Article 34 is stupid

Article 34 is stupid. Allow me an explanation.

The freedom of the media, it is called, is guaranteed for all types of media. Article 34 stops the State from exercising control over or interfering with the a person who is engaged in broadcasting, or the production and circulation of any publication, or the dissemination of information by any medium.

Okay, Article 34 is not stupid, but you get the sense that the idiot who ordered the arrest of John Ngirachu thinks that Article 34 is, indeed, stupid—an inconvenience on the way to getting these pesky, nosy, annoying weevils known as pressmen to report the news they are told to report.

I can't imagine these people have forgotten the fallout from the ill-advised raid on the Standard Group printing plant in 2006. The raid inspired some of the best undercover journalism against the Government of Kenya for a long time, exposing the names and faces behind the extra-judicial execution of Mungiki adherents, the vicious murder of policemen linked to sensitive drugs' investigations, the whereabouts of "missing" billions linked to Anglo-Leasing.

There is nothing smart about reacting to a leak of the parliamentary proceedings with the statutory equivalent of an 150mm artillery round fired from a self-propelled field gun. Whoever advised the man atop of the securocracy that the best way to determine who was leaking information to reporters from "closed" sessions of parliamentary committee should be fired; he is more trouble than he is worth.

This is not the United States nor the United Kingdom and it is, never mind the squealing that is sure to ensue, very easy to spy on reporters, bug their phones, and place them under total surveillance; they make it so easy to track them because they have volunteered their personal details and have, theoretically anyway, registered all their communications devices. Except it is not so easy, is it?

The securocracy has done everything in its power to make it impossible to trust that it is collecting, even for its own self-preservation, is reliable because all the top securocrats see one thing and one thing only—the total number of zeros on tender documents, appropriations bills, supplementary budgets, and operation funds. Whoever has his hands on that money is a god, because he is accountable to no one but himself and his conscience.

Mr Ngirachu was told in confidence that 3.8 billion shillings couldn't be accounted for by the Ministry of the Interior and Co-ordination of National Government. What was he to do? Pretend that he did not know? Pretend that he had not heard? That is not the bargain Mr Ngirachu struck with the people who buy the Daily Nation, and he espouses the very best ideals encapsulated in Article 34. It is these knotty issues for which the Article 34 exists in the Bill of Rights—and if the National Government wants it gone, it had better sell the hell out of their proposal at a referendum.

 

I pity the Cabinet Secretary and his Principal Secretaries. They are an anachronism. They are Polaroid Cameras in a world full of Digital Single Lens Reflex Cameras, a world where jackbooted thugs can trample, and get away with, on the rights of newsmen. They must imagine that the 2006 lesson must be taught again; they are wrong. This is the post-katiba mpya phase, and sooner or later it is going to be untenable for mawaziri to sit atop corrupted institutions of the State that refuses to account for a paltry 0.0004% of the 2015/2016 national budget.