.

The other political assassination that will give a headache to the Kiplagat team is that of Robert Ouko whose mutilated body was found on 13th February 1990. There is a big difference between this murder and the other three. The assassination of Robert Ouko, who was Daniel arap Moi’s Foreign Minister, has been documented in many investigations including that of foreign experts. Books have been written implicating very important personalities in the Moi regime including Nicholas Biwott. This is the one investigation in which Kiplagat’s team should come out with a lot of truth. How it will handle that truth to bring about justice and reconciliation, however, remains to be seen.