Undemocratic parties

"We need an electoral law to govern political parties primaries for free, fair and credible nominations." As quoted by @Faith Kasiva on Twitter

The political topic du jour is party primaries renamed so in our affected desire to be as American as possible. The shambles that were the primaries by the the Jubilee Party of Kenya are not the result of bad laws but the determined desire by the members of the party to sow as much confusion as possible during the exercise. Confusion leads to decisions that are not mediated by anyone or any institution to impose decisions on the party rank and file that they may resist. Confusion is a feature of all parties' primaries, whether they are members of the National Super Alliance or small, run of the mill parties like Narc-Kenya or Maendeleo Chap Chap Party.

The national discourse has tangentially dealt with the question of independent candidacies but it hasn't asked what I believe is the most important question: why is our politics organised around political parties and not independent candidates? The undemocratic exercise of power by politicians is tied directly to the undemocratic operation of political parties which signal to political and state institutions that undemocratic methods will not face political, constitutional or statutory challenge.

From the recruitment of -- and accounting for -- party members, the most undemocratic methods are employed, especially secrecy. The secrets of the political party reinforce every undemocratic act -- including bribery, forgery, violence and intimidation -- by party owners, officials and aspiring candidates. It is how a political party can have multiple party registers for the same constituency -- and all of them would be accurate depending on who the maker of the register was.

But do we really need to be politically organised around political parties? I have gone over news reports and articles over the past five years and come to an unsurprising realisation: political parties remain dormant for the period between elections. Little party activity takes place. No political party seems to invest in training and educating party officials or drafting party policy papers stating the party's position on public policy. Parties don't hold national delegate's conventions or congresses to reaffirm their ideologies or reconfirm their leaders to their position. Most important -- and damning to my mind -- no party seems to have a committed membership that subscribes to the party's ideals and proves its loyalty by giving material support -- money -- to the party for its activities. Parties' membership registers are about as real as chicken teeth.

I am -- we should all be -- suspicious of politicians when they exhort us to write better laws to better regulate political parties because political parties are, by very Kenyan standards, not designed to be well-regulated. When those politicians making these calls are elected representatives who have experienced the bracingly cold winds of change as represented by poor primary outcomes, my suspicion is tinged with paranoia because when these representatives were writing laws from regulating breast milk to regulating what photographs the newsmedia may publish, I am just curious as to why they never found the time to deal with political parties' primaries especially after they regulated every other aspect of the political and electoral process.

Few Kenyans have ever seen the constitutions of the parties that front thousands of men and women in our elections. Few Kenyans actually care enough to go looking for these constitutions. So it shouldn't be so difficult for most Kenyan voters to elect their representatives regardless of party affiliation, party membership or party loyalty, right? It doesn't make sense for Mr Odinga, for example, to command such blind loyalty when his own party is notorious for shambolic, violent, chaotic nominations. Or Uhuru Kenyatta, when his newest party -- his third in five years -- wears the veneer of corporate poshness but is in reality a dictatorship of fat wallets, deep pockets and political engineers of doubtful and dubious repute.

We don't really need political parties. We just need a less expensive, less chaotic way of choosing who will stand at an election. Political parties have proven to be the reason why our politics almost always ends in violence.

Whistling Dixie in the wind

We made a bargain with each other as adult voters. That bargain is called the Constitution of Kenya. In that bargain we decided how big a government we wanted. In making the bargain, we had a binary choice: promulgate a new constitution or carry on under an older, much-amended and imperfect one. On the 27th August, 2010 we replaced one constitutional order with a new one. What we didn't replace was the corrupted and corruptive politics of Kenya; we devolved it and the problems it engenders.

The Consolidated Fund is, more or less, the sum total of all the monies that pass through the innards of the Government of Kenya. That is all the taxes we pay, direct and otherwise, all the money borrowed by the Government, all the grants, donations and gifts to the Government, all the proceeds from the disposal of assets or the sale of licences and permits, and a million other sources of money. The Consolidated Fund, bar some constitutional amendment, is here to stay. The sources of money of the Consolidated Fund are here to stay. Taxes, in their varied forms, will continue to form the largest proportion of what forms the Consolidated Fund.

Even before we talk of a public service, the following State officers must be paid: the President, Deputy President, the members of the Cabinet, the members of Parliament, Governors, Deputy Governors, the members of county assemblies, judges and magistrates, the Attorney-General, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Chief of Defence Forces, each service commander of the Kenya Defence Forces, the Director-General of the National Intelligence Service, the Inspector-General and the Deputy Inspectors-General of the National Police Service, the Controller of Budget, the Auditor-General, the members of the Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, the National Gender and Equality Commission, the National Police Service Commission, the Teachers Service Commission, the National Land Commission, the Public Service Commission, the Judicial Service Commission, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, the Commission on Revenue Allocation and the Salaries and Remuneration Commission.

The existence of these offices is part of the constitutional bargain we made with each other and the remuneration and benefits due to those holding these offices is a part of that bargain too. The Salaries and Remuneration Commission is charged with determining the remuneration and benefits of these State officers, another constitutional bargain we made with each other. The public service that works for, works with or otherwise supports these State officers reflects the thousands of things that we ask our government to do. After 2010, no one has a valid argument that State officers and public servants have stolen power that is not rightfully theirs; if anyone wishes to challenge the legitimacy of a power that is being exercised by the Government, they have the courts of law to do so. After 2010, arguments about access or knowledge of the law or ability of litigants are no longer valid.

The most significant State offices are those held by members of the national executive: the President, the Deputy President and the Cabinet. These offices are responsible for establishing tax policy and fiscal policy. The choice of President and Deputy President is directly related to the choice of members of the Cabinet and, in turn, the kinds of long term policies that hit us where it hurts most: the wallet. As a nation, we failed to interrogate the fiscal policies of the candidates in 2013; we are now paying the price as the cost of living gets out of hand because of the malign effects of our growing national debt. While to many the size of the national debt is morally indefensible, it is not unconstitutional: the power to incur these debts is given to the Government and it is accounted for by the Government in accordance with our constitutional bargain.

Some have called for "shrinking the size of government" by which they mean that the number of elected State officers must be reduced as well as the overall size of the public service. What they have failed to do is to advance an argument that is persuasive enough for those who have no problem with the national executive being involved in road construction, milk processing, sugar milling, armaments manufacturing, drugs' distribution, higher education or medical equipment leasing. Millions of Kenyans have no problem with the manner in which taxes are employed. Those that do can be separated into two camps: those who oppose taxation as an unconstitutional usurpation of private property and those who simply want to see as little of it wasted, misappropriated, misspent or stolen. The former are fond of wailing about the assault on their liberties without offering practical solutions that will help them attain their constitutional nirvana. They are constitutional nihilists of the worst kind.

We have problems in Kenya. To even attempt to solve them, we must accept a few things: we are a constitutional republic in which State offices, State officers and their powers are defined; these powers have been exercised for both good and ill; if we are to make things better for all, we must re-examine how State power is used, and review our constitutional arrangements to reflect that re-examination. Anything else is whistling Dixie in the wind.

First improve the transport system we have

We didn't ask Sonko questions like zoning laws, revenue collection, parks and social halls, playgrounds and county schools for our kids, public transport (surely, surely, mathrees need to go. A city like Nairobi should have have a viable public bus network like yesterday). Wandia Njoya, Facebook

Nairobi once had public transport that was efficient, effective and, mostly, affordable. It was part-owned by the Government and it was known as the Kenya Bus Service Corporation*. The fares we paid to ride KBS were controlled by the Government. Because of its size and the price-controls, the gypsy minibuses and vans couldn't compete with KBS on fares; instead, they competed on speed, distance, comfort and entertainment.

Matatus were popular alternatives to the KBS in Eastlands, especially along Jogoo Road up to the City Stadium and Industrial Area, or up to Pumwani, Gikomba and Kariokor, connecting Embakasi, Doonholm, Umoja, Kariobangi South, Harambee, Buru Buru, Jamhuri, Jerusalem, Kimathi, Shauri Moyo, Jericho, Makadara and Maringo. KBS had a monopoly on the Central Bus Station, and the Ambassadeur Hotel, KENCOM and GPO stages. So far as I can remember, it also had termini in Kangemi, Kawangware, Pumwani and Umoja II. Matatus, on the other hand, were only allowed to operate out of that zone bordered by Ronald Ngala Street, Tom Mboya Street, and Kirinyaga Road, with popular termini along Accra Road, at the Globe Cinema Roundabout, the Nairobi Fire Station, next to Odeon Cinema and near the Khoja Mosque.

The principal provider of public transport was the KBS while matatus were alternatives for short distances only. KBS was organised and operated on a schedule that allowed one to plan her itinerary without worry. You could move from Umoja II to Kawangware using, at most two buses, because you were certain of the fare and the timetable and you didn't have to worry about being late. But what made the KBS perfect were the price controls by the City Council of Nairobi (which part-owned the KBS).

The liberalisation of public transport changed all this. First, the City Council discontinued price-controls and the KBS hiked its fares. Second, it lost its monopoly to the Central Bus Station and the Ambassadeur Hotel, KENCOM and GPO stages. Third, the national government undermined the KBS model by running for brief period the Nyayo Bus Service Corporation which charged even lower fares than the KBS because of subsidies offered by the national government. (The Nyayo Bus collapsed because it became an instrument of grand corruption.) Finally, matatus were licensed to operate on all the routes that the KBS used to operate on. There was a brief period when the KBS introduced the innovative Shuttle in the early 2000s to compete against matatus, but its debts finally put paid to it as a going concern and it underwent a management buyout. It has since then sold off most of its real estate and operates in the same competitive environment and in the same pricing model as the rest of the matatu sector. It is a bus company in name only; in all respects, it is a matatu operator with large-capacity buses.

Today, operators of large fleets of public service vehicles use a hybrid model: they own a set number of buses and mini-buses and offer franchises to individuals. These include the KBS Management Services (former managers who bought out the last owners of the KBS), Double M, Citi Hoppa and City Shuttle. These large operators maintain a semblance of standards. However, they compete against vastly larger single-vehicle operators, the living embodiment of the matatu spirit, who mostly operate 14-seat vans and 29-seat mini-buses. All operators compete for passengers and access to termini and stages. None operates on a set schedule. Many operate with uncertain fares, with a floor below which they cannot charge. Recent statutory changes require these single-vehicle operators to join Savings and Credit Co-operatives to instill some form of discipline in the sector, but as tragedies along Magadi Road have demonstrated in recent months, this hasn't helped much.

Hard as it is to imagine, Nairobi will not be nationalising public transport any time soon; it simply doesn't have the capital or the managerial expertise to successfully run a public transport network. However, it still retains the mandate to operate a public transport system. It has a mandate to make laws and, if properly overseen, to rebuild and expand the existing infrastructure. Nairobi's laws on public transport are a mess; so too are the laws enforced by the National Transport Safety Authority. There are too many unsafe vehicles posing as PSVs and many PSVs are operated dangerously. If we are to have the public transport system that we believe we are entitled to, our government and government agencies must ensure that the laws under which the system will operate are well-thought out and enforced firmly but fairly.

None of the men and women seeking public office in Nairobi seems to have credible plans or ideas to improve the state of affairs. All of them have made vague proposals about "mass transit" and the number of new large-capacity buses or trams they will buy. They are yet to give us an explanation of what is wrong with the current system and what can be done to improve it. Neither, it seems, are the voters who are demanding "a viable public bus network like yesterday".

 *http://www.ssatp.org/sites/ssatp/files/publications/Presentations/KenyaBusService.pdf

High-class perversity

Name-dropping is par for the course for the jet set. Name-dropping the names of the dead is perverse, though. I didn't realise how perverse our ukubwa culture was until I read the tweets of a serial name-dropper who couldn't help but remind us that she was connected to very dead formerly very powerful men.

Kenya's jet set is incestuous and insular; the same small elite group of people know each and have relations only with each other; upstarts and social climbers rarely break into this clique. It is this clique's insularity that blinds them to the perversity of name-checking/name-dropping the dead and gone. In the past, the name-dropping was meant to signal membership in the clique and allowed the one to whom the dropping was directed to confirm the name-dropper's social status. Often, it were new members that had the gauche habit of name-dropping; veteran members knew that it was enough to be invited to the right clubs, the right parties or the right [western] embassy reception.

Kenya's jet set has now been infiltrated by the sullied degenerates of the political classes, rough-hewn and newly monied. These are people whose polish is veneer-thin; a quick swipe with the wet towelette of high class social cachet and the ashy district focus skin beneath is revealed. Few survive their revelation as being members of the village-bicycle set, pretenders to the plush first class recliners of the jet set. Many of them have a narcissistic me-me-me penchant for posting selfies of themselves, chilled wine flutes to hand, reclining victoriously in first class on world class airlines, like Lufthansa or Virgin Atlantic. They often tend to come off as total asses.

The gauche, narcissistic, new-money social climbers seeking a place the social high table are the ones who are likely to remind you of their connection to the dead while affecting a faux emotional facade of sorrow at the memory of the departed. It's usually embarassing to know them; it's even more embarassing for them to know you and to publicly broadcast that they know you. It is downright mortifying when they signal membership in that higher social class they desperately wish to remain a part off when they remind you of their connection to the late great dearly departed. If we are lucky, every last one of them will become rich enough to move to California. Or New York. Or Sicily.

Whom will you rally to?

Evans Kidero or, as I love to call him, Le Kidero, Mike Sonko and, so far as we can tell, Miguna Miguna, all wish to be elected as Nairobi City County's governor on the 8th August. So too, if he carries through with his threat to stand as an independent candidate, does Peter Kenneth, one of the losing presidential candidates of 2013 and a popular former MP representing Murang'a between 2007 and 2013. It seems that Mr Kenneth's masochism knows no bounds; ever since he set his eyes higher than being the popular shark in a Murang'a pond, he has faced nothing but failure. However, it is possible the sting of losing the Jubilation's nomination to Mr Sonko must sting the most painful.

Mr Sonko is not known for the depth of his intellectual rigor. He has a street-smart and colourful approach to political combat. It helped him win a by-election that had been brought about by someone else; essentially, when Mr Sonko became an MP in 2010, he did so after Reuben Ndolo had spent months and boatloads of cash to bring down Dick Wathika. Mr Sonko has a complicated relationship with not just the ruling alliance, but the ruling alliance's leadership, but also some of its most influential thought-leaders. Mr Kenneth was thought to represent at least one half of the alliance's leadership and a large swathe of influential members who backed that half. He was seen as the urbane, suave, civilised and cosmopolitan foil to Mr Sonko's crude, ghettoised, hoi-plloi-sh wrong-side-of-the-tracks persona. Those who voted in the Jubilation's "primaries" pissed all over those plans to keep Mr Sonko in his place.

Mr Kidero has fans in the same way that rotting roadkill attracts swarms of maggots. No matter how much he tries to defend himself or explain himself, Mr Kidero cannot persuade the residents of the City in the Sun that is no longer green that he has done much to satisfy their needs. Indeed, regardless of the preposterousness of the claim, many residents of Nairobi City County miss the erstwhile City Council of Nairobi that, at least, removed the garbage from the streets and, no matter how heavy-handedly, kept the hawkers and street families from the CBD's streets. Instead, Mr Kidero will be remembered with a little hostility for promising first-world solutions but presiding over the sinking of the city in a quagmire of garbage, traffic congestion and the worst water crisis in twenty years. If he gets re-elected, it will not be because of what he has done or what he promises to do but because the other candidates are about as appealing as rusty nails driven through tender feet.

Which brings us to the barrister-solicitor-advocate-poet-author-bench-warmer, Miguna Miguna. He was the first man in Kenya to declare an independent campaign for the governor's office. He has been relentless in reminding Nairobians of his integrity, probity, intellect and accomplishments, though his accomplishments don't seem to have benefited Nairobians or Kenyans that much. He is a man of bombastic combat, certain that he is in the company of intellectual pygmies with a penchant for billion-shillings five-fingered-discounts and pharmaceutical-induced wealth-generation. We are, collectively and individually, unfit to be in his presence or to question the wisdom of his pronouncements. We are to sit in the corner, shut up, bow our heads in respectful silence and See How Things Are Done when he is in charge. Mr Miguna is the saviour we don't know we need but whom his most ardent acolytes know for sure we definitely need. If only we could just open our eyes. VIVA!!!

As usual we are faced with the devil and deep blue sea, rocks and hard places, the devil's we know and the angels we don't. Pick a metaphor. We've had Le Kidero in charge since 2013. Only the blind still believe that if we only gave him a chance, things will get better real soon. Mr Sonko has a long history of acts that raise serious doubts about his judgment or wisdom. Mr Kenneth creates the impression that he is a carpetbagger who will try his luck anywhere and everywhere so long as he his online fan club keeps his hopes up. Mr Miguna is probably trying the Trumpian political version of reverse psychology: the more he insults us the more we will love him and vote for him.

These are the men who claim that they wish to govern Nairobi. No wonder no one is inspired to rally to their banners. Whom will you rally to?

Youth is wasted on the young

Pick a side; stick to it, no matter what. That seems to be the foundation of the Jubilation's twitter army of influenza. It's funnier to think of them as the flu though some flus can and do kill. But when the Jubilation's twitter flu starts supporting patently unintelligible ideas - that twitter posts on the price of milk have real world effects on the price of milk - founded on the cherry-picking of elements of political or economic theory, how else can one view them but as a kind of influenza virus?

Truth, such as it is, is truth and right, such as it is, is right. No amount of mealy-mouthed legalese will make the people accept a bad thing as anything but bad; even when loyalists sing your praises about your virtues and achievements, not even your hubris that demands such praise-singing will hide the truth about your virtues, if they exist, and your achievements, if they ever occurred.

It is an election year and so the Jubilation and the Nasalites have deployed hordes of viruses to massage the news and shape opinion and infect the public space with lies, distortions and the praise-singing of political champions and the virulent castigation of political enemies. The Jubilation has its grubby hands on the levers of power and as the dust settles on the fiasco of its party "primaries", semi-literate acolytes with an internet connection and bank accounts to fill are busy setting the stage for total information and communications control on or before the general elections.

The same asinine argument relied on by the Central bank Governor to explain the straitened circumstances of the Chase Bank is the same one being relied on by the Jubilation's army of pseudo-intellectuals to lead the people towards accepting a decision by the Jubilation to switch off the internet in the name of the greater public good. Desperate politicians with boatloads of cash always seem to surround themselves with youthful men and women with talents to advance political interests that will eventually consume those same youngsters. It happened in 2007 and in 2013. It is happening today. Kenya's political class has mastered the washing-machine cycle of winning elections: wash, rinse, repeat. The playbook has not changed; what evolves is the technology.

We are being prepared for political confusion and, perhaps, political violence. The Nasalites are determined to spread the idea that its constituency is larger than that of the Jubilation by a couple of millions and that nothing has changed since the 2013 contest left the Jubilation in firm control. While the Nasalites' political lineup remains virtually the same, the political football pitch has shifted. The Nasalites continue to field old, tired and morally compromised political warriors against the Jubilation's reincarnation of the KANU of the late 1970s and 1980s that at first refused to accept the mortality of the president and then did everything to perpetuate the stale Soviet gospel that the president has been immortalised in the political philosophy of the day: fuata nyayo!

It is now almost certain that the internet will "fail" and that the mobile networks that have become intertwined in all our dealings will be offline until the "situation is resolved". Court jesters - like those seeing correlations between tweets and milk prices - will perform for the Jubilation. And soon thereafter, just as history reminds us, they will be betrayed. Youth is wasted on the young because it is often stolen for the pleasure of the aged.

A taste of things to come

The past two weeks have seen the tempers of party apparatchiks rise to unsafe levels because the women and men they intended to organise party "primaries for simply refused to follow their cues as and when directed to do so. These ungrateful women and men, instead of saying "Thank you" and doing as they were told, frequently defied their party bosses and invoked the names of "higher authorities" so many times that some of the nominations could not be held. As if that were not enough, ungrateful party members (if they could be called that) engaged in elaborate schemes to rig the results of the nominations contests by stealing ballot materials, pre-marking ballot materials, and misleading loyal party members as to the legitimacy of the entire process.

If you listened to party apparatchiks, not only would you believe that Kenyans are ungrateful, disloyal saboteurs, but that the very civilisation they were being offered by their party masters was being rejected out of hand and out of spite.

Kenyan politicians and their mandarins are bereft of fresh ideas. Nothing proved this as much as the image of grateful, pot-bellied members of the Jubilee alliance heading off to Beijing to undergo "training" int he management of political parties by apparats of the Communist Party of China and the minority coalition failing to call out the ruling alliance (made up of die-hard "capitalists") for its hypocrisies: how can the most pro-business political alliance in a generation yoke its nascent ideology to one of the most retrogressive and repressive communist political organisations in the world without batting an eyelid?

The nominations contests have unfolded predictably. Kenya is unofficially (and probably unlawfully) "zoned" with each coalition or alliance "controlling" a particular political zone that closely mirrors certain geographical areas. For example, ODM's zone is predominantly "Luo Nyanza" while Jubilee's zones include "Mt Kenya region" and the "North Rift". A nomination by your party in its "zone" is as good as a victory in the general election, or so the conventional wisdom goes and, therefore, the violence that has defined Kenya's elections since 1988 has been visited on these nominations on a very scary scale. On Tuesday, April 25, in Pangani constituency in Nairobi, a man was stabbed to death during a Jubilee nomination exercise. Few expect the violence and death to be confined to the nominations; the general election, in which multiple candidates from multiple parties will be seeking the same political seat, will see greater violence, whether or not the national government is prepared to crack down hard on offenders.

What remains clear is that Kenyan elections remain a zero-sum game: there are always winners and losers. The stakes are high; electoral victory does not mean that healthcare will suddenly be affordable for millions of Kenyans or jobs will suddenly be created for hundreds of thousands of youth. Electoral victory means an opportunity to participate in or influence lucrative billions-shillings public tenders and to use high public office for the self-aggrandisement that has come to define the Kenyan politician. What we are getting today is a taste of things to come in the run-up to the August 8 general election. God help us all.

It ain't funny no more

Procurement scams have been all the rage these past few years. Government procurement has minted dozens of millionaires and billionaires since the halcyon days of “Yote yawezekana bila Moi.” It is now trite knowledge that if you want to build a multi-million shilling pile in the village to awe the hoi polloi and bend them to your will, all you have to do is win a tender or two and Bob’s your uncle!

This isn’t that surprising. The procurement fiddles during the Kenyatta and Moi eras set the stage for the tenderpreneurship during the Kibaki years. We have now taken this lunacy to its logical conclusion: state capture at any cost.

Unless you have not been paying attention, and even if you don’t own a TV or buy newspapers, by now you must surely have heard of the political candidates who have been abducted, assaulted or threatened as they seek the nominations of their parties. While exaggeration is expected by our vaunted free press, there must be some smidgen of truth in the reports that even candidates for the office of woman representative are spending hundreds of millions to secure victory not just at the nominations but at the general election as well. The reason for this fervent desire to become a mheshimiwa is not so remote: as a member of the government, whether as an elected representative or a member of the executive, comes with privileges available to the public and no privilege is as important as the ability to participate in or influence public procurement.

Those wondering aloud about how a five-year salary of sixty million shillings can justify the outlay of one hundred million to become an elected representative should realise that the world we live in now is one in which shadows and ghosts define public policy and public service. The National Youth Service scam ensnared members of the executive and Parliament and members of the ruling alliance and the opposition coalition. Both the corrupt and the anti-corruption warriors were ensnared in the scam. It is rumoured that almost eight hundred million shillings was stolen but it is likely that the sum is considerably higher as NYS had twenty-five billion shillings budgeted in its name.

Now that every ambitious billionaire-in-waiting knows that the path to financial glory passes through the Consolidated Fund, they are pulling out all the stops to ‘enter government”. It is why blood and tears are being shed even at the nominations stage and it is why aspiring elected representatives are living in fear and travelling with phalanxes of armed bodyguards. When the dust settles after the 9th August, perhaps, we will be able to come to terms with the lunacy of it all because, just as it eventually happened in Venezuela, Pakistan, Italy, the Ukraine and Belarus, state capture, while funny, will have a huge, bloody human cost.

Investment?

You know its a tough campaign when even candidates for the office of member of county assembly are getting abducted or violently assaulted by their rivals. Kenyans, as usual, have raised the stakes on high-stakes campaigning. Now, regardless of whether a candidate has any chance of victory at the hustings, tales, some very tall, are being broadcast far and wide of kidnappings, abductions and assaults of rivals. And this too at the nominations' "stage", when, presumably, the stakes are not that high. But if it is true that the Jubilee Party took in over six hundred and eighty million shillings from its own nominations, the "investment" in the nomination might just reflect the one that is likely to be made in the general election which begs the question: If they're treating the election as an investment, just what kind of return on investment are they looking at?

On public transport

Public transportation is a system where buses, trains, subways, and other forms of transportation that charge set fares, run on fixed routes, and are available to the public. The system may be owned and operated by the government, private investors or a combination of both. What is certain, though, is that the system is supposed to transport the largest number of commuters, usually in an urban area, for a set fare that is usually many multiples lower than the cost of operating a private vehicle.

Nairobi's public transportation system is entirely a private one. Buses, minibuses and vans form the core of the system. Part of it is in the hands of companies with large fleets; but the vast part of it is made up of private investors who own and operate one or two vehicles. Competition in the sector is cut-throat; for some, investment in the sector has ended in tears, having lost their investment to competition and organised criminal organisations that unofficially police the sector.

The national government (through the Ministry of Transport, Infrastructure, Housing and Urban Development) and the county government have failed to make private investment in public transportation worthwhile and the effect has been, to my mind, oversaturation, recklessness, losses. In other words, the failures of the Government have resulted in chaos.

Part of the problem has been that the regulation of the sector is more miss than hit; for example, the National Transport Safety Authority is responsible for issuing permits to public service vehicles to operate on public roads. These permits are usually issued after a road-worthiness assessment of the vehicles. It is trite knowledge that large swathes of PSV fleets are unroadworthy; the same accusation of corruption against law enforcement officers can be levelled against NTSA officials when it comes to the issuance of permits to PSV owners or operators.

One other aspect of the problem in Nairobi is that the infrastructure available to PSVs (as well as other road-users) is shambolic and inadequate. As opposed to two decades ago when PSVs used to operate on set schedules along their assigned routes, PSVs spend considerable amounts of time parked at termini, stages and roadsides waiting to pick up a full complement of passengers before moving. If even a fraction of the estimated 30,000 PSVs in Nairobi did that, it means that substantial road infrastructure is occupied by obstructing PSVs. This affects traffic flow, especially on busy main roads, causing congestion an increasing the likelihood of road traffic accidents. Add to the fact that pavements, road signs, traffic lights and road markings are almost always absent or inoperational, the chaos on the roads is usually exacerbated to unimaginable proportions.

Poor enforcement of rules and regulations also contributes to our traffic problems. Coupled by the lackadaisical attitude of the NTSA when it comes to licensing PSV and PSV crews, the police have to shoulder their share of the blame for permitting many PSV crews to operate with criminal impunity: driving on the wrong side of the road, stopping in inappropriate places to pick up or drop off passengers, speeding, occupying more than one lane at a time, overlapping...these are just some of the traffic infractions that PSV crews routinely engage in. The impunity of PSV crews emboldens private motorists and taxi crews to engage in the same blatant violations of the law. The result is traffic chaos.

Finally, little serious thought is given to pedestrians, handcart pushers, cyclists and boda boda riders as legitimate road-users. It is why pedestrian space is slowly being encroached on not just by buildings expanding their footprints using fences or walls, but also unlicensed "hawkers" who camp out on the pavements, and boda bodas and motor vehicles parked on pavements because parking space is at high premium these days. Consequently, more and more pedestrians are now compelled to "encroach" onto the roads, putting life and limb at increased risk and compelling motorists and PSV crews to often swerve to avoid them.

The solution is unlikely to be Government investment in BRTs, subways, light rails or urban mass transit systems. Not at first, any way. Solutions should start by rethinking public transportation in light of the changed mindsets of operators or owners of PSVs. If they will no longer operate on set schedules, then the logical first step is to increase the infrastructure available to stationary PSVs so that they are no longer obstructions on roads. Second must be stricter enforcement of all rules and regulations. Unroadworthy vehicles must not be permitted onto public roads and PSV  crews that break traffic rules must be punished. Third, safety infrastructure must be provided: road signs, traffic lights and lane markings. Fourth, infrastructure must be redesigned to accommodate boda bodas, cyclists and handcart pushers as well as increased numbers of pedestrians and "hawkers". Finally, more parking for private cars must be provided or built.

These solutions must be co-ordinated between the key stakeholders: national and county governments, NTSA and national police, PSV owners, operators and crews, and private motorists and pedestrians' associations. If the only solution on the table is light rail/BRT/Mass Transit System, nothing will change.

Facebook Archives: You are on your own

It is interesting to observe how the ones who campaigned against the election of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, and who invested so heavily in the election petitions challenging the results of the election, are faring after the Supreme Court of Kenya declared that the election of the two was valid. The Mutunga Court, after fourteen days of intense legal gymnastics, declared that despite the irregularities that even the IEBC admitted had occurred, the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as president and that of William Ruto as deputy president was after all valid. Raila Odinga swiftly accepted the verdict of the court. However, there are those who are still fighting the election and the re-litigating the election petitions, long after everyone else has set their minds to move on.

Maina Kiai, the former head of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and Makau Mutua, the director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, had done everything in their power to ensure that first, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto would not be on the ballot, and second, failing in that mission, to ensure they lost the election petition challenging their election. The two are two for two: Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto were on the ballot and the court dismissed the petition challenging their election.

Messrs Kiai and Mutua have not taken the news well. Mr Kiai penned a poisonous diatribe against "home guards" linked to the Uhuru presidency and another one calling the Charperson of the IEBC vile names for the manner in which his lawyer, the combatively indefatigable Ahmednasir Abdullahi, defended him in court. Makau Mutua has declared categorically that he will not and cannot accept Uhuru Kenyatta as the president of Kenya.

For two eminent human rights campaigners to treat the will of at least 6 million Kenyans in such a cavalier manner beggars belief. The Second Liberation was all about unleashing the will of the people to make the choices that they will without the nannying, oppressive hand of the government leading them hither and thither. With the dismantling of the KANU machinery that had been abused by former presidents, Kenyans overwhelmingly ratified a new constitution that guaranteed them democratic rights that had been stifled for decades. The flip side of the bargain was that politicians, whether standing for the presidency or some other public office, had to offer themselves to the people in the most persuasive way possible. Mr Makau continues to argue that Mr Kenyatta is an insider and that he benefitted from his links to the government and its machinery. He refuses to accept that Mr Kenyatta and the wily Mr Ruto made a compelling case to the people of Kenya, persuading many from areas other than their strongholds in the Mt Kenya region and the Rift Valley.

Some of us were opposed to the election of Uhuru Kenyatta or William Ruto and we made our feelings known at the ballot. That battle is now past and we are prepared to live with our choices, or lack of them. Some of us were never persuaded that the two should not be on the ballot, regardless of the persuasion from Messrs Kiai and Mutua. We never agreed that the ICC was the killer knock-out punch that would deny them their place on the ballot. And we never agreed with the two that they were hamstrung by Chapter 6 of the Constitution. We thought that their manifesto was a pipe-dream; now we will see whether they will prove us wrong once again. But we will not join Messrs Kiai and Mutua in their poisonous campaign against a government that is yet to even take office officially; that is a path to heartache or worse. We will do what other patriots are doing: we will work with the government we have to make our lives a little better.

(Facebook)

What do you want to do with street families?

There are two key questions to consider when attempting to implement a new policy: will it cost money and if so, how much? In Nairobi City County, both the national and county governments are faced with a serious problem: tens of thousands of Kenyans living on the streets. One of the more striking reactions by a popular member of the media industry has been to suggest that street families are a threat to the safety of citizens. Another one by a leading newspaper is that the members of street families must be rounded up, confined to rehabilitation centres and that the rounding up and confinement should be carried out by county askaris instead of their more traditional role, that of energetically chasing hawkers. Neither of them has even attempted to examine the problem from a fiscal perspective: will it cost any money and if so, how much?

Take the media personality's assertion that street families are responsible for the un-safety of citizens. Any reaction must involve measures to neutralise the dangers posed by members of street families. These measures might include the recruitment and training of more askaris and policemen, the deployment of more askaris and policemen in places overrun by street families, the enhanced arrest, prosecution and confinement or incarceration of members of street families in conflict with the law. None of these actions can be accomplished without the expenditure of public funds; Kenya isn't, after all, the United States of America where for-profit private prisons have proliferated in the last decade or so.

Public finance is often a zero-sum game because there is a finite amount of national revenue that can be collected and spent in a fiscal year. Nairobi's fiscal situation is not special; there are multiple priorities and limited public funds to address these priorities. If this media personality is interested in the eradication of street families in order for him to feel safer, is he willing to pay more in taxes and rates if the increased taxes or rates go towards addressing the street families' "menace"?

Take also the newspaper's demand that members of street families must be rounded up and confined to rehabilitation centres, and given access to education "where they can learn some trade that could be income generating for their sustenance". First, these centres must be built and staffed with qualified personnel who have undergone training to care for and educate members of street families. Second, facilities must be provided for the proper training and care of members of street families. Third, unless the newspaper intends for confinement in these centres to be involuntary, incentives must be offered to members of street families to enter and stay at these rehabilitation centres until they are fully trained and capable of generating an income for their sustenance. None of these things comes free: public funds must be appropriated for them. Where will these funds be found? Taxes and rates.

The media personality and his colleague, a business news reporter, had the opportunity to interrogate the seniormost bureaucrat in the county government about his government's plans for street families. Instead what we witnessed is members of the elite engaged in a political dance that failed to even tease out the semblance of a policy from multiple statements on the same. We were inundated by statistics but none of the statistical rhetorical flourishes served to answer the simplest question: how much it would cost to address the plight of street families sustainably, humanely and effectively.

Mr Madowo, street families are not unsafe

Street families are back in full swing all over the city. These endanger the lives of citizens. — Larry Madowo, SIDEBAR

This remarkable statement occurs around the 18:33 minute mark on the video as posted on YouTube.  I might be able to accept the excuse that in the heat of the moment during a charged television interview, an exasperated interviewer mightn't be able to collect his thoughts sufficiently in order to ask a question as it should be asked. But I can't; Mr Madowo and his colleague, Mr Kantai, had time to prepare for the interview.

Two things stand out. First, street families are made up of criminals. Second, street families are not made up of citizens; they endanger citizens' lives. Nairobi's elite is astonishing. It never ceases to blame someone else for what is a cultural problem: the poor and the lower classes are not fit to be considered citizens because, more often than not, they are the causes of all crime. Simplistic? Maybe. But I have Mr Madowo's words. As a member of Nairobi's elite, Mr Madowo is representative of the casual dismissal of anyone who isn't a member of the elite.

Street families are not "back in full swing"; they never left. If the Homeless of Nairobi, a Nairobi charity is anything to go by, street families have always been there. There was a brief period when rehabilitation and relocation removed many of them from the streets of the Nairobi business district. Those programmes have been hijacked by political combat between the ruling national alliance and the ruling county coalition. In any event, to claim that street families are back is startlingly wrong.

But it is the utterly elitist certainty that it is street families ho endanger the lives of "citizens" that takes the breath away. An open-eyed examination of the lives of street families reveals that their members are the victims of great violence, not just from law enforcement officers but also from "citizens" as Mr Madowo refers to them. Physical and sexual assaults are commonplace against members of street families. So are the unlawful confiscation and destruction of their private property and their exclusion from accessing basic services such as healthcare and education in direct and indirect ways. To expect these vulnerable Kenyans to react like docile slaves is asinine.

We are now used to painting the poor with a broad brush but forget Jesus's exasperated question according to the Gospel of Matthew, "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" The elite, even among themselves, is remarkable for the degree of un-safety it puts its members in. Many of them have firearms certificates which are often used in patently risky and unlawful ways. In recent months prominent members of elite society have accused their spouses and significant partners of physical and sexual assault. The cases of members of the elite killing and maiming other road users using expensive SUVs are commonplace. Before Mr Madowo can accuse the poor and the vulnerable of being responsible for the un-safety of citizens, it would behoove him to cast a wider eye at the society to which he belongs.

Street families are not a bane to be eradicated. They are humans that deserve kindness and opportunity. Public policy must stop treating them as a problem or as a menace. It must be reoriented, even if it means greater outlays of public funds, towards their rehabilitation, access to education and training opportunities, access to basics such as food, healthcare and shelter, and the protection of their dignity from the heavy-handed, fascistic attentions of the elite and their police forces.

Bumpy and rambunctious

The Bill, if passed into law, will not only subject some elected leaders to unfair by-elections but also encourage corruption and impunity in the Judiciary where judges will take advantage of their final authority to be enticed to deliver judgement in favour of a party.

A member of the Judicial Service Commission is reported to have expressed those sentiments in an advisory opinion he has given the Speakers of each chamber of Parliament. It is an amazing declaration. On the face of it, it is a restatement of one of our favourite shibboleths: the Judiciary simply can't be trusted. It is also a startling declaration about the failure of the Judicial Service Commission to ensure that the administration of justice is just and fair. Finally, it is an indictment of the electoral system that this commissioner feels will lead to electoral unfairness, and judicial corruption and impunity.

Elections take on a mind of their own in the best of circumstance. Our circumstances, though, are anything but good. Political parties have failed to reflect, truly, the electorate; instead, they remain grotesque caricatures of the founder-owners. Parties are ill-suited to the onerous task of organising the political needs of the people or the proper distribution of political power among stakeholders. Instead, they are weapons of mass destruction and it is why so many politicians spend so much treasure in order to occupy party positions of power and influence.

As a result of the dysfunction in political parties, elections are not won or lost on the basis of ideology or more prosaic bread-and-butter concerns of the electorate; the are won or lost on the basis of the curation of ethnic and tribal loyalties, the cash-based influencing of voters and the oftentimes violent intimidation of candidates and their supporters. For these reasons, it is almost certain that disputes will arise at every electoral level: MCA, Governor, Woman Representative, MP, Senator and President. These electoral dispute will consume a disproportionate amount of the Judiciary's energy and, crucially, time. For the sake of sanity, the Judiciary can't expend most of its energy and time hearing or determining electoral disputes. The litigation must come to an end at some point and it is at the Court of Appeal that electoral litigation must end. (I would argue that even presidential decisions should only be decided at the Court of Appeal, but, maddeningly, the Constitution disagrees.)

For a member of the Judicial Service Commission to openly and recklessly sow doubt about not just the elections process but the administration of justice, it is impossible to tell whether he is a shill for governors with doubtful electoral prospects who would love to prolong litigation all the way to the already discredited Supreme Court or whether he has given up all hope that the situation will ever improve. Because the opportunities for rent seeking have multiplied exponentially since the election of the first generation of devolved governments, elections and election petitions have become akin to do-or-die events; the stakes are so high that no matter the vociferous protestations of innocence, this member of the Judicial Service Commission confirms that "enticements", whether at the Court of Appeal or elsewhere, are almost certain to play a role in the determination of the election petitions.

What we are witnessing today is the unbridled desire for State office and the pre-election maneuvres that candidates are engaging in, including by activating tame mouthpieces to their causes, in order to secure whatever advantages there are to secure. If this advisory opinion to the Speakers is accepted as an affront to the candidates' right to "access the courts", this will simply be one other safety net strung across the roiling waters of the electoral oceans that one set of jittery candidates will surely need come the 9th August. Dear reader, the situation is about to get even crazier so hold on to your seat and settle in for a bumpy and rambunctious ride.

Are you a moron?

If you claim, even in jest, that violent crimes are a consequence of poverty or penury, you are an idiot. If you claim with a straight face and without an ounce of irony that it is the "lower" classes who have a propensity to violence, you are an idiot. If you propose that the solution to violent crime is extrajudicial executions by the police, you, dear reader, are a moron. Fear not, sir; I do not weep for violent offenders whose young lives are violently cut short. May, probably all, made their bed and if it turns out to be made up of ballistic rounds, they can't come crying to me about it.

But, I am no champion of the unlawful, excessive and unnecessary employment of force represented by the 7.62mm cartridge travelling at 715 m/s. I may be naive, but giving the forces of law and order the opportunity to play by unconstitutional rules never ends well for the blameless or the innocent. Temporary safety or security may be purchased by the blood of a few alleged violent criminal offenders but, as every victim of a police state will remind us, what was once temporary becomes entrenched soon enough and its entrenchment almost always leads to more and more innocent and blameless citizens facing the same 7.62mm cartridge travelling at the same 715 m/s and not a court of law in sight.

Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Moi had the Special Branch and the Police Reserves whose violent notoriety sends shivers down grown men's spines even today. Nyayo House, Nyati House and Ngong Forest recall the worst excesses of a police state run amok. Mwai Kibaki had the Kwekwe Squad and the blood of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of "Mungiki adherents" who faced the Kwekwe Squad's hail of bullets laid the bloody foundation for the descent into murderous madness that was the benign-sounding post-election violence.

Violence begets violence. This is almost an immutable law of nature. There aren't enough bullets in the world to wage war with the criminal underclass, never mind the confident-sounding declarations of imminent victories by the worthies in charge of national security and public safety. Law and order is not a factor of the application of brute, violent, deadly force but that of the just interpretation and application of the law without fear or favour. Kenya is far from the land of the rule of law.

Kenya has a penchant for shortcuts and it never learns from its mistakes. You can draw a straight line through the violent actions of the Special Branch and Police Reservists in the 1960s and '70s to the political assassinations of the '60s, '70s and '80s to the rise (and attempted violent extermination) of "proscribed sects" such as the Mungiki and similar crime organisations to the elections-related violence of 1992, 1997 and 2007. Kenya bullied its judges and prosecutors to apply the criminal law of the land in increasingly farcically unfair ways and was shocked when crime, including violent crime, spiralled out of control. The unholy trinity of a corrupt venal state applying violence as the solution to all its problems and an atrophied justice system guaranteed that eventually, even the fig leaf of a corrupt judiciary or prosecution service would be unnecessary: undesirables could be eliminated safe in the knowledge that the rest of the people would keep schtum.

When Willie Kimani, Josphat Mwenda and Joseph Muiruri were murdered by policemen in secret and their bodies dumped in a river, the police adapted; instead of hiding their criminality, they went in the opposite direction. All they have to do now is blow you away in broad daylight, claim that you are a known and notorious violent offender and they will get away, literally, with murder. The Independent Policing Oversight Authority will tut-tut in despair and, Pontius Pilate-like, wash its hands of the affair because of a "lack of co-operation by the police leadership" and "intimidation" by the rank and file. The DPP won't prosecute because of "lack of evidence". If the DPP does prosecute, the judiciary will almost always acquit because of the DPP's "shoddy case-preparation." And just like you who have forgotten the names of Willie Kimani's fellow victims, Kenyans will forget about the whole affair.

So, if your answer remains that violent crimes are a consequence of poverty or penury, or that it is the "lower" classes who have a propensity to violence, or that the solution to violent crime is extrajudicial executions by the police, you, dear reader, are a moron.