The Butcher's Bill

The grim butcher's bill of 9/11 keeps on rising eleven years after the United States suffered its most devastating attack on the homeland since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, Hawaii on December 7, 1941. In the  years after 9/11, George Bush's White House neo-conservatives launched a Global war on Terror, exacting revenge on the Taliban hosts of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and invading Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction. Barack Obama excoriated the Bush government for its pursuit of the dumb war at the expense of the necessary war, but today he finds himself in the untenable position of keeping open the patently illegal prison camp on the Caribbean island of Cuba and ordering the assassination of American citizens who have chosen to fight on the side of America's enemies worldwide. He has expanded George W Bush's War on Terror to far-flung places in the Middle-East and his use of the Predators and reapers has risen dramatically, killing both enemies and innocents alike. If you live in the Middle East, it is wise not to sit in a wedding party lest you become the latest casualty in a war without end.

Kenya must learn lessons from the United States' misadventures on the field of battle. In the past decade and a half, Kenya has witnessed first-hand the ruthlessness of its enemies. The bombing of the United States' embassy in the capital came hundreds of Kenyan casualties. As did the attack on an Israeli-owned hotel at Kikambala on Kenya's sun-kissed Coast. Then there are the home-grown criminal enterprises such as the Mungiki whose reign of terror galvanised the government to extra-legal means to contain them. This year alone, Kenyans have been bombed while traveling, while shopping, while worshiping. And now a growing inter-ethnic conflict is witnessing the introduction of small arms from the ungovernable Somalia, where Kenya has acquitted itself well in its war with al Shabaab. There is also the small matter of the Mombasa Republican Council which the High Court says is a legitimate organisation but the government claims is a front for foreign powers or organisations bent on destabilising the country before the 2013 general election.

Our responses have been poor. Murders are happening and no culprits are brought to book. Allegations are bandied about without proof. Kenyans are dying while their government worries about keeping its political leadership happy. And now public servants have had enough. Promises made have been broken and they have decided to go on strike - teachers, lecturers, doctors, nurses all. We and our government care only for the outcome of the general election. Who the President will be and who it won't be. To a lesser degree of obsession, we also want to know if Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto will indeed stand trial at The Hague. We aren't worrying about what form the government will take, how much we will be asked to pay in taxes, who will run our public institutions or whether we are prepared to sacrifice more for the upkeep of our elected leaders. Our blindness means that when al Shabaab and its acolytes strike, we won't have a sufficient response. We will be caught flatfooted. And innocent Kenyans will continue to pay the price. The butcher's bill only gets grimmer.

The constitutional honeymoon is definitely over

A new constitution for a fair land was supposed to make the pain of 1992, 1997, 2007/08 go away. Someone forgot to tell us that a constitution is not paracetamol. The past three months have been bloody so much so we are wondering if the nation ever recovered from the scars of 2007/08. The latest are the ongoing skirmishes between the state security establishment and the supporters of murdered al Shabaab-sympathetic cleric Sheikh Aboud Rogo. Mombasa is on fire and no one seems prepared to do what it takes to tamp down the flames and lower the temperature.

If we needed more proof of the ineptitude of our elected representatives, Mombasa should be a sober reminder. Kenyans should take the promises made on a daily basis on the stump by campaigning politicians with a truck-load of Indian-owned Magadi soda. While the politicians are the most visible symbols of the rot in Kenya's cadre of leaders, they are by no means unique. Institutions of higher learning have become battle-grounds for, as Eric Kiraithe might put it, each tribe to measure their strength against another. Faith-based organisations have become vehicles for the self-aggrandisement of their "owners". Corporations are organsied more like ethnic self-help groups and their chief executives operate more like tribal warlords than good corporate citizens. Professional institutions are divided into tribal alliances; not even the Law Society has escaped this sad descent into the abyss of ethno-chauvinism.

In this environment the more violently inclined among us take out their frustrations on sysmbols of the ruling class. In Mombasa, Garissa and Nairobi, these symbols have been churches and policemen. It seems no one has truly let go of the events of 2007/08 when the church and the police were accused of taking political sides for or against one presidetial candidate or the other. It is only a matter of time before attacks against private businesses become the norm as was the case at the height of the violence in 2007/08; the bombing of Assanand's House was the just the first salvo.

The National Security and Intelligence Service has warned that giving the Mombasa Republican Council political legitimacy is a bad idea. Perhaps they realise that the MRC has been infiltrated by foreign elements hell-bent on destabilising the country ahead of the general election in favour of more radical or radicalised candidates. Majo Gen Gichangi's warnings have been ignored by all leading presidential candidates, keen as they are to secure votes in the restive Coast region. In 1992, 1997 and 2002, they did the same when it came to (as the NSIS called them) organised criminal organisations such as the murderous Mungiki, Chinkororo, and Jeshi la Mzee. If politicians had not patronised these outfits, the bloodshed of 2007/08 would have been minimised; the country would not be in crisis and we would not be expressing disappointment at the tactics politicians are employing to get around the provisions of the Constitution.

The obsession by civil society types on the "implementation of the Constitution" without addressing the core problems this nation faces has only exacerbated the situation. Their obsession with the political system at the expense of socio-cultural questions has blinded them to the realities on the ground. Politics, of course, is the only vehicle for expressing frustration in governance issues but it is by no means the only one or even the most important. Some programmes that were crucial to moulding good citizens were abandoned when the government began the free primary education programme. Children are no longer being mentored to be leaders; nor, it seems are students in secondary schools or institutions of higher learning. Public universities have lost the most when it comes to their character. Student leaders, if they could be described as that, are mere pawns in the chessboard of national politics; they are easily manipulated and sacrificed. Few survive to be effective political, religious, academic or corporate leaders. Many become political thugs-for-hire without a name to themselves. The less said about the church...

Kenyans have few viable choices going into 2013. We know it. The politicians know it. Our enemies know it. But we will repeat past behaviour, fall into old patterns. The violence, bank heists, poaching and terror attacks are more of the same. We are prevented from properly vetting candidates for high office; our attention is on our safety, both physical and material. It is what politicians want. It is what our enemies want. But it is not what we need.

When did we become a civilised society?

Makau Mutua gets it wrong again. By claiming civilised society status for Kenya (Physical attacks on Miguna are barbaric, Sunday Nation, 2 September 2012), he betrays that he has been away from home for far too long. Let us examine some of the characteristics of a civilised society. Leadership, even when corrupt, is held to account. The members of the community take an active, sometimes loudly vocal, part in the governance of their communities, be it at grassroots, regional or national level. This is how someone like Barack Obama was able to rise from the level of a community organiser to the President of the United States. Institutions matter; it is why even in their decline, trades union, political parties, professional societies, and the like continue to play an important role in organising the voices of the masses. Everyone pays their taxes; those who cannot afford to are assisted to rise to a level where they can pay. In the USA and the UK, "the dole" or "unemployment"  is not a permanent subsidy; one is usually assisted to get off it and into a job as quickly as possible. Even in the middle of a battle over the curriculum offered in institutions of learning, politicians in civilised societies accept the vital role that well-managed schools play; for this reason, schools are funded to an astonishing degree.

Even a casual examination of Kenya betrays the fact that it is far from being considered a civilised country. Prof Mutua points out that in a civilised society, "free speech" is to be celebrated and protected. I couldn't agree more. For this reason, whether I think Miguna Miguna is wrong or the paid agent of the Prime Minister's nemeses, his right to speak and publish what he wants cannot be infringed upon, save under the laws of libel and slander. But Kenya is not civilised and speech is far from free. The history of the past decade has been a history of missteps and political corruption n a colossal scale. Mwai Kibaki, with the support of Raila Odinga, swept into power with the promise of a new beginning; a new broom to sweep out the Augean Stables that was the Kenya body politic.

What we got instead was the ever ballooning corruption and rights violations that culminated in the murderous blood-letting after the 2007 general election. Speech is only free in Kenya if it sings the tune of the politician of the hour. Miguna Miguna is discovering this to his eternal sorrow. When he hitched his wagon to the Raila Odinga movement, Miguna Miguna distinguished himself amidst all the lackeys, kiss-asses and sycophants, for his devotion and loud loyalty to the Prime Minister. His every public move until his spectacular falling out with the PM was calculated to paint Raila Odinga as Kenya's Second Coming and the PM's detractors as nitwits, nincompoops, morons and idiots-for-hire. He single-handedly contributed to making the PM the most loathed figure in the PNU camp; nothing the PM does today will erase the anger that Miguna Miguna aroused in his enemies. When he did what he did, no one saw fit to ask him to tone down his rhetoric; speech is free, right? It is only after he turned his cudgels on the PM and his coterie that we have somehow discovered the limits of free speech.

The hallmarks of a civilised society are only appreciated by the men and women with the wherewithal to blind themselves to the realities of the day. Kenya is a poor country, yet we behave as if we have a bottomless Treasury. We can afford to keep our army of elected representatives in a style to which many Kenyans can only imagine, but it is "unsustainable" to give in to the demands of doctors, teachers, nurses or policemen who live hand-to-mouth and suffer the indignity of being thought of as failures for their chosen careers. We can afford to take out massive foreign loans to build highways and bridges while hundreds of thousands of Kenyans live in hovels not even fit for the most rabid of dogs. We can afford to send our defense forces to fight wars in foreign lands (a popular move no doubt) but we are unable to prevent the corruption of our immigration and citizenship services which sees foreign pederasts and sundry other criminals claim Kenyan nationality on a daily basis. On what basis does Makau Mutua make the claim that Kenya is a civilised society? What?

Are we really victims of a vast CSO conspiracy?

In an OpEd piece in today's Daily Nation, Jennifer Shamalla, a founder of the National Conservative Forum, attempts to tar all civil society organisations with the same brush. She accuses them of ultimately forcing on Kenyans obscure ideas and values systems (Beware those fighting for your rights). CSOs in Kenya perform many of the tasks that the Government of Kenya has given up on. Who among us is going to seek foreign conspiracies in the work of the Kenya Red Cross or of World Vision? No one denies that some operate like puppets on a string, spouting the latest in global group-think on matters as diverse as the 'rights' of homosexuals or transgender persons. But on some issues, the CSOs have led where the government has been loath to tread.

Take for instance basic education for the millions of Kenyans children whose parents have given up on the government. If it was not for civil society organisations like the Catholic and Anglican churches, these children would have no access to education. Or to primary healthcare for that matter.

We cannot continue to bury our heads in the sand and give the government a free pass simply because it is building the infrastructure of the future. The shiny new highways being constructed by the government come at great cost. While the Somalia adventure may have eaten substantially into the government's finances, it does not, by itself, explain why teachers, doctors or nurses have to go without the pay-rise they all so richly deserve for a job we would like to pretend is easy to do. The reality is that without the CSOs making up the numbers, the provision of some basic services to scores of Kenya's neglected regions would remain the pipe-dream it has been since Independence.

Some of the services that CSOs provide include capacity-building for local operators, be it in the arena of environmental conservation or prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Without the participation of the CSOs in these crucial areas, these services would not be available to those who need them and the degradation of our environment would continue apace and the child-infection rate of HIV would sky-rocket to epidemic proportions. Not all CSOs are the tip of the spear of foreign influence-peddling in Kenya. Ms Shamalla must acknowledge this. Indeed, does the National Conservative Forum not fall into this category? We would be within our rights to demand that they publish their charter and their accounts to prove to us that they are not under the control of a foreign power.

CSOs, especially NGOs, have been the victims of baseless accusations for decades. But even in the politically charged arena of 'human rights' they have contributed significantly in moving Kenya forward over the years. If it was not for them, Kenya would still be held hostage to the former Constitution and its odious Section 2A that made it a constitutional one-party state (some may have called it a constitutional one-party dictatorship). Of course some of the proposals coming out of CSO chinwags are anathema to millions of Kenyans, such as the legalisation of homosexuality, of prostitution or the expanded rights of minority communities. But we should not pretend that the members of these groups do not form part of this great country we call Kenya.

Instead of groups like the National Conservative Forum concentrating their efforts in rolling back many of the reforms brought forth by the Constitution, they should expend their energies n ensuring that Kenyan social and political values, such as they be, are not hijacked by foreign powers out to line their pockets. There is no reason why the governments of the USA, the UK, China, India, Australia and others should pour millions, perhaps billions, of shillings in achieving 'human rights goals' in Kenya; they should do so back in their countries. It is for well-connected and, apparently, well-funded CSOs like the National Conservative Forum, to pick up the slack where the Government of Kenya is lacking.

Of bete noirs and character

The entry of Tony Gachoka into the murky waters of the imminent trials of the ICC Four barely registered on the political front. Together with Miguna Miguna, the Prime Minister's loudly estranged bete noir, he is the latest in the lineup of political hatchet men determined to ensure that the Prime Minister does not succeed Mwai Kibaki in 2013 to the Presidency. This coalition has somehow survived since its creation. Eternal optimists may wish to attribute this survival to the close working relationship between the President and the Prime Minister and their desire to do what it takes to get Kenya to the next level, politically and developmentally. Serial pessimists, of which I am a card-carrying member of the club, see only the desire of the members of the coalition to hang on to the privileges granted to them in their status as ministers and assistant ministers. The return of Henry Kosgey to the industrialisation ministry is proof that the politicians will do anything to hold onto the power they have amassed.

Because the coalition encompasses all parties, save for the fly-by-night operations without a credible political footprint outside of the constituencies of the members represented in Parliament, it was not possible to have an effective opposition to keep the Executive honest. Everyone is in on the charade that Parliament will play a strong oversight role. The antics of the likes of Adan Keynan and the Parliamentary committees attempt the increasingly difficult task of pulling the wool over the peoples' eyes regarding the spectacular failures of the Grand Coalition. Indeed it is only the indefatigable Dr Willy Mutunga who seems determined to paint a different picture for a critical arm of government by spearheading the reform of the Judiciary and leading from the front. The Executive and the National Assembly (which, since the Promulgation has been doubling as the Senate too) have done everything in their power to disappoint the Kenyan public at every turn. We need not look far for proof. In a few days Kenyans will watch as 'senior government officials' and representatives of the armed forces and Parliament troop down (at great taxpayers' expense) to the Coast to welcome a 'military ship' that has been a decade in the making at great expense (and incessant intrigue).

In contrast, an examination of the political situation in Canberra, reveals that we have far to go before we can claim to have matured as a Parliamentary (or Presidential) democracy. Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister, is facing allegations of improper conduct from events that took place 17 years ago when she worked for Labour Party-affiliated law firm. She had helped a union boss to set up a trust that was embezzled from by the labour boss. Questions are now being asked on whether the Prime Minister knew, when she knew and what she did about it. The allegations have dogged her political career; she has always denied that she acted improperly. Her former partners at Slater Gordon, the law firm, stand by her; the opposition leader, Tony Abbott is determined to use the incident to his advantage during the general election in March 2013. What makes the Canberra situation remarkable (in my eyes) is the fact that all the hatchet men after the Prime Minister are known; none is operating in the shadows. There are one or two shady characters, but their identities are known. There is very little speculation as to who is in and who is out.

Kenya political operatives thrive on intrigue and rumour. It is what makes them such formidable operators. It is also what makes them vile and a hated species, reviled by all right-thinking Kenyans. Mr Gachoka styles himself as a patriot and a nationalist, pointing his fingers at all manner of skulduggery in government wherever he may find it. It is therefore strange that when he worked for the Prime Minister he sat in meetings in which he alleges the Prime Minister admitted to having committed grievous offences without coming forward. He had to wait for four years until he could reveal all to the investigators of the International Criminal Court's Office of the Prosecutor. As goes Mr Gachoka so goes Mr Miguna.

This is not to say that the Prime Minister is spotless; he is yet to weigh in on the Cabinet decision to butcher the Integrity Bill. While Mitt Romney, the Republican challenger hoping to face Barack Obama in November, faces increasingly loud calls to reveal his finances, the Prime Minister and his colleagues in Parliament are determined to ensure that their financial arrangements remain as opaque as possible, hidden from the sunlight that all Kenyans wish to see it in. The Tenth Parliament has distinguished itself as being the most perfidious in history. At every turn, be it the question of their tax returns or the question of pre-election vetting, they have determined that their interests supersede those of the Kenyan people. Without shame they have put themselves over and above the men, women and children they took an oath to serve. I dare you to find one Kenyan who believes he has been truly served by his elected representative. Just one.

What Shikuku's death means to us.

Martin Shikuku's death exposes something else about our peculiar habits: we never prepare for the succession, whether it is in the political, corporate or administrative arenas. The man in charge of administration at the Western Australia Parliamentary Counsel's Office is retiring in 4 months, and he has a succession plan in place. Many of the senior drafters here are also retiring over the next three years and he is concerned that there are too few being recruited at lower levels. He has set in motion a recruitment plan that will pair new counsel with senior ones for mentoring over a period of 2 years so that as the older ones retire, the younger ones can step into their shoes and assume responsibility for some of the more demanding tasks.

In Kenya, it was always presumed to be malicious any consideration of the death or departure of persons in positions of responsibility. Indeed, the Attorney-General once declared it a treasonous offence to contemplate the death of the president. As a result, frequently, we are unprepared for the departures of leaders. Martin Shikuku, in contrast, since his exit from the political field, had always presumed that he was soon going to die and so he prepared himself for the event. He bought a coffin and dug his grave. It was a subtle message to the politicians in charge; prepare for your exit or the country will suffer.

This failure to prepare can be starkly demonstrated in the way the ICC Four continue to ignore the march of time and the changing environment. Messrs Kenyatta, Ruto and Sang continually fail to appreciate that the International Criminal Court is not a local Magistrate's Court in which their stature and prominence may be used to brow-beat the court into acting favourably towards them. When the matter first came up for public debate, they assumed that if anyone was going to be named in the famous Waki Envelope, it would be the President and Prime Minister. After all, in their opinion, they had been fighting for one or the other. So it came as a shock when their names were in the list after all. They had conspired with their colleagues to reject the President's and Prime Minister's pleas for a local mechanism for the 2007/08 crimes. They even ignored their friend and supporter, Mutula Kilonzo when he advised them against preferring The Hague Option rather than the local one. Today, they are compounding their error by concentrating too much on their political contest with the Prime Minister than in preparing for their trials, set to commence in 2013.

The same can be observed in the higher reaches of the civil service. Heads of department rarely have a succession plan in place; it is presumed to be the preserve of the Public Srvice Commission and the Directorate of Personnel Management. Many senior civil servants are appointed for their political loyalty and not for their technical abilities. For this reason many of them spend a vast majority of their waking hours conspiring to ensure that they keep their political masters happy than in ensuring their departments are well run or effective. The rest of the service views this as the preferred mode of operation and thus, tend to concentrate more on internal intrigue and politics and less on ensuring service delivery. The result is plain to see: the customer satisfaction surveys constantly rate the civil service and other arms of the government very poorly.

Perhaps a new government will be able to sweep away the detritus of 50 years of Uhuru. The Constitution lays the foundation for the establishment of an effective, efficient public service. Emphasis on merit is the key ingredient in reviving the civil service to its previous glory. Of course, success will not be achieved without expending serious resources. But in the light of competing demands - from the police, the teachers, university lecturers, doctor, nurses, etc. - the government must prioritise carefully. Favouring one over the other may be a recipe for chaos - strikes and go-slows. The late Shikuku shows that one can prepare; the question is: are we willing to draw the proper lessons from his death?

Being seduced

Meeting with the President of the Legislative Council of the Parliament of Western Australia, one is struck by how down-to-earth the man is. Maybe it the politician's skill of making everyone feel at ease, but his mirth and good humour must certainly come from a place of great confidence in his place int he grand scheme of things. One cannot help but compare the Hon Barry House, MLC, with the Hon Kenneth Marende, MP. Meeting with the Clerk of the Legislative Council, too, was a great pleasure. He knows more than he lets on and his job is simply to shepherd the business of the Chamber the best way he knows. His place in the political structure is neutral; he does not take sides in the business of the Chamber; all he does is to ensure that the business of the Chamber is transacted efficiently and honourably.

Our experience in Kenya is strikingly different. No senior government official will be seen around and about without an entourage of hangers-on and kiss-asses. The sign that you have arrived is a bevy of secretaries, clerks and factotums at you beck and call. Our arrival at the President's private office was heralded only by the Clerk and the President's secretary. Earlier in the week, it was the Parliamentary Counsel who came to our humble cubicle to introduce himself to his visitors from East Africa. He does not have a secretary; the receptionist will do. That she serves the entire Parliamentary Counsel's Office doesn't seem to diminish the fact that without his imprimatur, legislation will not be drafted.

The Attorney-General of Western Australia, whom we have not been officially introduced to, drives herself to work every morning. The only sign of her stature, apart from the fact that she is one of the most powerful people in the state, is the fact that she gets the nearest parking spot to the elevator door! She gets one secretary. Nobody seems to be out to get her; there wasn't a single bodyguard in sight the one time I saw her. Perhaps they were out to lunch or something. It is inconceivable that the woman who oversees the drafting of laws or the management of the legal apparatus of the state does not have a security detail.

In Kenya, status is the currency that we all seek. It is more important to be seen with the trappings of power than being seen to be effective. It explains why we have more policemen protecting politicians and other high-ranking functionaries than chasing down the armed robbers and murderers who make life difficult for millions of Kenyans. The glass entrance to the Corruption and Crime Commission is right on the street, protected only by a key-pad to control access. There isn't a singe policeman in sight.

Not that the Western Australians are cavalier about their security. Far from it. Lifts are key-card controlled; as are all doors and entrances. One cannot simply waltz into the PCO's office or the Legislative Council's chambers without a hundred eyes following you around via CCTV cameras and discreet (but sometimes visible) security patrols. Kenya, in contrast, is fond of the overt; boys in blue are de riguer and motorcades are par for the course. Among the first things we were issued with in Sydney and Perth were electronic key cards for access to the areas that we were authorised to be in. We are trusted not to abuse the privilege accorded to us and we are not about to step out of line for anything or anyone. It seems to be the spirit that imbues the men and women we have dealt with so far. Even the friendly dukawallahs don't bother with security glass or watchmen. If you rob them, at least a half-dozen CCTV cameras will record your perfidy. It is a very seductive feeling to know that you can walk around town, a foreigner in a strange land, in safety. Very, very seductive.

Perth

It must be said: I am envious. Working in the Parliamentary Counsel's Office here in Perth is a breeze. The facilities these guys enjoy can only be dreamed of in Kenya. While we have to share computers and printers, these guys not only have individual terminals, but the place is littered with printers and copiers. I almost forgot I was in a drafting office and thought I was in an office supplies shop. Tomorrow we get to have a look at their drafting software. It is all Microsoft Office software but it has been tweaked for use by Parliamentary Counsel; it is great to use.

Compared to Sydney, Perth is a very slow city. In other areas, it is a revelation. While Sydney has its own free bus, Perth has three routes that are completely free and within the CBD, they'll get you to all the important destinations in the city. Like Sydney too, the wireless is fast, really fast. I don't know about affordability though; they do not have the same pay-as-you go system as Safaricom and Airtel offer, but for $30 you get a shit-load of airtime and data.

Perth is set out in grid and it is easy to get around on foot. Sydney has way too many cul-de-sacs and curves; it is very easy to get lost in Sydney. In one key respect, though, Sydney steals a march on Perth; there are way too many lound and angry people on the streets of Perth. They may be friendly most of the time, but you get the impression that the residents of Perth would rather watch you on fire than get water to put you out. The people we've met at the PCO's office, though, have been cheerful and friendly and they have gone out of their way to make us feel welcome and wanted. It is an odd feeling, to tell you the truth. My colleague can't get over the fact that very busy men and women are willing to set their work aside to answer some of our more inane questions.

We have a very tight timetable; every second of each day is allocated to finding our way in and out of the office. We are visiting the upper chamber of Perth's Parliament, the Legislative Council, tomorrow and the lower chamber, the Legislative Assembly, next week. I am looking forward to the visit, especially as we'll be meeting with the President of the Chamber. In Kenya, in contrast, I don't think the Speaker of the National Assembly would set aside an hour of his busy schedule to meet with students on attachment who pay him a visit.

We met with the Parliamentary Counsel and he was as welcoming and friendly as his position would demand. He has a killer office with a view of the Swan River and marina that is to die for. Sadly, my Chief Parliamentary Counsel only has Parliament to stare at or the statue of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. But he does not seem to have a secretary; the receptionist seems to be the only secretary in sight. We simply walked to his office and introduced ourselves without a gate-keeper eying us with suspicion. It was surreal.

The food in Australia can't shine a candle to the fare back home. Without a reliable source of maize flour, we are forced to rely on supermarket chapatis, and rice and spaghetti. What is it with old people and high blood pressure? Too much youthful indulgence is what I think. My colleague can only eat white meat so we are forced t consume chicken night after night. I want to go home!

The placement is just beginning. Let us see how it progresses over the next fourteen days.

What Public Transport shows about Sydney's Civic Leadership.

In Nairobi, public transport is the bane of every modern Kenyan. Before Nairobi became the preferred port of call for every man, woman, child and cow from the four corners of the Republic, the public transport was in the hands of the government. The Kenya Bus Service offered a service that was cheap and reliable. Then the government went to shit and handed over the running of KBS to the yokels in the City Council of Nairobi who in turn handed it over to the whack-jobs in the Nairobi City Commission and by the time the City Council was reinstated the rot had set in and public transport was in the doghouse. 

When the City Council gave the private matatu owners their inch, no one imagined that they would grab the one hundred miles they have so far or how fucked up public transport would become. All this was happening when the Kenya Railways Corporation was going through its own version of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy; it is a pale shadow of what it once was. It is the last choice of the truly desperate. No one alive can recall when last passengers willingly opted for the Kenya Railways passenger service.

The problems of public transport are not insurmountable. It has been done in jurisdictions more corrupt and dysfunctional than ours. It can be done. Whether it will depends entirely one whether Kenyans are willing to do what it takes to take back their roads and their services. The residents of Karen and Langata have demonstrated that sometimes even the strongest of wills cannot withstand the corruption in the halls of City Hall. But by refusing to stay the course, they betrayed themselves. They can no longer claim to be part of the solution to the problems that bedevil the City of Nairobi including, ironically, the lack of an efficient public transport system in Nairobi. Nairobians, and Kenyans in general, must play a more active role in the governance of the metropolis. It is the least they can do in order to drive the process of improving the quality of their lives.

Commuting in Sydney is an eye-opening experience. Sydney has its share of lawbreakers and miscreants, yet public transport is clean, safe, reliable, affordable and competitive. The buses and trains run on time. I may only have been here for a short while, but there have been no reports of buses crashing and taking innocent lives; no trains have gone off their rails or been held up because rail lines have been uprooted by rioting citizens. Perhaps it has something to do with the well-designed, well-built, well-marked roads or the fact that drivers stick to the rules and the police enforce them without favour. The emphasis on safety means that pedestrians don't wander into the road; they only cross at designated places and only when the lights are in their favour. I am yet to witness a driver jumping the lights, even at night. Perhaps the fear of the draconian fines keeps many in check; if not, the speed cameras surely do.

Special mention must be made of the buses. Regulated by the New South Wales Transport Authority, they are all of a standard design; there isn't the imagination of Kenyan transport companies in sight. While many play music, it is not the loud, intrusive noise that passes for music blasted by the crews of Kenyan matatus. Sydney's buses are massive behemoths that run on natural gas; the pollution is almost non-existent. Certainly you will not find buses belching diesel fumes like a smoker on his last cigarette. The seats are adequate and can accommodate even the widest of girths of which there are plentiful in Sydney. They are all clearly marked: Standing Room for 15 Passengers Only. It is reassuring to see that this rule is enforced by the drivers and obeyed even by the impatient passengers.

The civility that this engenders cannot be gainsaid. Passengers will wait patiently for others to disembark before boarding in sharp contrast to the rugby-scrum witnessed daily on the daily commute in Nairobi. If we are to make a success of our country we must take a less selfish approach to sharing the resources available and we must ensure that the men we entrust with the management of those resources are not only the best, but the most honourable. It is time we stopped holding our political, and other leaders, on pedestals and instead, held their feet to the fire.

More Lessons from Down Under.

Australia has an awful lot of women in positions of leadership and power. Kenya, in contrast, is still in the shallow end of the pool, afraid of trusting its women withe either power or or leadership responsibility. The few women who have risen to the top have done so in direct opposition to the interests of Kenya's patriarchy. Given the givens, it is only natural that we focus our attention on the political class today. In this arena, it is the likes of Martha Karua and Charity Ngilu who have managed to defy the odds, much as their predecessors did in the late sixties and seventies. Others like Nyiva Mwendwa and Agnes Ndetei proved to be disappointments, behaving more like handmaidens to President Moi than potential presidential contenders. Meanwhile, in Australia a woman is the Prime Minister, a woman is the commonwealth Attorney-General, a woman is the Premier of Tasmania as is the Premier of Australian Capital Territory.

In 2013, Kenyans will be electing not just the President and Deputy President, but the governors of 47 counties. It is instructive that just about NARC-K and NARC have women leaders, but not much more. It remains unclear whether the political parties have women waiting in the wings to take on the entrenched interests of the men who have laid our nation low. Instead, we get the impression that the men who make decisions are more interested in the tokenism of women representative seats than in substantially advancing the political careers of qualified and determined women in their political parties. It is the same when one looks at leadership positions in other areas: academia, media, manufacturing, the defense forces, the national security establishment, the public service, or even faith-based institutions.

What makes this phenomenon unusual is the fact that more women are registering for higher education than men. It has been suggested that many of the female university graduates graduate in disciplines that do not put them in line for positions of leadership or political power. It is more likely that decisions being made by boards dominated by men are blinkered in their options, seeing only the familiar shape of a man in a suit than of a woman with the necessary skills and qualifications to take over the reins.

It is disappointing that women were the most vocal in deriding Kingwa Kamencu's ambition to succeed Mwai Kibaki. She may not be the best candidate to take over in 2013, but instead of scoffing at the scale of her ambition, women should have taken it as their cue to pile on the pressure for the women of their choice, qualified or otherwise, to rise to the top of the political greasy pole. The ambitions of women are being realised in other areas should be taken to their logical end in the political arena; it is the only way that the lofty objectives of our not-so-new Constitution can be realised. Australia is proof that the participation of women in all areas of leadership and governance is good for the country.

The V-Rod is still a ways away.

You will not believe the number of Exile v-twins on the streets of Sydney. It's like California out here. The thump-thump of those big vee-twins thrumming their way down Shepherd Street is music to all petrol-heads' ears. And when they are accompanied by the angry buzz of Japanese and Italian crotch-rockets, it is positively seductive like nothing else.

These Aussies have money to burn. Every way one turns the proof is in the choice of wheels some of these people choose to drive. Encountering an M3, a Porsche Turbo S, a 3-window '32 Ford hotrod, a Holden Maloo and an Aston Martin V12 Vantage - and all in one day - is the height of petrol-head heaven. As is encountering the King of Harley - the V-Rod...12 of them in full flight!

Kenyans have a habit of hiding their lights under bushels. Kenyan members of the fat wallet society hide their Jags, Astons and Porsches for fear of arousing the envy of the financially less well-endowed... or attracting the unwanted attention of Citi Hoppa, Kenya Bus or Forward Traveller drivers. It does not help that our version of city roads is a litany of potholes, mountainous speed bumps and corrupt traffic cops. Sydney, in contrast, is spectacularly orderly; this makes it easier for the petrol-head to strut his stuff without fear of damage to his precious metal.

We have a long way to go before Kenyans can spend their hard-earned case on the luxuries of life that are so commonplace in foreign land. Many of our captains of industry are adept at wringing the blood out of their hapless workers while at the same time evading taxes with the alacrity of Usain Bolt gold-medaling his way to Olympic glory. Our political leaders are more interested in hamstringing each other than in ensuring that the economy is firing on all cylinders. Our teachers spend more time plotting on how to get more out of The Treasury than in preparing their charges for the harsh world out there. Even the men of the cloth (and women too) are more concerned with lining their grimy pockets than in saving souls for Christ. If you think that that last point is too cynical, I point you to the shenanigans of one Bishop Dr Margaret Wanjiru and the NHC house allocations or any of our dozens of "apostles" and "evangelists" and their myriad sex scandals.

None of us is prepared to play by the rules or to walk the legal straight and narrow. We take our cues from the men and women at the top. Our hypocritical complaints about impunity and the like are but mere fig-leaves for our avarice. Our hypocrisy is every day affirmed when we refuse to hold our elected representatives to account for their acts of commission and omission or to demand a fair wage from our employers or to put in an honest day's work for the money we are paid for our labour. We cannot demand probity from our elected representatives when we are determined to lie, cheat and steal our way to riches and glory. For this reason, I am going to be denied the pleasure of witnessing a 12-bike V-Rod motorcade down Kenyatta Avenue!

Tears are no longer enough.

They may have died while on a mission for Christ in another country, but that does not make the pain of losing the mothers who died in Tanzania any less painful. It is an indictment of the system that we all inherited from the colonial government that we are unable to maintain safety on any of East Africa's roads. Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania stand accused of failing to use self-rule and independence to improve the lot of the African. Instead the priorities of the leaders of the three nations, bar possible Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, to use uhuru as the fig leaf for their avaricious power grabs. The peoples of the East African community have paid for the sins of their leaders: poorly designed and constructed roads; corrupt road and traffic departments; carnage on the highways.

In the few weeks I have spent in Sydney, I have found myself being extra careful when crossing the road. It is easier to be careful here: the roads are well designed and built and there is ample space for pedestrians. Even in the rain, it is very easy to get from place to place: no sections of the pavement are muddy or filled with water. It is a pleasure being a pedestrian in this town. It is remarkable that there are hardly any traffic police on the streets and everyone obeys the rules. You only cross roads at designated sites and only when the traffic lights are in your favour. Drivers obey the traffic rules; speeding is unheard of. I am yet to witness a road traffic accident!

Impunity is a hackneyed word in East Africa yet it captures perfectly the distance we have to cover before we can assure the peoples of East Africa that their governments will keep their interests in mind at all times. When it comes to the enforcement of the rules, it should not be that men of power and means are given a pass while the hoi polloi get the book thrown at them every time they step a little out of line. Politics should not be the reason why innocent mothers are mowed down in roads that barely qualify as such. Documents should mean what they say; if a man holds a commercial driving license, it must mean that he is qualified to drive commercial vehicles of a particular description and that his driving record is unimpeachable.

Driving in Kenya reveals in stark detail the failures of governance that we have suffered for nigh on forty years. Drivers take their licenses as a license to commit some of the most flagrant violations of the Traffic Code. Traffic police take their uniforms for a license to extort and steal from the public. The courts are only to happy to shuffle the litigants as cards on a deck without laying out for all to read the facts so far outlined. Sunny Bindra is right: if we cannot keep public places, especially public toilets, clean, we will never be able to govern ourselves effectively, brand-new constitutions notwithstanding.

My Land is Kenya...

There seems to be a large number of immigrants in New South Wales. There seems to be scores of Asians (Chinese, Vietnamese, South Koreans, Indians, etc.) walking the streets of Sydney. I find this reassuring. Despite what seems to be a national movement to restrict immigration to Australia, foreign-born persons don't seem to be as ostracised as the news reports seem to imply. This also seems to be why the student population is vibrant and animated.

We stood on the Sydney Harbour promenade and witnessed the melting pot of different languages, skin colours and cultures in full bloom, everyone click-clacking away on their iPads, iPhones and digital cameras. If there is one thing that seems to unite everyone in Sydney, it is that they seem to be owners and users of iPhones, iPads and MacBooks - Apple is well-represented on the streets of Sydney and the hallowed halls of University of Sydney.

I visited an Apple Store and it was all that I had imagined it was - vast, airy, well-lit and infused with the feeling of techno-efficiency. I felt like such a snob that I could wander about between rows and rows of iPads and iPhones knowing that there was no watchie who would be eying me with suspicion or an officious seller who would be pushing me out to make way for the "preferred" customers (if you are Kenyan, you know what I mean).

So! I love the school. I love the Harbour. I love the streets. I love the hotel. I love the experience. Yet! I want to go home. I miss the noise and chaos. I miss my colleagues and family. I miss the No 58 Mike Sonko-owned ma-three. I miss the Haile Selassie Nakumatt and its rude watchies. I miss the APs outside our office gate. I miss the constant barrage of anti-Raila and pro-Raila rhetoric. I miss the shady 'preachers' who accost me on my morning commute to work. Lord help me, but do I miss Kenya!

Where's the beef?

It is strange being in a country that does not live or breath politics 24/7. The experience is strangely disorienting. I have been here now a week and it is unusual not to have the faces of politicians plastered all over the TV screen like it is back home. There is a leadership battle in the Labour Party and Prime Minister Julia Gillard is facing opposition from members of her coalition but you would not know it. In Kenya, when William Ruto and Musalia Mudavadi had a falling out with their party leader, it became a story that lasted months on TV and in the Op/Ed pages of the newspapers. In Australia, the biggest news is the Olympics and then the 2014 G20 meetings in Brisbane and Cairns.

Kenyans have elevated their politicians to the levels of the gods of Greek mythology without getting any love in return. It is embarrassing to compare Kenya and Oz in this regard: politicians Down Under are important but their importance is seen in the context of the work they are supposed to do including the proper management of the economy in the face of such global cataclysms. In contrast, Kenyan politicians are important because they are politicians not because of the achievements or the policies they may or may not advance. Looking at the state of the economy or the environment or education in Australia, one is struck by the conscientiousness of the local politician in meeting the needs of his constituents. The same cannot be said for the his Kenyan counterpart who is more interested in being re-elected to the total exclusion of everything else. What a vomit-inducing parasitic class!

Time will tell.

The most striking thing about walking around Sydney so far has been the utter lack of drama on the roads. Barring the occasional biker motorcade, the roads are spectacularly free of the lunacy that Nairobi drivers frequently put all other road users through. It seems that the pedestrian is king in Sydney: whenever you come upto to a pedestrian crossing, and the lights are in your favour, the drivers will wait until everyone is across the road. Even the drivers of public transport will wait for all pedestrians to cross before proceeding on their way. What makes it even more amazing is the fact that the lanes are very narrow so that you only occupy the width of road that is absolutely necessary. If the drivers did not stick to the rules the narrowness of the lanes would make it almost impossible to move from point to point.

My colleagues from Cameroon attribute the orderliness of Sydney, and Australia generally, to the patriotism of the citizens here. The people here are used to playing by the rules such that only the criminal elements tend to break the rules. Getting through Immigration at the airport was a breeze. Even when one of our colleagues lost his bags, there was no panicking; the Qantas officials assured us that either his bag would be delivered or he would be compensated by the insurance. They tracked his bag to Johannesburg and it was delivered in two days. Meanwhile the airline had arranged for clothes and toiletries to be delivered to him at the hotel while he waited for his bag.

The University of Sydney campus is a beautiful place to be in. It is clean and the noise that one associates with Kenyan universities is absent even though the students seem to be holding a very large number of rallies over one cause or the other. Our orientation was completed by our guides in good humour. You get the sense that had it been an official at UoN or KU, the orientation tour would have been done with a level of grumbling that would have demonstrated his displeasure at being forced to guide a bunch of country yokels around his beloved University.

We visited a massive white-shoe law firm in the middle of the city and it can show a thing or two to the HHMs and Daly & Figgises of Kenya. They laid out tea and sandwiches. The water is clean so all they added was ice for the more adventurous. The conference rooms are well-appointed with WiFi and internet. Maybe they wanted to impress the Africans but we got the sense that this is how things work. No one had any airs about the fact hat they worked for the largest law firm in Australia.

I have been struck by the dozens of historical buildings in Sydney. They seem to be in great shape for their two centuries of existence and use. Many of the main buildings on the campus date back to 1850, though some were completed before the First World War. Of course there are those of more modern vintage but they complement the old ones rather beautifully. I wonder if this love affair with Sydney will last. Only time will tell.

Where is the change that they promise?

Somehow, we are in the quiet phase of the campaigns for the general election. The High Court has just ruled that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission can publish in the Kenya Gazette the new electoral boundaries created under the Constitution since August 2010. The International Criminal Court has set the dates for the trials of four Kenyans for international crimes for well after the general election, giving Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto and Joshua arap Sang the opportunity to stand in the elections. All presidential contenders have resumed their largely lacklustre campaigns after the burials of the late Prof George Saitoti and Orwa Ojode. And a mightily self-satisfied Miguna Miguna has published a tell-all book on his rise in Kenyans politics and the time he spent as the Prime Minister's advisor on coalition affairs, taking pot-shots at his former colleagues and generally making himself the nuisance we have all come to see him as.

Leading lights of Kenya's chatterati expected the campaign to be dominated by issues, but the likes of Tony Gachoka and his colleagues on K24's Crossfire have put paid to that dream. Instead, what Daniel Toroitich arap Moi set in motion in 1991/92 seems to have solidified into a permanent state of ethnic arithmetic and ethnic balancing. The likes of Uhuru Kenyatta and Raphael Tuju imagined that they would run presidential campaigns along the lines of the historic and history-making presidential campaign of Barack Obama, but they have all been forced to settle for the ethnic winner-takes-all approach that President Moi instituted once it became apparent that the Opposition would force him to repeal Section 2A of the former Constitution.

There are issues that must be addressed, but given the unusual coalescence of events this time around, it is all but certain that they will not. No one is in a position to publish a policy paper on the deepening youth unemployment, the skyrocketing cost of living, the yo-yoing of the Kenya shilling against world currencies, the continuing war against al Shabaab, the frequent terrorist attacks against the civilian population, the worsening crisis in basic and higher education, the burgeoning public debt, the resource-capture by foreign multinationals and the deepening distrust between and among Kenyans due to the perception that certain ethnic communities are "eating" while others remain starving. One is compelled to recall the policy documents generated by Peter Anyang' Nyong'o in 1992 in support of Charity Ngilu's presidential bid that year and one is forced to admit that until Kenya's population becomes educated and fully engaged in the governance of its country, policy will continue to play second fiddle to the politics of tribe.

In our obsession with the implementation of the Constitution to the complete exclusion of everything else, we have been sold a bill of goods. It seems as if we are more concerned with the form of the implementation and not with the substance. No one is questioning the increased creation of various commissions and authorities; the financial implications of creating so many new public institutions is lost on many seeing that we only wish to ensure that there is ethnic, regional and gender balance in the appointments of their members and not whether they are truly necessary for the successful full adoption of the 2010 Constitution.  Even in the enactment and amendment of legislation, our obsession is with the effect the legislation will have on the success or failure of our preferred presidential candidates' campaigns and not whether the legislation addresses specific problems or improves the lot of Wanjiku.

In the absence of any substance to the political rhetoric of the presidential campaigns, we are left to wonder at the shape and substance of the next government. We have no clue who the next president will appoint to his Cabinet, to senior positions in the civil and diplomatic services or what he or she will prioritise for the benefit of Kenyans. In the obsession of persons like the Gang of Seven to keep the Prime Minister from succeeding the President, we are left reading the tea leaves to determine whether the men and women competing for the ultimate political job in Kenya have a plan for pulling Kenya into the Twenty-first Century. The lack of imagination in this pivotal general election confirms what PLO Lumumba once quipped: the forest may have changed, but the monkeys remain the same.

No Messiah Yet.

The idea that any of the presidential contenders speaks for me is ludicrous. When was the last time they allowed a simple thing like hunger or ill-health to fester for days at a time? When they hunger, as Prof Anyang' Nyong'o was wont to remind us, they will spend thousands on a single meal for themselves. When they ail, even if it is a mild flu, they will check themselves into Nairobi's finest medical establishments or swan off to South Africa, India or the United States. While I must scrounge and save every single penny I earn in order to prepare for the day when the responsibilities of fatherhood and family weigh heavily on my shoulder, these men and women can count on the ever-open purse of the Government of Kenya, to monetarily smooth the way for their scions' education, basic or otherwise at institutions of learning where proteges are not lumped together like sardines in a can.

If they can claim with straight faces that they understand my pain whenever I am humiliated and my life gravely endangered when I ride the death-traps that are Nairobi's PSV's, or when I have to grovel at the feet of my pitiless landlord, mama mboga, butcher, water-meter reader, garbage-collector, watchmen and pastor demanding his ten percent tithe, then they would be better off challenging the Americans to the Best Actor Oscar than standing for election to succeed Mwai Kibaki in 2013.

Not one of them lost a step when burying the late Prof George Saitoti or the late Joshua Orwa Ojode, speaking out of the sides of the mouths about "honouring the legacies of their lives" and playing it straight with each other. Despite the fine declamations at the late politicians' funerals, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto remain in the cross-hairs of the ICC Prosecutor and their trial at The Hague-based International Criminal Court may have been postponed to accommodate the general election but it will not be cancelled; Mutava Musyimi is still determined to make it easier for Old School politicians to keep playing games they have perfected since 2008 on the ability and capacity to cross the floor of Parliament without facing any sanction; Aden Duale sees nothing wrong in labelling his erstwhile colleagues in the Orange Democratic Movement as "wakora" while he flirts shamelessly with William Ruto and Isaac Ruto on the inaptly acronymed URP. All of them have failed to take the brave step of reminding the thieving members of their class that the Consolidated Fund is not the MPs' piggy bank but a national resource that is to be managed with prudence and foresight, or to prevent them from treating the Constitution - Kenya's "mother of all laws" - as a list of suggestions to be taken or ignored at will whenever it suits their fancy.

They have all utterly failed to offer Kenyans a vision of the possibilities that Kenya could seize and the future it could enjoy. [Possibly] vast oil and water quantities lie beneath the barren land in Turkana but the obsession of the politicians is how the spoils from this bounty may be shared among themselves. The Chinese and a host of other investors are jostling to put money down for the LAPSSET Project but the politicians have singularly failed to even attempt to find a solution to the Coast Land Question that is the principal bugbear of the Mombasa Republican Council. Meanwhile, scores of Kenyans are added to the growing statistics of death and injury on our shiny new highways of death, but our contenders refuse to hold their constituents' feet to the fire by laying the blame where it must - reckless drivers, reckless pedestrians and reckless Kenyans.

Prof George Saitoti, perhaps due to the shock of the event or the manner in which the Professor of Politics sprang the matter on him, mangled the Queen's English on his way his "There come a time" Speech. Now is such a time and it is time that Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, Raila Odinga, Martha Karua, Raphael Tuju, Musalia Mudavadi, William Ruto, Moses Wetangula, Peter Kenneth, Mutava Musyimi, Uhuru Kenyatta, Cyrus Jirongo and the rest of them started atoning for their grave sins against Kenyans by withdrawing their candidacies to succeed Mwai Kibaki to State House. Their energies are best spent reversing the mess that has been left behind by their wayward charges, including the fat pay-cheques they saw fit to award themselves. When the history of Kenya is finally written, and this period is placed in the proper historical context, none of the candidates will come out smelling of roses; more like the deposits in Dandora.

This not the revolution that MPs wanted. That is a good thing.

We did not get rid of the KANU hegemony only to have the National Assembly assume the mantle that had been yanked off Rais Moi's shoulders in 2002. Kenyans have demonstrated an almost zen-like capacity for patience with their elected representatives. In a spectacular show of philanthropic magnanimity, Kenyans have time and again allowed its elected representatives to behave as if the Consolidated Fund was their personal bank account, to be dipped into whenever and wherever they felt that they were running a bit low on cash. The manner in which they have used the Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill, 2012 to advance their selfish ends may be the straw that finally breaks the camel's back.

Kenyans suffered in the period between 1982 and 2003 at the hands of their government, especially the overmighty hand of the Executive as personified in President Moi and from the fecklessness of the National Assembly that acted as a rubber stamp for all that the Executive deemed to be in its interests. The supine form that the Judiciary assumed during this period made a bad situation worse by endorsing the acts of the Executive at every turn, handing down judgments against men and women arraigned before it on trumped up charges with gay abandon. In 2002 Kenyans began a revolution that removed President Moi, peacefully, from power, denied him a back-door into the Executive; this revolution culminated in 2010 when Kenyans overwhelmingly ratified a new Constitution. The gains made since then are slowly being reversed, not at the hands of the Executive, but that of the National Assembly.

In 2010, after almost a decade of disappointment from the National Assembly, Kenyans endorsed a Constitution that sought to corral Parliamentarians from making off with the last of our taxes in pay and perks that were wholly undeserved. We insisted that regardless of their popularity, Parliamentarians (and leaders) needed certain minimum skills in order to steer this nation to the next level in its quest for development. Members of Parliament who had enthusiastically supported the draft Constitution have now, Janus-faced, turned around and rejected the compact they made with Kenyans and are determined to water down the prescriptions in the Constitution to suit their own ends. In the past week, Kenyans shamed the few MPs with a conscience into reversing the retrogressive amendments introduced to the Miscellaneous Amendments Bill, forcing their greedy, grasping, recalcitrant peers to appeal directly to the President and Prime Minister to reject the final version of the Bill and not assent to it.

Kenyans do not want to be held hostage by their elected representatives as much as they do not want to be held hostage by the Executive branch. Kenyans are witness to the reforms taking place in the Judiciary and they are hungry for more; they will endorse any law that reduces the capacity of Parliamentarians to draw from the national Treasury. They will endorse laws that compel their elected representatives to represent the peoples' views in Parliament. They will endorse laws that will reverse the decades of corrupt acts perpetrated by the members of the government, be they elected or appointed. Kenyans have declared loudly and clearly that they are no longer cowed by the trappings f power. They will speak truth to power even if it means cutting down their favourite sons and daughters to size. The faint glimmer of hope for a better future have been sighted. Kenyans have declared that they will remain vigilant and prevent their elected representatives from snuffing out the light.

Prof Mutua gets it wrong again.

In Prof Makau Mutua's opinion, Kenya is at a stage where the politics of issues is possible and so he calls the apparently blossoming relationship between Prime Minster Raila Odinga and Eldoret North MP William Ruto a poisoned chalice (Raila must shun Ruto or pay the political price, Sunday Nation, June 17, 2012). He warns the Prime Minister that not only will he lose the world should he choose to rekindle his romance with Mr Ruto, but that he will lose his soul in the bargain. Prof Mutua deduces that there is cabal surrounding the Prime Minister that is leading him down the wrong road and that these men and women do not have the Prime Minister's or the country's interests at heart. He advances the proposition that the general election will not be won on the basis of tribal mathematics, but in the way politicians and candidates address contemporary issues that affect the day to day lives of Kenyans, including, I suppose, such bread and butter issues as the rising cost of living and the continued unemployment of the youth.

It is dangerous to compare presidential politics in Kenya with what prevails in the United States Prof Mutua attempts to do. While the influence former heads of state wield in their political parties is great, it diminishes in time. It has been the case in the United States that the influence of living former presidents on general elections depends almost entirely on the performance of incumbent presidents. George W Bush is more or less out of the limelight; this is not the case for Bill Clinton, who has joined the fray in favour of a second Obama administration and helping the incumbent to raise millions of dollars for the fall campaign. In Kenya, however, President Moi continues to cast a very long shadow, hence Prof Mutua's reference to Moi's Orphans who included the incumbent President, the late Prof George Saitoti, and the wily Rift Valley kingpin, William Ruto. It is in the place of the ethnic community in the political calculations of presidential candidates that Prof Mutua makes fatal assumptions.

Right-thinking Kenyans would like to be seen as cosmopolitan and post-tribal inn their political engagements. What they do, however, speaks louder than their public posturing. In Kenya, it is nearly impossible for a presidential candidate to emerge from outside the existing Parliament. Today, all serious presidential candidates receiving inch-columns of newsprint are sitting Members of Parliament and the Cabinet. All of them claim, or would like to claim, the loyalty of their ethnic communities and to decide for them where to cast their votes in 2013. Not even Raila Odinga has escaped the ethnic maths that goes to crafting a winning strategy at the hustings. While he may have preached national cohesion and unity in his campaign so far, his surrogates march to a different tune, attempting to sabotage the ethnic engineering of the Prime Minister's opponents while ensuring that his is done surreptitiously. The Friends of Raila, just like the Gang of Seven, is an attempt to craft a winning tribal alliance that will send the Prime Minister to State House in 2013. It is time we accepted this and learned to live with it.

Until all Kenyans are sufficiently well-educated to think beyond the needs and wants of their ethnic communities, their view of the political world will be through the prism of their tribal cocoons. Even in cosmopolitan towns, Kenyans are unlikely to cast heir ballot for a person who is not one of their own. This is a phenomenon that the Prime Minister sees and accepts and is attempting to exploit to his own benefit. It will be political suicide for any presidential candidate to concentrate solely on the bread-and-butter issues that keep Kenyans awake at night at the expense of a simpler strategy of promoting the interests of your ethnic community while promising benefits to those communities that line up for you. The PM knows this and that is why his surrogates are making forays into traditionally hostile regions to make deals with the kingpins in those communities in the name of the Prime Minister. High-minded campaigns like those of Martha Karua and Peter Kenneth are bound to flounder, while those of Musalia Mudavadi, William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta place them in positions where they can challenge the PM on an equal footing. Should it become clear to them and their supporters that all is lost, it is almost certain that they will attempt to salvage some pride by allying themselves with the PM before it is too late. Daniel Toroitich arap Moi was the last candidate to run a truly cosmopolitan campaign; he could do so because of his long stint in power and the fact that he was cannier and more ruthless than the men and women who dared to challenge his hegemony. President Moi was the last true president of all Kenyans. Not even Jomo Kenyatta came close.

Therefore, the recent moves by the PM's and William Ruto's surrogates to bury the hatchet should be seen in the context of the politics of today. This move was going to happen sooner or later. The PM surely, must calculate that it is better to test the waters today rather than later in order to prepare Kenyans for the harsh reality that is Kenyan politics. Instead of condemning the PM, we must appreciate that he had no choice in the matter. What he does with the opportunities that come his way, whether he takes State House or not, will determine whether Kenyans will be able to live with a permanent tribalised political environment or whether they will surmount it for the sake of our collective futures.

What next for national security?

The deaths of Prof George Saitoti and Joshua Orwa Ojode reinforce the received wisdom that Kenya's national security establishment is moulded in the image of the politicians in charge. Sad as their deaths are, as we bury them, we must remember that the nearly stillborn police reforms are crucial from removing the over-mighty yoke of the Executive from security policy. There have always been powerful security policymakers in Kenya and in the deaths of the two, Kenya is now forced to contemplate a policy apparatus that is devoid of leadership that can be seen. The roles that the Commissioner of Police, the Commandant of the Administration Police, the Director of the Criminal Investigations Department, the Director-General of the National Security and Intelligence Service, the Commandant of the General Service Unit, and the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of State for Internal Security and Provincial Administration play have continued to be invisible to the general public. It seems that the only persons privy to what goes on in the national security establishment are those who are tasked in keeping us safe from the dangers of the world.

The police spokesman, speaking after the disruption of the first Limuru 2B rally last month, stated that the police was acting on intelligence that the dreaded Mungiki was being revived under the guise of a political rally called to counter the GEMA rally earlier on.In the wake of the Assanand's House explosion, he stated that the police had intelligence that pointed to the involvement of al Shabaab terrorists operating in Nairobi. For a public that has decidedly turned its attention away from all that matters and concentrated its mind on the mundane question of who will succeed Mwai Kibaki in 2013, this is enough to satisfy its curiosity. For the rest, it is inadequate to explain what our national security policy means and how best it can be implemented in the face of overwhelming odds, from a dwindling revenue collection exercise to the increasing cost of living and poverty levels among the youth and the working classes.

The manner in which the Lady Justice Kalpana Rawal-led Board of Inquiry conducts its its investigations shall demonstrate the strength and resilience of Kenya's national security establishment as well as expose the weaknesses that are inherent in it. The appointment of the team, as is normal in Kenya, was shrouded in equal parts mystery and confusion. Even after two previous air traffic crashes that claimed the lives of Mwai Kibaki's ministers, it seems as if there is no plan on how to investigate such incidents. The aftermath of the Assanand's House explosion, as in the aftermaths of all other deadly explosions in Nairobi, it remains unclear who is in charge of the ensuing investigations, how and when foreign experts will be invited to participate, and more crucially, what the results of the investigations are. In the absence of a transparent and accountable process, even the Prime Minister's exhortations to avoid speculation will not relieve the public from engaging in bouts of conspiracy theories. And in our heightened state of ethnic chauvinism it is all but impossible to erase the stench of an ethnic conspiracy behind the deaths of the two; in the last three days, rumours of a burgeoning political alliance between Prof Saitoti and Mr Ojode have fuelled speculation that they were both murdered to prevent the Professor from making inroads in Luo Nyanza in his quest to succeed President Kibaki.

Nzamba Kitonga's Committee of Experts drafted into the Constitution a somewhat coherent national security structure, delineating areas of responsibility in order to streamline the process and delimit the powers of those who would seek to keep us safe. The CoE attempted to constitutionalise what is usually a dynamic and fluid administrative procedure because many Kenyans feared a return to the dark days of the Nyayo House torture chambers. In going to this extreme, the CoE failed to appreciate that national security matters tend to evolve and take unpredictable paths and they require public officers charged with national security responsibilities sometimes to act swiftly without taking into account the fine print of the Constitution. Even Barack Obama, the US President, in his zeal to keep the United States safe from harm, has taken to approving personally who will be eliminated by drone strike and who will not, something that the US Constitution or the laws of the United States did not anticipate when the US Constitution was drafted in 1776.

Mwai Kibaki's successor must perchance work with what he has and this means that in crafting a national security policy, it is time that we evolved from the over-secretive way national security is handled in the corridors of the Executive. In the absence of an effective press, the Executive must pursue a proactive public disclosure programme to ensure that Kenyans have the correct information at the right time in order to appreciate the extent to which the Executive will go to keep Kenyans safe. Even taking into account the need for secrecy, it is imperative to make Kenyans partners in the handling of national security matters by educating them fully on who is in charge, what powers they enjoy and what they can and cannot do, from the legal to the administrative. George Saitoti and Orwa Ojode were products of a bygone era and as we mourn their deaths we must be prepared to abandon their hidebound ways. By properly investigating their deaths and making the results of the investigations public, perhaps, in some small way, we shall be able to craft a more robust and responsive nationals security establishment that we can all have confidence in.

What will we do?

It is time we admitted defeat in our efforts to reform the ruling classes from their myopic ethnic-tainted look at the political landscape. Regardless of the wishes of millions of Kenyans, what we have is a political class that sees everything in the un-rosy tint of one tribe eating at the expense of all others. Or one coalition of tribal leaders eating while the people they claim to be fighting for suffer from all the ills that have bedeviled this country since Independence. Their leadership, if it could be called that, has been the reason why illiteracy, disease and poverty have remained realities for large swathes of the nation. Images of starving children, or children taking their lessons in caves or under leafless trees will not soften their hearts and persuade them to address the problems of the people. In their desire to control the destinies of millions, our political masters have forgotten that leadership is not for eternity but for a term, the presence of leaders-for-life in distant lands not withstanding.

The Gang of Seven, the United Democratic Front, the Wiper Democratic Movement, the United Republican Party, The National Alliance and the Orange Democratic Movement, among scores of others, are living proof that regardless of the lofty aims of the Constitution, the political landscape in Kenya continues to be shaped by men and women who see the masses as political pawns to be moved about the chess-board in an effort to seize and hold onto power and great material wealth. Looking at the leading lights of the political kingpins in Kenya, one is hardpressed to identify one whose great fortune is not as a direct result of his proximity to the levers of political power. While millions of Kenyans have to do with substandard public services, these men and women have the ability and capacity to ensure that their families enjoy only the best the country, and the world, has to offer. Their children attend the best national and international schools. They are treated in the best medical facilities money can pay for. The last time any one of them slept hungry was when they were participating in another Western-inspired 'diet'; millions of Kenyans are at constant risk of hunger because they can scarcely keep up with the ever-rising cost of living.

This weekend, the President, the Chief Justice and the Speaker of the National Assembly led their government colleagues in a charade aimed at hoodwinking the masses that peace was the government's aim. The lofty speeches aimed at cooling down the temperatures that were made at a five-star hotel in Mombasa are a cruel reminder that the peace that these men and women are seeking have nothing to do with the travails the peoples of Kenya suffer, but with the desire of the rich and powerful to protect their wealth and status in society. It is impossible not to conclude that our political, religious and financial leaders only wish to maintain the facade of stability with the view of entrenching their positions and not to give Kenyans a better life. Every atrocity suffered by innocent Kenyans is an opportunity for the political class to parade before the cameras to portray their status as first-among-equals.

As a people, we have been programmed to look at everything through the prism of entitlement. "My community is entitled to this because..." is the enduring leitmotif of our political culture. We parade our ignorance before the comity of nations every time we speak of the evils of one community or the innocence of another while ignoring the malgovernance of our nation at the hands of men and women who should know better and do better. Forty-nine years of Madaraka have passed by cruelly for millions of Kenyans and all they have been programmed to think of is elections and nothing else. The promulgation of a Constitution in the face of such overwhelming odds has not reminded Kenyans of their duty to one another, merely the fact that "their man" has yet to taste the power that comes with the Presidency or some such powerful position. In our adamant refusal to see beyond the election of one man from one community to one position, we reinforce the foundations of inequality and venality on which the Government of Kenya is built.

The lone efforts of people like the Chief Justice will be in vain if all Kenyans fail to join in the efforts to reform their government and their society. The valiant efforts of lone MPs such as John Mututho are in vain when the basic frailties of the communities they are trying to help remain unaddressed. Reforms are not for the political and judicial leadership alone to address; every man must re-examine his place in the great scheme of things. Until that is done, until we can face the truth about ourselves and our leaders, all the great constitutions in the world and all the Willy Mutungas of the world will not rescue us from the catastrophe that lies down the road. We faced choices in 1964, '65, '69, '92 and 2002 and we consistently made the wrongs ones. Will we do so again in 2013?

Peter Muthoka is the Canary in the Mine-shaft

It is the brave contrarian who suggests that despite the now well-documented and tragic failures of the political class it is not wise to seek the professional services of the champions of the private sector. Indeed, an examination of this months edition of The Nairobi Law Monthly should not only reinforce any smidgeon of suspicion one may have harboured against the so-called captains of industry throwing their hats in the political ring, but it must demand an examination of the ever-blossoming relationship between government mandarins and private sector friends bearing gifts.

This month's cover story not only raises questions as to how an agency like the Kenya Airports Authority could enter into such a lopsided agreement with Peter Muthoka and his Transglobal Cargo Centre Ltd. It is by no means the only transaction that requires closer scrutiny; one must struggle to remember that despite the irregularities of the Anglo-Leasing contracts, Kenya is still making payments for a mysterious naval vessel that must surely have set records for the length of time it has taken for the ship to be launched by its builders. The suspicions that surrounded the concessioning of the Kenya-Uganda railway have never been cleared up, even after Roy Puffett and the criminally incompetent Sheltam Corporation exited the picture. Goldenberg and its bastard offspring remain a blot on our national conscience; its perpetrators continue to walk free, cocking-a-snook at every single one of us.

Except, perhaps, for a tiny elite whose careers began and flourished in foreign lands, the majority of the so-called professionals throwing their hats into the political ring, making promises as to the proper government of the counties, we seem to have forgotten, or are wilfully ignoring, the fact that many of them before they became private-sector champions began their careers in the government. It is not just captains of industry; lawyers, doctors, economists, teachers, accountants, engineers...there isn't a professional occupation in this country that does not have the fingerprints of the government all over its establishment. It is a trend that was established in the 1960s and 1970s; looking at the careers of the likes of  Duncan Ndegwa and the late John Michuki and the establishment of billion-shilling companies such as Transcentury and Centum Investment, one is struck by the naivete of those Kenyans labeling these private sector privateers as our political messiahs.

Of the three elements of a free society, Kenya barely satisfies. For all its flaws, our rulers rule with (barely) the consent of the people. But the concept of the rule of law remains a cruel joke on Kenyans and the transparency and accountability fostered by a free, fearless and independent press remains a promise unfulfilled, save for the valiant efforts of outfits like The Nairobi Law Monthly. Before we begin laying the burden of carrying forward the reforms that this nation needs on the shoulders of the professionals from the private sector, let us be sure that the interests of the private sector and the interests of Kenyans mean one and the same thing. Otherwise, we will substitute one pack of hyenas with another. I can almost hear their demonic cackling.

Dr Mutunga's and Mr Odinga's versions of reforms

It is a rare thing to agree with my senior Charles Kanjama and today is one of those days. When he states that none of the Second Liberation stalwarts is indispensable in the reforms being undertaken in Kenya's body politic and the governance of the nation, he acknowledges and reaffirms the centrality of the active participation of the people that lends legitimacy to the individuals championing reforms (No reform champion should be presumed indispensable, Standard on Sunday, June 3, 2012). He argues that the canonisation of the living tends more often than not to lead to anti-democratic results and we run the risk of losing faith not only in the champion but also in all that he may have stood for.

In Kenya, sadly, reforms today are equated with the sacrifices of the few at the expense of the many, especially in the realm of political reforms. In this, Raila Odinga and Chief Justice Dr Willy Mutunga are being championed by their supporters as being indispensable in the reforms of the State and the Judiciary respectively. It is argued that without the two, the process of reforming these key institutions will be set back for a generation at least. Even with the hyperbole surrounding their place in the Second Liberation, it is imperative to remember that they are not just men, but flawed men at that. A study of the rise and fall of Nancy Barasa, the suspended Deputy Chief Justice, shows why it is imperative to institutionalise the reform agenda rather than lay it on the all too frequently feeble shoulders of the popular individual.

Dr Mutunga and Prime Minister Odinga demonstrate the different and differing paths to reforms that may be pursued. While the Chief Justice is properly lionised for his efforts to reform the administration of justice in Kenya, especially by his leadership and personal sacrifices in the dark days of the Nyayo Era, he is demonstrating that reforming the Judiciary is not a one-man show, but that it can only be achieved if the key stakeholders in the administration of justice play their roles as well. In contrast, by his very actions, the Prime Minister continues to demonstrate that he is the key to reforming political activity in Kenya; by the utterances of his acolytes and supporters, the impression is being created that if Raila Odinga does not succeed President Mwai Kibaki, the country will be set back for a generation as impunity is further entrenched in public life.

While Dr Mutunga has set the stage for reforming the very infrastructure of the Judiciary, Prime Minister Odinga has failed to seize opportunities to reform party politics in Kenya. The only difference between the Orange Democratic Movement and all the other political parties lies in the personal popularity and charisma of the Prime Minister and not in the quality of its governance, its manifesto or its constitution. But the differences between the Judiciary as it was until the promulgation of the Constitution and the appointment of the Supreme Court are plain to see, especially in its efforts at greater transparency and efficiency.

No doubt Dr Mutunga and Mr Odinga are flawed heroes of Kenya's Second Liberation, but in apparently accepting that he is not indispensable to the reform agenda, Dr Mutunga sets the stage for the complete overhaul of an institution that is widely reviled and feared in Kenya. In what is bound to be a short tenure, Dr Mutunga intends to leave a blue print for the improvement of the quality of justice dispensed in our hallowed halls of justice that will stand us in good stead for generations to come. Mr Odinga, on the other hand, in concentrating on the consolidation of his political power at almost any cost has failed to articulate a different vision for the conduct of politics in Kenya, instead reinforcing every negative stereotype that he have of the political elite.

By failing to lead the democratisation of ODM, Mr Odinga fails to assure us that if elected President of the republic he will pursue a different course. One of his recent statements speaks to his intentions. In calling for a tough anti-terrorism law, Mr Odinga did not even bother to articulate whether terrorism was a law enforcement or military problem. Instead, what he called for was for the State to be granted ever greater powers to violate the civil liberties of Kenyans in the name of national security. Before we place the government of Kenya on Mr Odinga's shoulders, let us be prepared for the consequences of dubbing him our messiah. The same goes for those attempting the canonisation of the likes of Musalia Mudavadi, William Ruto, Uhuru Kenyatta or Kalonzo Musyoka.

49 years of Madaraka and things remain the same

In Kenya, it is not an ideology that moves the people to engage politically with one another; instead, it is the personality at the head of a political outfit. Calling them parties does a great disservice to the political party traditions of developed democracies. What differentiates Raila Odinga from Uhuru Kenyatta or William Ruto or Musalia Mudavadi or George Saitoti is not the strength of his political message, even where he has a compelling one; it is the fact that he is seen to represent the aspirations of one of Kenya's forty-two or so ethnic communities. What motivates the men and women who swear fealty to Messrs Mudavadi, Kenyatta, Ruto or Saitoti is not the strength of these men's political convictions but the fact that as the apparent representatives of their ethnic communities they are articulating the aspirations of their people because no one else will or can.

When Musalia Mudavadi and, before him, William Ruto had a falling out with Raila Odinga, they claimed that it was because the Orange Democratic Movement had become a cult in which the Prime Minister could no wrong. They claimed that the party was slowly being stifled of dissent with Raila Odinga's voice being the only legitimate one. According to the two, despite their holding high offices in the party as deputy leaders, their views were being ignored and that they had found it impossible to inculcate a culture of democracy in the party. Their decision to leave, and to lead ODM MPs away from the party, they claimed further, was in response to the continued reluctance of pro-Odinga party functionaries and officials to ensure that all voices in the party received their fair share of attention and consideration. At no point did they claim that they disagreed with the party leader's ideological stance or his political philosophy. The reason, perhaps, is that there is none to disagree with.

Between 1969 when the Kenya People's Union was banned and 1991 when Section 2A of the former Constitution was repealed, Kenya was a one-party state with no need for an ideology or a unifying political philosophy other than the whims and caprices of the President who was also the Chairman of KANU and all its organs. President Jomo Kenyatta used the party as a personal weapon to reward or punish its members. He used the structures of the party and the state to control the fate of millions. It became a vehicle for personal aggrandisement; in his reign, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and his family became fabulously wealthy. As did his successor, Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, whose twenty-four years in power can only be remembered for the Nyayo Philosophy of peace, love and unity; this was not a political philosophy or an ideology. Had the party been democratised in 1991 and all voices permitted an equal chance of being heard, perhaps the past twenty years would have turned out very differently.

What we have experienced since 1992 has been the steady decline of the concept of the common good. What we have today is an extreme version of what Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania termed a "man eat man society" writ large in the political arena. The political calculations that Raila Odinga and his rivals engage in in obsessive detail boils down to the unity of ethnic communities in order to guarantee the ascendancy of one man to the highest pinnacle of political power in Kenya and not the nurturing of an ideology that may survive its author and that may give the people a rational basis for determining who will and who will not rule the forty-two ethnic communities. In forgetting, or ignoring, why political parties exist, all presidential candidates mouth the platitudes that Kenyans want to hear but not what they need to hear. Their message has consistently been about themselves and not the people they claim to represent. It is the theatre of the absurd.

When Kenyans line up to cast their ballots at the next general election, they will not care whether the men and women they cast their votes for are capitalists, communists, socialists, Christian democrats, conservatives or liberals; all they will care for is whether 'their man" (or woman) will get the chance to eat and through him, their chance to eat, vicariously or otherwise. It is for this reason that despite lofty credentials as champions of the Second Liberation or as holdovers of the KANU Era that these men and women are wholly unfit to lead. When one of them is eventually elected as Kenya's fourth President, it will be a cruel irony that despite their claims to democracy or the common welfare of all, they all intend to rule as Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel Toroitich arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki have ruled.