Kamatusa and Gema outdated

What do the recent Cabinet reshuffle; the Gema threats to petition the ICC and the fake anti British dossier tabled in Parliament have in common? The answer is Uhuru Kenyatta. It is in his effort to anoint Uhuru as his successor and to protect him against threats from the ICC that Mwai Kibaki removed the hard working and straight talking Mutula Kilonzo from the Ministry of Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs and dumped him into the Ministry of Education where he will have no say about justice at the ICC in the Hague.

But removing Mutula from the Justice Ministry will not in any way change the flow of justice at the ICC in The Hague. Neither will the collection of signatures by the Gama and Kamatusa communities, even if the signatures are presented to the United Nation’s Security Council to try and postpone the cases against Uhuru and Ruto. The unpleasant truth is the fact that silencing Mutula Kilonzo by moving him from the Ministry of Justice will not in any way, shape, or form alter the legal truth Mutula was openly telling everyone who wanted know the truth about Kenya’s case at the ICC.

Parliamentary investigations today have failed to authenticate the genuineness of the papers tabled in the legislature claiming to have originated from British diplomatic circles. It is now clear that the fake documents were a futile attempt to protect Uhuru Kenyatta against the ICC criminal cases by politicizing the entire process.

At the risk of being accused of hyping tribal nationalism, Gema leaders met in Limuru on April 23rd to tell all and sundry that Uhuru was the undisputed leader of the Kikuyu people. This plot however boomeranged when William Ruto immediately reacted by showing his brand of tribal strength by organising a Kamatusa meeting in Eldoret where he too was declared the undisputed leader of the Kalenjin and the Presidential candidate of the Masai, Turkana and Samburu communities as well.

The Kamatusa and Gema meetings were followed by an outburst of condemnation of tribal grouping throughout the country making Mwai Kibaki to join the bandwagon by castigating a growing tendency of reviving tribalism. The latest political development in the country was in fact a blessing in disguise in the sense that it exposed the organisers of the two tribal groupings as absolutely irrelevant in the modern Kenyan political development.

Ruto and Uhuru may appear to be young and representing the youth of Kenya. But their political scheming and organisation is old and antiquated. It is so obsolete that it has been overtaken by the new Constitution which prohibits political organisations based on tribal affiliation.

Article 91 (1) of the Constitution says every political party shall have a national character as prescribed by an Act of Parliament; have a democratically elected governing body; promote and uphold national unity; abide by the democratic principles of good governance, promote and practise democracy through regular, fair and free elections within the party; respect the right of all persons to participate in the political process, including minorities and marginalised groups; respect and promote human rights and fundamental freedoms, and gender equality and equity; promote the objects and principles of the new Constitution and the rule of law; and subscribe to and observe the code of conduct for political parties.

Neither Gema nor Kamatusa have fulfilled these requirements by the supreme law. Ruto and Uhuru will of course be among the first to claim that the two organisations are welfare societies which have nothing to do with politics. If that was true then they would have had no business backing anyone for a political office. If the two organisations were not political then they should have refrained from selecting presidential candidate for the next election.

Throughout the Easter festivals Anglican and Catholic churches, which are the largest and most powerful Christian organisations in Kenya, condemned both the Kamatusa and the Gema attempts to return the country in the pre-2007 tribal politics that was the real cause of bloodbath of the PEV. To his credit the retired President Daniel arap Moi was also among the first people to condemn the revival of tribal political parties. He too, as Kenya’s oldest politician, knew that Gema and Kamatusa wre, for all practical purposes, tribal political parties.

The open involvement of Kamatusa and Gema in political affairs also exposed the fragility of political unity in the G7. Its two top leaders are both interested in the top seat at State House and none is prepared to stand down for the other. In the final analysis Ruto and Uhuru will run for the presidency of Kenya as rivals who intend to unite later during the runoff against Raila Odinga. But by the look of things Kenyans are so disgusted with tribal organisations that Raila may very well win the seat in the first round.

Kenyans love their new Constitution so much that they will not hesitate to reject anyone who plans to undermine it through tribalism. They know for example that Article 91 (2) says a political party shall not be founded on a religious, linguistic, racial, ethnic, gender or regional basis or seek to engage in advocacy of hatred on any such basis. Kenyans know very well that the new Constitution prohibits any political party from engaging in or encouraging of violence by, or intimidation of, its members, supporters, opponents or any other person. The constitution also prohibits any political party from establishing or maintaining a paramilitary force, militia or similar organisation.

Ruto and Uhuru may say that Gema and Kamatusa have no such intentions or plans. But Kenyans know they are tribal organisations made up of communities that have been involved in violence and formation of militia groups in the past elections. In fact the real reasons both Uhuru and Ruto are facing criminal charges at the ICC today is because they are suspected of organising their communities into dangerous militia in the last elections.

Besides violating the Constitution by engaging in political activities, Kamatusa and Gema are not allowed by the Political Parties Act to engage, as they do now, in political activity. Section 4 of the Act prohibits any association such as Gema and Kamatusa from engaging in political activities unless it has been registered as a political part. It actually says the registrar of political parties shall not register an association of persons or an organisation as a political party if such association or organisation does not meet the requirements set out in Article 91 of the Constitution.

Given what the Constitution and the Political Parties Acts say it is clear both Kamatusa and Gema were engaging in illegal activities when they took serious political stands concerning the next general elections. Kenyans know very well what happened to this country in 2007-8 elections when tribal nationalism was used to mobilise people for selfish gains of the few.

Politicians backing Kamatusa and Gema have talked of establishing political parties which have yet to be registered under the new law. When they finally register their political parties the rest of Kenya will easily identify those parties as tribal institutions which will find it very difficult to exist in the modern day Kenya.