No better than councillors.

opinion. n. 1. ~ (about/of/on sb/sth) (that ... ) your feelings or thoughts about sb/sth, rather than fact. 2. the beliefs or views of a group of people. 3. advice from a  professional person.

The Supreme Court may give an advisory opinion at the request of the national government, any State organ, or any county government with respect to anything concerning county government. ~ Art 163(6), Constitution of Kenya

The definition and the highlighted Article of the Constitution are important to better understand whether or not the Senate is talking out of its ass over the making of laws. In this case, the Senate has accused the Attorney-General of siding with the National Assembly in sidelining the Senate in the enactment of laws because all laws are laws that concern county government. They have extrapolated an advisory opinion on the Division of Revenue Bill to all Bills passed by the National Assembly. That is not what the Supreme Court said.

The Speaker of the National Assembly has been of no help. When he declared that the opinions of the Supreme Court were not binding, technically he was correct, but it was stupid thing to say in the middle of a political battle of wills between the National Assembly and the Senate. Now the Senate is trying to enlist the help of the Attorney-General in this on again, off again war between the two legislative chambers.

A rational examination of the facts should sort out the Constitutional wheat from the political chaff. It all boils down on the core mandates of the institutions in question. In Articles 95 and 96, one can sense the relative importance the Committee of Experts between the National Assembly and the Senate. Article 95 is replete with declarative phrases: "represents the people", "deliberates...and resolves issues", "determines", "exercises oversight" and so on and of forth. The phrasing in Article 96 in relation to the Senate is more tentative; there is a lot of "the Senate shall participate in..."

The Supreme Court is yet to examine the meaning of "a matter concerning county government." The self-serving justifications of the Senate are yet to be interrogated robustly before the Supreme Court. If the matter comes up for an advisory opinion, this is what the Supreme Court should say: while it is true that the broadest meaning should be applied to that phrase, from a practical point of view, a narrower meaning should be applied. The phrase should be understood in the context that where an act of the national government directly affects a county government, how it is governed, its administrative stability and such like, that is the time when the advisory opinion of the Supreme Court regarding that act should be sought. But not when the act is of a more general nature such as the enactment of a national law.

The Senate has failed to perform its duties faithfully. It has strayed far from its core functions. Its members' desire to be more relevant in the current political climate has blinded them to their legislative excesses. The Senate has demonstrated a spectacular myopia about devolution; it has done nothing to strengthen county government or county governance. It has hamstrung governors by entertaining incredibly idiotic schemes to impeach some of them. It has refused to cashier the National Executive for its meddlesome antics in the counties. It has so strayed from its proper constitutional place that it is only a matter of time before we start viewing the Senate as a superior version of the gangrenous limb we amputated from our body politic when we buried the local government for all eternity. They may have PhDs and some may be professors while others killed it in senior civil service positions of power and authority, but until they get their shit straight, Kenya's Senators, bar one or two true geniuses, are no better than MCAs or the unlamented councillors.

So many laws, so little benefit.

In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous. ~ Tacitus (56AD - 117AD)

Kenya is a major manufacturer of laws and the Constitution has become the principal raw material for some of the stupidest statutes ever conceived by bored lawyers. Under the misconception that every Article of the Constitution that contains the statement "Parliament shall enact legislation...", Parliament, the National Executive and special interest groups have drafted Bills to address matters of such infinitesimal stupidity as who can and cannot fly the national flag, the stoning to death of a foreigner convicted of sodomy, and a ban on county governors from using the honorific "Your Excellency."

When the Committee of Experts sat down to harmonise all the draft constitutions produced since the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission wound up its work, they were under the gun to get the harmonisation over and done with in the shortest possible period. Therefore, rather than act surgically, excising the constitutional detritus of little value, they published a document that runs to almost 90,000 words. It contains every conceivable constitutional conceit that the Committee could think of. In its two hundred and sixty Articles, it tries to reverse the constitutional problems that had bedeviled Kenya for forty years. It is the inspiration for the reckless legislative overreach we are witnessing today.

Legislatures in Kenya have taken this lesson to heart. Nairobi County's assembly has copied, word for word - even with the patently unconstitutional provisions regarding property, liberty, and due process - the Alcoholic Drinks Control Act, 2010. In its desire to raise revenue, the Nairobi County government has looked to the fee-raising provisions of the national law and decided to blindly follow suit. When the Nairobi County Alcoholic Drinks Control Act, 2014, is challenged in the High Court and most of it is thrown out, I have no faith that sanity will prevail among the City Fathers; the county government will look for an alternative route to raising revenue from the sale of alcoholic beverages in Nairobi City. They will double down and seek to "address the issues raised by the High Court" or they will mulishly appeal until the Supreme Court slaps them down with finality.

One of the reasons that we are writing so many laws to address our challenges is that we have absolutely no faith in institutions, even the very ones we establish using the numerous statutes we enact. What we want - the only reason we enact statutes with drunken-sailor wild abandon - is the opportunity to siphon public monies from the National Treasury. The number of agencies, corporations, committees and task forces we establish is simply staggering. Even after Uhuru Kenyatta appointed yet another task force to cut down the number of agencies and whatnot, the number keeps growing by the day. What they all have in common are provisions for "appropriations by Parliament" of their funds and such lax financial management provisions it is a wonder we haven't yet bankrupted the state.

Most of these statutory bodies are unnecessary. If we honestly acknowledge that corruption is hollowing out the State, we may yet take the right steps to control it, maybe even eradicate it. Right now the people themselves have a love/hate relationship with corruption. They will say the right things against corruption, but parents will still pay bribes to secure for their children jobs in the public sector. We will enact laws to establish bodies to perform a duty that was being badly and corruptly performed by another body and act surprised when the new body does its job badly - and corruptly. Look at the anti-corruption agencies we have established, all of them with their "integrity issues". John Harun Mwau's Kenya Anti-Corruption Agency, Aaron Ringera's and PLO Lumumba's Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission and Mumo Matemu's Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission. Not one of them is or was trusted. And yet they consumed billions in "exercising their mandates." We are corrupt. So we enact laws to pretend that we are not corrupt.

Friends.

Celebrating friends is hard when you are the dullest knife in that drawer. It is twice as hard when their successes are the bright light that exposes your shortcomings. It is positively masochistic when even by the lax modern standards, you have amounted to pitifully little. It is, however, a joy to celebrate true friends because their successes are your successes, their triumphs are your triumphs, their victories are not a mirror to your defeats. It is the rare friendship that gives one a sense of self-worth and belonging. It even rarer to be replicated in different and differing relationships across genders, age-groups and social classes.

I am in the happily enviable position of having few true friends. There are the three who are fathers with whom I was admitted to the Bar. Their careers are flourishing as their families grown in size and number. There is the couple that smile when I see them. That has been the weirdest thing ever; who could be happy to see me, except my grandmother? There are the two loud ones, ironically from the same bit of the Rift Valley. Intelligent and belligerent in equal measure, they bring to mind a volcano that is simmering and one thing or another will bring it to a very loud, boisterous boil. Then there is she whose myriad stories I am having a hard time keeping track of but still valiantly trying to do so . She is like no one else I know. Which is odd because I thought that I had met every kind there was to meet. There are those I see only rarely because of what I'd like to think is a busy schedule but is probably a spectacular degree of sloth. There are others I'm in business with only because I like them. friends one and all that I hope will enjoy continued good fortune.

Then there are those I never thought I would ever befriend. Work colleagues whose sense of humour continues to be unrivalled, whose sense of duty is unparalleled and whose generosity continually takes my breath away. It is no surprise I found all of them incredibly beautiful and on one or two occasions of insanity allowed my mind to wander beyond the strict professional confines of my employer's business. Thank God, sanity is known to run especially hard in my family and the return of reason allowed these acquaintances and associations to become friendships that may defy the sands of time.

There is the lot for which a tut-tut is the only acceptable response to their latest escapade, while there are those three who will not react sniffily if the response is a swift kick in their backsides. There is that one that is always weeping into her beer; I have tried meeting her for coffee thinking that it was the inebriation that elevated her moodiness. That Java on Mama Ngina Street will not be seeing my custom for a while, I think.

What they will never understand (it hurts them that they do not know why), my friends, is why they are compartmentalised so neatly. There is work, home, upcountry, church, the pub and barber's. Each with its own set. Each with one picture of their friend. An incomplete picture, mind. Some will see anger, every now and then, while others will only see unbridled joy. Some will get to experience their friend's acerbic tongue, others only the charm. There are those who see a professional while others see the father of all sloths. It all depends on who is seen with their friend, where they are seen and why they were seen where they were seen. Life is not scripted and fate cannot be anticipated, but only small children can afford to be careless.

I'm bored. Aren't you?

I feel bad for the guy that has to sit next to Moses Kuria, the new Member for Gatundu South in the National Assembly. He doesn't seem to be a nice guy; perhaps only his family can actually tell us whether Mr Foreskin is really as odious as he seems. His presence on TV is usually combative, with a which of an inferiority complex that requires him to remind us of his stays in the Middle east as a world-class businessman which usually begs the question: if he was so good at wangling dollars out there, why in all that is financially lucrative would he drag his ass back to Kenya to join a gang that can't make money of their asses were on fire?

I can see the mammies in the National Assembly giving special attention to their hair, makeup, outfit, shoes and handbags the day that Steven Kariuki is sworn in, though I suspect his mother and wife will be on hand with daggers for eyes to keep the mammies in check. The young man has managed to whup the Jubilee man's ass in the Mathare by-election. He takes over in a constituency that was carved out of the larger Starehe that was under his mother's thumb in the last Parliament.

I feel bad for Bernard Kiala, whose ass is being impeached in the Senate. The Machakos Deputy Governor has had a much publicised falling out with Kenya's superstar governor, Alfred "Alfie" Mutua. What must really drive him to apoplectic rage is that while Governor Mutua and he rode the Kalonzo Musyoka train to glory, Mr Mutua has dumped all pretenses at bending his knee to the former vice-president without suffering for it while Kiala and his fellow-loyalists do not seem to be benefiting at all from their ardent loyalty to the CORD co-principal.

Nairobi's Senator must be feeling nice. He is an intelligent player. Two years ago he was forbidden from ever setting foot on US soil. Now he has just spent the last week in the US capital as part of Uhuru Kenyatta's delegation. He seems to be dogging the President's footsteps a lot these days. I wonder if he is intelligent enough to get presidential blessings for the sole purpose of yanking the governor's throne from out under Evans Kidero's ass. That man has done precious little to endear himself to Nairobi resident and he is rubbing on our last nerve by his hot-and-cold pronouncements on alcohol-at-the-Kebeberi-Sevens. If there is a governor who would inspire a roadside IED, it is the good doctor who ran Mumias Sugar before it turned to shit.

I wonder what Manzi Wa Nai, the Nairobi Woman Representative, is up to these days. Has she given up on dress-making? It was, after all, her road to ODM fame back in the day. I wonder if Elizabeth Ongoro still runs that garbage company. It made her so much money she could afford to defy CORD last year during the nominations. It also made her arrogant enough to refuse to kow-tow to the Bishop who wanted to be a Governor or Senator or Woman Representative...I can't remember. And what happened to Dick Wathika? Is he dead? Why isn't Reuben Ndolo taunting him these days?

You get the sense that even with referendum talk, things are a bit dull these days. It's not an election season, never mind all the by-elections we seem to be holding. Uhuru Kenyatta does not seem to be reshuffling his Cabinet any time soon. Even the perennial disappointments in the Cabinet seem to have learnt to keep their feet out of their mouths. Wouldn't you even believe it, Aden Duale has no one to attack other than Odinga and "rebel governors" but even he must be bored shitless with the whole referendum thing.

So, finally, I feel bad for Kipchumba Murkomen and Kithure Kindiki. They are no doubt loyal to their respective party chiefs. But they are in the wrong legislative chamber. The Senate is not suited to their obviously boot-licking personalities. In fact, and I shudder when I write this, it is suited to the likes of Aden Duale and Adan Keynan. If Mr Murkomen and Mr Kindiki could find it in their hearts to simply displace some nonentity in the National Assembly, they will find their bombastic and combative natures well-suited to that particular chamber of vipers.

Trying to pull the wool over our eyes?

There is a Bill in the National Assembly by a member of that august chamber that wishes to create in Kenya a theocracy-by-the-backdoor. The Anti-homosexuality Bill, 2014, would punish homosexual acts by public stoning. Homosexuality in Kenya is debated in fits and starts. There seems to be no coherent policy regarding the subject as a human rights issue. Those who would seek to decriminalise it are or seem to be a committed lot. Those who would enhance the penalties, such as in the aforementioned Bill, are just as committed.

Anti-homosexual legislation in Africa came first courtesy of the Victorian mores held fast by the colonialists and settlers who made Africa their frontier in the late nineteenth century and now courtesy of the culture wars of US politics which the family-first types seem to be losing to the progressives and libertarians. But in Africa, where ideology went the way of the dodo once corruption became the true ideology, culture wars are a pretext for the myriad failings of governments, whether they be autocratic or democratic. The more the failings, the harsher the attentions of the State against the gays.

Which makes the anti-gay attention in Kenya curious. We are not Uganda or Nigeria. We may have an iniquitously corrupt system, and crime may be getting out of control, and the cost of living may be skyrocketing, but there doesn't seem to be an organised anti-gay lobby that would actually march on the streets in support of the stone-them-to-death Bill. I do not even see Canon Peter Karanja, Bishop Eliud Wabukala or John Cardinal Njue marching in support of the Bill. They will make pro forma anti-gay noises, but that will be the extent of their involvement in the whole matter.

This Republican Liberty Party is a strange animal. No one seems to know what it does and who its members are. And why "Republican Liberty"? Its stance on homosexuality would run counter to the "liberty" part of its name. It seems to have missed a few steps in the penalties' clause too. Why stoning to death? Why not chemical castration? Why not actual castration done by a trained medical professional? In a nation that has not hung a convict for thirty years, what makes the sponsor of this odious Bill confident that publicly stoning a homosexual to death will ever happen? Is this Bill a political stunt?

It seems to be. It is a joke. And the Speaker of the National Assembly is in on it. How else would he allow a Bill that actually spells out "stoning" as a penalty to get through his chambers on the way to the Floor of the National Assembly? More importantly, our problems are not on the order of magnitude of the problems in Nigeria or Uganda that the people would require an anti-gay law to hoodwink them. Ahmednasir Abdullahi's point that Parliament is Jubilee's worst enemy is almost certainly correct. This Bill comes on the heels of the County Governments (Amendment) Act, 2014, the Order of Precedence Bill, 2014 and the National Flags, Emblems and Names (Amendment) Bill, 2014. These pieces of legislation do little to solve our economic or security problems; they contribute a lot to the poisoned political environment and hate-filled discourse on and off social media.

The enacting of these laws is an indictment of the Jubilee administration's leadership, the hands-off approach to governing, their belief in their own hype. There are limits to how long one can fool all the people. It can be done some of the time; it cannot be sustained forever. Pretty soon, the discerning among us will start asking the uncomfortable questions. If the leading lights of the Jubilee administration wish to continue to be the leading lights of a Jubilee administration, they had best concentrate their minds on the real bread and butter issues that affect Kenyans and leave the mindless anti-gay business to the religious and cultural wingnuts.

Who gained, who lost?

An expected outcome of the presidential junket to the United States, with "top business people" in tow, was the realisation that many private sector investors in the United States already have operations in Kenya and that they do not need to invest further in the Kenyan market. It was whispered unkindly in some quarters that Kenya wasn't a big enough market to require greater investment and if the barriers that existed in Africa between and among African nations persist, there would be no benefit in investing piecemeal in Africa.

The second expected outcome was that many US investors were more interested in getting concessions from the army of Kenyan bureaucrats that had accompanied the President. This is the story of investment in Kenya: foreign investors seeking to find the greatest cost savings from government concessions for the least amount of investment. What remains unmentioned during these negotiations for concessions are the backhanders, kickbacks and facilitation fees that change hands. Alcatel-Lucent happily paid out twenty million US dollars after "negotiations" at one time and even after it paid a fine after being convicted under the US' Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, it must have made a fair return on its investment.

What Kenya's game-plan was going into the United States-Africa Leadership Summit remains murky. There are bits and pieces of the strategy, but there is no clear picture. The Presidential Strategic Communications Unit seems to have hyped the meetings that were held and the commitments that were made, but we are yet to be told what the plan was and what the expected outcome was. President Kenyatta seems to suggest that fighting terrorism was at the core of his plans, but we do not know what the United States committed to do, what it would cost, how long the commitment would last and what Kenya was to do to facilitate it.

Jubilee mouthpieces seem to suggest that Uhuru Kenyatta had successfully rehabilitated his diplomatic image in Washington, D.C. But this does not seem to have come with any tangible benefits. They also seem to suggest that Kenya's foreign policy is Uhuru Kenyatta's fate at world capitals. If he benefits personally, then Kenya benefits.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not publish any white paper on the Summit. It did not publish a list of its professional advisors regarding the targets for the Summit. It did not publish anything on the strategic relationship between Kenya and the United States at the time of the Summit, and whether or not this relationship was one-sided or mutually beneficial. It did not even bother to examine the strategic costs or benefits of the rivalry between the United States and China in Kenya and how this would affect the international trade prospects of Kenya in the short, medium and long term. Eighteen months into its administration of the country, the Jubilee government is still living in the twentieth century where secrets defined power and power defined personal wealth and status.

Uhuru Kenytta's government has appointed one of the largest numbers of advisors. All of them seem to operate at a political level only, acting to forestall political challenges to Jubilee's continued hold on power. This is an incredible waste of public resources. We already have an economic blue print: Vision 2030. But this blue print is useless without constant re-evaluation of the strategic landscape from multiple perspectives. In the spirit of transparency, key subjects such as Kenya's diplomatic, defence and international trade postures must be published, interrogated publicly and adjusted for the benefit of the country. It is the only way that presidential junkets can be honestly assessed as either successes or abject failures.

Forked tongues in the pulpit.

Kenyan evangelists have done much in their power to bring the name of Jesus Christ low. That is par for the course; after all, religion is not really what Jesus started when he was born of a virgin, performed miracles, died and resurrected, ascended to heaven, and promised a Second Coming. His disciples set up the church and ever since, millions of "disciples" have set up their cults, sects, and denominations pretending to preach the one true word.

In Kenya, these people had always done one good thing: they kept the government on its toes. They held politicians' feet to the fire and jabbed their fingers in the faces of civil servants all in the name of making the lives of the men, women and children they ministered to that bit better. They spoke out when unfairness was done and they marched with the people when marching was required. church sanctuaries were true sanctuaries where the weak and infirm were always welcome.

Something insidious happened in 1997: godmen started drinking the Kool-Aid, as the Americans would say, and became part and parcel of politicians' plans, whether for good or for ill. Churches and political parties became partners scratching each others' backs and doing each other favours. Church leaders led their ministries into partnership with men and women whose moral authority had been steadily declining for two generations. Church leaders became apologists for politicians. It has only gotten worse.

When my father used to drag us to Africa Inland Church Ziwani, we always prayed that Baba Moi was in attendance. Those services were always blessedly shorter than the standard version; the president had important people to see and important places to go. What I remember most about Baba Moi is that he never, ever read the lesson for the service and he never, ever spoke to his fellow worshipers. Of course he left a token, but he never selfishly took over the pulpit for self-serving political ends. It is one of the few admirable traits about the old man.

But since godmen started praying publicly for thieves, liars, cheats and murderers, and laying their hands on them, and baptising them, things have gotten worse. Commentators have bemoaned the politicisation of the pulpit. But it is much worse. The church and church leaders are no different from the government and politicians. Thieving, lying, cheating and murdering seems to define churches and their leaders these days. Even the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church have not been spared the tales of intrigue and murder (or attempted murder) among church leaders, whether clergy or lay.

And so it is no longer unusual but expected that if a politician attends service at your church, he or she will invariably be invited to "say a few words" and he or she will invariably desecrate the sanctity of the sanctuary by lying his or her ass off or by justifying some great moral failing. It is the politicisation of the pulpit that has churches demanding death penalties for convicted criminal offenders instead of intensifying the churches' efforts to rehabilitate the morals of the people and promote the values of charity and fairness.

We eventually settled for the Africa Inland Church Jericho, with its brilliant choirs who could sing the Lord's praises that you believed your soul was destined to glory. And for a long time politicians gave us a wide berth because we were located in Ofafa Jericho which is poor, crime-ridden and backward. But it is our community and we shared what we had with one another. We spoke the truth to each other and we valiantly tried to raise money for our new sanctuary, which we have been building for fifteen years now. But when our pastors got in bed with the political class, money started disappearing, rumours defined our discourse and now even known pederasts and philanderers are permitted to stand in front of us and invoke the name of the Christ. This is where we are today, receiving invocations for blessings from the forked tongues of the sociopaths and psychopaths we call political leaders.

Something has to give.

I have read the self-serving justifications by Senator Kipchumba Murkomen over the problems with the County Governments (Amendment) Act, 2014, which creates the County Development Boards with senators as the chairpersons and governors as secretaries to the Boards. He unpersuasively argues that senators are the umbilical cord linking the national and county governments; that senators need useful information to facilitate their county oversight role; and that because senators do not manage any fund they are therefore, likely to be neutral. Governors, of course, do not have a credible intellectual argument to be made against the senators' power grab at the county level; they will go to court and they will likely lose their deposits.

Mr Murkomen and his colleagues, however, are wrong. It is true that devolved government has advanced in fits and starts. Mistakes have been made; some are grave but none is grave enough to require the presence of senators at the county level micromanaging the development agenda and generally being pains in the ass. There is a reason we have a Parliament; it is meant to play its oversight role in relation to the National Government; county governments have county assemblies and if the ex-councillors masquerading as members of county assemblies are incapable of performing their duties, it is the responsibility of the voters to make a change, either through recall elections or at the next general elections. The people at the grassroots sent their senator to Nairobi and chose someone else to keep governors on their toes at the county. It is time Mr Murkomen and his colleagues started playing their proper role in relation to the national government: sleep.

The Senate's grasp exceeds its reach. This power grab is informed by a peculiarly Kenyan understanding of development, being the spending of public monies for white elephants of little utility to the people but lucre for the spenders and their cronies. There is no reason why senators should provide input on the development agenda of a county executive; that is a partnership between the county executive and the county assembly. The former proposes; if the latter approves, the former can then execute. It is how a government works. Oversight is the responsibility of the one that executes. If the county government collectively decides to be profligate, the national government can step in. Again, it is the role of the National Executive to propose a course of action, the Senate to approve and the National executive to execute.

The argument that problems will be forestalled does not wash. That is why we have national economic blue prints and why the Controller of Budget's office was constitionalised. If Mr Murkomen and his colleagues had the equivalent of the Congressional Research Service, and which was not staffed by their village-mates without an ounce of grey matter in the matters that matter, and which received the resources required to function effectively, the Senate would perform its national oversight role more effectively and it would protect devolution more credibly than by these harebrained schemes cooked up by the bored and the intellectually perfidious. But instead of making the Senate a credible legislative chamber capable of erudite thinking and superior debate, it has become a venue for the venal, the lazy and the malicious whose principle objective, it seems, is t amass power just like every other power-mad institution in Kenya.

The case for the continued existence of the Senate can still be made. The National Executive and the supine National Assembly are determined to retain centralised power and its structures; they have no interest in the devolution of power or resources. It is in the interest of the Senate to ensure the complete devolution of power and resources to the counties, to empower governors to govern effectively, to inculcate a culture of selflessness in county assemblies while overseeing the work of the county executives and generally to ensure that the National Government does what it is meant to do: collect taxes; protect the people; and generally stay out of the way of progress. But senators keep making the case for the dissolution of the Senate and the return to centralised government by their hostility to governors who enjoy power and prestige in their counties. One way or the other, something has to give.

Is this our whirlwind to reap?

It is every son's wish that his parents be proud of him. So a dutiful son will do well in school, get a good job, get married and sire grandsons for the pride of his family. He will also uphold the cultures of his tribe, including language. If he is good, he will become a respected member of the community, and he will be sought after for advise and financial assistance. His parents will hold their heads high in the community and they will beam with pride when their son's name is mentioned in company.

There is a generation of sons who have been hamstrung in their efforts to make their parents proud. They have been disappointed by a social system that has completely broken down. Their parents have become the victims of circumstances beyond their control. The French call it force majeure, an act of nature. Acts of nature cannot be stopped; they can only be mitigated. But it is not acts of nature that have hamstrung the sons of today; it is the acts of their parents' generation that have all but guaranteed a Darwinian selection of the fittest over the weakest.

Kenya has had a tortuous history. The tribes that commanded all that they could see or steal were subjugated brutally by first, the mzungu missionaries, and then Imperial British East Africa Company, then the British colonial government, thereafter the first Kenyatta the Elder Independence government followed by his rule-by-fiat de facto one-party dictatorship which was succeeded by Baba Moi's de jure one-party kleptocratic dictatorship which was succeeded by Mwai Kibaki's tribal kleptocratic quasi-democracy. While events were unfolding on the political stage, sons were increasingly losing the guidance of their communities, of their families and of their fathers. We are reaping the whirlwind of the seeds we sowed when our cultural development stopped with the arrival of the bibles and guns of the European missionaries at Rabai.

It is politics that has shaped the fates of families for the past fifty years. Political decisions have been translated into government policies and which in turn have had real world economic consequences on families. These political decisions have compelled fathers to work longer and longer hours and to drive mothers into the job market and they, in turn, have been compelled to work longer and longer hours. Fathers and mothers, by and large, have been compelled to move to towns and cities and have slowly lost their connection to their extended families and their communities. Substitute communities in the city do not have the same legitimacy or utility as the real deal. In all this, sons have been neglected ad some of the key lessons they were meant to draw from their parents and their communities have passed them by.

So it is not out of order to advance the argument that if cultures had developed as they were meant to develop and sons were raised as they were meant to be raised, even the economic challenges facing this nation would not appear to be so intractable. This is not to say that daughters occupy a lesser place; but their rise was always going to be a factor of cultural and economic advancement. Not even a rigidly patriarchal society could prevent the rise of the  girl child in an interconnected world. It is the fall of the sons that has led to the cultural and social breakdowns witnessed in all our tribes, where individual greed has surpassed even the capacity of the community to satisfy it. If we do not do something to educate sons on their responsibilities, on the roles they must play in their homes, families, communities and country, all the political manifestos and economic blue prints will not lead us to greater prosperity, but greater misery.

Moral hazards.

The rule that permits public servants to run businesses has led to some absurd situations. In theory there are safeguards to prevent conflicts of interest. Theory is all well and good, but reality reminds us every time that conflicts of interest are the reason why any public servant would go into business while still taking home the government's shilling. 

It will explain why so many principals and headmasters and teachers run schools. It will explain why many Ministry of Education officials run schools. Indeed it explain why officials of the Teachers Service Commission and the teachers' unions run schools. And it will explain why Deputy President William Ruto finds himself standing alone regarding the release of examinations certificates, whether the candidates have paid off their dues or not. You see, Mr Ruto does not own or run a school. Not that I know of, anyway.

This is not a diatribe against school-owning public officers and their hostage-taking of exams' certificates, but the moral hazards the conflicts of interest have engendered in the education sector. One of the most painful things to witness is the sexual exploitation of children by men and women meant to protect them while away from home. Principals, headmasters, teachers, education officials, teachers' union representatives - there isn't a class in the education sector whose members do not have someone who has brutally robbed a child of his or her childhood.

Principles, headmasters and the education ministry have a well-rehearsed process for dealing with men and women who defile children under their care. First, a swift transfer is organised. Then an inquiry is instituted. Then a report is prepared. Then the report is buried. Finally, the parents of the child, where "only" a pregnancy ensued, is paid off and intimidated into silence. The teachers' unions don't give two shits if their members are monsters; all they care about is that the teachers keep paying their dues and voting as directed every time officials are "elected'. The only people these days who seem to care for the welfare of children, barring of course the Children Department, are public prosecutors whose zeal in prosecuting monsters is only matched by their deep desire to empathise with the child victims.

Every year, statistics are published on the number of children who are pregnant or who have contracted sexually transmitted infections. By and large, the bulk of the pregnancies and infections are as a result of defilement by principals, headmasters, teachers and education officials. There is a small proportion of pregnancies and infections are as a result of sexual activity among children. The problem, as many professionals have stated, is that, first, the government is doing precious little to educate the country about how to protect the children from sexual predators, including trusted community leaders and second, there is precious little being done to publicly name, shame, prosecute and punish sexual predators of children. 

That must change today. If it requires a change in the law, so be it. The argument that the predators' families deserve privacy will no longer wash when children as young as twelve are giving birth. If principals, headmasters, teachers and educationists refuse to grasp this bull by its horns, they will have no one to blame when they finally lose the respect of the people - and the people turn against them.

Sacred cows make the best hamburgers

Those public service mandarins in the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit who are yet to familiarise themselves with the business of strategic communication have somehow managed to comfortably ensconce themselves in the traditions of the old-school civil service. They are the astute observers of the black letter and the odious spirit of the Official Secrets Act. It is entirely possible that they know every single line in that piece of legislation - and the ways and means that someone could stray even a micrometre over that line.

Those fine men - who must also have read keenly the Supreme Court Opinion on the Two-thirds Gender Rule - declared themselves to be netizens, citizens of the digital Internet Age. When they were Jubilee aparatchiks, they did everything in their power to peddle the #TeamDigital badge against their opponents that it has virtually become the government's brand. Their reach, however, is much shorter than their grasp: #TeamDigital is none but a smooth slogan that hides an awful truth. If there is a modern government of recent vintage that has managed to resurrect every skeleton from our blood-soaked past, it is the one that had the most dynamic vision for the nation in a generation.

The realities of governing as opposed to permanently campaigning are slowly permeating the minds of the Jubilee government. This realisation has been very distressing. It is difficult to govern when one does not have an intellectual or legislative game plan. They planned to win a general election; which they did. They did not plan for the day after they won and now they have no choice but to keep campaigning. If Raila Odinga did not exist, #TeamDigital would invent him only so that they could have someone to campaign against.

It is not that the Jubilee government has not done anything but that many of the things it is associated with have the whiff malice around them. Take the not-secret-anymore demand for an opinion from the Solicitor-general regarding the law on treason because of political schemes. That has to be one of the stupidest demands ever made of the Office of the Attorney-General. It is something for which no paper work should ever exist. It is something for which the private sector hacks are best suited to accomplish. The Solicitor-General should have responded thus: "Politics is neither good nor bad, and it is not a sound foundation for the charge of treason even if the man you want to target has been  thorn in your side. Your only course of action is to defeat him politically, discredit his political schemes."

The Jubilee's true achievements are not being celebrated properly. It might be that holdovers from the past are yet to get the memo about Kenya moving inexorably into the digital age. So there are civil servants who take a perverse pride in the Official secrets Act because it is such a useful tool to hide official skullduggery and dirty tricks if not outright theft of public resources. If we are to retain the Official Secrets Act, it should not be to protect stodgy doddery crooks from embarassment, but the Government from danger, including treason from its most trusted officers. The Official Secrets Act must be a tool for the protection of the right kinds of secrets and for the right kind of reasons. If any reason includes a rationalisation of why a big tender was single-sourced and awarded to a contractor with neither he capacity not experience to undertake the project, then the Act should be repealed. 

It is time that my friends in the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit started behaving as if they wanted to communicate government information and not simply sing praises like cheerleaders for every inane idea that crosses some bigwig's head in the National Executive. They should start telling us why free maternity care is a success; why laptops won't be in our children's hands this year; and why Cabinet Secretaries continue to be have like sacred cows. Do Cabinet Secretaries not know that sacred cows make the best hamburgers?

If you sacrifice for us, we'll do so for the nation.

Kenya is defined by beautiful things. Bear with me. Our wildlife, even in the middle of a poaching frenzy, is beautiful. And I do not just mean the majestic elephants, the elegant giraffes, the regal lions, the lithe leopards, tigers and antelopes, or the imposing hippos and rhinos. Visit our marine parks, our nature trails and our beaches, and Kenyan wildlife is beautiful. 

So too are our world-beating middle and long distance runners. How they kick butt on the international stage is a thing of beauty. We celebrate with them when they monopolise the podiums of the world and we commiserate with them when they are pipped to the finish line by new up and comers. Our flowers command the best prices at the Amsterdam Flower Auction and grace occasions on every continent. Our teas and coffees cannot be found anywhere else in the world. We are defined by beautiful things and we should be proud of this.

It has been so for a very long time. Even the 2007/2008 murder and mayhem did not alter how the world views us. The continuing ICC problems of the President and Deputy President did not either. 

Until Westgate.  

That was the tipping point. It was the point of no return. Terror attacks in Kenya had either targetted the United States or Israeli interests — or the poor and unknown. Westgate changed the narrative. Suddenly every hack with a press pass from the shadiest rags in the West is concerned about the deteriorating situation in Kenya. Suddenly every mzungu that is blown away inflates the statistics on the security problems Kenyan is facing. We are no longer defined by our beautiful wildlife, flowers beaches or athletes. We are defined by al Shabaab and secessionists and drug smugglers and other ugly things.

The hyenas have started to circle. Tanzania is suddenly targetting the tourists that visited Kenya. So too is South Africa. Amsterdam has suddenly found an environmental reason to question the quality and safety of our flowers. Several international organisations have suddenly discovered safer havens in the Horn of Africa for their operations. Western nations are reducing their diplomatic footprints in Kenya because of the perception of insecurity. The only bright spark is that Kenya has taken on huge international debt by selling a bond in Ireland for a price that is more attractive than other African nations have managed.

And yet we are doing precious little to restore things to the status quo ante, what was there before Westgate. We have doubled down on the stupid things that continually drive a wedge between our ambitions and our achievements. Policing continues to be mired in spectacular stupidity. Immigration control is unravelling speedily with revelations of cross-party corruption. Land reforms are stuck in the dark ages of claim and counter-claim. 

Public confidence in the institutions of governance keeps dipping. Parliament is reviled; the Judiciary is increasingly losing credibility and legitimacy; and the Executive keeps shooting itself in the foot. In basic education, the Teachers' Service Commission and the Ministry are in a hell-for-leather battle with the teachers' unions, with neither covering themselves in glory but infamy. Our politicians have made us our own worst enemies and this is now reflected in the new Kenyan story.

We know what must be done to reverse things. We know we must make sacrifices. But our government seems to believe that sacrifices can only be made by the people and not their leaders. It is why the National Executive bends over backwards to mollify Senators this week, members of the national Assembly the next, governors the week after and councillors the week after that. (I refuse to call them members of county assemblies because they increasingly resemble councillors in their perfidy and avarice. I bet few of them can spell perfidy or avarice.) 

If our leaders actually make sacrifices — give up the million-shilling-per-month package, give up the car-driver-bodyguard fetish, give up the gold-level health insurance, give up the genuflecting minions in their wake, and yank their hands out of the National Cookie Jar, maybe, just maybe, we will be willing to give up our privacy so that the intelligence services can listen in on our intimate phone calls.

What is the PSCU doing?

There is an anti-Orengo screed, allegedly penned by "PSCU Senior Directors" which dares Senator James Orengo of Siaya to "do his worst" in relation to land-grabbing in Lamu, or the TJRC Report or the Ndung'u Commission Report - it is unclear which of the three issues Mr Orengo should "do his worst" on. The statement by the PSCU - the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit - senior directors seems of a piece with the Jubilee approach to governance of late - petty and vindictive for no discernible political gain.

Charity Ngilu, the Lands Cabinet Secretary, has done a pretty good job of converting what could have been a dry administrative position into a powerful political weapon against the opposition. She has been misled, once or twice, by the likes of the PSCU senior directors, but for the most part, by doing her job, she has made the political case for her brand of reforms in the land sector. She has managed to show up James Orengo and Kivutha Kibwana, seasoned lawyers both, for their failures on the land reforms agenda when they were in charge of the Lands docket. That they are both members of the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy, CORD, is something she can use to her advantage in the future. It is something Uhuru Kenyatta can use to his advantage.

There is a very strong suspicion abroad in the land that the PSCU is really a Political Strategy Communications Unit, and it has nothing to do with the dry-as-hell functions of the presidency. Even then the PSCU has proven woefully inept at its job. The manner in which it is communicating on behalf of the President requires the President either to double down on the message, which is frequently inane, or walk back the message in the hope that Kenyans' pigeon-like memories will have retained little. Sadly, the internet retains everything; every time the PSCU gets the President to say something inane, it is preserved and you can bet that just like the PSCU was very good at trawling James Orengo's record as Minister in relation to land reforms, the TJRC and the Ndung'u Commission, President Kenyatta's gaffes at the hands of the PSCU will be rehashed and broadcast for all to see when the time is right.

Part of the PSCU's problems lie in the fact that its senior directors are still campaigning against Raila Odinga. Mr Odinga lost the presidential election if not exactly fairly but, surely, squarely. Mr Odinga lost the presidential petition again if not exactly fairly but, surely, squarely. Mr Odinga is not a Member of Parliament. He holds no official position in the Government of Kenya. He wields a diminishing-in the political cold and a lot can change in that time, never mind the ass-kissing that he must endure. It is time the PSCU admitted that Uhuru Kenyatta won - and started to act like it.

So long as the PSCU senior directors keep the campaign fires burning theirs will be an exciting tenure in State House. The moment they start the job of communicating Uhuru Kenyatta's government's policies in soundbites that the people can understand and appreciate, theirs will be the dullest job in all of government. They will have to understand, for example, why the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development wants to digitize land records. Not just so the Thirteenth Floor at Ardhi House is finally shut down, but also so that every Kenyan can trade in real property without doubt as to the authenticity of the documentation, thereby promoting capital investment, credit-cost reduction, employment generation, and improved manufacturing statistics. It is eye-wateringly boring shit and explaining it to Wanjiku who most likely has a Form Four education, limited English-grammar skills and a short attention span will take the patience of Job, the determination of Daniel and the loyalty of St Peter. The senior directors of the PSCU lack all of these qualities. It is why Uhuru Kenyatta's re-election shall always be threatened by Raila Odinga's non-existent strengths.

Hubris and milch cows.

How do you build a digital government when the men and women meant to run it have a determinedly analogue version of government and governance? They may have a sophisticated appreciation of digital tools, including digital media, but their instincts are as analogue as electrodes-on-genitals torture methods employed by the colonial era, Kenyatta Era, and Moi Era Special Branch. 

To them, "digital" is simply the application of technological advancements in communications to their communications; it is not the transformation of the peoples' engagement with their government from fear-based to demand-based. It is why leading members of the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit find it useful to use Twitter, Facebook and God-only-knows what else to paint Coalition Era politicians in a bad light while their own Twitterscape lies ashambles because of hacktivists of unknown digital provenance.

Kenyatta the Younger and Anne Waiguru, Devolution and Planning Cabinet Secretary, set off on the right foot with the Huduma Centres. The idea that everyone, regardless of status or wallet-size, is equal at an Huduma Centre is revolutionary. Once you get our electronic token, there are no queues to jump until your number is up. So, if you are a Big Man, you have a choice: sit among the Unwashed Masses or pay someone to sit for you. But there will be no queue-jumping. Sadly, it seems that this is the extent of the Great Digital Experiment. The democratisation of public services is a step to far, it seems, and that is something that simply cannot be allowed to prevail.

If you have ever had the great misfortune of visiting Times Tower you will understand this phenomenon. On the outside, while not exactly beautiful, Times Tower is an imposing, iconic building. It is imposing in and of itself and even without the six-feet high fence, the closed circuit cameras, the private security or armed Administration Police, it is an intimidating building to visit. For years it was also home to the largest group of "brokers" outside Ardhi House's notorious Thirteenth Floor, able to organise the processing of income tax returns to PIN certificates to driving licenses to number-plate issuance with speed - but for a reasonable fee. 

It was a brilliant con by the quick-fingered factotums in Times Tower; they would limit the number of tellers available, slow down their rate of work by simple sabotage - missing paper, missing computer keyboards, and such - and push the desperate wage-earner into the open arms of the broker who, for that reasonable fee, would "facilitate" the processing of your paperwork. The broker would give the factotum his cut and the cycle would be repeated in thousands of transactions every year.

Then one of the factotums came to the same realisation as the denizens of Ardhi House's Thirteenth Floor; since he was in charge of the process, and he had access to all manner of material, why shouldn't he go into the business of manufacturing fictitious documents, records and the like? Suddenly Nairobi was flooded with certificates and licenses and returns which were backed by nothing but thin air. They were not forgeries - after all they were printed on official government paper but they were about as real as the pink unicorns small children are entertained with in their pre-primary education.

The digitisation of the Government of Kenya was meant to wipe the slate clean, clean up the registries and guarantee that what someone claimed was true, what someone presented as proof was genuine, and that the army of brokers that had settled in Times Tower would find new accommodations. And the Huduma Centres were proof that Kenyans would give up a lot of their privileged privacy for certainty and order.

Human idols all have feet of clay. With Team Digital, hubris is their weakness. The arrogance to believe that they alone could change our world, that they alone had the keys to our brighter digital future. They are caught in the same quagmire that demolished the dream that was NARC and poisoned the nusu mkate/nusu mkeka coalition with accusations and counter-accusations that reverberate even today as witnessed between former and present Lands Ministers. Hubris! It is only a matter of time before they shelve all their high talk of change and progress, forget all their promises, and simply set their minds to milking the milch cow that is GoK until its teats are flat as chapatis.

Coming full circle.

If you are a US citizen, you are likely to aspire to beat Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or Mark Cuban at their game, though I suspect many US citizens increasingly view The Donald with great sympathy. On the other hand, if you are a Kenyan citizen and you have made your mark in the private sector, your greatest desire is to become a Big Man or Big Woman in the Government. There are exceptions to this rule, of course but these are the exceptions that prove the rule. The private sector in Kenya has an unhealthy relationship with the Government of Kenya, and that is the reason why Free Laptops for Tots will be beleaguered for the foreseeable future and  the Standard Gauge Railway will cost us more than we bargained for just like the Turkwell Gorge Dam did.

Look at the parade of corporate honchos who have made the serikali their home since 2003. They made their names in the private sector - in banking, commerce, investment, research, medicine and a whole host of endeavours. Some were respected members of the clergy and academia. Some were notorious for their exploits against the forces of law and order. All of them claimed with a certain degree of credibility at the time that they wanted to serve the country and that their expertise, under the right leadership, was what this nation had been waiting for. We believed them and placed them on pedestals. It was too late when we realised that all of them have feet of clay. We have been paying the highest price for this folly ever since.

The United States government is no less corrupt than ours. Nor are the British or French governments any less corrupt. Indeed, British government officials have received official protection for corrupt deals in faraway places such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Tanzania. France's involvement in the corrupt regimes in West Africa is knowledge in the public domain. But in protecting their national interests, the US, Britain and France will go to extraordinary lengths to keep everyone in line; their officials may be lining their pockets, but they do so keeping the big picture in mind: the homeland comes first!

Look at the private sector saviours come among us and weep, fellow Kenyan. In their haste to line their pockets they sold us to the devil and his hordes. Look at the tenders granted by the Kibaki government; how many of the military transports from China are on the road today? How swiftly did we come to the realisation that rolling lorries are unsuitable for our military? Was it before or after someone come to save us had trousered hundreds of thousands of dollars as earnest money?

Look at the tender-combat between ZTE and Huawei over the surveillance cameras tender. The loud murmurings that ZTE's man in the Interior Ministry was reassigned to "other duties" and that Huawei's man is now the one in charge have simply refused to die down. Do you remember that incident involving Members of the National Assembly taking money - sometimes as little as two thousand shillings - to ask embarassing questions on the Floor of Parliament or have you forgotten, keen to keep your eye on the ultimate prize: a government tender of your own?

Our saviours are not out there somewhere waiting in the wings to swoop in and save the day. That is a fantasy best left to small children and the mentally weak. We are our own saviours, but only if we are willing to what must be done to sort out our national interest. We need not act morally; that is the preserve of the clergy and the education sector. But we must keep our eye on the big picture; we do not prosper if prosperity is limited to a few fat cats selling the family silver to the Chinese or the Japanese of the British or the Americans. We all prosper if we sell what we sell for the right price and we all get a cut.

We are many nations in this country. We hold stereotypes of nations that are not us very dear to our hearts. We are selfish to fellow Kenyans and generous with the stranger with a fat wallet. It is why parts of Kenya wish to secede; after all, the involvement of their government in their lives has been more in the form of a war than anything else. It is why other parts of Kenya believe that their is the only nation destined to rule. If we refuse to heal the schisms that permanently segregate us, we don't have to worry about the Ebola virus wiping us out; the triple threats of poverty, ignorance and disease identified by Kenyatta the Elder fifty years ago will do that for us.

It's in our hands.

Crossroads are the universal sign that difficult choices must be made and that each choice will result in conflict. In the performing arts, especially theatre and television, crossroads are demonstrated by emotional choices made by the protagonists. Frequently in the second act, the main protagonist will make the wrong choice which he must reconsider in the third act. We try to recreate what we see in such shows in our real lives, a perverse case of life imitating art. We try and live the lives of our favourite characters and are frequently shattered when things do not go according to the script running in our minds.

It takes a certain confidence in oneself to admit that ones life is not a play. It is not scripted. It can be planned, but it cannot be lived as if there is a director other than the person living the life. We make choices, big and small, everyday. Some bring us joy; some cause us pain. In the end we must be prepared to live with the choices that we make. There is a growing population of young Kenyans who seem to live as if their lives were scripted for television and that forces beyond their control are directing them to make different choices. These young people are unwilling to admit that they are in charge and that it is their choices that will affect their lives. They have become a reflection of the politicians and the politics of Kenya.

From what we have been able to discern by innuendo and insinuation, Kenya at the time of independence was a nation full of hope. The insurgency that had brought the colonial government to the negotiating table had wound down. A constitution that reflected the broad national consensus had been adopted with a great degree of legitimacy. The Independence Cabinet was well-respected and trusted. But in six years, the Constitution was akin to toilet paper, the Cabinet was a joke, and Kenya was in a downward spiral that it is yet to recover from.

Kenya has become a nation of wishful thinkers. We wish to be developed. We wish to be democratic. We wish to be at peace with each other. We wish to have the highest standard of living possible. We wish we had better politicians. We wish everyone had the potential to be great at something. We wish the glamour that our middle-distance and long-distance runners bring could be shared with the Harambee Stars. We wish all these but we are unwilling to do what is needed to achieve them because we believe that our fate lies in the hands of others, that we are powerless to change our fates, that we are not responsible for our choices. Kenya is behaving like the youth who believe that television, movies, radio and the internet are responsible for their choices.

If we were honest with ourselves we would admit that we have stopped paying attention to our nation and its problems. A few of us will keep banging on about the need for one solution or the other in the face of greater and greater odds. But these are the exceptions to the rule. By and large, we and our leadership have turned our attentions inwards; we are more concerned about our selfish needs than those of others. As a consequence, there is this all-pervading feeling that our fate lies in the hands of the United States, the European Union, al Shabaab, China, international trade...anyone but us. And yet it is the choices that we make everyday that have the greatest impact on our fate.

When we notice corruption by our heroes and turn a blind eye to it, we make a conscious choice to condone corruption in high places. When we notice the abuse of power by our heroes, we make a choice to support liars and cheats in their lying and cheating. When we notice waste in the public service, we make a choice to lose our taxes for the sake of the fat few. We keep silent and the corrupt, the liars, the cheats, the embezzlers and their ilk prosper. When they prosper, the soul of the nation gets just that little bit deader. Our fate is not in the hands of others but ours. So snap the fuck out of it, Kenyans, and do your fucking bit!

Moronic, Benji Ndolo?

I am compelled - by the doubling down on stupidity in the security services - to revisit the idiotic ropes-as-security apparatus adopted by the Inspector-General and his minions in their bid to protect...do you even know who is being protected? The ropes-as-security pathogen of idiocy is spreading. Parliament, which already has robust anti-people systems to keep waheshimiwa from getting gunned down or blown up, has now decided to commandeer its lion's share of the pedestrian pavement next to its steel fence along Parliament Road. And talking about the robust protection of our modern day liwalis by Benji Ndolo in the Friday Nation, I have no choice but to slap down this idiocy one more time.

Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto, Willy Mutunga, Joseph Ole Lenku, Raychelle Omamo, Amina Mohammed, Henry Rotich, Julius Karangi, David Kimaiyo, Michael Gichangi, Mutea Iringo and Monica Juma are some of the people who would deserve some form of enhanced protection given their sensitive posts in the security and foreign affairs of the Republic. But the idea that men and women who campaigned vigorously for my vote would need to be protected from me is laughable and, in Mr Ndolo's words, moronic. If they were the politicians they thought they were, they wouldn't ask for my vote with the ethnic-splitting perversity that they have perfected, especially since 1992. They have made their bed and if it happens to crawl with some Kenyans who hate them and all they stand for with a passion, they shall lie in it without asking for a platoon of the Kenya Police to keep them safe.

Security arrangements, whether of buildings or persons, is not made from the simple rubric that so and so oversees a budget of 17 billion shillings and his kidnapping for ransom would be a lucrative opportunity for brigands and sundry malcontents. Even in the badlands of the Forgotten Frontier, I challenge Mr Ndolo to identify one instance where rocket-propelled grenades have been used. Security arrangements are made after a careful assessment of the person and the unique threats he faces. For someone like the Head of State, constant motion is a key element in his security; after all, the President cannot hide who he is or where he is going unless it is being done in a civilian, unmarked vehicle without visible security. A Cabinet Secretary does not need a three-car convoy with armed personnel speeding recklessly into oncoming traffic just so he "can arrive at the office at 6 am to receive briefings" unless there is truly a national crisis that requires his presence in the office.

Kenyans have given up much without getting much in return. The State, in the guise of its officers and its buildings, is now demanding pedestrian walking zones. If you think this argument is overwrought, look at all those Cabinet Secretaries and Principal secretaries who must drive on pavements or into on-coming traffic just so that they are always in motion to avoid assassins. This idiotic approach to VIP protection is being taken to extreme ends by the roping off of pedestrian spaces without any discernible security benefit but great risk to lives and limbs of pedestrians. The logic of pushing pedestrians onto oncoming traffic continues to defeat me. How that makes the CS or PS safer remains a mystery. What it does, though, is to piss us off. And a pissed off population is unlikely to view your security proposals with any kind of favour, Mr Ndolo.

The best security is when the people have a desire to keep you safe. We don't. We won't either if the high and mighty continue to swan about as if they are God's Gift to the Huddled Masses. And given the degree of incompetence these characters have demonstrated in the execution of their public duties, there is very little incentive to even afford them the simple courtesy of respect and deference. Our economy is in the shitter. Fellow Kenyans are being murdered in cold blood. KCSE and KCPE certificates are being held hostage by crazy-eyed headmasters. Famine and starvation are slowly killing thousands of Kenyans. Bhang-smoking matatu drivers are setting records of how many passengers they can put six feet under every day. Police are living in squalor and filth. Magistrates and Prosecutors are cheek-to-jowl with thieves and rapists because courtrooms do not exist. And Mr Ndolo would demand of us forbearance for what amounts to a cabal that has singularly failed in its duties. Maybe he is the moron.

Lamu's troubles have always been about land.

The strategy is simple: blame the last guy. James Orengo was Mwai Kibaki's Minister for Lands in the period between 2011 and 2012 when five hundred thousand acres of public land was irregularly allocated in Lamu. From the disparate bits of information available, this was public land available for allocation for settlement; only 30% of that land was left to locals. President Kenyatta need not have mentioned Mr Orengo's name; all he had to do was impute that if anyone was to blame, it is the former Minister. It is a script that is faithfully being executed by his minions.

If the Land Question were that easy to resolve, that is by blaming someone else for the problems bedeviling you, then we would have sorted out the mess at Ardhi House a generation ago. While President Kenyatta inherited a poisoned chalice, his advisors seem to desire that he swallow its contents wholly without providing an antidote. What will be the effect of fingering Mr Orengo for the mess in Lamu without admitting that the nettled bush is now in his hands and that it is his government that must settle the matter before more lives are lost? None that is good. Shifting blame, if it is part of a strategy for starting with a clean sheet and addressing the problem once and for all, might be the way to go. But if all the President and his minions intend to do is shift blame and "investigate," then Lamu should be prepared for more troubles.

When speaking to the Mpeketoni Attacks, President Kenyatta blamed "local political networks" and absolved al Shabaab, which had claimed responsibility. The President may be right; after all it costs al Shabaab nothing to create the impression that it is running rampant in Kenya except to gain it infamy and notoriety. The Land Question is the bread and butter of all politicians in Kenya; each of their constituents who has the vote wants a piece of land to call his own. Land is the only reliable source of credit and it is the foundation of all our ethnic identities. Even the pastoralists need territory to identify as their own on which they and their herds can roam freely. So until the Land Question is settled, Kenyan politics will be prone to violent shocks such as happened in 1992, 1997 and 2007. If the President is right and local politics is to blame for Mpeketoni, then the solution is to settle the Land Question in Lamu and the "local political networks" will have to find another ground for sowing disaffection among the communities in Lamu.

President Kenyatta has given the Cabinet Secretary for Land political cover to sort out the mess in Ardhi House. Twice he has stood publicly by her side as she has taken on what are described as "corruption cartels" in the Lands Ministry. He has done so in the face of resistance from the National Land Commission, the Law Society and civil society. Mrs Ngilu, the Cabinet Secretary, claims to be reversing what Mr Orengo was responsible for doing. If she succeeds in cleaning up and cleaning out the Land Registry, streamlining the land administration process, and ensuring that land titles' provenances are clear, she will contribute mightily to settling one of the most intractable problems that independent Kenya has ever faced. But if she and, by extension, President Kenyatta do what successive governments have done since 1963, it is almost certain that the "local political networks" will sow so much death and destruction that President Kenyatta's beloved Lamu South Sudan Ethiopia Transport corridor projects will be dead in the water.

President Kenyatta and his Cabinet Secretary, sadly, are playing with a marked deck against cheats and liars. Part of the reason why they may not prevail is that they have become too enamoured of the traditional secrecy and paranoia that pervades the National Executive. Mr Kenyatta has started well by exposing the key beneficiaries of the irregular land allocations in Lamu. He must bolster this by making public the relevant passages of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Report dealing with the Land Question and whatever findings are made by the Directorate of Criminal Examinations must be published for all to read. Secrecy has covered up more problems than it has solved. It is time Mr Kenyatta's government stood naked in the agora for the people to see that it is not hiding any skeletons underneath its skirts.

A cruel joke on the faithful.

In my neighbourhood are seven churches. They are pretty similar in many respects. They all hold multiple Sunday sermons. They all preach the Gospel with varying emphases. They all celebrate marriages. In key respect are all similar: they are ringed by eight-feet high, razor-wire topped fences and armed guards to control access. In a key respect, all but two are remarkably similar: after five in the afternoon, access is limited to a chosen few. Except for the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints in Phase 5 and the Roman Catholic Church in Phase 4 which allow people to enter their premises to play basketball and football in the evenings, every other church in Buru Buru is like a barricaded fortress, repelling the angry pitch-fork wielding hordes from hell.

This is not a screed about the relative merits or otherwise of the Mormons or Catholics in Buru Buru but an observation of how far we have taken this lunacy with our avarice and selfishness. the church, as an institution, was the only legitimate institution to rival the State. It transcended politics, ethnicity, race and even economic status; everyone was welcome to the church as a sanctuary, as an educator and as a healer. Churches never, ever would have been surrounded with fences, nor their windows barred with grilles or their doors padlocked to keep out thieves. The church, and church doors, were open to anyone and everyone. The church, in the community, was not the target of thieves and brigands and the community was not treated with suspicion by the church. The church was the community. The community was the church.

But in the evolution of the church in Kenya with the evolution of the State, politics, the people and social mores and values, we have lost our souls and with it we have lost communities that had stood by our parents through many travails and celebrated many of their successes. It is possible to see a church leader, whether he or she is a preacher or a lay leader, living in the lap of luxury while many of his or her congregants can barely make ends meet. The church leader will tell you that it is due to God's munificence and that One Day God will bestow favour on the congregants if only they keep their faith. but with the daily litany of scandals that consume leaders of the church, whether it is regarding the offerings of their congregants or their congregants' spouses or children, the image of the church leader as the pillar of probity in a world buffeted by sin has suffered desecrations it might never recover from.

Where are the people to turn when the church has adopted the mannerisms of the State, political institutions, thieves and cheats? Someone will argue that the values and mores of the church are the values and mores of the congregation. That person is an idiot. The church was always the one institution where on which we bestowed our trust to make the right decision over the matters that affected us collectively. When Henry Okullu spoke out against contraception for children in 1990, it had afar greater impact on us because of the authority and legitimacy the church still enjoyed. In 2014 when John Cardinal Njue speaks out against the same thing, we roll our eyes and mutter that he is a Jubilee politician in canonical robes and the equivalent of Aden Duale or Jakoyo Midiwo in legitimacy or authority.

Where the church used to subsidise our lives, it now profits just like any other for-profit organisation. Where it was a moral leader, it has been overtaken by individuals with great moral character, even individuals in the church, like the late Nelson Mandela or Archbishop Desmond Tutu; it is interesting that we cannot find a strong moral leader in Kenya in 2014. If you believe that this is an unfair attack on the church, there was that story last week where a church leader, with the support of his congregation, hired armed thugs to beat off other armed thugs who were "invading" the church's property. If you missed the implication, that church leader and his church went to war using militia. Are you still willing to turn a blind eye as the one moral, spiritual and social institution we can rely on becomes a caricature, a cruel joke on the faithful?

Heading to hell in a handbasket.

There are few institutions for the mediation of conflict that have the potential to do so much yet achieve so little as political institutions. Their remarkable record of failure in Kenya can be attributed to the relentless hollowing out of the State and its institutions by a political and corporate elite that placed power and money far higher in the national list of priorities than true political and cultural integration. To them, stability came from the force of arms that the State could deploy to quell any unrest than from a true integration of the disparate communities, interests and peoples of the nation.

In 2014 the theories that sustained an entire autocratic system for forty years still prevail, whether one is a luminary of the "conservative" or "progressive" school of thought. Power flows to he who wields absolute control of the political environment. Take the Coalition for Reforms and Development, for example. While Raila Odinga has proven to be the national political bellwether, he has consistently failed to articulate a political vision that would unite large swathes of even his own political constituency, other than that One Side has always ruled. As a result, he is not seen, even by his supporters, as a national saviour but merely as the one who would replace the side that is eating with the side that should eat, in Kenyan political parlance.

The Jubilee, on the other hand, are no better. The relentless and sub rosa concentration of coercive power in the hands of a few has raised alarm bells among the intelligentsia though this alarm is yet to spread to the general populace. President Kenyatta need not have the command of the disciplined services directly in his hands; but in retaining the power to limit the men or women who could deploy that power at short notice is almost as good. Tweaks are made to statutes, ostensibly for efficiency and effectiveness, that have ensured that offices like that of the Inspector-General of Police or the Chief of Defence Forces are subject to the least degree of civilian oversight as possible. We have kept the appropriations made to the security sector a secret for all of independent Kenya's history without justifying the grounds for the secrecy. As a result, we still do not have a comprehensive knowledge of how many men and women under arms are deployed in Kenya's various disciplined services.

We have been unable to discuss these matters in public because we are still held hostage by our mindsets that privilege the men in charge and ignore the voice of the man on the street. Decisions are made without proper consideration of the people's needs. It is why there is no sense of shame among the elected class every time it squanders our taxes on boondoggles of little financial or social value. It is why the National Assembly's members can feel confident in insulting the voters with Bills such as the Order of Precedence Bill or the National Flags, Emblems and Monuments (Amendment) Bill which do nothing to put food on our tables, lessen the degree of youth unemployment or guarantee that each boy and girl can attend school up to secondary level without bothering with the payment of "fees".

Kenyans have suffered terribly since September 22, 2013. Many have been murdered since that mall was attacked by men who have never been caught or prosecuted. Those that have carried out attacks on innocent Kenyans since then continue to rampage in the forgotten bits of the nation, forgotten by their own government and forgotten by their fellow Kenyans. But the only important question that occupies the minds of the men and women of the presidency and the opposition's ranks is whether Kenya can afford a referendum. If we ever integrate, if we ever unite, if we are able to act as a nation and not as collection of ethnicities and religions and political avarices, maybe we may yet salvage our future. But the Jubilee and the CORD, being a reflection of our base thoughts, have set us on a path of utter destruction.