Referendum fraud: Media saves Kenya

The alteration of a vital part of the Proposed Constitution at the Government Press amounts to a serious fraud for which some heads must roll. The crime would never have been discovered had it not been for the vigilance of the media which played its watchdog role in the most professional and admirable manner. The whole saga started on the 11th of May when the Daily Nation published a six paragraph story at the bottom of page five which was devoted to constitutional debate. The story at the bottom of the page could have been missed by any reader since it had such a commonplace and banal heading reading: “Error noted in law document.”

Many must have wondered what the big deal was. After all the whole exercise was man made and it was human to err. But alas, the magnitude of the error was so gigantic that it changed the essence and spirit of whole Proposed Constitution. All the wonderful guarantees made by the Bill of Rights were subjected to conditionality of "national security". Though stuck at the bottom of page five the Daily Nation story rang the alarm bell by warning that a serious anomaly had emerged in some copies of the Proposed Constitution currently in mass production and circulating across the country.

Though it rang the alarm bell, the story itself was not alarmist. It was neither used on the front page as a splash nor as a subject for any op-ed analytical story, commentary or editorial. The editor was being reasonable and all he told his readers was that the Government confirmed it had ordered the Government Printer to stop the production of the copies containing what it called “anomalies”.

The beauty of the Darwinian nature of the Fourth Estate is that the principle of survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence gives professional practitioners the ability of seeing a scoop even in the rivals’ stories. That is exactly what happened to the Editor of the Star who must have seen a real scoop in the Daily Nation filler of May 11th. She therefore went to town with the story the next day on May 12th when the paper professionally did a follow-up to the Daily Nation story, which the people at the Nation Centre missed. The splash of the Star’s Wednesday 12th edition was in a form of a question which every thinking Kenyan was asking: “WHO SMUGGLED CLAUSE INTO DRAFT”?”

As a splash of a national newspaper, which the Star has now rightfully become, no one could miss the gist of the story. The Star’s story was telling the people of Kenya that the Attorney General Amos Wako had hotly denied that he was the person who tried to smuggle an illegal clause into the Proposed Constitution. Though the Star’s story kept talking about section 21(1)(d) of the Proposed Constitution, which actually does not exist, everyone in the know realized that they actually were referring to the same part of the vandalized Proposed Constitution as the Daily Nation of 11th May was talking about, which is Article 24 (1) (d).

The Star took a further step and devoted their editorial to the same subject. In a punchy Leader titled “An attempted coup détat” the paper rightfully warned about what it called “the greatest threat to the stability of Kenya since the post election violence in 2008.” On that same day The Standard jumped on the bandwagon and wrote an editorial on the same subject with a headline saying “Address ‘errors’ in Proposed Constitution.” The Leader argued : “The alteration of Article 24, the clause limiting fundamental freedoms, to make an exception for issues that ‘prejudice national security’ is bound to be set up on as proof of ulterior motives by the State in pushing for adoption of this law” . According to the paper this alone could do much damage to the “yes” campaign by implying the Attorney General and Parliamentary Select Committee on review process were negligent or malicious in their duty.

Very strangely that is more or less the same conclusion made by William Ruto , the Minister for Higher Education , who is spearheading the “NO” camp. The only difference is that apart from blaming the Government for the mysterious and extremely damaging changes, Ruto was calling for stoppage of the entire exercise as the country would be confused with the publication of two versions of the Proposed Constitution. Whatever the case may be, a very serious crime has been committed against the people of Kenya and whoever is responsible should face the long arm of the law.

As the country curiously seeks to know the culprit, a number of questions come to mind: Who would be the people to benefit if the entire process of getting a new constitution is halted? Who were the people mostly uncomfortable with the section of the Proposed Constitution the hooligans want to change in a clandestine and illegal manner? As the country tries to answer those vital questions the Fourth Estate is admirably leading the country in exposing the truth. Now the story has become a national expose by all the papers, radio stations and television stations.

When all is said and done, however, William Ruto’s suggestion of stopping the entire exercise must be opposed by all Kenyans of goodwill. Except for the attempted defilement of the Proposed Constitution’s Article 24 (1) (d) which has been exposed by the Fourth Estate and has therefore miserably failed, the law of the land was followed to the letter in shaping the Proposed Constitution. The law is still being followed in educating the people about the Proposed Constitution. The crime that has been committed by trying to change it has not in any way altered the Proposed Constitution which legitimately is a legal document following a legal process which obviously does not please many people.

We must not forget there are some people in the current Government who do not hesitate to misuse their powerful governmental muscle to suppress peoples’ rights. These are the people who organized State-sponsored hooligans to invade The Standard newspaper and terrorized journalists in March 2006.Memories cannot be so short as to forget those who at that time said that if you rattle a snake you would have only yourself to blame if it bit you. Are these the same people who are now trying to strengthen the “State Security” at the expense of peoples’ most vital human rights?

According to Amos Wako the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS) had wanted
the Article that has been tampered with to be changed in more or less the same manner in which the Proposed Constitution was altered secretly. It is therefore reasonable to suspect the NSIS to have had a hand in the crime that has been committed. The AG would categorically not point a finger at the spy institution resorting to vaguely telling journalists that their guess was as good as his. Besides that Wako challenged newsmen and women to embark on investigative journalism to unearth the truth. Obviously the AG realizes that the media have a very important role to play in the entire constitution making exercise. Sad will be the day when the NSIS starts behaving like the KGB in the defunct Soviet Union.

The other group that would be pleased to see the whole constitution making process in Kenya stopped is the "NO" group led by William Ruto who has said as much. Whatever happens the people of Kenya, who now desperately need a new constitution, must not be denied the opportunity of liberating this land by accepting the Proposed Constitution. The most difficult huddles have been jumped and the petty, though criminal, attempts of stopping the move to get a new constitution must now be stopped by all the forces the people can gather together.