It's time for the wolves to go hunting.

They will not admit it, but the footsoldiers in the CORD army surely realise that their generals are way past their political prime. Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka look like an unhappily married couple forced to live in the same house "for the sake of the children." This blogger has previously defended Raila Odinga's right to remain in the political field. But this is not the United States. Politics here is not dependent on a stellar career, in and out of Parliament. It is dependent on proximity to the presidency. Simple as that.

Raila Odinga went as high as he was ever going to go. There have only been two Prime Ministers in the history of Kenya. One was Kenya's First President, the other was Raila Odinga. He is in stellar company. Kalonzo's achievements are no less impressive. He, unlike Raila Odinga, is no silver-spoon baby. Mr Musyoka worked for everything he has. he may have been sharp-elbowed now and then, but that is neither here nor there in the sharp-elbowed world of Kenyan politics. But in the here and now, you get the sense that their time in the sun is at an end, tragically prematurely so for Kalonzo Musyoka. The two have joined the VAT-Act-is-bad bandwagon rather reluctantly. They don't seem to have their hearts in the anti-VAT agitation. They are suffering from serious withdrawal symptoms. For men used to having their egos presidentially massaged, they are in uncharted waters.

It is time that even the intellectual heavyweights of CORD began the short but swift process of disengaging from national leadership. Peter Anyang' Nyong'o, James Orengo,  and Dalmas Otieno need to follow in their generals' footsteps and fall on their own swords too. It is time for the aggression of the new Young Turks to be unleashed. Pit bulls in the form of Agosthino Neto and Ababu Namwamba must be allowed free rein to savage the lunacies of their Jubilee bete noirs in Parliament and elsewhere. The fading lion in Raila Odinga must be confronted with the sad truth: he is over the hill. The diplomat in Kalonzo Musyoka must be confronted with an uncomfrotable truth: peace-makers are a shilling-a-dozen today; what the Minority party needs is a vicious attack dog that does not give two figs for diplomatic tack.

The opportunity to light a fire under Jubilee has arrived. Their No. 1 general is winging his way to The Hague. CORD is familiar with the fimbo-ya-mbali adage. It is time to take off the leash and allow the natural exuberant enthusiasm of Mr Neto, Mr Namwamba and Ms Millie Odhiambo to run riot. While Mr Duale is a capable politician, he is not a general in the mould of the wily Deputy President. With Jakoyo Midiwo harrying him all the way, Messrs Neto and Namwamba, and Ms Odhiambo should give him enough to do that he may not keep his erstwhile disciplined troops in line. Clearly, this strategy does not work if the CORD army is being micromanaged by two over the hill geezers bored in their semi-retirement. When the President eventually makes his way to Den Haag too, CORD must capitalise on the confusion they will have sown during the absence of the Deputy President. If they play it right, the Minority Party's tail will be wagging the Majority Party's dog. But then again, they have demonstrated such a dearth of imagination that they will still look to the former PM and former VP for guidance and fuck up any chance of taking the war to Jubilee in their hour of confusion.

If Raila Odinga wishes to see his and his father's work achieved, he must let go of the Opposition. He gave it three tries. A fourth is not going to gift him the Presidency. Kalonzo Musyoka placed his bets and ended up Aces-and-Eights. Unless he finds some stardust, his apparent reputation for water-melonness and fence-sitting puts paid to a third act. He is done. It is time for the hungry wolves to rise. It is the only thing that works for the Minority party and for the nation.

The fig leaf.

It is not enough to claim that the International Criminal Court is a Western tool of neo-colonialism, even when the men who have been indicted at the Court are all Africans. It is not enough to claim that the imminent trials of the President and Deputy President at the Court are ploys to destabilise the nation, even though their trials may very well do that. It is not enough to claim that the civil society human rights industry is in cahoots with unnamed foreign powers simply because their funds are routed through suspicious bank accounts. It is not enough to claim that the trials of the President and Deputy President could very well take place in Kenya because we have sufficiently reformed the Judiciary that it is able to dispense even-handed justice. It is not enough to do all this because thousands of Kenyans are still dead, tens of thousands of Kenyans have lost their property or had it expropriated without just compensation, and hundreds of thousands of Kenyans bear physical and mental scars that may never heal.

This is the week when it emerges that the government of the people, by the people and for the people is an ideal that favours the few at the expense of the many. The events of the past few months demonstrate as nothing else will that "the people" are only an abstraction, a figment of the popular imagination abroad in the land. The "government" exists for the few; it does the bidding of the few; it is made up of the few. The "few" have always existed in Kenya, taking up various guises, all of them pernicious: settlers, colonists, well-heeled, well-connected tycoons, and the sons and daughters of the favoured few.

The people exist as cannon-fodder for the amusement of the few. They are rallied to causes as diverse as teachers and doctors' strikes, elections, or political arm-twisting contests of no value. A stalwart members of the few, Rachel Shebesh, decides to "side" with the people against the erudite and cerebral symbol of the the same few she belongs to. In her verbal and physical assault on the person of the Governor of Nairobi, and in his physical and verbal assault on her in retaliation, the plight of the people is forgotten. Whether they should retain their jobs or whether they should get better terms is forgotten. It is a war of the egos of one member of the elite against another. The people have served their purpose. They may return to the detritus of their lives. One day soon, they will against be called out to stand in solidarity with the one against the other. That is their purpose in life.

This phenomenon plays itself out on the national stage. Thousands of Kenyans are set upon by their neighbours and erstwhile friends. Many of them are murdered in cold blood. Their homes and fields are set ablaze and their livestock butchered where they stand. Hundreds of thousands of them are driven from their homes and forced into concentration camps, what the civil society human rights industry calls IDP camps. A few days later, people who had nothing to do with these events are targetted by militia armed to the teeth and butchered and maimed in their homes. More and more of them are driven from their homes, which are set ablaze and they too, find themselves in other concentration camps. The peoples' lives have been disrupted. Their sons' and daughters' education has been disrupted. They live, and look, like animals. The "government" spends a considerable chunk of national treasure to find out who was responsible for the cataclysm. Six men are accused of it. The case against three collapses for want of evidence. The case against the remaining three is set to proceed. The people are about to be called out to "protest" the indignity of the trials of the three in a foreign land because "Kenya has the capacity" to do it on its own.

A member of the "few" with a gymnast's ability to twist himself argues that that the "people", by "overwhelmingly" voting for two of the accused have rejected their trials in a foreign court. His boon friend of similar ability argues that it is the civil society human rights industry, sponsored from parts unknown, that should answer for the crimes being tried abroad. Both make passing reference to the fates of the victims, but only in a conflation of the plight of those in concentration camps and the three. The victim and the accused are the same, you see? Soon the intellectuals will read and reread the social compact called the Constitution, and they will argue that its words do not mean what they say. They will argue that it is OK to use it as a fig leaf for the avarice, caprice and heartlessness of the few.

Our appointment in Samarra.

There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me.  She looked at me and made a threatening gesture,  now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate.  I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.  The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.  Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?  That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise.  I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra. ~ Appointment in Samarra

This blogger keeps returning to this theme for a reason; this blogger believes that the continued conflation of the fates of the President and Deputy President with that of the sovereignty of the nation or the their relationship with the victims of the violence of 2007 and 2008, by the President's and Deputy President's ardent acolytes, is misjudged. When The National Alliance and the United Republican Party were formed, the nominal presidential candidate of the latter, William Ruto, and that of the former, Uhuru Kenyatta, had searched for a formula that would guarantee them victory against the apparently imminent victory of Raila Odinga, the Orange Democratic Movement Party of Kenya's candidate.

The events leading to the rise of the three parties to the top of the political firmament is a classic study of how raw ambition in the pursuit of political power, untrammeled by morality or notions of fair play, can have consequences than just the rise of political heroes or the fall of political villains. In 2007, in the face of an incumbent determined to win at all costs, William Ruto and Raila Odinga formed a formidable team. In 2008, long after the embers of the violence had died down, and Mr Ruto had been betrayed by Prime Minister Odinga, his casting about for a winning strategy would require that the events of the previous 10 months be cast in a light that would rewrite history and cast him as the victim of political perfidy. He could not have known that the decisions he made at that time would re-unite him with Uhuru Kenyatta, whom he had allied with twice before: in 2002 for Mr Kenyatta's ill-fated first presidential campaign, and in 2005, in opposition to Mwai Kibaki's attempt at making a constitution without the consent of the popular Raila Odinga.

It is now well-documented that Kenyans were murdered, raped, maimed and displaced, and their properties unlawfully expropriated or destroyed on a scale not witnessed since the days of the Emergency (1952 - 1959). Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, President and Prime Minister, agreed to appoint a Commission to Inquire into the violence. The Commission's report has been widely accepted as factual and honest, save by the President and Deputy President, though they only denounced the report when they were ensnared in its consequences, one of which was that if Kenya could not or would not establish a special judicial mechanism to investigate and prosecute offences committed in 2007 and 2008, the whole can of worms would be dumped in the International Criminal Court's lap. Kenya had signed up to the Rome Statute in the early months of Mwai Kibaki's first administration; Mr Kibaki could not have imagined that one of his favourite politicians would be in the cross-hairs of the ICC within a decade of ratifying the treaty. His minions had assured him that the Rome Statute was a valuable weapon in taming the impunity they claimed had become a culture under the twenty-four year reign of Daniel Toroitich arap Moi. They forgot that Mwai Kibaki and Mr Moi went back a very long way; what touched the one would inevitably touch the other. Perhaps this is why President Kibaki did nothing to domesticate the treaty. He would be forced to do so in the aftermath of the 2007 and 2008 crises.

Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto, having rewritten the narrative of how Kenya came to be under investigation by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, needed to cast "new" light as to how they were the victims of a vast conspiracy. The ICC trials were no longer about assigning responsibility, and blame, on the persons responsible for the violence or the judicial satisfaction of the victims; the trials were alternatively or solely about the sovereignty of the nation; the usurpation of the peoples' will to elect political leaders of their choice; or about the racist tendencies of the ICC against Africa. Intellectuals were deployed in an effective campaign to revise the ICC narrative. One day before the Deputy President travels to The Hague for the start of his trial, the campaign against the ICC and the trials has been an unqualified success.

None of the players in this complex story are clean. Neither the civil society nor the Court itself come to the affair with lean hands. Neither too the accused or their apologists. It is because of the complex motives of each of the actors that the outcome of the trials is in doubt. What seems to have been buried under the plots and counter-plots is the fate of the victims. Their lives were demolished. Few of them are scar-free. Few of them have been made whole again. Few of them are free of the fear and desperation that they faced in 2008. Few of them have moved on. In our posturing and cant, their fates have become more political fodder for the survival or convictions of the accused, depending on where your sympathies lie.

In the anonymous story, the servant ran away to Samarra because he misinterpreted the gesture by Death. In Kenya, we misinterpreted calls for a domestic process and our President and Deputy President ended up in The Hague.

Who will save us from ourselves?

Well, we done gone and lost our damn minds! The motion by Parliament that Kenya must withdraw from the Rome Statute is a case of the lunatics running the asylum. In a fit of spectacular irrationality, Jubilee acolytes has gotten it into their heads that they must prove their unswerving and ardent fealty to the President and Deputy President in acts that not only endanger their benefactors' liberty, but paint Kenya as a jurisdiction in which common sense is neither common nor sense.

Even the lawyers among the members of the Eleventh Parliament admit that the withdrawal from the Rome Statute will not be effective until twelve months after proceedings are initiated, and that withdrawal will not reverse the process underway regarding the trials of the President and Deputy President. Five years after the violence of 2007 and 2008, the scars are yet to heal; many victims have yet to be restored to their properties, the murders of their loved ones are yet to taste the justice they so richly deserve. What the print media referred to as the Post-Election Violence remains unresolved, regardless of what the results of the 2013 general elections indicate.

It is the lack of resolution that raises questions about the wisdom of the Jubilee coalition's moves over the ICC and the trials of their standard-bearers. In the three years since the Office of the Prosecutor opened investigations over the violence, the cases against the President and Deputy President have only weakened. At each stage of the confirmation process, even as the case has advanced, procedural and substantive irregularities have been highlighted. Witness have been recanting their testimonies since the President and Deputy President were sworn in. Indeed, the dismissal of charges against some of the original six co-indictees of the President and deputy President would suggest that the OTP has a much weaker hand than is acknowledged. And given the win/loss record of the former Chief Prosecutor, the two should be sitting pretty instead of, allegedly, marionetting their parliamentary troops into acts of great folly.

This blogger sees no beneficial outcome, wither for the three accused or the nation, from Parliament's desires over the ICC; there is only potential difficulty. It is one thing to pretend that the trial of our top leadership is no big deal, especially when they publicly declare their support for the process. It is something else to attempt to claim co-operation when Parliament has declared war on the ICC. And even in their aggression against the court, Jubilee seems to be listening to the advise of a misguided senator. Kithure Kindiki was part of the original team of defence lawyers that fucked things up for the Deputy President; now he seems to be the intellectual leader of the Jubilee coalition's designs on the ICC. He misapprehended the law then; he is doing so now. (He should look at the Treaty Making and Ratification Act, 2012, if he thinks we are being unfair to him.)

Parliament has complicated the diplomatic field for Kenya by this move. We may be developing a close and intimate relationship with the Russian Bear and the China Dragon, and deepening bonds with pariahs such as Syria and Iran, but when it comes to global finance and investment, the United States, Great Britain, and the European Union remain our true loves. While markets in the BRICS are opening up, there isn't an economist alive who thinks that the United States and European Union will ever diminish in important as target markets for our products, raw or value-added. The Third Sector in Kenya is dominated by international public benefits organisations from the West; show me one with Chinese, Russian or Iranian antecedents. It is the Third Sector that picks up the rather pricey slack when Kenya's public sector cannot in the fields of education, basic healthcare and grassroots development. What are the alternatives when these Western organisations are finally compelled to pack up and depart?

This blogger has a dim view of the Eleventh Parliament. he considers its members capricious, selfish, avaricious, cruel, indolent, mendacious and in serious need of a swift kick up their collective rear. The events of the past six months have only reinforced this dim view. But this blogger is aware of that adage, Those whom the gods wish to punish, they answer their prayers. Our prayers were well and truly answered.

Relax. What could possibly go wrong?

Uhuru Kenyatta was low-key: the ICC indictment was a personal challenge which he would overcome, just as he had overcome all other political setbacks he had suffered in the past. Mr Kenyatta is now President and Commander-in-Chief of the Kenya Defence Forces. William Ruto (and his ardent acolytes, no least of which is Aden Duale) was less sanguine about his fate. He is clear who betrayed him to the ICC, and it is not Philip Waki, he of the Waki Envelope. He is clear on the false testimony procured against him. Witnesses have been recanting their testimonies. He is now the Deputy President and the President's boon-friend.

Their coalition in Parliament, and their friends outside Parliament (such as the lunatic fringe in the form of the National Conservative Forum), are taking steps to ensure that the President and Deputy President do not set foot in The Hague-based International Criminal Court premises. Indeed, those in parliament are set to debate the matter this evening for as long as it takes for a Bring-UhuRuto-Back-Home motion to be secured. Those outside Parliament have decided to trouble the Judges of the High Court, which is the constitutional court, with a petition to prevent, more like block, the President and Deputy President from meeting their personal challenges head on or taking on the false witnesses with compelling counter-testimonies of their own.

Quite understandably, Kenyans have emotionally waded into this debate with wildly differing opinions on the matter. Some are so apoplectic that parliament would even schedule such a debate that they have suffered severe indigestion. Others are so grateful for the good work that the National Assembly's Majority Leader they are seriously considering naming or renaming their their spawn after him. There is a third rather dull and unpatriotic group that does not care what happens. They have listened to the political, religious and tribal rhetoric over the matter and have decided to treat all those involved in the affair with contempt bordering on insolence and vice versa.

Kenya is entering uncharted waters. Kenyan presidents are never ever arraigned in court. Nor are their deputies. Parliament is never apparently impotent. Political rallies were never religious tent revival meetings. Even in the dark days of the Shift Wars, the Wagallah Massacre or the Mwakenya Movement, Kenya was never an object of pity from the likes of Uganda or Tanzania, one a dictatorship in all but name and the other a ho-hum economy with a massive inferiority complex. We have sunk so low that even Western investors are seeking green pastures in Somalia!

But we should take all the hyperbole in stride. We did so during the political campaigns. We did so during the presidential election petition hearings. We will do so tomorrow and when the two spend their days in The Hague. Kenya will not disintegrate (unless William Ruto attempts to usurp Uhuru Kenyatta's power.) They have both assembled legal eagles of no mean repute. Witnesses have been recanting. Parts of the cases against them have been abandoned by the Office of the Prosecutor. What could go wrong that Aden Duale and his fellow-parliamentarians and Jeniffer Shammala and the National Conservative Forum see that we cannot?

The futility of good intentions.

Allow this blogger to wade in once more into the moribund debate on road safety. It is not that, especially, Nairobians do not realise that their lives or limbs are at risk every time they board a matatu flying from one part of the city to another. It is not that they do not care for the welfare of other road users when they bully their way in and out of traffic in a bid to make it to their places of work in the shortest period. It is that despite all these and many more cogent reasons, they simply do not care.

In Kenya, today, the prime motivator is profit at all costs. We no longer frown at the unseemly Mammon idolatry that defines our lives. Indeed, even the institution that once mightily caviled against mammon, the church, has gotten it into its head, and heart, that it is God's will that you die rich. The Prosperity Gospel has done more to liberate people from their morals than the destruction of civic institutions such as political parties or schools or places of high learning.

This attitude is starkly reflected on our roads. The national Executive, whether through the Ministries of Transport or Roads or Internal Security, can produce facts and data detailing why public transport and road safety are in the toilet. They will produce reams of White Papers detailing what must be done to stop the rising death toll on our roads dead in its tracks, pun intended. They know who is to blame. They know what is to blame. They know what must be done, from an administrative point of view, to solve the problem. And they know that what they know is hogwash. Kenyan lives will not be preserved on or off our roads because the Executive has successfully implemented this policy or the other. All the policies, programmes, interventions and whatnot will not reverse the death toll unless a key ingredient is added.

The political will to enforce the rule of law on the roads will have a salutary effect on road safety and public transport. Matatus in Nairobi have always been a law unto themselves. Since the colonial era, matatus have played a game of cat-and-mouse with the forces of law and order. In the over five decades of matatuness, tens of thousands of road users have perished in what our print media love to call horrific accidents. The rise of the matatu culture has mirrored the descent of law enforcement into the pits of sloth and corruption. Policing and matatus are the Siamese twins responsible for the untold suffering (another print-media favourite) of families. The reform of the one must necessarily lead to the reform of the other.

Sadly and tragically, Kenyans are not interested in the proper enforcement of the rule of law. Their intentions for the for forces of law and order are to keep their enemies from interests, legitimate or otherwise, not to prevent them from circumventing the rule of law, every now and then, for their benefit. Kenyans are happy when the rule of law applies to a mysterious Others, not to them as individuals. It is why a motorist will resist, strongly, the suggestion that he must pay for any damage he cause with his motor vehicle. It is always someone else who is responsible. The motorist is encouraged by his political representative, elected or otherwise. 

The political class is no stranger to the concept of cutting corners; few of its members have ever gotten to where they are playing by all the rules, save for those that advance their political careers. When elected to parliament, it is their duty to protect their constituents from harm, which include ensuring that they are alive at each election save when natural causes (a particular favourite of the print media) intervene. The reality, as in most things in Kenya, is truly shocking. The politicians will conspire with their equally culpable constituents and forces of law and order to frustrate the lofty, but misguided, ideals of the Executive. Every time. And every time, the death toll will keep receiving new adjectival phrases from the print media to express the horror.

Syria and hypocrisy.

Chemical weapons are heinous weapons. They are indiscriminate in their choice of victims. Their users are monsters. Their effects are difficult to control once they are used. Their deployment in a theatre of war effectively announces that their users have given up on finding a political solution to their problems. But they are not unique. Nor are they the most heinous weapons ever used or deployed in theatres of war.

Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, John Kerry, would have you believe that because Bashar al Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people he is beyond the pale and that it must fall on the global community to "do something about it." the United States' President and his military command are mulling military action, short of invasion, against President Assad and his regime. They have been building up their case against the Syrian President for months. Their claims have not persuaded the people of the United Kingdom. Nor even a majority of US citizens.

While leaders in Western capitals ponder what to do with the Syrian regime, some matters must be confronted. The United States does not come to this debate with clean hands. The United States is the only country to have ever deployed and used weapons of mass destruction against a civilian population in a theatre of war. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a terrible stain on the human conscience. The United States deployed and used chemical weapons during its long and bloody war in Vietnam. It assisted Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, in his deployment and use of chemical weapons against Iran in the 1980s. It is facile for the United States to speak of international law when it so blithely ignores international law.

The Syrian civil war has been fought for over two years now. It is the product of decades of sectarian differences, military coups and the brutal suppression of any opposition to its power by the Assad family. During this civil war, millions of Syrians have been displaced from their homes; it is claimed that there are more than one million children in refugee or displacement camps in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands have been killed in the civil war. It is only when a few hundreds are allegedly killed with poison gas that the United States is roused to do something about it.

The world is tired of United States-led wars. After a decade in which the the United States has invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, waged undeclared wars against Libya, Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, and spied on enemies and allies alike, the United States cannot expect the world to trust that when it intervenes in Syria there will be an improvement. What is so special about Syria that is not special about the military coup in Egypt? Is it that Egypt's military junta will not breach its peace treaty with Israel and Syria does not have one?

It is quite clear that on the United Nations Security Council the United States will receive only the support of Great Britain and France. Russia and China, the other permanent members will not lift a finger to help. Indeed, Russia has indicated that it will reject any calls for military action in Syria. It might be because of Russia's military and commercial ties to Syria; but that is the price the world pays for having the veto-wielding members of the Security Council. This is the essence of international law that the United States is tom-tomming for all to hear. It is not for the United States to pick and choose which of the rules of international law it will obey and which ones it will ignore. The last time it did so, it lost men and treasure in the hot sands of Iraq and Afghanistan. And the world was made that much more dangerous.

We are what we decide.

It shall reverse the gains being made by the Jubilee Government on land, national unity, devolution, economy and security. The will of the people must prevail over ICC. Parliament is the custodian of the will and sovereignty of Kenyans. - Kipchumba Murkomen, Sunday Nation

In 2002, Uhuru Kenyatta stood in the general election as a candidate for president on the Kenya African National Union ticket as a "project" of President Moi, or so it was claimed. Besides him were Musalia Mudavadi as his choice for Vice-President, and William Ruto as part of his robust campaign team. Then, as in 2013, Kenyans were told that the elections were Kenya turning the corner on historical injustices.

In 1963, two years after Jomo Kenyatta was allowed back into public life by the colonial government, Kenyans witnessed the lowering of the Union Jack and the hoisting of the Kenyan flag. Prime Minister Kenyatta promised to fight the good fight in eradicating the triple threats of illiteracy, poverty and disease. He also promised to realise the dreams of the freedom fighters whose campaign in the Mount Kenya and Aberdare forests for land and freedom had led to internal self-rule. In 1964, realising the benefits of power, Kenyatta led the country in declaring itself a republic and he became its first president. He would die in office on 1978 without having realised the dreams of freedom fighters and having failed abysmally in dealing with illiteracy, poverty or disease.

In 2007, after a disastrous final year as President, Mwai Kibaki decided to stand in the election to retain his position as President. Uhuru Kenyatta, betraying his party KANU, decided to sit out the contest. Mwai Kibaki was controversially re-elected. The declaration of results was the spark that led to wide-spread violence. Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, this time, were on opposite sides of the contest. Uhuru Kenyatta supported Mwai Kibaki. William Ruto did not. Indeed, William Ruto was at the forefront of declaring the illegitimacy of the Kibaki re-election.

In 2008, Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga announced a truce, brokered by Koffi Annan and a panel of eminent African personalities. Mr Odinga was appointed as Kenya's only second Prime Minister. William Ruto expected to be appointed a Deputy Prime Minister. He was not. But Uhuru Kenyatta was. Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga appointed a commission of inquiry under the chairmanship of Philip Waki, a Judge of the Court of Appeal, to inquire into the violence of 2007 and 2008. The Commission prepared a widely accepted report in which it implicated politicians and businessmen alike for the violence. A secret list of financiers and planners of the violence was prepared, ultimately handed to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court after Kenya repeatedly failed to find a judicial mechanism that would investigate and prosecute the suspected masterminds. Among the indictees were Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto.

Between 2002 and 2008, neither Uhuru Kenyatta nor William Ruto showed any desire to solve the historical problems bedevilling the country. They took no steps, in their positions in the government or their political parties, to address the problems that affected the majority of Kenyans. When they campaigned together in a coalition in 2011 and 2012, they made many promises. Redressing historical injustices was not one of them. Now the government is in their hands while they still face the indictments at the ICC and their trials are imminent.

Between 2008 and 2010, Mwai Kibaki attempted to forestall their trials at The Hague. He failed. The two have since then attempted to conflate their indictments with their election as President and Deputy President. As have the leading intellectual lights of their political parties. Kipchumba Murkomen carries on with that project. He goes further to argue that the original indictments, in the face of the collapse of the cases against other co-accused, has morphed into a vendetta by the Office of the Prosecutor against the President and Deputy President and risks "[reversing] the gains being made by the Jubilee Government on land, national unity, devolution, economy and security."

Mr Murkomen tends to ignore the evidence on the ground. The election was not as unanimous as he makes it out to be. Kenya has a population of forty million. The registered voters, depending on which figures you rely on, are about 12 million. Uhuru Kenyatta barely got a majority of the vote, and the allegation of election voodoo over whether he actually got the bare majority required will linger for the rest of his presidential term.If Mr Kenyatta had gotten over 60% of the vote, we would not be questioning the legitimacy of his election win.

What gains Mr Murkomen is talking about regarding land, national unity, devolution, the econmy or security, only he can see. While Mr Kenyatta carries on with the well-trodden scheme of issuing title deeds (bringing into question the place of the National Land Commission), he has failed to address the circumstances that have all but guaranteed that land administration will continue to poison relations among Kenyans for a long time to come. The results of the general election and the renewed calls to disband the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, are proof that national unity is still a ways away. So too on the question of devolution. Members of his own coalition feel very strongly that the National Government is an impediment to the smooth implementation of devolution. On the economy, while it might be booming for the few who can afford foreign holidays, the bulk of the youthful population is unemployed. When over half the youth cannot find jobs, the economy is very much a work in progress. On security, Kenyans continue to remain unsafe. Mr Murkomen and his colleagues in Parliament enjoy the best security money that we don't have can buy. The majority of urban Kenyans continue to live in fear for their safety and that of their property.

Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto were indicted by the ICC before they were elected. Their election was not a referendum on the legitimacy of their indictments. Indeed, the Tenth Parliament made it explicitly clear that it wanted the indictees to be tried at The Hague. This blogger believes that the ICC is a neo-colonial tool designed to keep the developing world from ever developing. But no one held a gun to Kenya's head to sign and ratify the Rome Statute in 2005, and no one held a gun to Parliament's head to send the indictees to The Hague in 2010. In this case, the ICC did not conspire to destabilise our country. We did that all on our own.

No. Parliament is incompetent to summon JSC.

The fetishisation of the Constitution, indeed of the law, is a mistake. If we are going to make an idol out of the law, at least let us pretend to do all that a religion requires, like learning the catechism, for our new religion. To make this new religion a success we must understand what the chapters and verses of the Constitution say and what they mean. Without that essential ingredient, then it will be as if the high priests of this new religion are taking us for a ride the same as those myriad one-church fly-by-night preachers who make our lives miserable.

Chuma Mwendwa, writing in the Daily Nation, suggests that the Judicial Service Commission must obey the summons issued by the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee of the  National Assembly under the provisions of Article 10 of the Constitution, as well as, rather oddly too, Article 173 on the Judiciary Fund (Why JSC should appear before the House, 29/08/13). Mr Mwendwa is wrong. The only relevant provisions are Article 251 of the Constitution on the removal of a Commissioner in a constitutional commission and section 12 of the Judicial Service Commission Act, 2011, on the suspension and removal of the Chief Registrar. The allegations and counter-allegations made by the Judicial Service Commission and the Chief Registrar can only be resolved either by the removal of the members of the Commission from the Commission or the dismissal of the Chief Registrar from office.

No one disputes that Parliament has the power to investigate the Judicial Service Commission; however, Parliament does not have the power or authority to summon members of constitutional commissions. Commissioners may choose to appear before parliamentary committees and if they choose not to, they cannot be compelled to do so. Parliament is not a court of law and it does not enjoy powers of a court, even if Members of Parliament think it does. If their lawyers are advising them that they have that power, someone should swiftly disabuse them of this erroneous interpretation of the relevant law.

The dispute between the Chief Registrar and the Judicial Service Commission is the JSC's fault. We may not like the idea of a person being investigated not being suspended while the investigation is being conducted, but that is the law that we have on the books. We do not have a law that says the JSC can make things up as it goes along. The JSC was wrong to suspend the Chief Registrar without informing her of the decision to do so and without giving her an opportunity to challenge the decision.

The JSC must have information that compelled it to act as it did. But this information is worthless if the JSC refuses to obey the express provisions of the law. In this case, section 12 of the Judicial Service Commission Act enumerates the steps that must be taken before the Chief Registrar is suspended from office or removed. The JSC disregarded these provisions. Now we will never know if the Chief Registrar is a crook or not.

The parliamentary committee has also misread the law. While it has power to investigate, its investigations do not empower it to summon members of constitutional commissions or holders of independent offices. Parliament does not even have the power to dismiss the holders of offices in constitutional commissions. It can only investigate and recommend to the President the appointment of a tribunal to investigate further and recommend whether the individual commissioners should be dismissed or not. In its investigations the parliamentary committee can summon any other person or it can receive information and testimony from any other person. It failed to exercise this power. All it needed to do was summon the acting Chief Registrar, Deputy Chief Registrar Kaikai Kissinger, and ask him to provide the information it required to make a decision in the matter.

Mrs Shollei, the Chief Registrar, has gone to the High Court and the High Court, after hearing her, has suspended any investigation into her affairs as Chief Registrar. But the decision to allow the parties to negotiate a settlement is wrong-headed and illogical. If Mrs Shollei did what was alleged by the JSC, then she is unfit to hold office. If the JSC was wrong to suspend her as it did, then it cannot competently discharge its duties. One or the other must go. The decision of the JSC risks destroying the Judiciary's newly stellar reputation.

The buck stops with the President.

Long-distance runners in Kenya are national heroes. You would not know it to look at Athletics Kenya, the dysfunctionally managed institution at the heart of management of athletic sports in the country. If not for the international exposure Kenya's top athletes receive, and the fact that athletics, generally, are solitary sports, athletics would be in the shitter. This, sadly, is the situation the most popular sport finds itself in: football.

Football and athletics are the oldest and most popular sports in Kenya. Despite the on again, off again success of other sports - cricket, volleyball, swimming, hockey, tennis - Kenya is defined by its athletes' prowess in the marathon and long distance races at the Summer Olympics and other global athletics events, and its utter dysfunction in the management of football and development of top talent in the sport.

Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, in their manifesto, promised to make significant investments in the youth of Kenya, specifically in identifying, nurturing and promoting talented athletes. Their manifesto promises to invest in the development of athletics and sports programmes, and infrastructure, so that the youth of Kenya can develop other talents than those tied to offices or factories. The Sports Bill, 2013, is supposed to be a part of their strategy. It, however, epitomises the wrongheadedness of the Jubilee government's approach to youth development in general and sports management in particular.

A fallacious proposition has gained currency in Kenya: the solution to any problem is legislation. Football, and sports, in Kenya is in the crapper. To rescue it from total collapse, we must enact a new law to deal with the problems that bedevil the sport. Thus the Sports Act. The effect, however, is unanticipated. Instead of miraculously reforming the administration of football in Kenya, it gives rise to new bureaucratic fiefdoms.

Because of the incessant clamour for a law to deal with this, that or the other from the myriad of specially interested groups that collectively call themselves civil society in Kenya, there is a new industry too: the creating, and staffing, of new public institutions. This is the case in sports. When Kenyan athletes descended on Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport for the 2013 IAAF Championships, in addition to their coaches and managers, training partners and physicians, they were accompanied by an equally large delegation of government officials whose role in Moscow remains murky to date. Rather than restructure sports management in Kenya, or hold sports' federations' managers to account for their work, the Sports Act simply gave the erstwhile Youth Ministry the motivation it needed to create new positions and to staff those positions with career public officers with as much knowledge of sports management as a child has in neurosurgery.

More Kenyans than at any time in the past fifty years watch the English Premier League. It is more popular than the Kenya Premier League not simply because the EPL players are better, though many are, but because the KPL is not a joy to watch, its matches are not a joy to attend, and its reputation as a shambolic system overseen by a cabal of gangsters and petty thieves is yet to be sullied by professionalism. Many Kenyans live in the absurd hope that the budding relationship with Super Sports will clean up football management in the KPL. The election of the likes of Sammy Nyamweya to head Kenya's federation should swiftly disabuse Kenyans that sunny days in Kenyan football are ahead for the sport.

While it is laudable that the Jubilee government intends to build, or finance the building of, stadia around the country, the government coffers are empty. This is a promise that will not be realised in the 5 years that the government has. And if the government finances the construction of sports stadia, it is almost certain that during the tendering process, the graft that will ensue will rival Goldenberg, Triton and Anglo-Leasing. The public-private-partnership route is a route to disaster too.

The solution, as this blogger keeps harping on, lies not in enacting ever more laws to solve our problems. The solution lies in observing and enforcing the ones that we have now. The Sports Act is a fact of life today. Its repeal is not on the cards and probably never will. Therefore, why not implement its provisions properly for the good of sports in Kenya? The sports "managers" we've had for the past five decades have proven to be millstones around the sports' collective necks. If the Act can provide a way of replacing all of them with sports management professionals, that is a course we must zealously pursue. If the Act can ring-fence sports funds and sports revenues from the usual hyenas, that should be done. It is the responsibility of the President to ensure that it is done. if he hides behind weaselly words as "the Cabinet Secretary is responsible" or "it's the sports commissioners fault," we must call him on it. The buck stops with him. If he manages to ensure that all sports' federations are managed without the whiff of mysteriously depleting bank accounts or suspicious grumbles amongst sportspersons, whether he builds new stadia or not will not matter; he will have done more to rescue sports in Kenya than any other President in history.

Be careful what you wish for.

Those whom the gods wish to punish, they answer their prayers.

The push-and-pull over whether the National Government is implementing devolution faithfully is misplaced. Devolution fails or succeeds on how ell the 47 men elected as governors perform. They have, so far, and in concert with their Senators, fucked it up six ways to hell. All, bar none, came to office with a misguided sense that they were akin to Governors in the United States, with "constitutions" of their own, "federal powers" and authority to "raise revenues" as they saw fit. They are not, have not and do not. Counties, regardless of the lofty title, are glorified local authorities and governors are no better than mayors or council chairmen. No more. In fact the only governor who recognises this as his true position is the governor of Nairobi City County. Rather than accompany his party leader to the United States, where he could not possibly draw the proper lessons, he accompanied the head of State to the Middle Kingdom, where he probably would.

Kenya's devolution structure may contain the nomenclature popularised by the United States and India; in reality, it is very similar to that of the People's Republic, minus the overweening central government. Counties cannot "tax" in the traditional sense; whatever revenue they raise by "borrowing" must be approved by the National Government. As must all their expenditure plans, lest these endanger the national economy. Counties do not have police services of their own, the nearest being their "inspectorates" that are not akin to the disciplined police. They have no impact on foreign policy or National Economic policy except as followers rather than pace-setters. Perhaps Nairobi City and Mombasa may one day, because of the local revenues they will generate, rise to the level of national pace-setters on political, economic and foreign policy. That day, sadly, is not today.

The relationship between the counties and the Senate remains tentative. Governors are not sure that the hyenas their counties sent to Nairobi have the balls to do the right thing when it comes to devolution; the Senators, on the other hand, think that they left their counties in the hands of complete morons incapable of managing money or personnel in a responsible manner. It is why governors feel more comfortable striking individual deals with the National Government, especially with the National Executive, rather than pursuing the more long-term-oriented Senate path, where more or less permanent legislation will secure their positions and the Senate is attempting to bolster its prestige by raiding the Constitution for non-existent additional powers and functions. The National Executive, of course, has taken advantage of the situation.

When the Senate and the governors begged, piteously, for the full transfer of functions, the National Executive pretended to hem and haw before, in one fell swoop, doing just that. Then it pushed the Senate and the governors into a harebrained scheme to amend the Constitution. Without the benefit of guidance, both the Senate and the Governors will come to a bad end because of their iniquitous greed. All, when their backs are to the wall, will admit that counties are in no position to perform all the functions enumerated in the Fourth Schedule to the Constitution; they can barely account for the limited functions that had been performed by the former local authorities. Nairobi City and Mombasa can barely afford to pay their workers. If the full transfer of functions is accomplished before the counties are ready to perform the functions, or ready to properly manage the resources that will accompany those functions, this might be the catalyst for serious constitutional amendments that end with the extinction of devolution as we know it, the expunging of county governments from the Constitution for all eternity, and the unlamented death of the Senate.

Why won't the JSC admit it is wrong?

Gladys Boss Shollei accused her employer, the Judicial Service Commission, of abusing its power, behaving in an arbitrary manner, and unlawfully asking her to "step aside" while it investigated mysterious claims against her. At least that was the substance of her application in the High Court. The Judicial Service Commission, on the other hand, was convinced that its Secretary, the Chief Registrar of the Judiciary, the erstwhile Ms Shollei, had a long-fingered interest in procurement decisions made in the Judiciary, that she was capricious and difficult to work with, and that she had dictatorial tendencies that simply had to be investigated. That at least is the innuendo surrounding the Judicial Service Commission's decision to send Ms Shollei on forced leave while it investigated the mysterious claims made against her.

Ms Shollei has every right to protect her reputation; she, however, does not have a right to lie and cheat in order to prevail against the JSC. So far, she has not been accused of lying or cheating. So far, the High Court seems to agree with her: the JSC acted in bad faith when ti did what it did. In a civilised society, at least the ones that we compare ourselves to in the West, when a person is aggrieved by a decision of their employer, they go to court. Ms Shollei acted in a civilised manner.

Once a court is seized of a matter, there are several possible outcomes. The court can hear all the parties (or one of them in extraordinary circumstances) and make a decision; it may refuse to hear any of the parties and ask them to resolve the matter without resorting to the court process; or it may hear part of the case and suspend proceedings while the parties negotiate an agreement. Majanja, J., seems to have chosen to hear Ms Shollei before directing her and the JSC to negotiate a settlement.

This is where it gets murky. Ms Shollei, as Chief Registrar, and the Judicial Service Commission, are public institutions. If one or the other acted improperly, the consequences are significant. Either one or the other cannot be trusted to discharge their functions competently, honestly or with the national interest in mind. Therefore, the negotiations between the Chief Registrar and the JSC can only result in one or the other admitting that they were wrong. If it is the Chief Registrar, prosecution for impropriety must follow her admission. If it is the JSC, the President must appoint tribunals to investigate the members (and the tribunals can only reach one conclusion given the admissions made). The JSC precipitated this situation; if it admits it is wrong then all the JSC's claims of spearheading "reforms" in the Judiciary will be mere hot air and a waste of our time.

Whatever we feel about the laws and regulations that seek to civilise us, we cannot pick and choose which laws and regulations are convenient to observe, and which ones are not. The members of the JSC include well-trained, experienced and respected lawyers. How is it that they looked at the provisions of the law and chose to ignore them? Even in the absence of key members of the Commission, before the Commission took the precipitate step, why did it not obtain the opinion of an unbiased third party? It is the JSC that is to blame for the situation, not the Chief Registrar. Whatever the Commission feels of the rules regarding the dismissal or suspension of the Chief Registrar, or the Code of Regulations of the Public Service, the Commission was not at liberty to make things up as it went along. on that ground alone, regardless of whether the proof of what they allege against Ms Shollei is found, they must compensate her and reinstate her to her office.

It's all about preserving face.

Juristic persons, that is things like companies, political parties or even states, are not moral beings. The officers of these beings may or may not be moral beings, but juristic persons have no human personality to which we can ascribe feelings or morality. they exist as their creators intend them to exist and they do what their creators intend them to do. No more and no less.

Kenyans frequently forget to make this distinction when reacting to what a juristic being has done or been accused of doing. Take, for instance, the scaremongering perpetrated - by men who should know - over the recent economic and financial deals struck between Kenya and China. Some commentators and editorialists have argued that Kenya should be wary of the intentions of China; that because China has a record of getting into bed with dictators and such like, Kenyans should ensure that Kenya does not end up with a dictator at home fronted by China.

States, especially so, do what they must to serve their purposes. Frequently, their purposes are the purposes of the men and women who form the government, whether they be in the Executive or the Legislature, and on some very rare occasions, in the Judiciary. For the most part, however, it is the National Executive that determines what that "purpose" is, and the National executive is frequently the President and his closest advisors (not even the Cabinet).

So, if your president is a deeply moral individual (that is, he makes decisions based on whether they are morally right or not), then your nation will be seen as a moral state. If he is not, it will get the reputation of China, which is frequently accused by many of being a handmaiden to gross human rights abuses. The problem with that perception (other than the image of hypocritical politicians declaiming on Chinese amorality) is that it focuses too much on China and not enough on China's so-called client-regimes.

Despite the accusations and indictments levelled against our President, for example, and despite his sometimes bare-knuckled political Kung-Fu, Kenyans generally repose great faith in Uhuru Kenyatta. Indeed, many believe that even if he is not a "good' Christian, his neither amoral nor immoral. Some will argue strongly that he is a deeply moral man. There is nothing to suggest otherwise. But the decision to invite ever greater investments by China in Kenya suggests to many that he is becoming, at the very least, amoral. They are wrong. He is doing what he is doing because he knows, or believes, that it is the right thing to do in the interests of the nation. And that is as it should be.

It is irrelevant what your personal feelings are. When you occupy a national seat of power, the decisions you make (in addition to preserving your power or authority) must be made with the good of the nation in mind. If this means supping with the Devil, the only consideration should be the length of the spoon. Dealing with the United States, the United Kingdom or the European Union is an endurance test for Kenya; we must endure publicly humiliating lectures on our "human rights record" or our "pace of democratisation." With China, if there are any lectures to be given (or threats to be made), they are done in private, where the leaders can arrive at an understanding that preserves the semblance of comity, builds up the confidence of the people in their government, and our standing on the world stage.

Scrap the Senate. It has outstayed its welcome.

We also need amendments that give life and meaning to the Senate. The irony here is that those Senators crying that they have been neutered are the selfsame MPs in past life who during the constitution-making process conspired to water down the powers and functions of the Senate. - Macharia Gaitho, Daily Nation (26/08/13)

When the Harmonised Draft Constitution was finally presented to Kenyans to comment upon, an overwhelming majority of voters focused their minds on the structure of the National Executive. They debated, and fought, over whether the National Executive should be presidential or parliamentary. The structure of Parliament did not even feature in the top ten concerns of the electorate. It did not receive the attention that was received by the Abortion Question, the Two-thirds Rule, the Land Question or Devolution. There were flaws, for sure, in the Harmonised Draft; we chose to ignore them in pursuit of narrow points-scoring.

This blogger does not believe that the Senate needs to be "strengthened" or its role in the government of Kenya "clarified." The Senate is not the Upper House that Senators believe it is. It was not conceived as such. It is the institution whose principle duty is to protect devolution. They have done a piss-poor job of protecting devolution because the Majority and Minority Leaders in the Senate are very, very busy playing handmaiden to political colossi in the form of Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, respectively.

Kithure Kindiki may be a respected and accomplished lawyer; he is completely useless in the political arena. Indeed, Moses Wetangula is a not only an accomplished lawyer, he is also an accomplished politician but in the Senate, he is completely wasted. What the two have managed to do over the past six months is to demonstrate as starkly as possible that the Senate is a chamber of no use and should be scrapped.

Rather than plan for the inevitable, they have gone looking for new powers to exercise and new functions to perform. they have done everything they could other than what they should. They have given scant attention to the devolution process and allowed it to be hijacked by the National Executive, the public service, sundry irrelevant commissions and authorities, and political players out in the cold with idle hands ready for the Devil's work. And instead of refocusing their attention on their jobs, they have picked fights with the National Assembly and the National Executive, receiving the hiding they richly deserve at every turn. Very soon the Supreme Court will disappoint them too.

Why they believed they could style themselves as American Senators without the power to do so beggars belief. A cursory comparison of the US Constitution and the Kenya Constitution would have clearly shown that the two chambers are as similar as chalk and cheese. The US senate enjoys great power; the Kenyan one does not. The Kenyan one is the equivalent of a glorified debating society which will only be roused when it is time to take part in the budget-making process. It does not enjoy one single veto power over anything. If there are amendments to be considered regarding the Senate, the only sensible one is how to scrap it and transfer its functions to the National Assembly. At the very least, it will bring down the massive wage bill for those characters. Kenyans would definitely approve that.

Amendments are political. Deal with it.

This blogger has argued in the past that Kenya is not benighted because of politics but because of its politicians. It is why this blogger is disappointed by the calls not to politicise the Constitutional Amendment Question that is abroad in the land today. No less an authority than the Daily Nation begs Kenyans not to politicise the issue. With all due respect those asking for the elimination of politics from the Constitution Amendment Question are wrong.

The Constitution is a political document; the process of amending it is necessarily political. Into this mix it would be near impossible to amend it without the participation of politicians. Indeed, the men and women likely to lead the process of amending the Constitution are politicians. Of course the Constitution is not just political; it is also a moral, social and an economic document. It is the principle tool for the organisation of our lives, our relationships and our government. If there are flaws in the document, these flaws must be ironed out through the only process available for the resolution of political, moral, social and economic problems: the political process.

How do those asking for the elimination of politics from the process propose that the Constitution be amended? Perhaps they think that an external institution can do the job for us. This line of thinking is dangerously flawed. Kenyans did not trust its politicians in 2008 to spearhead the drafting of a new Constitution. It is why they placed great hope in the Committee of Experts. This was a direct consequence of the betrayal by politicians after the Bomas process. If it had not been for Bomas, and the fallout among the principle players in the NARC administration, there would have been a different outcome after the 2005 referendum.

The Committee of Experts did the best they could with the flawed drafts they were working with. But at the end of the day, the final arbiter of what was to be presented to Kenyans was the least trusted body in Kenya: the Tenth Parliament. Unless you have been living on Mars, you must recall the fraught and poisonous political negotiations that ensued among the members of the Tenth Parliament. Key provisions that would have kept the political class on the straight and narrow were bastardised. Look at the original drafts of what became Articles 10 and Chapter 6 and you get an idea. But there was no alternative and Kenyans, as they always do, allowed the political class place pride of place in the negotiations and followed it blindly down every dead end on the way to the 2010 referendum.

We have a young Constitution but we still retain the political process that we have always had. Its membership consists of snake-oil salesmen and charlatans of all shades and stripes. They have done everything in their power to bastardise the concept of the sovereignty of Kenyans in order, once more, to guarantee pride of place for themselves. Regardless of their personal probity and popularity, politicians are a much-distrusted and much-loathed class. Despite this, they are the only ones who can lead the Constitutional Amendment Process, which means the process must be a political process.

This does not mean that they have a free hand to do as they please. The hands-off Kenyans who sit on their hand while the process is abused must get off their asses and get involved. It is not enough for the Daily Nation and its ilk to wring their hands and bemoan the politicisation of the process; they must get their hands dirty and engage the politicians in a political debate about the future of the nation. Whatever decision we make will be a political one; it is imperative we marshal political arguments that are more persuasive than those advanced by that perfidious, iniquitous and untrustworthy group.

This is for you, Jakom.

My favourite punching bag, Raila Odinga, is still sore that the Kenyatta II administration is still standing. I feel his pain ,though. Therefore, in the spirit of even-handedness, I think it is time we gave him new ideas to pursue his unrealised dreams, one of which, as you are all aware, is to make the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission share his pain. Let us help ODM's Jakom send home the IEBC.

By IEBC we obviously mean the Commissioners and the Chief Executive (although I think the Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission will put the Chief Executive in jail before Jakom gets to him. C'est la vie! Let us hope the legendary EACC incompetence will give Jakom a chance to get his hands, figuratively speaking of course, around the Chief Executive's neck.

The demon seed of a Constitution that somehow denied Jakom the presidency, at Article 251, contains the rules for the removal of members of constitutional commission, such as the extant ones. The grounds in Art 251(1), particularly in paragraphs (b) and (d), are just perfect for Jakom's purposes: gross misconduct, whether in the performance of the member's ... functions or otherwise, and incompetence. It's devilishly difficult to establish gross misconduct; incompetence, the main plank of Jakom's Hail Mary Supreme Court Petition, is the ticket.

The Commission, that is, the incompetent commissioners that make up the Commission, were supposed to perform the following functions, well, competently:

1. Register eligible voters.
2. Create and maintain a register of voters.
3. Capture their biometric data in an easily retrievable database.
4. Procure equipment to register eligible voters and store the details of the registration.
5. Conduct a general election for President and Deputy President, Governors and Deputy Governors, Members of the National Assembly, Women Representatives of the National Assembly, Senators, Members of County Assemblies, as well as the nominations of Members of the National Assembly and County Assembles.
6. Record the numbers of voters who voted for each candidate, verify the ballots cast, electronically transmit the results and record the final numbers of the votes garnered by each candidate.
7. Procure the equipment for the identification of validly registered voters.
8. Procure the equipment for the transmission of results of the election.
9. Procure the equipment for tallying the results of the election.

Jakom should abandon all hope of proving that, in the words of the Supreme Court, the Register of Voters was a moving target. He should, instead, prove the incompetence of the IEBC by showing that when it came to the process of registration, verification and identification of voters, the Commission was incompetent; that when it came to the process of recording and transmitting the votes that were cast, the Commission was incompetent; and when it came to the procurement of election equipment and materials, the Commission was incompetent. He does not have to prove gross incompetence, just mere incompetence.

We must not ignore the elephant in the room: for the Commissioners to be dismissed, Jakom requires the President to appoint Tribunals to investigate each and every one of them and to assign the proper blame on each individual Commissioner. This might seem like an insurmountable obstacle; but those who doubt his capacity to rally the people when he has the facts on his side should be wary should he pick up this gauntlet and throw it at the feet of Uhuru Kenyatta.

Since his ignominious defeat at the Supreme Court, Jakom has been searching for a cause. The various ones that he has road-tested have been mere small potatoes, including the sheer lunacy of amending the Constitution to fiddle with the manner in which a president is elected. But if he wants a mission that will receive the full-throated support of his supporters, the perfidious IEBC is a perfect target for his mobilising skills. All he needs are the facts and he will be half way to creating a movement for change.

This will give him something worthwhile to do while his minions in the National Assembly and the Senate deal with the minor detail of trying to hold the Uhuru Kenyatta government to account. They do not need the distraction of a national campaign to fire the IEBC; they don't have the mental or testicular fortitude to see the campaign through. But this is where he will make his mark. We can't go to another general election with these jokers in charge.

Anti-corruption Warrior-in-Chief? Has hell frozen over?

If corruption will be vanquished only when Uhuru Kenyatta stops sitting on his hands, then we are in deep trouble. Once more I am compelled to partially disagree with Ahmednasir Abdullahi's proposition. (President is best suited to end corruption, Sunday Nation, 26/08/13.) But if Mr Abdullahi intended that grand corruption will be vanquished because of the President's actions, I have no quarrel with that. And when we speak of grand corruption, we mean the acts of official corruption that have granted us new phrases in our political lexicon: Goldenberg and Anglo-Leasing are merely the most popular.

Kenyans, for the most part, think of corruption in terms of the likes of Goldenberg or Anglo-Leasing. Very few imagine that they are corrupt or must act corruptly in order to make it through their day. The corruptors and corrupted would be glad if the President took a more hands-on approach to corruption; it would mean that they would most likely not be caught or punished. The ones who would worry, and who should worry if the President does get into the anti-corruption racket, are the ones making procurement decisions in the government and its agencies. Mrs Shollei is only the first of many high-profile public officers who will undergo enhanced official scrutiny if the President stops sitting on his hands.

But, in the words of the unlamented former Director-General of the Kenya Anti-corruption Commission PLO Lumumba, the small fish will have a field day. It is in the unseen world of the hoi polloi where corruption is insidiously rife. I wonder if Mr Abdullahi would be shocked to know that the seeds of petty corruption are planted when we are still trying to overcome our hormonal urges while in High School. What would he say if he were to know that students who seek medical attention in the public hospitals near their boarding schools must part with a facilitation fee for the doctor who sees them? What would he say if he were to know that when seventeen-year old truants, testing the boundaries of their guardians by going to night clubs and beer dens, nowadays carry an extra 500 shillings for the policemen who will confront them on their way home from their night of revelry?

The battle against corruption, grand or otherwise, will not be won only because the President has a stake in its success. It will be won when Kenyans, collectively, take a stand against it. Kenyans will take a stand against it if they trust that they will not be required to solicit, or give, bribes for municipal services that should be their as of right. To that end, a bureaucratic monster in the guise of an anti-corruption commission is a grand waste of public finances and resources. Special anti-corruption courts are a waste of judicial time and resources.

If one examines the constitutional and legislative anti-corruption environment, one is confronted by Article 10, Chapter Six, Articles 225 and 227, and Article 232 of the Constitution; the Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission Act, 2012; the Public Procurement and Disposal Act, 2003; the Public Financial Management Act, 2012; and the Penal Code. The institutional framework has the anti-corruption Commission; the Commission on Administrative Justice; the Public Procurement Oversight Authority; the Central Bank; the National Police Service; the Judiciary; and many many more. The war on corruption is not being lost because the President sitting on his hands; it is being lost because Kenyans have not bought into the premise that corruption is an inherently bad thing.

Even if Mr Kenyatta ordered all the players in the anti-corruption game to step up their efforts, he will find it impossible to monitor their efforts. On the other hand, if he wanted to fire the laggards in the pack, he would need the National Assembly to agree with him. If there is a Member of the Eleventh Parliament who has demonstrated a capacity for fighting the corruption wars of the past two decades and has a record of achievement, he (or she) has managed to camouflage himself (or herself) rather deftly. Parliament will not be Mr Kenyatta's partner in a renewed onslaught against the citadels of corruption, big or small.

The solution, as with all things, is simple in theory, and hairy to implement in reality. Simply enforce the laws of the land as they were meant to be enforced. There should be no special favours or considerations. If you are caught in wrongdoing, only a good lawyer should get you off. If you wish to trade with the government, you should not sweeten your tender with a briefcase full of dollars. And so on and so forth. Theory? Good. Implementation? When hell freezes over.

Facts are facts; wishful thinking is for children.

We shall no longer ask Makau Mutua to "accept and move on" in the small matter of the election of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto as President and Deputy President respectively. He is likely to hurl. Prof Mutua has made up his mind that the election of the two was illegitimate; he is never going to accept them as the legitimate leaders of Kenya because of the accusations levelled against them over the crimes committed in 2007 and 2008 and their subsequent indictments, and imminent trials, at The Hague. He warns them that the Look East Policy initiated in the government of  Mwai Kibaki will not rescue them from the clutches of the International Criminal Court's Prosecutor. (Looking East won't end Uhuru's troubles, Sunday Nation, 26/08/13)

Mr Kenyatta's pursuit of investment opportunities in the Middle Kingdom and in Russia may be misguided. Indeed many economists, while holding their judgment until the details of the deals struck in Moscow and Beijing are revealed, have many qualms about the state of the national debt because of these deals. But is Makau Mutua right that only reason why Mr Kenyatta has been so comfortable in wrangling the deals from the two is because he wants to use them as leverages to extricate himself, and his Deputy President, from the clutches of the ICC?

The path to the ICC has not been as straight or as inevitable as made out by Mr Makau and his fellow travellers. For sure, many errors have been highlighted in the process, and many questionable decisions were made by the ICC Prosecutor. The stories of the coached witnesses simply refuse to go away. The partiality of the Prosecutor is yet to be examined comprehensively. At each stage in the process at least one of the Judges has expressed grave reservations about the cases. Makau Mutua has an axe to grind; whether his view prevails is matter only time can reveal.

Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto have always pleaded innocence in the face of the accusations levelled against them. The constant drip-drip-drip of witnesses dropping out of the prosecution may be proof that they really are innocent or that they are using their offices to intimidate the witnesses into withdrawing their testimonies. Makau Mutua fails to impartially examine these issues; his mind, you see, is made up.

To a large extent, Mr Mutua says what the human rights industry in Kenya is saying: Kenyatta and Ruto should never have stood in the election; they should never have been allowed to stand in the election; the Kenyans who voted for them made a mistake, a grave mistake; whether or not there is a trial, Kenyatta and Ruto are guilty. The same human rights industry that has arrayed itself against the two is at the forefront of demanding a respect for the rule of law, one tenet of which is the presumption of innocence. The human rights industry has added a caveat to this tenet regarding Kenyatta and Ruto: because of the gravity of the accusations, and the positions the two held in the former and current administrations, they should be presumed guilty; they should prove their innocence before the world court. The rule of law, as postulated by Makau Mutua and his fellow theorists, does not apply to Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto because they are accused of international crimes; they are guilty as charged. Why should we then bother with a trial?

Mr Mutua is right in one respect: the voters of Kenya are bitterly divided over the Jubilee victory. Half the voters voted for the other guy. But, and this is in no small measure to Mr Mutua's efforts, the electoral system we adopted for the March 4 general election demanded that the winner be picked in the manner that he was picked. We can quibble over the incompetence, and possible corruption of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission but we cannot pretend that this is not the system we chose to elect our president and his deputy. The men and women who voted for the Jubilee ticket may have agreed that the ICC indictments disqualified the two from standing in the election; they either didn't care, or they thought that it did not matter.

It was always a fallacy that the general election and the indictments were connected. If they were, then the rule would have been that whoever is indicted of an international crime could not stand for election anywhere in Kenya. That is not what the rule says. The rule says that a person convicted of an international crime cannot stand for election. In the here and now, Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto are innocent of any crime. They were innocent when they stood for election. This is the reality. There is no need to accept and move on. Whether one does or not, the fact on the ground will not change.