The right partnership.

This blogger dares you to find any intelligent Kenyan who believes the National Police Service or the National Police Service Commission are intelligent or professional. This blogger dares you to classify the Administration Police as the cutting-edge in national security or public safety. Individual units, such as the Criminal Investigations Department and the General Service Unit (and its Recce Squad) have received deserved plaudits, but by an large, Kenyans view their police and police commission with undisguised loathing.

For this reason, millions of Kenyans greeted the attempted explanations by the Inspector-general with derision and hurtful mockery. The Inspector-General has been to a real school and obtained real degrees to boot. It is whispered in certain quarters that he is a doctoral candidate in one of Kenya's finer institutions of higher learning. At one point in his illustrious career, he headed the brutally, scarily effective GSU Presidential Escort Unit. You would not know this to listen to his ham-fisted atempts at setting the story straight about Westgate, narcotics trafficking in Kenya, high-profile murders, or anytjhing to do with the security mess at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Nor can you trust that his spokespersons will do a better communications job; other than the colourful Eric Kiraithe and the eloquent Charles Owino, these characters have cemented the impression in Kenyans' minds that any relationship that the National Police Service has with the English language (or Swahili, for the purists among us) is purely accidental.

This blogger has argued in the past that until the mandate of national policing shifts from national security to public safety, we will never have the police service that we deserve but the police force that we universally loath (and deride.) With the mulish determination to see everything in national security hues, just like the United States federal government, the people are a threat, to be corralled and controlled. The people cannot be trusted to do the right thing; they are to be feared as undeclared fifth columnists of foreign powers or transnational criminal networks. It is for this reason that draconian laws that treat even public officers like a threat are yet to be repealed  a decade after the Second Liberation war was declared won by the leading luminaries of the National Rainbow Coalition. Instead, even more draconian laws have been enacted, dozens of Kenyans have been renditioned to parts unknown, and the civic space necessary for democratic discourse has slowly been occupied by the oppressively mighty presence of the Government.

A change of focus from national security to public safety will see both objectives of a secure Government and a safe public achieved. The elements of national security truly charged with ensuring the continuity of government would find the field clear for them to go after enemies of the nation, whether or not these are synonymous with enemies of the government. The police, on the other hand, would develop new partnerships with county governments and municipal authorities to provide for a safe environment for Kenyans and visitors alike to engage in an activity the Government would encourage: the creation of wealth.

A partnership, for example, between the Nairobi City County government and the National Police Service would identify that the key drivers of violent crime are interconnected: poor traffic management, poor civic facilities; corruption among the police and City Fathers alike. A functioning partnership between the two institutions would ensure that street lights work; drains and sewers function; potholes are urban legends; physical plans are enforced (and complied with) without favour; and the corrupt in the public service are hounded out of the system and jailed. The spectre of an inarticulate Inspector-General as the laughingstock of the nation would be a thing of the past. The image of a bombastic but ineffective Governor would be banished to the ash-heap of history. More importantly, the people would have faith again in the institutions of government. That is the key; until our faith in government is restored, it will invite contempt, ridicule and ill-will.

Slow-roll Express.

The redoubtable Fatou Bensouda's much-delayed prosecution of Uhuru Kenyatta is turning into a Russian play, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, perhaps, though Mr Beckett was not a Russian. The International Criminal Court's prosecutor from the Gambia was always playing with a loaded deck when she inherited Luis Moreno-Ocampo's fiasco-ridden Kenyan cases. The doubts, both at home and abroad in Africa, about the rationale behind the heavy-handed ICC prosecutor's investigation meant that regardless of the power politics between Kenya and her development partners, Ms Bensouda was never going to get everything she wanted.

The to-ing and fro-ing between the prosecution and defence teams has supplied enough drama for at least 10 years of the leading lights of the Nigerian movie industry. Mr Moreno-Ocampo and Ms Bensouda, when they once master and apprentice, underestimated the Kenyan establishment's determination to prevail. Senior police, senior intelligence officers, senior civil servants, and senior provincial administration officers resisted the entreaties and threats of the ICC prosecutor. They dragged their feet until the whip was seemingly cracked by the President-Prime Minister combo. The machinery of government - something that Joseph Kaguthi knows a thing or two about - maneuvered and manipulated and got the outcome it wanted. No one doubts that if the system had sufficient time, the postponement of the President's trial would also have meant the postponement of the Deputy President's.

Makau Mutua, Maina Kiai and John Githongo must be staring in horror as Kenya somehow one-ups the ICC prosecutor. All three must surely know that the Government of Kenya is not and cannot be separated from its politicians, especially its president regardless of what the Constitution says. It is not that the president or deputy president are above the law; those days of presidential imperialism are well and truly over. But the reality is that even before Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta and William Samoei Ruto took their oaths of office, they were pretty big deals. Mr Kenyatta needed no introduction to the people of Kenya; he may not have spent his entire life in the public limelight, but millions of Kenyans knew of him and wanted him to win in 2013. Mr Ruto was a wily political operator who had made and broken political careers of others; this was his moment in the sun and the ICC prosecutor was not going to be the fly in his Deputy Presidential ointment.

What must also horrify the three is the narrative that has somehow whitewashed the terrible crimes of 2007/2008. The Judiciary has proven a disappointment, as have the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney-General. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights is out of commission and commissioners. The other Kenya Human Rights Commission is in the hands of the clever-but-flawed Atsango Chesoni; it will not be troubling Mr Kenyatta any time soon. Ndung'u Wainaina and his fellow-travelers leave one with the feeling that their intellectual journeys have proven terribly arduous...and exhausting; they are the human equivalent of a deflated tyre. On the home front, whether Messrs Makau, Kiai and Githongo will admit it or not, there is nothing to trouble Mr Kenyatta on the ICC personal challenge.

The good lady from The Gambia must look for a face-saving gambit from the demon-seed that Mr Moreno-Ocampo dumped on her lap. She has slow-rolled the withdrawal of charges against Mr Kenyatta in the hopes that the rats deserting her prosecution ship will somehow have a change of heart. It was hard enough to persuade them to come forward when Mr Kenyatta was a mere politician; it will be near impossible for her to persuade the remainder to stay now that he is the Commander-in-Chief of the Kenya Defence Forces. And she cant go dipping into the KNCHR/KHRC well given all the poison dumped in it since March 2008. She's on her own. She must wish she'd never left The Gambia; at least there it was easy to see the other guy pulling a fast one on you.

Hang your heads in shame.

The presence of water dispensers in the offices of public servants, whether they be Cabinet Secretaries, Principle Secretaries or the rank and file, or the presence of uncountable bottles of bottled-water on the high tables  of high-level chinwags attended by the aforementioned personages of the Government of Kenya are an indictment of over thirty-five years of the Clean Water for All Pledge that the Government of Kenya made to the people of Kenya.

It is symptomatic of the sloth with which the Government of Kenya has completed its projects for the improvement of the lives of the people. Since 1962, Kenya has metronomically held regular elections, and replaced one administration with another with only one or two major electoral crises. But the elections have not transformed the lives of the people all that much. There are those who are proud of the legacy left by Baba Moi in the education sector: all those schools, especially girls' schools, that he built and staffed. There are those who believe that Baba Jimmi's accomplishments in the rods sector trump all the achievements of Baba Moi and Mzee Kenyatta combined. Yet none are able to demonstrate that Kenyans are all that better off for all the schools Baba Moi built or the hundreds of kilometres of roads that Baba Jimmi built.

Many more Kenyans are less poor today than there were in 1963; more Kenyans have been educated and have educated their children that in 1963. The quality of life for hundreds of thousands is quite good; that of millions more is in the toilet (only that millions of Kenyans do not have toilets.) The big-ticket programmes that are and should be the concern of the Government of Kenya are education, healthcare, public safety...and potable water. A casual assessment of the situation leaves one with the sense that the Government of Kenya is stuck in the Egyptian dessert of want, without a Moses to lead it to the Promised Land of plenty.

If the Government of Kenya, whether at the national level or the county level, is unable to assure the people of potable water, affordable and reliable healthcare, or public safety, there is little that it can boast of to its neighbours. We are praised as a dynamic economy, the engine of East Africa, but this praise damns us to perpetual mediocrity it does not lead to the upliftment of the quality of life for the millions of Kenya still stuck in an agriculture-based economy that barely sustains livelihoods in the rural backwaters policy-makers never visit.

If Kenyan agriculture were the pride of East Africa, it would guarantee clean drinking water for the millions that it employs; dispensaries would be fully-staffed, well-stoked and efficient. But none of this is true. Agriculture, especially commercial industrial agriculture, seems to benefit an elite that lives in the swankiest palaces in Kenya while the labour that makes agriculture the economic engine of Kenya languish in smoke-filled hovels, barely able to send all their children to school and who die like flies every time there is an outbreak of one affliction or the other.

Therefore, when the President and Deputy President, the forty-seven governors and the army of functionaries and factotums host their visitors and offer them water dispensed from a machine or packaged in plastic, they should take a moment to wonder why the tap water in their offices is not to be trusted fifty years after Kenya decided to rule itself. If they cannot supply their own offices with clean water, it is almost certain that they cannot supply the people of Kenya with clean water...or clean anything, for that matter. They should hang their heads in shame and admit they have failed the people.

Culture wars, Kenya-style

The belief that homosexuals are inherently immoral has made its way across the Atlantic to our fair land. Charles Kanjama, a candidate for the chairmanship of the Law Society of Kenya, argues that there is something wrong with embracing the gay agenda; that each nation should be free to discriminate (or not discriminate) against The Gay Agenda and its advocates. Calestous Juma, a Kenyan scientist living in the United States, argues that discriminatory laws can be used even against those they are supposedly meant to protect.

Kenya is going through an intense process in the implementation of its progressive constitution. It is becoming increasingly apparent that different communities of interests have different agendas. There are those that would love to have the constitution implemented in full; there are those who would love to see the process slow-rolled as we "work out the kinks in the document;" there still others who like to see the whole thing shelved "until Kenyans are ready."

It is in the context of the implementation of the constitution that Kenyans are asked to debate whether or not the law should be amended to decriminalise homosexual acts; to protect homosexuals from discrimination; and to recognise their "rights" to healthcare, safety, adoption of children, marriage, and so on and so forth. The argument is being framed as being an unwarranted assault on our sovereignty as a nation to determine what is and what is not suitable for the peoples of Kenya against the obligations of a free society to permit individuals the widest liberties without infringing on the rights of others. It is being framed, too, as a moral battle between those who would still believe that homosexuality is a path to great moral decline while there are those who argue that what happens between two consenting adults behind closed doors and shut curtains is no business of yours or mine.

Despite what the various advocates for one side or the other argue, the constitution forms the foundation of the laws that we will enact, revise or repeal. It is not enough to blithely declare that the people will determine whether to "permit" or not the Gay Agenda; it must be declared in the context of whether the constitution prevails. If we are to ignore the provisions on non-discrimination and equality, we must do so honestly. We should not dissemble. We should tell all Kenyans that we do not believe that the Bill of Rights should be read as it has been drafted. We must tell them that we will pick and choose who will enjoy protections under the Bill of Rights and who will not. We must make it explicit that homosexual acts and homosexual persons do not deserve the protection of the constitution, that it is our solemn responsibility to not only make it impossible for them to be who they claim to be, but we must find a way of re-engineering their psyches and suppressing their immoral, perverted urges.

If the constitutions prevails, however, then the purveyors of such hate-filled religious bigotry must be put in their place. They may promote their hate-mongering in the name of protecting the institution of marriage, in protecting the children, in protecting Kenyans from immoral and corruptive influences, and generally, ensuring that the bulk of all right-thinking Kenyans will find itself on the way to heaven when the day of judgment is upon us. Whether we will admit it today or not, the breadth of individual liberties in the constitution implies that the State, and all its agencies, are no longer welcome in my bedroom. Or bathroom. Or home. If they think I'm unfit to look after my child, they can only prove it in the courts. If they think that my neighbour three doors down is a pederast of the worst kind, it is the courts that will settle the matter and I can then shun the little perv.

It is the institution of the constitution and the rule of law that must determine whether or not Kenyans will one day marry whom they want and adopt children when these children have no one else. But when you have leading lights of the Law Society asking for Kenyans to set aside the provisions of the constitution on equality and non-discrimination, and instead, discriminate actively against fellow-Kenyans because they "worship at another church" it is only a matter of time before we decide that we really didn't mean for women, children and the vulnerable to be protected by the constitution, or that environmental rights are the wild imaginations of tree-huggers of the Committee of Experts. They came for The Gay, and I did nothing...

Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The national values and principles of governance include the rule of law, equality and integrity (Article 10(2) of the Constitution). In exercising judicial authority, the courts and tribunals shall be guide by the [following] principles [of] alternative dispute forms of dispute resolution including reconciliation, mediation, arbitration and traditional dispute resolution mechanisms subject to [these] not [being] repugnant to justice and morality or results in outcomes that are repugnant to justice or morality (Article 159(2) and (3).

It is becoming increasingly difficult to see how the winding judicial process in L'affaire Kidero has the hallmarks of the rule of law, equality or integrity or how it cannot result in an outcome that is repugnant to morality or justice. The Governor of Nairobi City is alleged to have assaulted the Woman Representative of Nairobi City when the latter, he alleges, assaulted him by touching him inappropriately while leading irate workers of the City in a demonstration over the workers' terms and conditions of service. The Governor filed a complaint with the police on the same day. As did the Woman Representative. The police announced, rather grandiosely that they were investigating the alleged offences committed by the Governor and the Woman Representative against each other. This was in September 2013. It is only in January 2014 that the Director of Public Prosecutions directed the prosecution of the two City leaders. The High Court stayed the prosecutions of the two and asked the accused persons to sit down and reconcile.

From a technical perspective, the Governor, the Woman Representative and the High Court acted within the letter of the law. When it comes to the spirit of the law, it is safe to assume that the jury is still out. Every Kenyan has a strong opinion on the administration of justice. Many Kenyans will state without equivocation that the rich and powerful, the high and mighty will get away with offences because they are rich and powerful, high and mighty. They will also tell you that when a little fish commits an offence, the administration of justice machinery will throw the book at the little fish, lock them behind bars and throw away the key. Minor altercations among people who are not politicians or who do not have great wealth are almost always prosecuted with alacrity. There is never even the farce of an investigation; the word of the investigating authorities is practically holy writ in these cases. Not so for Governors and popular Woman Representatives.

There is logic in arguing that a Governor or a Woman Representative should not be treated in the same manner as the hoi polloi, but this logic makes a mockery of the rule of law, equality (before the law) or the justice and morality of the law. It is moot that the law treats the rich and poor differently, deferring to the rich and bringing the hammer down on the poor. Regardless of the merits of each others' cases against each other, it is only the willfully blind who will deny that the Governor assaulted the Woman Representative. It was, after all, captured on national TV. (Whether his assault on her was precipitated by her assault on him is what the courts must prove.) But the unctuousness demonstrated by the National Police Service, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the High Court make a mockery of Article 10 and Article 159 of the Constitution.

The effect of such mockery is that Kenyans from all walks of life will give lip service, if that, to the Constitution or its principles. What they will hanker for is the same power and privilege that ensures that the Constitution and the law bends to ones every whim. It is for this reason that very few Kenyans see a career outside the political arena as attractive; many of us dream of becoming the President, Deputy President, Governor, Senator, Member of the National Assembly, Cabinet Secretary, Principle Secretary, Member of a County Assembly, or Member of a County Executive. These are the men and women who are treated with kid gloves, if at all, by the forces of law and order when they are "in conflict with the law" and who very, very rarely see the inside of a jail cell. And if we keep treating them as the princes of old that they are treated like, the dream of "justice for all" will become the nightmare of a privileged few facing the pitchforks and torches of the great unwashed.

The Chief Justice should heed his own wise counsel.

It is easy to praise the dead in Africa; anyone attempting to speak ill of the dead will be burnt in effigy or worse, simply burnt. In his Closing Statement in the January edition of the Nairobi Law Monthly (Let's emulate Mandela), the Chief Justice is effusive with his praise for the departed Nelson Mandela of South Africa. In his service as President of South Africa, the Chief Justice draws lessons which he exhorts us to be illuminated with in "our constitutional moment as we struggle to stabilise our politics, law and institutions." The Chief Justice accuses us of being "incapable of stitching together our ethnic diversity, bow to the demands of the law, dream big, expand our vision, respect our constitution and professions." And he is right.

Kenyans have had countless opportunities to be better; better at politics, better at governance, and better as people. Many of these opportunities have been squandered. Even those, such as the Chief Justice, who have the intellectual courage to speak truth to power have squandered opportunities to be better. Because he is the Chief Justice of Kenya, and the head of the Judiciary, let us examine the place the Chief Justice finds himself in light of his effusive praise for the South African icon.

We shall take only two examples of his role as Chairperson of the Judicial Service Commission. The first is the removal of the erstwhile Deputy Chief justice, Nancy Barasa. When, on New Year's Eve 2012, the Deputy Chief Justice was accused of assault, the Judicial Service Commission under the leadership of the Chief Justice applied its mind to what the law demanded. It investigated the allegations against Ms Barasa. It concluded that she had indeed acted in a manner that warranted dismissal and recommended the appointment of a tribunal to investigate her conduct. The process was not seen to its conclusion as Ms Barasa chose to resign her position. As the saga unfolded, there wasn't a Kenyan alive who did not believe that the Chief Justice, and the Judicial Service Commission, acted other than professionally.

How much difference a year makes. In August 2013, the Chief Justice, and the Judicial Service Commission, had the opportunity to act with the same degree of professionalism that they demonstrated during the Nancy Barasa saga. The disinformation and misinformation surrounding the dismissal of the erstwhile Chief Registrar of the Judiciary, Gladys Boss Shollei, have painted the Chief Justice and the Judicial Service Commission in the worst possible light. It is yet to be proven but the public spectacle of the removal of the Chief Registrar pointed to a vindictive disregard of the law and level of vendetta against her that belied the professional integrity of the members of the Judicial Service Commission.

Perhaps the Chief Justice cannot see it and it will take the people to show him the truth. In Kenya, while our ethnic diversity continues to be the subject of much punditry and commentary, and corruption continues to animate all pro-reform voices-in-the-dessert, it is the colonial-era legacy of the public service that must be reformed, and this is reflected starkly in the Judicial Service Commission more than anywhere else. The puffed self-importance of the Commissioners has done more damage to the institution than all the corrupt acts of the Judges and magistrates of Kenya for the past fifty years. The arrogance of the Judicial Service Commission about its power and place in the administration of justice has become the albatross that will eventually damn the Judiciary.

It is not just the removal of the Chief Registrar speaks volumes. It is also the avarice displayed by all serving public officers on the Commission. When Maina Kiai points out that there is no logical reason why the Chief Justice, the Attorney-General, the representatives of the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, the High Court and magistrates, and the representative of the Public Service Commission should be paid eighty thousand shillings as sitting allowances when they meet as a Commission, he is accused of ill will. All these civil servants earn millions every year in remuneration and other allowances. When asked, they claim that their service on the Commission is for the public good. Their avarice does not resonate with their stated good intentions. But what is surprising is that the Chief Justice has done little of note to reverse the trend of senior civil servants lining their pockets while "serving the people."

This nation continues to suffer its leaders, whether they are politicians, civil servants or judges. A nation that finds it impossible to pay teachers, doctors, nurses or policemen finds newer and better reasons to line the pockets of public servants who do not need that extra eighty thousand at all. In light of their zealous fidelity to the provisions of the Official Secrets Act, they will continue to speak loftily of the dream that is Kenya and their speeches will continue to fall on deaf ears, just as seed sown on rocky ground will not grow.

Sink or Swim, Mr President?

Clearly the Governor of the County of Nairobi City does not have the muscle. It is time to appeal to a higher authority. Mtukufu Rais (allow me a measure of oily unctuousness; you must be used to it by now), when are you going to erase the whiff of siege mentality that seems to be engulfing your nascent administration?

The residents of the City of Nairobi are tired of being treated with such extreme hostility and suspicion by both the national government and the quick-fingered county government. The most visible elements of the suspicion and hostility are the spectacular land-grabs that both governments have perpetrated in the name of keeping nabobs, mandarins and party apparatchiks safe from the people who pay the taxes and vote in the elections that keep the nabobs, mandarins and party apparatchiks in truffle all year round.

In Nairobi, public bodies seem to see all Nairobi residents, regardless of the extremity of the suspicion and hostility, as potential gunmen, bombers or God knows what kind of crack military-trained assault team. In a period when you are trying to create the impression that the government is not the enemy of the people, the kilometres of steel--and-concrete fences and armies of ill-trained, ill-mannered private security askaris create the impression that your rhetoric is only that: rhetoric; it has a snowball's chance in hell of being converted into reality.

Mr President, the most paranoid nation on God's Green Earth is the United States of America and despite their quite extreme precautions to preempt their fears, it remains a nation whose federal government is the victim of one attack after another. I do not intend to argue that if the mighty United States cannot defend itself, Kenya does not have a chance to do so. What I intend to argue is that because they are so paranoid and because they have made such extreme efforts to protect themselves they will forever be victims of terror, terrorism and the occasional mad, bad man with a gun. Kenya should not follow in the foolish footsteps of the country many refer to as the Great Satan. Neither should we follow in the footsteps of the United States' poodle, the United Kingdom, whose paranoid lock-step mirroring of the United States has invited foreign extremists to lay siege to its institutions of government, though of a lesser intensity.

Now, I am well aware of the social schisms that make it seem as if we are at each others' throats. It is therefore, imperative that you demonstrate to your people, that is, Kenyans, that we have nothing to fear from the one institution that is supposed to unite as all. The national government does not need to hide behind high fences, rungu-wielding askaris or phalanxes of gun-toting praetorian guards. It speaks volumes about the deep suspicion and hostility with which you and your government treat us that you will not allow us to have an unrestricted view of your buildings or your mandarins because there is a (slight) fear that we may feel an overwhelming need to be disagreeable with them.

Some fathers teach their sons how to swim by tossing them into the deep end during their son's first swimming lesson: sink or swim seems to be a mantra that sometimes fails, but it tends to concentrate the mind. Your government has become complacent, comfortable behind its barriers, askaris and guns. It refuses to take the issue of public safety seriously because all your mandarins know that by the time al Shabaab-types make it past the first barrier they will be faced by a wall of very hot lead. If you truly want you government to meet the objective of keeping your people safe from the kind of violence that is now stalking South Sudan or the Central African Republic, not to mention Somalia and Rwanda, take away their comfort zone. Tear down the steel-and-concrete fences and barriers; dismiss the askaris standing idiotically at the doors. Ask your mandarins to find another way to keep themselves and your people safe. If they are unable to do so your people will not lament (too loudly) to see them tarmacking for new jobs after you give them the steel toe and send them on their way.

Play the game and play it well or withdraw from the field.

Political debts are very difficult to settle. Regardless of the consideration paid, there is always a whiff of the controversial around who gets what and when and the the expense of whom. The President made some appointments over the New Year to state corporations' boards. Some were received without further thought; some have generated controversy. The appointments of Ambassador Francis Muthaura and Mohammed Abduba Dida to the boards of the LAPSSET and the CDF have received especial attention.

The appointments have become controversial because of the opposition and support for the appointments. What no one has said, explicitly or implicitly, is that the President was out of bounds for making the appointments for political reasons. Those against the appointments may sound the most sincere about their opposition, but they are doing the same thing that the President is doing, only in reverse: they are playing politics with the appointments, intent on demonstrating to their constituencies that they are on top of things.

Regardless of the odious whiff of opportunism about the appointments, this blogger is acutely aware that there is no democratic system that does not run on the political settlements that must be made every now and then. It is how the world turns. Sooner or later, it is the political grease that will come to play when there are sensitive and controversial decisions to be made.

The President is implicitly acknowledging that the days of an imperial presidency are dead and gone. If he wants his legislative and administrative agenda to be implemented, he will need allies in Parliament, in the state corporations' sector and, especially, in the private sector. When it comes to sell his agenda, the President understands that for the long term legitimacy of his government, he cannot make decisions by presidential fiat, but through an integrated approach to selling the agenda to the wider public. The President has done what other heads of government do in democratic societies; he is managing the affairs of state by co-opting as many political and administrative allies as he can. In other words, he is playing the game like it should be played.

Those who are challenging his appointments are well within their rights to challenge the appointments. They too are playing the game. Who comes out on top will only be known when the game is done. However, many of them are stuck in the dark days of the KANU era, seeing ethnic ghosts where none exist. It is in their short-sighted interests to argue that "their" people or "their" regions have been sidelined; it is not in their interests to accept that the experienced administrators and the political threats co-opted into the Jubilee government are a necessary evil all democracies must contend with.

Rather than whinge piteously about who or where was left out, they should strategise to keep the appointees on their toes. Some of the appointees are bound to make mistakes; it is the duty of the Minority Party to play an aggressive oversight role over the appointees to ensure that the President pays for their mistakes if and when they make them. Anything less and the Minority Party will constantly be wrongfooted in their attempts to politically kneecap the President. Mr Kenyatta is the consummate strategist and the Minority Party must up its game to keep up with him.

Mosquitos and Thermonuclear devices.

When you witness even men and women who should know better declaiming, loudly for all to hear, that the International Criminal Court at The Hague is a principle weapon in the fight against impunity and political corruption, you know that the human rights cum civil society industry has completely lost the plot. Impunity, in the context of the Rome Statute, is not a word that simply exists in limbo; it is part of a vital phrase that the demagogues of the human right cum civil society industry vlithely glide over when they raise their voice in the public square. Impunity is followed by the words for crimes that shock the conscience of humanity. And which ones are these crimes that shock the conscience of humanity? Certainly you will not find political corruption on that list. You will find genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

This blogger will not challenge the disgust expressed at the hypocrisy of the United States of America for promoting the Rome Statute, signing it but refusing to ratify it unless it receives special op-out clauses for its citizens who may commit acts that shock the conscience of humanity. But this blogger takes great exception at the attempt to conflate political corruption with such crimes. While political corruption could lead to those crimes, it is not and should not be equated with a crime such as genocide or the forceful movement of entire populations.

Political corruption, despite what the nabobs of the human rights cum civil society industry claim, is not unique to Kenya, Africa, the Global South or the developing world. It is starkly apparent everywhere you have free and fair elections as well as where autocracies, autarkies and repressive regimes flourish. It is not the preserve of the global South; it is the legacy of the idea that men (and women) can and should govern themselves. it is as old as government itself.

It receives notoriety in Africa (especially in Africa) because it is regarded as the principle reason why African governments, African peoples and African societies are not as industrialised as the Global North. None, even the brave amongst us, will admit that the ideas that underpin the governments we have in Africa have nothing to do with African culture, history or political maturity.

This blogger will not argue that it is now OK to lie, cheat and steal in the name of political competition, or that it is OK to lead a people to commit grave acts of genocide in order to secure political office. But before we look at political corruption as a uniquely African malaise, we must look at it in context; for many African states, the cultures and traditions they practice in the modern governance of their nations are the legacies and prescriptions of not just their former colonial subjugators, but have become reinforced in a modern world of high international finance and resource-based international intrigue. Many of the "advisors" and "consultants" sent from the Global North to the governments of the Global South have come not with altruistic goals, but with ever greater amounts of profit for their people.

In the past 40 years, our bit of Africa has seen civil wars in The Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Northern Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. Until Kenya became an arms-maker sometime in the 1990s, all weapons employed in these wars came from five main suppliers: the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, of which China was the only non-Global North member. The genocides, war crimes and crimes against humanity that have become the raison d'etre of the Rome Statute would not have become the genocides, war crimes or crimes against humanity without the active connivance of the P5. This blogger suspects that this is the only reason why the United States will never ratify the Rome Statute regardless of what sops we throw at them to sign; there is an ocean of blood for which that country, its people and their government are responsible for.

So, while we may deplore political corruption, let us not equate it to things that the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge did in the name of nationalistic purity. It is only when we treat the problem in the context of its effect on the body politic that we will be able to prescribe the correct solutions to our political problems. To paraphrase PLO Lumumba, to call political corruption a war crime is to attempt to swat a fly with a thermonuclear device.

Nyumba kumi is a moneypit, unless...

In urban Kenya, it is only the gregarious, the foolhardy or the criminally-inclined who have any desire to get to know their neighbours, especially among the younger generation. If you have had the ill-fortune of being confined in what is known as an "estate" in Nairobi, or any of the other half-dozen or so urban centres, you will instinctively know that getting to know your neighbours will bring you more grief than you would care to suffer in a hundred lifetimes.

It is for this simple, and simplistic, reason that the Nyumba Kumi thing that the security establishment has been banging on about for the past three months will end up being another white elephant, with the pay-stubs to prove it. If there is one thing it will achieve, it will be the decimation of a small forest to provide the paper for the thousands upon thousands of words that will be written to explain it, to sell it and to justify it when it comes to grief.

This blogger has absolutely no wish to know his neighbours. Ever. He does not want to know their children, their children's ayahs, the local cigarette vendor or the names of the choggis who let him into his court when he staggers home from The Porterhouse in the wee hours of the (mostly) Sunday mornings. This blogger has absolutely no wish to find out why the doctor in house 442 refuses to park his shiny new Ranger Rover inside his compound, or why last night there were suspicious groans coming from the upstairs apartment in this blogger's own compound. All this blogger wants is the sense of safety that comes form knowing that Kenya Power and the County of Nairobi City will not get into another lover's tiff that cuts off all power to the street lights that compel the nefariously-minded to scurry like the cockroaches they are into the shadows. All this blogger wants is a commitment from the City Fathers that drains will get cleaned, sewers will be unblocked, and the thug-infested unplanned migingos and vibandas will be razed to the ground and the pavements restored to the walking working public, including yours truly. And because this blogger knows that City fathers have spent their entire existence lining their pockets without helping him line his, this blogger has absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the half-an-idea that is Nyumba Kumi will not reverse the escalation in violent crimes in Nairobi or anywhere else.

David Mole Kimaiyo is a nice enough man for a policeman. Joseph Ole Lenku is a nice enough man for a quasi-politician. But none of them has a clue what needs to be done to de-escalate the rising violent crime statistics in Kenya. That's a bit harsh; they know what needs to be done, but they threw up their hands at doing it a long, long time ago. They know, and must have known for a while now, that it is the small things that make it possible for the criminal element to flourish with such wildly violent abandon.

Take a typical "estate" in Nairobi's quasi-middle-class neighbourhoods of Buru Buru, Doonholm or Kariobangi South. These are estates where civil services were more or less suspended over two decades ago.Tarmac used to define the roads in these estates; today, it is the ever-widening potholes and the incessant dust that do. Street lighting and garbage removal were facts of civic life; nowadays the extortionate demands of Kenya Power and "sanitation" companies are all that is left. The run and decrepit state of the municipal facilities have encouraged the impression that the City fathers do not give a damn about the residents of these estates and that they are fair game for the jackals and hyenas among us. The tally of residents assaulted and murdered in these estates on a monthly basis are a reminder that in their obsession with their place in the national security firmament, Messrs Kimaiyo and Ole Lenku (and their minions) have their eyes firmly fixed on the wrong problem in the wrong place. It is only an Act of God that will force them to shift focus. And to pull the wool over our eyes that they have everything in hand, they come up with inanities such as Nyumba Kumi.

Public safety is a partnership that brings together the public, the security agencies and the municipal authorities. But it is the role played by the City Fathers to provide and maintain key infrastructure and that of the security agencies to act professionally at all times that will persuade the public to enthusiastically embrace the core elements of the partnership. But when City Fathers treat their residents as vermin, and the security agencies treat them as a threat, there is absolutely no reason why city residents should join a quasi-espionage operation against their neighbours. Find a way of building up the confidence of the people in their county government and in their police and Nyumba Kumi may not seem the hair-brained moneypit that it is already on its way to becoming.

Reform education for national success.

This blogger might have a sense of how important a quality education is but cannot claim to have a deep appreciation of the same. This blogger has always been a middling student, taking wins and losses as they came because of the incredible support he has received from his parents. This blogger's parents are authorities in their own fields and they have done all parents can do to instil a sense of pride in academic achievement.

This blogger's experience is atypical of the Kenyan experience. From an early age, it is impressed upon Kenyan pupils and students that they will not get to where they wish to go if they do not excel in school. It is why there is prestige in being allocated a place at a premier, national school. When one meets a Form-Four-leaver who was a student at the Starehe Boys' Centre, the Alliance High School or the Mang'u High School, one immediately associates the former student with rigorous training and determined focus. The same cannot be said for a student who successfully sits his Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education at the thousands of district schools that dot our fair land.

It is disingenuous for pundits to claim that all students are the same regardless of the secondary schools they attend. The legacy national schools such as Starehe and Alliance have some "it" factor that all other schools, including the recently elevated national ones, do not. It is difficult to determine precisely what makes a good national school, but it goes without saying that an experienced faculty and abundant facilities are up there in the list of priorities.

In Kenya education is the magic bullet to a successful life, success being measured by either entrepreneurial success or a high-paying job in the public, private or Third sectors. While a few Kenyans have made a name for themselves in athletics or sports, they are few and far between, but it is education that defines the Kenyan experience. It is also why parents nationwide want the most solid of foundations for their children by having them attend the very best high school and the very best university.

It is in this context that the publicly-funded school system's problems should be seen. The crisis in the education sector must be tackled if the children of Kenya are to have a chance at competing with their peers overseas. Teacher remuneration has been a bone of contention for almost twenty years. While politicians keep saying that education is important to them, they see no irony in lining their pockets at the expense of the teachers. The teachers' unions, by and large, have done a piss poor job of making the case for better teacher remuneration. While education takes a very large chunk of the national expenditure, it is still no enough. Thousands of schools are schools in name only. They lack basic facilities such as classrooms or, indeed, teachers. If we are to make the dream that is Kenya a practical reality, it is in the education sector that reforms are needed.

Fate and Politics

It is still too early to predict the demise of the UhuRuto political marriage. It is the loud voices of the United Republican Party that create the impression of a rift between the President and the Deputy President. One would be mistaken to take the bonhomie between the two at face value; they are after all, politicians with an eye in the Big Picture. President Kenyatta intends to serve two terms; William Ruto intends to succeed him after the second general election and serve two terms too. Whether their dreams comes to pass will depend almost entirely on whether they can manage the fallout from the ICC trials of the tow with pragmatism.

Those looking at the theatrics surrounding the disputes over public appointments and tenders are looking in the wrong place. It is the lack of legs in the allegations that the President's "people" are responsible for the trial of the Deputy President that speaks volumes. If Mr Ruto truly thought that the President was somewhat behind his trial, the political marriage between the two would today be in the divorce courts being prosecuted with vicious venom. Mr Ruto and Mr Kenyatta both served, in varying capacities, in the Kibaki administration, an administration whose ham-fisted handling of the post-election violence led to the ICC investigation, indictments, trial and imminent trial. It is the men and women who served in the Kibaki government who are responsible for the mess that the PEV became; if they had not underestimated the doggedness of the ICC prosecutor and the Kenyan civil society industry, Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto would not be standing trial today and the PEV cases would be dying the expected deaths of a thousand cuts in the still-being-reformed Judiciary.

The threat of the ICC to the UhuRuto alliance should not be underestimated. It must be taken seriously. How it is resolved will make or break UhuRuto. It is in its resolution that Kenyans will be able to determine whether the principle partners are truly in it for the long haul or not. The challenge is in understanding whether the one or the other is patient enough to achieve the alliance's objectives.

Mr Ruto is the more obviously ambitious of the two, though whether the reality speaks to this is another matter. His rise in national politics since 1992 has been spectacular but no less than that of Raila Odinga or Kalonzo Musyoka. It is the apparent pragmatism in his character that makes him the man to watch. When it was in his interests he dumped Moi (2002), Kenyatta (2003) and Odinga (2010). The alliances he made cemented his primacy among the politicians of the Rift Valley, especially the North Rift. He has risen in both power and wealth in a relatively short time and he has achieved key positions because he has not been held back by fickle concepts such as absolute loyalty.

Mr Kenyatta's rise is no less impressive. From a mere name name in 1998, he is now the Head of State and Commander-in-Chief. He has had a less stellar rise than his deputy. But it is how he has managed to rise so far and so fast that we must draw lessons. He comes to the political arena with advantages that many would kill for: instant name-recognition, great wealth, sub-conscious acceptance from almost all Kenyans and an intelligence that is constantly underestimated by one and all. He has managed to control his press with a ruthlessness and discipline that speaks volumes about his long-term plans. It helps considerably that he has a knack for connecting with the man on the street and the still-at-sea feeling that wafts around the opposition.

It is obvious that the fate of the alliance is in the hands of the President. He  must seize the opportunity to re-shape the alliance as he requires. If he allows the alliance to be seen as a marriage of bickering partners, he may never regain the momentum to keep the presidency at the next general election. Towards this end, annoying pin pricks like the demands for "balance" in public appointments and "value-for-money" in big-ticket public procurement must be quashed. He cannot allow annoyances such as Alfred Keter to become thorns in his side. He must do what Moi and his late father did; smash them without appearing to smash them. He has the skills and intelligence to do so. It is just a question of whether he will or not.

Monkeys and forests.

Two events in the past week demonstrate that we are far from doing the things that we promised ourselves to do when we ended the KANU Era in 2002. The High Court ordered the Governor of Nairobi and the Nairobi Woman Representative to hold reconciliation talks, while the President reshuffled the chief executives of state corporations.

When the Women Representative of Nairobi City walked to the Governor's office in solidarity with city workers who had gone on strike, she reminded Kenyans that disputes are never settled in a civil  manner in Kenya despite the millions of cases backlogged in the Judiciary. Rather than negotiate in the spirit of give and take, the Nairobi city workers were determined to force a confrontation with a Governor they believed was an illegitimate one. They were determined to demonstrate that new and improved systems of governance for the city were anathema to their interests. They wanted to carry on with a perfidious system that allowed them to milk the residents of Nairobi for all they are worth without providing services that would make the city the envy of the region, the continent and the world.

This has been the case since the Constitution was promulgated in 2010. The changes it has mandated have made it near impossible for sensible people to agree on what needs to be done, especially in the devolution of public services (and finances). Justice Lenaola's order that the Governor and Woman Representative is an admission that the rule of law is a farce. It applies only when it is convenient. From a political perspective, it will be a grave error for the Governor to be prosecuted with a crime; it will be seen as a political vendetta by one side of the government against another. It is a crying shame that these sorts of arrangements can only be made for the men and women in power and not for the hoi polloi sweating to earn a decent living.

President Kenyatta's appointments raise other concerns. Mr Kenyatta is acutely aware that Kenyan politics is unique. The rules that apply in advanced African democracies as South Africa and Ghana do not apply in Kenya. Patronage still rules the roost here and the appointments are meant to calm the waters before the next round of elections and by elections. It is why the men and women chosen for the positions have ties to the leading partners of the Jubilee coalition. It is also why the restless and inexperienced first-timers in the Eleventh Parliament are getting unhinged. It is not just the public appointments or their ethnic distribution that continue to animate the pundits; the distribution of tenders and other public policies have as much to do with the stalemate as well. Mr Kenyatta faces a great challenge in reconciling his campaign rhetoric with the reality of Kenyan politics.

Kenyans must demand more of their government and their government must deliver on its promises. This can only be achieved if we make a clean break with the past. The rules that governed what could and could not be done in politics must change. Integrity should define whom we appoint. The choices that we make must not be informed with the short term interests of politicians alone. Unless Kenyans play a constructive role in the governance of their country, the two events will form a distressingly familiar part of their government for a generation at least.