Ethno-religious Hypocrisy

Najib Balala, the ODM Mvita MP, was on his way out of the Cabinet and he knew it. Ever since he began flirting with the leading lights of the Gang of Seven, his days in the Cabinet were numbered and it has nothing to do with the MoU signed between Raila Odinga and the "Muslim Community". When William Ruto and Isaac Ruto led their putative rebellion in the ODM, Mr Balala had betrayed a certain weakness for their line of reasoning. When Mr Ruto's attempt at commandeering the United Democratic Movement failed and he was forced to settle for the United Republic Party, Mr Balala must have realised that hitching his wagon to the Ruto vehicle was a recipe for disaster so he began formulating a strategy that would give him a say at the national level hence his persistent hints of settling for another party "to be announced soon" and his accusations of the dictatorial tendencies of the ODM leadership (read Raila Odinga).

Mr Balala, Mr Ruto and their ilk are the worst kind of hypocrites. If they feel that the manner in which their party is organised and managed is dictatorial, which it very well might be, they must stand on their principles, something they claim to do anyway, and resign their parliamentary seats and seek a new mandate from the political vehicles of their choice. That they have not done this is proof that what they say and what they mean have a tenuous relation with each other and that their principle reason for remaining in their dictatorial parties is so that they continue enjoying the trappings of power that have blinded them to the realities of the hypocritical positions that they continue to champion.

The paucity of the content of their arguments is belied by the reasoning of their apparent rebellions. Mr Balala and his supporters allege that Mr Odinga has broken an MoU with the Muslim community. If it was not tragic, it would be humorous the instances of politicians from other political parties ganging up to castigate Mr Odinga for his apparent break with the Muslim community. They are not members of the ODM so their input as to how the PM has dealt with Mr Balala is pure political theatre bereft of any substance or intelligence. What is surprising is that many of these leaders claim democratic credentials, that they have broken completely with the dark KANU past of many of the leading lights in government today. Yet, their claims to religious or ethnic chauvinism are straight out of the playbook of the dark days of the KANU interregnum.

This is similar to the claim, made with such pomp and circumstance, that the Women Vote will determine the general election, ignoring the fact that women do not identify themselves only on the basis of gender. They are also members of particular families, clans, ethnic communities, faith-based organisations, professional bodies, and socio-economic classes ad they will make their electoral decisions based on all these and other criteria. It is the same with religious or ethnic communities. It is not enough for the "Muslim Leaders" to claim that Raila Odinga has broken an MoU with them; they must demonstrate that when Mr Balala was a member of the Cabinet and a leading light of the ODM the Muslim Community benefited and that these leaders ensured that the benefits were shared equally or equitably among all Muslims in Kenya. Of course they cannot do so, for Mr Odinga and, by extension, Mr Balala and his fellow leaders will have discriminated against every other religious and ethnic community in the basis of religion, something the Constitution takes a dim view of. If their intention was to embarrass the PM, they have failed.

It is these kinds of leaders, however personable they may, that Kenyans must discard at the next general elections. Their worldviews are limited to their ethno-religious backyards and no further. Their economic blueprints, such as they may be, revolve around eating and no more. Their socio-cultural plans amount to pandering to the basest instincts of their political bases and no higher. They have lowered the bar of political maturity so low that it is surprising that they constantly fail to clear it. They are the albatross around the nation's neck that is going to lead us from one bad end to another. Someone must remind them that it is brand new day. The general elections offers us the opportunity to do just that!

Puppet on a string?

Has President Kibaki handed Eugene Wamalwa a poisoned chalice? The justice docket has felled more capable politicians than the young Mr Wamalwa. Charles Njonjo so enjoyed the power that came from the docket that when President Moi finally shoved him out of the Cabinet he could only lament about the vicissitudes of the political arena, staying out for a decade until FORD offered him a chance at redemption. Kiraitu Murungi proved once more, that legal skills are not the be-all-and-end-all of the capable politician, getting turfed out, albeit temporarily, from the Cabinet over the Anglo-Leasing scam. Martha Karua, after playing one of Mwai Kibaki's staunchest defenders, stomped out of the docket and Cabinet after Mwai Kibaki reminded her that she was not the chief lawyer for the government; that job is and remains that of the Attorney-General. Mutula Kilonzo seems not to have learnt from the travails of his predecessors, openly disagreeing with his colleagues over whether Uhurua Kenyatta could stand for the presidency at the next general elections. For his trouble, rather than being shown the door, he has been moved to that snake-pit that is Jogoo House as the new Minister for Education. Now it is for the relative neophyte, Eugene Wamalwa, to occupy what is arguably an accursed docket. On his way out Mutula Kilonzo could not help but cheekily remind Eugene Wamalwa that the docket is not his to do as he pleases, but that it has its own "owners" and that he would be dancing to their tune or be shown the door.

Mr Wamalwa assures us that as a lawyer and a lawmaker his fidelity is to the law. This is an assurance that is set to be tested as Kenya engages with the International Criminal Court over the imminent trial of Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto, Francis Muthaura and Joshua arap Sang. Even the Attorney-General's panel of eminent lawyers has advised the Government that the State has no choice but to co-operate fully with the Court over the trial of the four Kenyans. Mr Wamalwa has identified himself with the Gang of Seven whose leading lights include Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, both of whom have expressed an interest in standing for the presidency at the next general elections. It remains to be seen whether the real reason he has been elevated to the justice docket is so that he can use his legal skills, such as they may be, to ensure that Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto weasel out of the clutches of the ICC Prosecutor for the Ministry oversees a great deal more than Kenya's engagement with the ICC.

The Justice docket is responsible for the smooth implementation of the Constitution, the proper functioning of constitutional commissions such as the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, the Gender and Equality Commission, and the Commission on Administration of Justice. It is also responsible for the smooth operation of the Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission, whose appointment has been held up because the National Assembly is divided over the names of the nominees sent to it by the President and Prime Minister. Before he was sent to the education docket, Mr Kilonzo had drafted a law for the implementation of Chapter Six of the Constitution on leadership and integrity. Even with his political and legal skills, Mr Kilonzo was not sure whether the Bill would survive mutilation at the hands of the members of the National Assembly. It remains, again, to be seen whether Eugene Wamalwa has the moxie to get it through Parliament without it being defaced and watered down.

Mr Wamalwa has displayed a worrying lack of judgment in his political engagements, flitting from one association to another before running with the Gang of Seven as an "equal". Simama Kenya, which he was closely associated with proved to be a bust. His association with Maina Njenga, the feared former leader of the Mungiki, raised more questions than answers. A rally that the two intended to headline was violently broken up by the police. It is his continued association with the Gang of Seven that displays his lack of political maturity. It seems, and no matter how much they deny it, that the principal reason for the existence of the Gang of Seven is the prevention of the Prime Minister from succeeding Mwai Kibaki as president at the next general elections. The Gang has spent more time trying to link the PM to the travails of two of its leading lights than any other association in Kenya. They have spread lies, usually at 'prayer rallies', that the PM is to blame for the two being charged at the ICC glossing over the fact that both the PM and the President begged them to ensure that trials for the PEV be conducted in Kenya. In all this Mr Wamalwa has been complicit. It gives the lie to his assurance of fidelity to the law. How he conducts himself as the Minister for Justice will determine whether Mr Wamalwa is his own man or a puppet in a string.

Weeds in the Shamba

If all that the Limuru II Conference intended to achieve was the collection of two million signatures to petition the ICC to postpone the trial of the Deputy Prime Minister, Uhuru Kenyatta, rather than find replacements for the departed John Njoroge Michuki and Njenga Karume, then it was an unmitigated disaster, a failure of epic proportions. 

It becomes increasingly apparent that the leadership of the Mt Kenya region is so far off the reservation that it would not be amiss to consider them the wayward children of the legacy of the original GEMA. That they have been renounced by the likes of Gitobu Imanyara and Martha Karua is proof that they still have no clue what political unity means or what it is meant to achieve. It is also apparent that they do not speak for the peoples of the Mt Kenya region nor do they have their best interests at heart. It was sad to listen to the likes of Cecily Mbarire declaring that the interests of Uhuru Kenyatta supersede those of the thousands of victims of the violence that rocked the nation after the 2007 general elections.

The Constitution protects the cultures of the peoples of Kenya but it also implies that negative ethnicity is the bane of the nation. Striking a balance between the two will be an uphill task at the best of times, let alone during the middle of an election campaign and the process of trying four Kenyans for some of the most heinous crimes ever committed in Kenya against Kenyans by Kenyans. Old-timers recall the role that the original GEMA played in consolidating power in the hands of an elite few in Central Kenya; its most prominent members amassed great wealth and power and used it to enrich themselves while millions of Kenyans slept hungry. JM Kariuki's admonition of ten millionaires and ten million paupers still rings true when you look at the line up that purports to represent the GEMA peoples today. Njenga Karume and John Michuki epitomised the rot that accompanied the existence of organisations such as GEMA; but Moi's proscription of these organisations did nothing to redress the evils such institutions represented.

Kenya is at a critical crossroads. Not only are we in the process of implementing one of the most progressive constitutions on God's Earth, but we are suffering through one of the worst drought-boom-drought cycles for fifty years. Our children attend state-sponsored schools of the most unimaginable squalor and deprivation. In the Twenty-first Century it is heartbreaking to read of innocent children who sleep hungry simply because their government has failed them and their generation. 

This morning it was announced that oil has been discovered in Turkana, one of the most backward regions of the country, beset not only by drought and famine, but also unimaginable violence. It is too much to expect that if the oil deposits prove to be of commerciable quantities that the so-called trickle-down effect will benefit them more than it will benefit Tullow Oil, the foreign company licensed to prospect in Turkana. More likely, the hyenas in the National Government and their successors in the County Government will spend their every waking hour thinking up schemes to keep the profits to themselves and none to the peoples of Turkana. It is how things have been and it is likely how they will always be.

Our history as a nation has been a tortuous one and the likes of Kiraitu Murungi's GEMA are not the ones to take us to the next level. What we have been calling for, struggling for and campaigning for is a paradigm shift in the power relations of the nation. It is why the deep black of the night continues to cover our land. Not even the popular Raila Odinga has a solution to our myriad challenges; he is too wedded to the ways of the past to see past the ethnic and special-interest considerations that have so riven the peoples of Kenya. Until these men and women coveting positions of power and influence lead the peoples of Kenya we will always be held hostage to the inanities of the likes of GEMA and the hundreds of Councils of Elders that seem to spring up like weeds in the shamba.

Footnotes of History

The local economy is in shambles. Once you ignore the illusion created by the Chamber of Commerce, the Central Bank and the Brand Kenya campaign, it will be rapidly apparent that this economy that is apparently growing and lifting hundreds of thousands out of poverty is an illusion. Every year, our primary schools, secondary schools, technical colleges and polytechnics and universities spew out tens of thousands of young men and women onto the market, expecting them to sink or swim in the ocean of job-seeking. Mwai Kibaki promised five-hundred thousand jobs to the youth of Kenya when he first made it to State House. It is not too soon to say that on that count alone, he has been an abject failure. Raila Odinga and his ilk have made similar promises in the past; their records in government have been a litany of failure after failure.

The place of Kenya in the regional economy is in grave danger. Uganda has struck oil and foreigners are flocking to Tanzania with cheque-books at the ready. South Sudan, once it resolves its disagreements with the North, will start extracting and exporting oil to the hungry engines of China and the West. Once Somalia is stabilised and the political gridlock that has fomented civil war for the past two decades is dealt with, the hyenas in the West will not only flock to the beaches of Mogadishu but they will make sure that is Western companies that will reap from the opportunities to be found. Once Ethiopia completes its mega-dams on the River Omo, not only will Kenya buy electricity from her at a price that she dictates, Lake Turkana will shrivel and die, taking with it the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Kenyans, pushing them more firmly into an abyss of poverty the likes they have never experienced. To add salt to injury, the proposed wind-power projects on the shores of the Lake will be permanently crippled.

It is this that should worry Kenyans as they consider presidential candidates at the next general elections. Moses Wetangula, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, has expressed an interest in the presidency. He has demonstrated that he knows nothing of the importance of foreign policy on shoring up the economic fortunes of the nation. His decisions, and those of his predecessor Raphael Tuju, another presidential candidate, betray the fact that they see the flash of political union and partnership as the epitome of foreign policy. They forgot that foreign policy is wedded to only one overriding objective: the economic fortunes of the nation. A nation enters into political arrangements with another for the sole purpose of advancing its interests in the global market. We know nothing of the economic plans of the other candidates other than 'they will create jobs, they will employ the youth'.

It is not enough to speak of the potential of the country. It is not enough that these men and women do not seem to understand that the fortunes of this country are not tied to the growth of the local economy alone but to the growth of the regional one and the dominance of Kenyans and Kenyan companies in that economy. What we need to do is review their records over the past two decades and judge them for what they have done or failed to do. In their public lives they have utterly failed to see the role Kenya plays in the regional, continental and global economies, selling the country to the Chinese at the expense of the West and refusing to advance the interests of the country. If they are incapable of understanding this fundamental truth, they do not deserve nor merit the votes of hard-working Kenyans. They deserve to be forgotten, dumped in the ash-heap of history. They deserve to remain footnotes for all eternity.

Hold their feet to the fire

They don't even have the competence to do bad things well. It is amazing that even decades after Kenyans finally started to attend institutions of high learning and to obtain degrees and post-graduate degrees, their political leaders continue to think of them as complete morons, stealing all they can in the brief time they enjoy executive or parliamentary privileges. They behave as if the power that has been conferred on them also confers invisibility, going about their affairs with the arrogant disdain of the gods of Greek mythology. It is staggering that they continue to play about with the rules that they swear to uphold, manipulating their executive or legislative authority to award themselves privileges that they do not deserve. When they make rules that instead of protecting the weak and the poor, empower the corrupt and deceitful, they are poking their fingers in the eye of the Almighty Himself and daring Him to rain down Holy Fire upon them for their perfidy and corruption. They go about their business quoting from Holy Scripture while milking the good people of this nation for every cent they can lay their greedy, grasping hands on.

Take a look at the laws that they have passed to fight corruption or to remove the stain of tribalism from public life and you are left astounded that they think so little of the men and women who toil in the burning noonday sun for a pittance. They have created Commissions to combat the evils that assail our politic ensuring that these bodies spend so much to achieve very little. Since President Moi created the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority, then disbanded it, and President Kibaki oversaw the creation and destruction of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission and, recently, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, billions of shillings have been spent fighting corruption but not a single politician has been arraigned in court or convicted of pilfering public funds. Goldenberg and Anglo-Leasing have become bywords for impunity, a cruel reminder that regardless of the promises made every election cycle, Kenyans are going to find themselves bent over a barrel with their pants around their feet with their political class taking carnal liberties.

Look again at the laws that they have passed to cleanse ourselves of the shameful stain of tribalism. All that the National Cohesion and Integration Commission has achieved in the past three years is a library-full of warnings against the true purveyors of hate and disintegration. While politicians of all stripes parade themselves in front of adoring crowds, spewing hateful vitriol at their political opponents and their opponents' constituencies, the Commission is holding cohesion and integration conferences to teach Kenyans how to live together as one. Other than the fatcats living in Nairobi, enjoying their comfort and surfing the web for progressive ideas, the vast majority of Kenyans do not give two hoots about cohesion or integration, but about their daily bread, the safety of their families and a roof over their heads. No one has the time or the energy to sit through a do-gooding lectures on the need to keep a civil tongue in their heads while dealing with their fellowman. Hate keeps them going every day of their difficult lives and they do not need a well-fed lecturer reminding them that their lives could be so much better if only they observed the Golden Rule.

As the nation is dragged to the general elections by their political masters, the air is thick with uncertainty. The man and woman on the street is not sure that the nation will not be pushed to civil war once again just to satisfy the ego of a politician. As the Central Bank of Kenya keeps its bankers happy, the cost of living for those who can barely afford a bank account keeps climbing, pushing more and more Kenyans below the poverty line. While the Ministry of Roads oversees the construction of the highways to the future, dozens of children of those who walk for a living keep getting mauled by the driving population. As the children of the ruling class enjoy a tax-funded education, those of the forgotten masses study under trees or in classes without teachers. Or text-books, desks, chairs or black-boards and frequently, far too frequently, on empty stomachs. Kenyans have frequently refused to hold their leaders to account, keeping their politicians honest and they may yet fail to do so again at the next general elections. They don't have the competence to do bad things well and Kenyans will keep forgetting this abject lesson every time they are reminded that their community comes first, no matter the consequences.

The Perils of Economic Salvation

Our economic salvation is at hand if one goes by the millions of inches of newsprint published over the past eighteen months. If it is not gushing stories on the Thika 'Super-highway', it is equally saccharine disquisitions on the Konza 'Techno-City' or the LAPSSET. When President Kibaki's government unveiled the economic blue-print for our future, the Kenya Vision 2030, we all stood to a man and cheered for the vision that promises to make Kenya a 'middle-income country' by the year 2030. Its flagship projects have been hailed as the panacea for the economic mismanagement of the past four decades, a cure-all that will not only bring us into the twenty-first century but will empower the nation to catch up with the Asian Tigers, such as Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan. The promulgation of a new constitution is seen in the same context, especially the provisions on devolution which promise to decentralise economic decision-making from the feckless, corrupt mandarins in Nairobi to the enlightened and highly motivated homeward-bound boffins who have made their mark in the world.

What a short memory Kenyans have of grand schemes and national targets. President Kenyatta promised to end poverty, illiteracy and disease. He failed. President Moi promised to foster peace, love and harmony. He failed. President Kibaki Mark 1 promised to end impunity and corruption. He failed and continues to fail. Policy papers have been prepared, some of them very good, to address our myriad challenges, from piped water for all by the year 2000 to comprehensive healthcare for all by the year 2015. Even our government admits that we are missing all our targets by a country mile. Now we have new targets and new objectives to achieve, old-challenges-dressed-as-new to overcome. The Constitution and Vision 2030 are the tools that we will use to attain nirvana. The record so far is as encouraging as can be expected, if our expectations were that they would be vehicles for rent-seeking, cronyism and corruption.

A look at constitutional implementation betrays that the ills that have plagued this nation for nigh on forty years are yet to be cured. The political class that has been at the helm of all policy-making and implementation has demonstrated that it is incapable of placing the nation ahead of its selfish needs. Even in the relatively simple area of appointments to national offices, whether constitutional or not, they have demonstrated that merit or the national good have no place in political discourse. All that matters is that the imperative of booth-capturing to ensure that Their Men occupy sensitive positions with the overall objective of keeping everyone else out.

Vision 2030 went off the rails a while back and it is only a matter of time that Kenyans wake up to the reality. Take the LAPSSET as an example: the plans for a port in Lamu have been on the cards since at least 1972. In that period, not only has our government failed to tackle the Land Question at the Coast, it has ensured that the matter never sees the light of day. The landless at the Coast are not just un-propertied, they are unlettered and disenfranchised on a colossal scale, their grievances given short shrift by all and sundry, relegated to the fringes of national debate. When the Presidents of Kenya and South Sudan and the Prime Minister of Ethiopia witnessed the groundbreaking ceremony for the project, President Kibaki capped it off by issuing title deeds to the peoples of the district, promising more in the months to come. Prime Minister Odinga had done the same some months ago when a nascent opposition movement against the project started gaining traction. Amos Kimunya did the same when he was Lands Minister when the project was first mooted. This has not prevented the well-heeled and well-connected from making a killing from the project.

Perhaps the LAPSSET will be completed; whether it will be a success depends on which side of the breadline one will be standing. Some will make a killing, literally, and laugh all the way to the bank. Most will find themselves not only landless, but also jobless for it is inevitable that if a majority of the jobs that will be generated by the project require technical or professional skills, these will be in short supply in Lamu or indeed, at the Coast. It will be the same case with the Konza Techno-city. 

Ukambani is not known for ICT start-ups but for eye-watering poverty, drought, famine and staggering levels of illiteracy and semi-literacy. The hordes of investors that will descend on Konza will bring more than their cheque-books; they will also bring a buccaneering spirit that is alien to the Kambas. I foresee decades of land-wrangles as the better-heeled, better-educated occupants take the locals for a ride as experienced by the millions of people in Coastal Kenya. Our economic salvation is at hand. Let it not blind us that economic salvation will benefit the few over the many.

On the Political Party

The political party in Kenya is less a party and more an exclusive members' club where the needs of the members are at the mercy of the man with the fattest wallet. A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating its own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions. Parties often espouse an expressed ideology or vision bolstered by a written platform with specific goals, forming a coalition among disparate interests.

Take, for example, the United Republican Party. Formed as a last resort for the ambitions of William Ruto, its ideology or platform seems to revolve only around Mr Ruto's desire to deny the Prime Minister the opportunity to ascend to the presidency after the general elections scheduled for 2012 (or 2013 if there is not action from Mr Odinga or the President, Mwai Kibaki). The Party of Action, recently formed by Raphael Tuju, the immediate former Member of Parliament for Rarieda and a former Minister for Foreign Affairs, ostensibly cares for the plight for the youth and the oppressed, yet it seems to have been formed for the sole purpose of sponsoring Mr Tuju's candidacy for the presidency. So too are NARC-K (Martha Karua), New FORD-K (Moses Wetangula), PNU (George Saitoti), and indeed, ODM (Raila Odinga). None of these parties, it seems, have a discernible ideology that energises them, other than the capture and retention of political power.

The main purpose behind an ideology is to offer either change in society, or adherence to a set of ideals where conformity already exists, through a normative thought process. Ideologies are systems of abstract thought applied to public matters and thus make this concept central to politics. Implicitly every political or economic tendency entails an ideology whether or not it is propounded as an explicit system of thought. It is how society sees things. This is not how Kenyans see things. Ideology in Kenya is a lost system; it has been abandoned either through neglect or through deliberate political action to strip the members of the party of their voice in the future and fate of their parties.

It is not possible for the implementation of the Constitution to be achieved if the political party remains the preserve of the ruling elite. In recent weeks, and up to the end of March 2012, political parties must ensure that they submit to the Registrar of Political Parties all documents that are required for the full registration, demonstrating that they have complied fully with the provisions of the Political Parties Act. But it is not enough to comply with the law; they must also demonstrate that they are capable of differentiating themselves from each other with clear policies, ideologies and manifestos. As it is, one could easily replace the names of one political party with another and none would be the wiser; they are cookie-cutter copies of one another. Indeed, I suspect that there must be a model political party constitution that they rely on for drafting the rules that govern their affairs.

Without a robust political party system, without a clash of ideologies, and without a robust public debate about the future of the political party in Kenya, we will be reduced to electing men and women on the basis of opinion polls and their perceived popularity, rather than on the strength or weakness of their arguments, programmes or ideologies. In other words, it will be business as usual. And in the short to medium term, we will continue to suffer political uncertainty and instability. This is not the basis for a sound economic renaissance or development.

Mis-education

Ex-candidates from Kenya's forgotten frontier are on the warpath. The Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) cancelled the Form Four examination results of a majority of the schools in Kenya's North Eastern Province. The political leadership of the NEP is united in condemning the decision by the national examinations body to cancel the results of hundreds of students for irregularities, including collusion and cheating. The news media report running battles between the aggrieved former students and the security officers in Garissa and scores of injuries among the angry youth. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education is busily rethinking the 8-4-4 system, proposing a radical overhaul of the system. There are those who support the overhaul whole others, including education experts, are vehemently opposed. A robust debate over the proposed overhaul is currently being held to determine whether it will be accepted or rejected.

We are nowhere near being ranked among global leaders in childhood and adolescent education and the scenes being witnessed from Garissa buttress the fact that regardless of the proposed overhaul, Kenyan students have a long way to go before they can be classified as among the best in the world. In 2010 and 2011 it was apparent that the resources allocated to the public education sector, despite being greater in proportion compared to other public services, were still grossly inadequate. When members of the teaching profession went on strike the last time round, they insisted that the government had to hire more teachers to cope with the massive influx of students since the decision to provide free basic education to Kenya's children was implemented. They also demanded better pay and working conditions; after all, they argued, without the teaching profession, the dreams of Vision 2030 or the development of the nation would remain dreams and nothing more.

The middle classes in Kenya's main towns have been isolated from the realities of public education for a decade or so, ever since they discovered that for a reasonable fee, their children could attend private academies where the teacher-to-student ratio is optimal to the education of their scions. The private schools their children attend have better facilities than most public schools and ensure better all-round development of their children. Public schools on the other hand, in line with the austerity measures being enforced throughout the firmament of government, have continued to suffer diminishing resources and stagnation. Teacher-quality is doubtful at best and facilities have deteriorated to such an extent that it is not unusual to visit a public school where black-boards are no longer black, and children share desks sometime six-to-one. So it is with anger that the parents and ex-students of Kenya's NEP reacted when the KNEC decided to classify many of the candidates as cheats and withheld their marks. In a region where the education of the youth is not high enough on the national agenda, every child that attains a grade sufficient to send him to university is an asset and a resource that is sorely needed, not just for the survival of the family but his clan and his community as a whole.

We have made a fetish of the KCSE and KCPE, holding them above all other means of measuring education in this nation. Without these basic certificates, our children are condemned to lives of penury and hardship. They are then exposed to the harsh realities of a nation in which jobs are apportioned according to the paper qualifications one possesses with the best jobs going to those with the best 'papers' and the rest being relegated to the fringes of the white-collar economy and, very often, the criminal underworld. It is no surprise that even parents are engaged in exercises meant to game the examination system, going so far as to spend vast amounts of their family fortunes to ensure that their children surmount the examinations hurdle on their way to well-paying government jobs. Cheating has become a national pastime, where everyone including the mandarins at the KNEC to the schools' administrations to parents and students are complicit. However, the punishment is only meted out against the youth of the nation, reminding them that they live at the sufferance of the official government. It is no wonder that many of them find attractive the likes of quasi-religious criminal outfits like the Mungiki or al Shabaab.

It is time that we woke up to the fact that the overhaul of education in Kenya requires more than just re-jigging the 8-4-4 system, but a complete overhaul of how we value human resources in this country. When Mwai Kibaki was seeking re-election in 2007 - indeed when all candidates were seeking the presidency - he promised that his government would create 500,000 jobs annually. That is a promise he has failed and continues to fail to keep. One reason is that i is impossible to assess what skills the youth possess when they do not have passing grades either at Standard Eight or Form Four levels or what skills are needed and in what proportions at the various levels of the national economy. It is sad that the mandarins overseeing the implementation of the Vision 2030 blue-print are yet to advise the nation of this either. Until we do so, the rage that is being expressed by ex-students in Garissa will continue to be a main feature every time the Minister for Education cancels the results of children accused of cheating and other examination offences and the nation will be the poorer for it.

ODM deserves pity not sympathy

It is getting increasingly difficult to sympathise with the leading lights of the Orange Democratic Movement party. Raila Odinga and Musalia Mudavadi are engaged in a battle to determine which one of them will lead the party to the next general elections. William Ruto, still one of two deputy leaders of the party, is having a hard time persuading the rest of the country that the United Republican Party is a viable vehicle for electing the next President. Meanwhile, Prof Peter Anyang' Nyong'o, the Minister for Medical Services, is having a hard time persuading the striking nurses of Kenya to go back to work. He has made several intemperate statement, even being interviewed on TV to demonstrate that he is serious about the need for the nurses to toe his line. Because Mr Mudavadi and Mr Odinga are unable to come to an arrangement that would sort out the method of choosing the party leader, ODM's National Delegates' Conference has been postponed several times, leading many to assume that the two leaders are hellbent on rigging the outcome of the conference in their favour.

In 2005, during the last referendum campaign when Samuel Kivuitu's Electoral Commission of Kenya divided the Yes and No Camps into Orange and Banana, the Orange Movement was a cohesive, big tent that united a large proportion of the country behind their vision. Then, even Uhuru Kenyatta and Kalonzo Musyoka were solidly behind in the Orange Movement opposing what many presumed was Kibaki's coterie's power grab in the guise of the Wako Draft. As with all political maneuvering in Kenya over the past 15 years, Uhuru Kenyatta ans Kalonzo Musyoka split from their erstwhile Orange partners, Uhuru retreating to the comfort of his mother party, KANU, and Kolonzo Musyoka attempting a palace coup and running away with the registration documents of the Orange Democratic Movement Party of Kenya, forcing Raila Odinga, William Ruto, Najib Balala and Musalia Mudavadi to regroup in what eventually became the most popular party in Kenya. Even that semblance of political bonhomie did not last; William Ruto, unable to receive the recognition he sought, especially in light of the loyalty he had demonstrated after Kibaki's 're-election', sought to split the party, attempting at various times to pull out all the Rift Valley MPs of the party, or to take over the United Democratic Movement Party, and finally settling for the URP.

Now, it is Musalia Mudavadi's turn. In 2002, he stuck to President Moi's script and remained Uhuru Kenyatta's running mate even when Raila Odinga had led a rebellious bunch to the NARC bandwagon. For his temerity, the good people of Sabatia sent him packing. He learnt his lesson in 2007 and stood by Raila Odinga as his running mate, not only recapturing his seat, but also getting appointed a Deputy Prime Minister when the National Accord was signed between the government and ODM. Now he has gotten it into his head that he is the equal of Raila Odinga in ODM and has decided to challenge him for the party leader's position, and the opportunity to lead ODM at the next general elections. The two have spent the past three months traversing the nation meeting 'ODM delegates' and shoring up support in the 47 counties. One gets the sense that the thousands of delegates they have been meeting owe their loyalties not due to the ideologies espoused by the two leaders, but due to the 'inducements' they may have received.

In the absence of a credible manifesto and ideology, the only thing that distinguishes ODM from the briefcase political parties in Kenya is the popularity of the Prime Minister, Raila Odinga. Without him, indeed without Musalia Mudavadi too, the party is a mere vehicle for the naked power grab that characterises politics in Kenya. While Mr Odinga is likely to share in the successes of President Kibaki's government over the past four years, notably the promulgation of the Constitution in 2012, he is also likely to be tarred with the brush of the ethnicisation of the nation in the same period. He must also shoulder the blame for the corruption and impunity that has followed the government like a bad smell since Mwai Kibaki became president in 2003. So too must Musalia Mudavadi. They are yet to demonstrate that they are willing and able to slay the twin dragons of impunity and corruption. Mr Mudavadi may have survived the cemetery scam, and The PM may have survived the Kazi Kwa Vijana scandal, but neither demonstrated a willingness to be held to account for what went on in their respective offices. Rather than leading from the front, they buck-passed with alacrity and ensured that hirelings and minions carried water for them. Their contest, if that is what it is, for the leadership of the party is devoid of the serious intellectual political debate that this nation sorely needs. Without it, they are unlikely to lead this nation in a bold new direction if elected president. Therefore, it is not easy to sympathise with the travails of the party today, if ever.

The Big Picture

The Big Picture obscures the details of our lives. A Parliamentary Committee was appointed to investigate the volatility of the shilling against the dollar in the Third Quarter of 2011. The shilling's volatility affected the cost of living of millions of Kenyans, pushing up the cost of food, energy and transport and pushing many Kenyans to the fringes of the economy. The Committee was not interested in how the shilling affected the lives of millions of Kenyans, but whether the Governor of the Central Bank was asleep on the job. The deliberations betrayed that, as with other political matters, it is the ethnic element of the matter that captured their attention. No one disputes that the ethnic equation is always foremost in the minds of the political class and they are loath to consider anything else when addressing the matters that come before them. The demands for the resignation - stepping aside - of the Governor of the Central Bank, seems to be tinged with the stain of the ethnicity that pervades political and public discourse in Kenya these days. With the tabling of the Committee's report before the National Assembly, the Members of Parliament predictably lined up along ethnic lines, with members of the Governor's ethnic community defending his track record. It does not help that when Uhuru Kenyatta stepped aside as Finance Minister, he was replaced by someone from his community.

The National Cohesion and Integration Commission has published a report that exposes the ethnic rot that pervades the public universities in Kenya. The report states that the lion's share of admissions to public universities are taken by the members of Kenya's five biggest ethnic communities. It also states that employment in the public universities reflects the ethnicity of the Chancellors. In our obsession with the ethnic question, we have blinded ourselves to the situation in the public and, to some extent, the private sectors. The Parliamentary Committee and the NCIC have taken the task of resolving the ethnic imbalances in the public sector as their reason for existence, engaging in spirited activity to root out one particular community from the levers of power.

This is their Big Picture. The details are writ large on the faces of the Kenyans struggling to stay afloat. Hon Adan Keynan, leading the pack of howling MPs is determined to cut down the Governor of the Central Bank a peg or two regardless of whether the Governor's resignation will improve the lot of the Kenyans. Now, the National Assembly itself has decided to take a less than casual look at the question of ethnicity while throwing a lifeline to the Governor of the Central Bank. This really tells you just where their priorities lie; not in resolving the relatively simpler question of economic growth and job creation, but one of the most intractable problems that has bedevilled the nation since the British employed their divide-and-conquer technique to keep the restless natives at bay during their 70 years of colonial rule. The picture politicians are determined to examine has nothing to do with the realities of day-to-day life but everything to do with their political longevity. Without the ability to point at an ethnic community and blame it for what ails his community, the politicians would have no choice but to do what they were elected to do: legislate. There are few of these characters that have the ability to read through the thousands of legislative verbiage that is published every Parliamentary session and look intelligent in the bargain. Few are capable of appreciating the impact laws have on the lives of the ordinary. They, instead, do not have any qualms in using the legislative agenda of the National Assembly to advance their interests rather than those of their constituents.

The recent debates on the fall of the shilling and the President's decision to reject the County Governments Bill expose the vacuum in leadership that is waiting to be filled. Kenyans have an opportunity at the next general elections to radically redesign their government, electing only men and women capable of improving their lives, instead of injecting conflict and hate into the process of governing. Their Big Picture and ours are different. If they are incapable of determining the relatively simple cause of the shilling's precipitous fall without raising the spectre of ethnicity, we cannot expect them to accomplish the Herculean task of ending the ethnic problem.

Leave Ngilu be

Ukambani has some of the strangest political figures in Kenya. John Harun Mwau has been accused of amassing his great and mysterious wealth from the trafficking of narcotics. Of course, no proof has been adduced to support this accusation. Prof Philip Kaloki, one of the Vice-President's most ardent acolytes, has failed to offer any proof that his 'professorship' is genuine. Kiema and Charles Kilonzo frequently butt heads with the leader of their party, sometimes playing footsie with the leading lights of other parties but coming to his defense when someone from his political backyard challenges his leadership. So too, it seems, is Mutula Kilonzo's on and off relationship with the V-P. It remains to be seen whether his recent statements are a ploy to clear the way for the V-P to gain where Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto lose. The remaining men in Ukambani politics are as silent as the graveyard, with the occasional mummers of V-P support from David Musila. Then we have Charity Ngilu, Mama Rainbow. Ever since she scared President Moi with her presidential bid in 1992, she has been a force to reckon with in Ukambani politics.

Mrs Ngilu was not the first woman in Ukambani politics. That dubious honour goes to the Moi Girls of Agnes Ndetei and Nyiva Mwendwa, and with the ascendancy of Wavinya Ndeti, she is unlikely to be the last. But she is the first to have independent national fame, first as the head of the Social Democratic Party and next as the member of the ODM Pentagon, despite the fact that she remains the party boss of the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC). Despite the tremendous odds women leaders face in Ukambani, Mrs Ngilu has not only managed to hold on to her constituency general election after general election, she has carved out an independent and fearless identity that threatens the received wisdom of masculine wisdom and leadership. She is a tribute to the indefatigable female spirit in the harsh environment of Ukambani, both political, economical, developmental and ecological.

Mrs Ngilu's recent very public falling out with the Vice-President has revealed that the deep gender schisms that prevail in Ukambani are yet to be resolved. Women leaders are still treated with suspicion and if it was not for Mrs Ngilu's national profile, she would have long been relegated to the political sidelines. Unlike in other parts of the country, especially since the death of Ukambani kingpin Mulu Mutisya and the retirement of General Johnson Mulinge, there is no political dynastic tradition. Those attempting to make Kalonzo Musyoka the undisputed head of Ukambani politicians refuse to accept that Mrs Ngilu, with her principled stand against the Moi hegemony and her record of national service, has created a political narrative that is more attractive than the V-P's. While Mr Musyoka was busy as one of the leading lights of KANU and one of President Moi's blue-eyed boys, together with the likes of JJ Kamotho, Sharif Nassir, and Ezekiel Barng'etuny, Mrs Ngilu was a lioness of the Second Liberation, taking the fight to the likes of Kalonzo Musyoka and the other acolytes of the KANU regime. And she paid a heavy personal price for her stand, suffering at the hands of the government.

The men, especially the men of the Wiper Democratic Movement, determined to cut Mrs Ngilu down to size must be reminded that they do not speak exclusively for the peoples of Ukambani. The good people of Kitui Central have reposed their faith in her since 1992 and there is nothing that suggests that they are about to look for different representation in the immediate future. There is, therefore, at least one constituency in Ukambani that is yet to fall under the spell of Kalonzo-for-President that is being perpetrated by the V-P and his acolytes. She has every right to take steps to protect her national and local political constituency. She has deduced from the actions of the V-P and his acolytes that they are not happy with her unwavering support for the Prime Minister, and lately, the Deputy Prime Minister, Musalia Mudavadi. She is not persuaded that Kalonzo Musyoka has what it takes to be Kenya's next President. She has every right to support the politician of her choice. It is not automatic that she will support the V-P simply because he and her come from the same region. If the Wiper Democratic Movement wants Mrs Ngilu onside, it must stop trying to kneecap the political fortunes of the Member for Kitui Central and instead, try to persuade her that theirs is the political ship of the future, and not ODM. If they cannot do so, they will lose. And so will the Vice-President.

Whether UK and The Hustler should stand for the presidency is not the issue

Is Mutula Kilonzo's stand on the pre-election disqualification of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto principled or premised on some long-term strategy to get Kalonzo Musyoka to the head of the line? Mr Kilonzo is undoubtedly a deft hand when it comes to the practice of law but he is still very much the novice when it comes to the practice of politics in Kenya. His long stint as one of President Moi's sharpest legal advisors blinded him to the shortcomings of the edifice that President Moi built. He stood by Moi's side, offering him advice on a myriad of matters, and watched silently as the country was riven with political and ethnic divisions. When he was first nominated to Parliament by KANU, it was only because Moi said that he could. It had nothing to do with his non-existent political skills, but by his ardent demonstration of loyalty to the system that had for decades been used to steal from the Kenyan people. It is not lost on many that Mr Kilonzo and Mr Musyoka were loyal subjects of Moi's system. So, is his stand on the eligibility of Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto to stand for the presidency principled or a strategy to keep the way clear for Mr Musyoka to prevail over Raila Odinga at the next general elections?

The High Court lifted the gag order it had placed during the hearing of case challenging Mr Kenyatta's and Mr Ruto's eligibility to stand for the presidency while their ICC trial hangs fire. So, despite Mr Kilonzo's statements regarding the eligibility of the two, it falls on the High Court to rule whether they may stand for the presidency. He is not the final word on whether the two are eligible. His is only an opinion and it can only be challenged in the realm of a robust public debate. This is the missing ingredient in the making of the Second Republic. Kenyans are still held hostage to the old way of doing things, where loyalty to the ethnic community trumps public debate on the eligibility of persons to stand for political office in Kenya. It is for this reason that the apparatchiks of the Gang of Seven were apoplectic when Mr Kilonzo suggested that Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto were disqualified from the presidential contest. Rather than acknowledge that Mr Kilonzo makes a legitimate statement of fact, they are busy looking for an ulterior, ethno-motive to challenge his opinion. It is also not lost on many that a majority of the men fulminating against Mr Kilonzo come from Mr Kenyatta's back-yard, if not from his ethnic community. Their threats against Mr Kilonzo and Mr Musyoka betray their ethno-chauvinism, that they are incapable of countenancing the possibility of a person from another community succeeding Mr Kibaki at State House.

There are those who fear that the disqualification of Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto from the presidential contests sets the stage for the whittling away of democratic gains made since 1992. They argue that it is undemocratic to prevent the people from exercising their sovereign right to elect the candidates of their choice. They argue that the disqualifications in the Constitution are sufficient to weed out the men and women who should not be elected to public office. They point out that where popular candidates have been excluded from elections, nations have fallen to civil strife and war. Egypt and its Muslim Brotherhood and The Ivory Coast with Alassane Ouattara are mentioned. However, they refuse to accept that Kenya is learning from the mistakes of its peculiar history. Since Independence Kenya has suffered at the hands of popular politicians, whether they were guilty of heinous crimes or not. It is not outside the realm of sanity to ask whether the Second Republic could survive the election of a president accused of heinous crimes, even if that candidate has not been convicted of the crimes in question. In such circumstances it is perhaps fit and proper that despite the demands of a majority of voters that candidates facing charges of crimes against humanity are excluded from the election. Kenyans cannot be trusted to make the right choice. They have not done so in the past and there is not proof to show that they will do so in the future.

The Second Republic cannot be founded on crimes against humanity. It cannot be helmed by men and women who have been accused of committing crimes against humanity. It cannot be kneecapped by calls to protect the candidacies of men accused of crimes against humanity. If for nothing else it is fit and proper that the debate over the candidacies of William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta is being carried on in public. They stand accused of serious crimes. They are undoubtedly popular. But Kenyans must be allowed to debate the veracity of their candidacies. They should not simply be given a free pass simply because it is the democratic thing to do. Those days of simply going along to get along are long gone. It is time the naysayers accepted this and moved on.

Before it is too late

The recent developments with the Gang of Seven and the ODM, especially as reported by Kenya's independent and fearless media, creates the impression that the next general elections will be between the Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, and whoever the Gang of Seven chooses as their standard-bearer. It is completely lost on the chattering classes and the punditocracy that Martha Karua, Raphael Tuju or Peter Kenneth have offered themselves for the presidency. Nor do they seem to have taken seriously Mutava Musyimi's candidacy. To be fair to the 'gentlemen of the press', the no-hoppers in the presidential race have not done much to galvanise the public to rally to their causes. Despite Martha Karua's indefatigable cross-country travels, she does not seem to have excited the public imagination with regards to her presidential agenda or her campaign. The public does not seem to have forgotten, nor have they forgiven, her hard-eyed defense of Kibaki's 're-election' in 2007.

Despite the opportunities offered by the Constitution none of the candidates are yet to articulate clearly what their platforms entail. It remains unclear what their stances are on the economy, education, nuclear energy, water or food security, insecurity, health-care, public service, or the war in Somalia. They have all been pretty tight-lipped about the status of compliance of their political parties or what role they envisage for the members of their parties, other than the nomination of the next candidate for the presidency. Their complete lack of political ideology save for the acquisition and retention of political power betrays the fact that their goals have little to do with the wishes of the people. Or their consent.

It is the question of consent that should guide their political maneuverings. Leaders who have the consent of the people may lead a great nation. It remains unclear whether Raila Odinga, Martha Karua, William Ruto, Uhuru Kenyatta, Raphael Tuju, Musalia Mudavadi, Mutava Musyimi, or Peter Kenneth enjoy the consent of the masses in their political wanderings across the nation. The images beamed to our TV screens every night merely show rows of adoring and adulating 'delegates' whose role is not to question the will of the leader but to endorse whatever decision he makes, regardless of merit or practicality. The method of choosing the delegates, whether at constituency or county level, is shrouded n mystery and conspiracy. Without the consent of the people and in the absence of a truly independent and free press, the leaders lack the legitimacy to impose their ideas on the peoples of Kenya. The next general elections will only be unique for being held under a new Constitution. Otherwise, the rules under which elections have been held since 2002 remain the same where the people are merely the vehicles for the 'leaders' to ascend to political power.

The men and women promising a complete break to the past are too wedded to their past to offer a truly revolutionary path forward for the nation. By their actions and their statements they betray the fact that they consider Kenyans as nothing more as the repositories of their ideas and ambitions. The people are not to be trusted with decision-making, not even in the choices they will make in the voting booth. They are merely to be persuaded to see things from the leaders' perspectives and nothing more. Their role in arriving at a political settlement that benefits the nation is to be kept at a minimum. This is the tragedy of the Second Liberation. The lions of the Second Liberation have morphed into the Establishment that they swore to destroy. They have become comfortable in the trappings of power and they are loath to relinquish them. They are not the promise that is Kenya. It is time we learnt this lesson before it is too late.

Why not the 50/50 Gender Rule?

The capacity of the media to state the obvious is staggering. The capacity of women leaders to repeat the obvious beggars belief. If it is now dawning on the media and women leaders that political parties routinely sideline women in their leadership, the future of the country is in ever greater jeopardy than we ever appreciated. Looking at the line-up of political parties in Kenya, one would be mistaken for thinking, and believing, that Kenyan women are yet to graduate from primary school, let alone secondary school or university, or that they have scaled the heights of the private sector. The men who have traditionally called the shots in KANU seem to be calling the shots in Kenya's political parties. Even Martha Karua's NARC-K or Charity Ngilu's NARC, regardless of the leadership of the two lionesses of Kenya's Second Liberation, are dominated by men and seem to pursue agendas that have been championed by men for decades.

The Constitution delivered a shock to this system of patriarchy when it mandated the equality of the sexes, ordering that no more than two-thirds of any gender could occupy elected or appointed positions in the public or private sector. Now, while political parties serve a public purpose, they are arguably private organisations. They are not established by law but they are regulated by statute. Officials of political parties are not public officials, but they are responsible for the nomination and election of public officials. They must, therefore, abide by the Two-thirds Gender Rule and ensure that no more than two-thirds of any one gender occupy offices in the parties. This is a rule that has apparently been flouted by all political parties and continues to be flouted 18 months after the Constitution was promulgated.

Despite the hype that accompanied the promulgation of the Constitution, its implementation is not going to be easy or without challenges. The Two-thirds Gender Rule is one example of the paradigmatic changes that will need to be made to ensure that many of the gains of the Second Liberation are protected. The changes upend many received orthodoxies, the least not being the primacy of the masculine gender in the destiny of the nation. The place of women leaders in defining the next phase of the development of the nation has been affirmed by law, but it will take a complete change in how we view the place of the woman in national development to ensure that everyone plays their proper role going forward. Many pundits have speculated that the recent wave of gender-based violence against men is a sign that the family structure is being destroyed by the spectre of women taking their rightful place in leadership.

The next general elections must elevate as many women as possible to the National Assembly, the Senate and the 47 county assemblies. The formation of the next government must also follow this path: more women must be appointed to the Cabinet and as Principal Secretaries. It is not just about ensuring that women form at least one-third of the leadership of the nation or that women's issues receive attention from the government, but it is also to ensure that women are recognised as part of the fabric of the nation no longer in need of coddling or patronage. It is unconscionable that half the population is not reflected in leadership or decision-making. It is time that even the mightiest of the mighty accept that the time for the old rules is over and that women have valuable contributions to make in the governance of the nation. It is time that they became part and parcel of the national narrative.

Who cries for Kalonzo Musyoka?

It is impossible to sympathise with Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, the Vice-President, in his current plight with the other prominent members of the Gang of Seven. They have been looking for a reason to jettison the V-P for some time now. Ever since Uhuru Kenyatta made that crack about some politicians behaving like hyenas hankering over the hanging hand of the unsuspecting, Mr Musyoka was always on thin ice. When the Minister for Justice declared that the Constitution and the law of Kenya were clear that Mr Kenyatta and William Ruto could not and should not offer themselves for the presidency until their ICC trial was over, they found the perfect reason for putting pressure on Mr Musyoka to leave their gang. 

Mr Musyoka is scrambling to salvage the situation, going so far as to write to the President asking him to sack Mutula Kilonzo, though it is difficult to see which grounds he will advance to make his case. He has also promised that Johnston Muthama would be dealt with through the 'internal mechanisms' of the Wiper party. Mr Muthama's sin, it appears, was to tell the people of Ukambani what they had known all along: that with the departure of the two, Mr Musyoka stood to gain and perhaps take the presidency at the next general elections.

The Gang of Seven was always founded on the wrong principles. It's reason for life was primarily to keep Raila Odinga from the top job. Other than the fact that the major partners in the Gang were all former KANU die-hards, there is no ideology that weds these men together. They have done nothing to demonstrate that their sympathies lie with the people of Kenya or for the challenges that the nation faces as it seeks to implement the Constitution that at least one of them rejected during the referendum campaigns of 2010. Mr Musyoka, the senior-most member of the Gang of Seven has consistently played second fiddle to Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto presumably because of his perceived weaknesses. 

For instance, it is widely presumed that while Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto command large followings in their respective political backyards, Central Kenya for Mr Kenyatta and the Rift Valley for Mr Ruto, Mr Musyoka barely commands the loyalty of half the peoples of Ukambani. Even in his Kitui home, he has to contend with the indefatigable Charity Ngilu, one of his most ardent opponents. In Kangundo and Mbooni areas of Machakos, Mr Musyoka relies on the popularity (and money) of Mr Muthama and Mr Kilonzo. In Makueni County, Prof Philip Kaloki, one of his allies, faces challenges from the down-but-not-out and recently resurgent Kalembe Ndile. Nor can he count on the support of Kilome's John Harun Mwau, a man who has stood alone ever since his first foray into elective politics in 1992. It also does not help when it is perceived that Mr Musyoka does not have and cannot raise the finances to support a lone-wolf presidential campaign without the assistance of Mr Muthama and his cronies in the gemstone industry.

Mr Musyoka has consistently been on the wrong side of history since 2005 when he engineered the break-up of the original Orange Movement. His decision to stand by Mr Kibaki in the aftermath of the 2007 general elections demonstrated as nothing else had done so far that he was willing to grab whatever opportunities came his way. The irony is not lost; Mr Musyoka's greatest asset in the Gang of Seven was his willingness to do whatever he could to deny Raila Odinga the presidency is his greatest liability in preserving his position in the Gang of Seven. His decision to jettison his erstwhile allies in the Wiper party demonstrate that he still does not get it. Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto, so long as they remain in the cross-hairs of the ICC prosecutor, are political liabilities, especially if the IDP remain in camps living in the abject conditions that the government has left them to. Mr Ruto's political nomadism is proof that just like Mr Musyoka, he will do what it takes to ascend to the presidency. He has persistently moved from one party to the next looking for a vehicle that will take him to State House and with the URP he has found himself the perfect vehicle.

Now Mr Musyoka finds himself in a quandary. The list of people he has betrayed in his ascension to the V-P's office is long and growing longer. I doubt whether the memories of the betrayed are as pigeon-like as the V-P thinks. Therefore, Mr Musyoka finds himself not only fighting to persuade Mr Ruto and Mr Kenyatta to allow him to participate in their 'primaries', but he finds an unlikely coalition arrayed against him. Even if the majority of the people he has betrayed are portrayed as minnows, they will become a formidable force when they join hands and perhaps join with Mr Odinga in denying Mr Musyoka the presidency. This is a race of incumbents, even with the inclusion of Raphael Tuju. All the major players are or were serving members of the Executive so the general election is a referendum on their performance not just in government but in their parties. Mr Musyoka faces a great challenge in rehabilitating his political fortunes. It is difficult to sympathise with him.

Political evangelism

Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
- Matthew vii: 21

Since the Pre-trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court comprising Judges Ekaterina Trendafilova, Cuno Tarfusser and Hans-Peter Kaul confirmed charges against William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta, among others, the pair has been on a whistle-stop tour of the nation, men of the cloth in tow praying loudly for their salvation from the clutches of the ICC Prosecutor. The images of William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta on their knees with preachermen laying hands on them in prayer have been on the front pages of our newspapers for the past few weeks. Absent from the pages of these same newspapers, even inside the papers, are images of the men, women and children living in abject conditions in makeshift camps, all but forgotten by the people of Kenya.

Traditionally, as the Archbishop of Canterbury found out in the past few months, the church has always been a refuge for the weak and the downtrodden. In Kenya, this tradition is all but forgotten; the church is the refuge of the high and mighty, a place for 'networking' and entrenching the overlordship of the ruling classes. It explains why the Kenyans living in Internally Displaced Persons' (IDP) camps have faded from our memories, while the men accused of causing their plight receive the red-carpet treatment from bishops and reverends wherever they set foot. 

It is why the vocal church leaders of Kenya find it easier to hobnob with the members of the reviled political class and persistently shun the 'others'. I am yet to see images of John Cardinal Njue or Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, or the leaders of our megachurches visiting with the IDPs or offering them the comfort of their coffers. The IDPs are left to organise what spiritual and material solace they can find, with what resources they can scratch together. In the midst of their suffering, forgotten by the majority of Kenyans, they have taken extraordinary steps to organise worship amongst themselves, while the leaders of the visible church in Kenya lay hands on the high and mighty.

Perhaps we have misjudged the major churches in Kenya. Perhaps what they do to offer comfort and solace to the IDPs is done away from the glare of the media cameras and they have made extraordinary sacrifices for the sake of the IDPs and we are being uncharitable when we suggest that they are blind to their plight. Perhaps it is the proliferating evangelical churches, seeing an opportunity to get closer to the powerful of the land, that are taking advantage of the legal plight of the ICC accused. But it still fails to account for why they see the ICC duo as more important, in need of divine intervention, than the Kenyans living in the IDP camps.

The men of the cloth that have taken it upon themselves to inject a dose of religion into the political process by coat-tailing after the ICC duo have decided that the fate of the particular sects rests in the hands of the pair more than it does in the hands of the Almighty. They represent a change in evangelism that was initiated when KANU finally lost its iron grip on the nation and was cemented with the bloody 2007 campaign and its equally blood-soaked aftermath. Their role is no longer to offer moral and spiritual leadership to the parched masses, but to participate robustly in determining the political future of the country. They have wandered so far from the straight and narrow that they will need binoculars to find their way back. Many of their comrades have decided to join active politics, using the rhetoric of politics to beguile their congregations to elect them to political positions. It is the weak and downtrodden that are paying the price for this change in mission statement. It is a sad time for the Christian faithful and one day soon they will realise just how much they have lost.

Time to face reality

It is a rare thing to see political parties marching in lock-step over anything of significance. Therefore, it is exciting to see PNU, the PNU Alliance, Wiper Democratic Movement and sundry elements of the G7 and G47 joining hands to bring down the Minister of Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs a peg or two. The good minister's sin, it seems, has been that he has taken a hard look at the provisions of the Constitution, applied a legal mind that has been honed over two decades, and proclaimed that the leading lights of the anti-Raila brigade cannot, and should not, put themselves forward for the presidency while they still face the prospect of an international trial for crimes against humanity. Mutula Kilonzo, the minister in question, happens to be the Secretary-General of the Wiper Democratic Movement, whose leader happens to be the Vice-President and a member of the triumvirate determined to stop Mr Odinga from becoming Kenya's fourth president. 

The Vice-President's colleagues, Uhuru Kenyatta, the leader of KANU and William Ruto, the ODM deputy leader and, apparently, leader of the United Republican Party (which factions of the republic the party wishes to unite remain a mystery for the rest of the nation), are the reason why his party apparatchiks are determined to teach Mutula Kilonzo a lesson. These disparate forces are determined to bring a censure motion against the justice minister for his public statements that not only contradict what the Attorney-General has publicly stated but also what the Wiper Democratic Movement's leadership (bar Mr Kilonzo, of course) have stated, that is, that Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto are free to put themselves forward for the presidency of Kenya, regardless of the indictments at the ICC hanging over their heads (and their political fortunes).

The irony is not lost that while Wiper Democratic Movement styles itself as a 'democratic' party, and that it espouses 'democratic values', it has decided to muzzle its Secretary-General for making uncomfortable remarks, going against the spirit of a free exchange of ideas. Lee Kinyanjui, one of the more vocal members of the censure Mutula movement is quoted as saying that the motion will be before the National Assembly even before they engage in the rigmarole of prayers; they are that determined to show Mutula Kilonzo the door. One must pause and ask, "Doth the lady protest too much?"

Until the promulgation of the Constitution, Mutula Kilonzo had rarely demonstrated a capacity for reading the public mood and acting in that interest. He was frequently castigated for placing fidelity to the law above placating the public, whose clamour for reforms only grew louder the more he went about his duties. Once the Constitution was promulgated, however, what was Mr Kilonzo's Achille's Heel became his standard, and for once, his strict constructionism of the law is in line with the public mood. As Martha Karua's successor to the justice ministry, Mr Kilonzo tried in vain to advise the Don't Be Vague, Go to the Hague Brigade that it was a bad idea. Together with the President and Prime Minister, Mr Kilonzo attempted to get his colleagues in the august House to amend the former Constitution and enact legislation to establish a local tribunal to try those who would be found to bear responsibility for the violence that brought so much pain and misery to hundreds of thousands of Kenyans after the 2007 general elections. At the time, of course, it was unknown who would be indicted and many, perhaps with disguised Schadenfreude, hoped that it would be Mr Odinga and members of the ODM. They saw his and President Kibaki's attempt at setting up a local tribunal as a blatant attempt to set the stage for manipulating the courts in Mr Odinga's favour.

They must be kicking themselves for this gross miscalculation. Mr Odinga may have called for mass action when it became clear that he was being robbed of victory but no one has been able to link him directly to the violence that ensued. No one has been able to show that Mr Odinga paid or organised marauding gangs to attack his political opponents. To date, other than the call for mass action, Mr Odinga remains blameless for the violence. The Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC, however, is convinced that Mr Kenyatta, Mr Ruto, Joshua arap Sang and Francis Muthaura bear responsibility for the violence and is determined to prosecute them before the ICC. The narrative has now changed. Those that were loudest in calling for an ICC trial are now determined to paint it as a scheme by the Prime Minister, the US President and the Prosecutor of the ICC to cut short the promising political careers of Mr Ruto and Mr Kenyatta, and their public statements at every ostensible prayer rally they have attended highlights this fact. Thus, every time the justice minister opens his mouth and states that they are barred, by the Constitution and the law of Kenya, from standing for the presidency, they see the Prime Minister's hidden hand in the justice minister's statements. The man that warned them of the folly of an ICC trial has now become their bitterest enemy and new reasons continue to be fashioned for why the minister speaks as he does. Indeed, one of the new reasons to come to light is that Mr Kenyatta refused to bend the law in Mr Kilonzo's favour when the Kenya Revenue Authority demanded back-taxes that run into hundreds of millions of shillings.

The censure Mutula brigade is playing fast and loose with the memories of long-suffering Kenyans. When he brought the Constitution Amendment Bill to Parliament in 2009, Mr Kilonzo offered the naysayers free legal advice; the ICC was a court that could not and would not be manipulated by the suspects. They refused to heed his warnings. When the Proposed Constitution was still in the process of being harmonised, he warned them against the inclusion of certain clauses including the International Law Clause that makes international law part of the law of Kenya. Again, they refused to heed his warning. When various Bills were introduced in the National Assembly to implement the Constitution, they refused to ask the justice minister for his legal opinion, determined as they were to fashion political clauses that would benefit them down the road. For them to cry foul at this stage and turn a stridently deaf ear to the minister's opinions on whether the two may or may not stand for the presidency is the height of hypocrisy. The censure motion is an attempt to turn back the clock and pull the wool over Kenyans' eyes. It is time that someone called them on it and forced them to face reality.

Poverty and Illiteracy are the real sins

The Culture Wars are the bread-and-butter of conservative politics in the United States. Railing against abortion, the assault on religion and the right of the people to bear all types of arms, conservatives in the US have made the Culture Wars the Rubicon of Republican politics and it is a brave Republican that goes against the grain to argue that the Culture Wars are a waste of time. Charles Kanjama, writing in The Standard on Sunday rails against the "war on morals" by the "inundation of the contraception campaign" (We should not lose the war against social immorality, 12 February 2012). He is correct to argue that there is an ongoing war in Kenyan society where hedonism and immorality are on the rise while traditional family values are being eroded at an alarming rate, but his prescription for the malaise is wrong-headed, and just plain wrong.

Social conservatives in Kenya warned against the moral risks of ratifying the proposed constitution in 2010. Their arguments failed to persuade a majority of voters and the proposed constitution was duly ratified in August 2010 and subsequent;y promulgated in a colourful ceremony televised internationally. 18 months later, no studies have been advanced to show that abortions have risen or that homosexuality has ensnared even more Kenyans than before. The proposal by the Mayor of Nairobi to legalise prostitution is now being used as a red herring to attempt to persuade Kenyans that the fears engendered by the Constitution are indeed real and coming to life as we sit idly by.

To take one strand in Mr Kanjama's proposition, that contraception is the bane of Kenya's social fabric, one must agree that contraception has led to greater levels of immorality and contributed to the breakdown of the family. One must turn a blind eye to the debilitating poverty and illiteracy of the people and the proliferation of media that promotes hedonism at the expense of moral and spiritual growth. Mr Kanjama, whom I must assume is a member of the Roman Catholic Church in Kenya, refuses to admit that the ability of families to plan when and how many children to have has liberated them to pursue interests and activities that will reduce poverty and increase their literacy levels. Before the advent of the condom and the pill, it was impossible for mothers to decide adequately when to have children, or even how many. That was the preserve of the husband and to that end many women were consigned t home-making roles only, denying them their rightful places in the workplace and as contributors to the national well-being. No one will deny that the millions of Kenyan women in the work place contribute to national development and that their voices are vital in shaping the destiny of this nation, whether for ill or for good. More girls are attending university than ever before and their education is vital to strengthening this country, more than all the prayers made at the alter of the No Condom Campaign.

The presence of homosexuals, prostitutes, rapists, child molesters, murderers, thieves, liars and cheats is not just down to the pro-contraception campaign or the pro-choice campaign advanced by non-governmental organisations with ties to foreign backers. Poverty and illiteracy have ensured that these moral problems continue to have a stranglehold on the lives of millions of Kenyans. Very few Kenyans wish to be associated with these sins, for that is what millions of Kenyan Christians see them as, and very few would wish to legalise homosexual relations or prostitution. But simply denying that their causes are not just psychological or spiritual but also environmental fails to admit that poverty and illiteracy are far greater moral sins than the aforementioned. The solutions proposed by the conservative culture warriors of Kenya fail to take into account their role in perpetuating the fraud that belief in God, and a rigid adherence to His Word, is all that is required to reverse the moral decline in this nation. What is needed is a robust programme, a campaign if you will, to lift the millions of Kenyans languishing in poverty and illiteracy out of their squalor and setting them on the path to a proud and successful nation.

Why not?

Why anyone would legalise prostitution in Kenya defeats logic. The largest population of hypocrites in the world is not going to agree to a proposal to legalise an activity that tens of thousands of men engage in at least once in their lifetimes. Nor are their wives going to sit idly by and admit that for one reason or another they permit their husbands to seek comfort in the paid arms of another. George Aladwa, the Mayor of Nairobi, set the cat among the pigeons when he suggested that there are benefits to bringing the world's oldest profession into the light of day. The reaction from the legions of hypocrites was swift as it was overwhelmingly negative. The Mayor swiftly walked back his proposal and indicated that a robust programme of rounding up the women (and their clients) who carry on this profession and charging them in court would be initiated. Prosecutions, he assured us, would target both the prostitute and her clients.

However, we need to seriously consider whether the Mayor had legitimate reasons for making the proposal. The overwhelming opinion is that he did not. After all, no woman would want to admit on her tax returns that she makes her living on her back nor would her parents wish to admit to their friends that their daughters are prostitutes, walking the streets of Nairobi. I suspect that they would also be shunned in their respective houses of worship if they were to openly advertise that their profession included taking money for sexual services. I can almost see the men of the cloth railing against the moral decay that is the City of Nairobi.

Should be the State's job to police the morals of the people of Kenya? That is an argument that has been made since the British brought us the rule of law and Victorian values. WE police all manner of activities and behaviors. It is no longer acceptable for men to take the life of another; we leave that to the due process of law, where accused persons are charged in a court of law, prosecuted and if convicted, prosecuted. It is the same case with such moral questions as thievery or lying while under oath. So, it is right and proper that our society decides whether prostitution should be permitted or not.

We cannot run away from the fact that there are tens of thousands of women and young girls who earn their living from the world's oldest profession. They work under some of the worst conditions in the world, not knowing whether their clients will turn into monsters and commit some of the most unspeakable acts known to man. Women of the night have been maimed and murdered in the course of their work and society turns a blind eye to their plight because of its perceived moral superiority. It can be argued that it is hypocritical to criminalise this activity when we know for certain that men and women, even those who's moral probity is beyond reproach, employ the services of courtesans on a regular basis. A few years ago, prominent legislators were caught prowling the streets looking for the services of women of the night. Stories abound of the legions of college and university students who pay for their studies through profession. We know profession exists, we know (roughly) who engages in it, we know (roughly) who the customers are, and we know that it is not going away. So why not legalise or, for that matter, de-criminalise the profession?

Of battered husbands and changes in the family structure

We snigger and make salacious comments every time we read about the men that have been attacked by their spouses or live-in girlfriends. We pity the men for being victims of domestic violence and shun them, even if it means that they continue to suffer in silence. We refuse to admit that the traditional family structure, where the man is the breadwinner and the wife is the home-maker, no longer holds true for all families. Traditionally, the man worked and provided or his family, and exercised dominion over his home, making key decisions for the family without reference to anyone else, not even his wife. He could 'chastise' his wife for challenging his authority without being accused of being a monster. Indeed, some men used the more conservative sections of the Epistles of St Paul to justify such 'chastisement'. But in the modern world, where men and women frequently work outside the family home, and women are now in charge of a large part of their lives, the traditional ideas that underpinned marriage must be re-examined.

The most vocal victims of domestic violence seem to emanate from Central Kenya and the image of the Nyeri wife wielding a rolling pin or a knife against her husband has gained popular notoriety. Examining the plight of the husband in Central Kenya one is struck by the profound changes that have taken place in family life. Charles Onyango-Obbo, writing some time back in the Daily Nation, argued that the emancipation of the women in traditional African society has contributed to the emasculation of the man, especially when men are increasingly suffering the embarassment of being unable to provide for their families due to straitened economic times. Women now, especially in the rural areas, are the primary providers for their families. They face great frustration in their home lives when their husbands are incapable of performing their duties as husbands, fathers or members of the community. They are frequently to be found indulging in excessive consumption of alcohol, impairing their judgment and rendering them incapable of managing the affairs of the home, leaving their wives to take charge. In such circumstances, regardless of what the bible says, women are no longer the helpers of their husbands but their equals and the trend in recent months of men getting walloped by their wives is an indication that they are demanding to be treated as equals.

Society still expects young men to take wives at a certain age, ideally between the ages of 27 and 35. Many of the young men in this age-group, in contrast to their parents and grandparents, are just starting out in their careers and do not own the houses they live in or the farms they work. Many have been persuaded that a hedonistic lifestyle is their birthright, hence the bacchanalian approach to 'having fun'. By the time they are getting married, many young men are used to being treated as gods, to be obeyed without showing any inclination to providing to the welfare of their families or their communities: they only live for themselves. They pretend that even after their marriages, they shall continue to live life as they did before, spending hours away from their wives and young children in bars watching foreign football matches or some other sporting event. When it comes to making decisions about their families, they leave it all to their young wives, who frequently have careers of their own. In a society where we no longer teach young persons how to resolve conflicts or how to make proper decisions, why should we be surprised that young wives are taking on the role of husbands and chastising their spouses for failing on their marital duties? The legions of young wives who throng the evangelical churches do not receive the guidance that will help them in their marital lives; churches have frequently become vehicles for get-rich-quick schemes that do nothing for their spiritual well-being.

It is time we addressed these issues openly and honestly. We must begin the arduous process of not only accepting the image of the working wife, but that she is no longer the subservient member of the family but an equal partner with an equal stake in the fate of the home. And we must equip our youth with better communication and decision-making skills in order to safeguard the family as the primary institution of the community. The image of the battered husband is the clarion-call for a new form of family and we must heed the call or suffer the consequences.

Devolution, the A-G and his detractors.

What do we expect of the devolved government? There are men and women, traipsing abroad in the land making promises of what they will do as governors or senators without having a clue as to what devolution is, what it means or what it will do. They make promises based on three generations of political received wisdom without considering, first, that devolution, unlike the Sixties' version, is an entirely new form of governance that Kenyans are experimenting with and, secondly, that unless it is well-implemented, it is set to be the most expensive mistake Kenyans have ever made (or will ever make). Public discourse over the past few months has revolved around the question of who or what is sabotaging devolution and of late, the culprit has been identified as the Attorney-General (and his State Law Office).

After Mzee Jomo Kenyatta's death, politics in Kenya underwent a sea-change. What had been a gradual personalisation of the State in the presidency, was made manifest in the twenty-four years of President Moi's and KANU's rule. Development, as an agenda, was the exclusive province of the Head of State and Government. His word was final as to where roads or schools or hospitals or anything would be built. The central government became the all-encompassing octopus that we all came to know and fear. It's mandarins were represented everywhere, directing the development of even the smallest projects conceived in the name of the people. IN time, the people stopped being the reason for the existence of the government, and instead became nuisances to be handled and managed with an iron fist, especially when they became restive and demanded a say in the way their lives were being shaped.

The Bomas of Kenya Constitutional Conference set the pace for the changes that would be finally entrenched in the Constitution by the Committee of Experts in 2009/2010. A process that had crept up on the central government by the inauguration of the Constituency Development Fund was finally realised when devolution was entrenched in the Constitution. The structure of devolution, which the Ministry of Local Government-appointed Task Force on Devolved Government attempted to deconstruct in the months following the promulgation of the Constitution is one of the most ambitious political projects Kenya has ever attempted, more significant than the defeat of KANU in 2002 or the crisis of 2007/2008. For the first time in three generations, the destiny of the peoples of Kenya is in the hands of citizens at the grassroots level, where significantly larger sums of money than had been allocated under the CDF will be managed without the overbearing hand of the central government by the people at grassroots level. Devolution is the final step in empowering citizens who have been ignored by their government and to give them a real say in how and where public monies will be expended.

The accusations being levelled against the Attorney-General must be seen in the contest of a debate over how devolution will be implemented. The A-G, being the principal legal advisor to the government, speaks for the government and acts for the government when he makes decisions regarding the manner in which devolution will be implemented, including the enactment of laws that will bring this dream to fruition. However, he does not act alone; he does so with the full knowledge of the government, offering his advice where it is needed and bringing into effect the decisions of the government. His decisions are not final; neither are the Cabinet's. These decisions must be placed in the crucible of the National Assembly, where the people's representatives sit. It is here that the decisions and actions of the A-G and the Cabinet will either be vindicated or abandoned. Anyone that only speaks of the role of the A-G without considering the actions of the National Assembly should be the one to be accused of ulterior motives.

Enact legislation to change the Sub Judice Rule

The Civil Procedure Rules make provisions for when a matter that is being considered in a court of law can be discussed (or not). The Constitution protects speech and the individual's right to know. Mr Justice Lenaola, while hearing a suit that considers the question of whether Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto may contest the presidency, has ordered all public discussion of their candidacies to cease during the duration of the trial. This is known as the Sub Judice Rule and it has exercised the blogoshpere like all things these days tend to do.

In Kenya, matters under active litigation are heard before judicial officers, without a jury as is common in other jurisdictions like the United States. The rule is meant to preserve the dignity of the court and the litigants by preventing the members of public from ridiculing them during the period when the matter is being considered by the court. However, with the new Constitution, the freedom of the people to free speech and expression and their right to be informed of matters of national importance, this rule comes up against the demand of the people to be allowed to comment, whether fairly or not, on the matters before the court.

Justice Lenaola, no doubt alive to the fact that legislation is yet to be enacted that would give life to the freedoms and rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution, fell back on the only legislation that addresses this knotty issue: the Civil Procedure Act. The commentators in the mass media and on the web refuse to accept the fact that there is no legislation to give life to the freedom to free speech and expression or the individual's right to be informed. Therefore, until a law is enacted to do so, the Sub Judice Rule will continue to be applied as and when the Court determines that it is best to do so. The reactions to the ruling of the court refuse to take into account that the enactment of legislation to implement the Constitution has been left to the devices of the politicians. Their antics have ensured that the process of enacting legislation is held hostage to the presidential ambitions of the political class and that the needs of the people play second fiddle to their ambitions. Therefore, such legislation as to give life to the freedom of speech and expression or the right to know has not been considered or even actively pursued. The men and women riling against the ruling must take a step back and acknowledge that they too must bear the blame for the situation that obtains today.