To the promised land, step by step

The difference this time is that elected leaders are abandoning their parties before their term has ended. This has left the electorate confused. What if I vote for a candidate from one party today and tomorrow he moves to another party? What does the Constitution and the law have to say about this?—Rasnah Warah

In David Rothkopf's Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power, he states, albeit in a wildly different context,

Trust and rapport are, in the day to day operations of any government, much more important than the formal mechanisms of governing.

The formal mechanisms of governing that Mr Rothkopf refers to in this instance are made up of the Constitution of the United States, the National Security Act of 1947, and the rules, regulations and guidelines issued by the US Government to organise the management of ts foreign policy and national security. I believe it is this that lies at the Heart of Ms Warah's question, "What does the Constitution and the law have to say about this?" Plenty, it turns out, but that ignores what the Government is, what it does, and how the people who make up the formal government influence how the Government does what it does.

Elections in Kenya, since the amendment of the former constitution by the insertion of section 2A that stated, "There shall be in Kenya only one political party, the Kenya African National Union" have not been founded on the interpretation of the Constitution or the sound interpretation of the written laws of Kenya. Instead, whittling away at the independence or autonomy of public institutions and the fusing of political and administrative roles have made political parties to be mere vehicles for the acquisition of power; the retention of that power relies almost entirely on ones ability to seek rent from the high office one holds. It is why an elected MP/MCA could resign his parliamentary seat without suffering any judicial repercussions and why his party will not insist that he be held to account in the courts of justice.

It is not surprising that despite the Constitution and statutes like the Elections Act and the Political Parties Act, defections are rife, even though parliamentarians and county legislators have not formally quit their parties. The assumption by the Committee of Experts was that a separation of the Executive from the legislature would reduce corrupt acts where members of the executive were also legislators. As the NYS scandal and the several impeachment attempts against sitting governors have demonstrated, legislators have been able to corruptly influence members of the Executive, demonstrating the same impunity that necessitated a new constitution in the first place.

I believe we are still in a transitional phase, moving slowly and deliberately from the old constitutional order to the one ushered in August 2010. We are naturally impatient to enjoy the benefits of the post-2010 constitutional order and are justly frustrated by the slow pace of constitutional implementation and the persistence of corruption in the Government. However, we must bear in mind that the change we desire requires the total purge of the detritus of the past as well as the complete mental re-engineering of the people in order to reject ideas that have compromised the pace of reforms. 

In this endeavour it is vital that voices such as that of Ms Warah continue to contribute to the national discourse on what we believe we can achieve as a people. Despite the frustrations, it is quite possible that subterranean changes that are yet to see the light of day have already to have effect in subtle ways. Recalling the fiascos of the Kibaki Era ministers when they "stood aside" or resigned and then were later reinstated to the Cabinet, isn't a measure of progress that Charity Ngilu, Michael Kamau, Kazungu Kambi, Davis Chirchir and Anne Waiguru have so failed to make it back into the Cabinet? Despite rumours that they are still on the public payroll, this is progress of sorts and we should build on these incremental changes in the hope that we will reach the promised constitutional land.

A slippery slope indeed

When I was still trying to figure out how to get over bad news Like A Man, I remember a pretty funny story about our post-1990 post-Saba Saba politicians. Two of them had raised their voices at each other while in the National Assembly's debating chamber. As soon as the Speaker banged his gavel and released his inmates on recess, these two worthies decided to take their political disagreement to Parliament's lawn, where, if I am not mistaken, one of them bit the other "on the back" as one of the dailies breathlessly reported the event. This was the proverbial beginning of the slippery slope.

In 2007, at the height of that bitter election, two contenders from the volatile Mt Elgon came to blows, leaving the loser of that brawl in tears of rage. The winner of the brawl went on to win the election. Just last week, in the middle of a bitter internecine contest for the senatorial seat left vacant by Charles Keter as he finally sits his ass down in the Energy waziri's chair, a senior politician claimed another senior politician was uncircumcised, and two members of the same party, if not the same alliance, came to blows while awaiting a flight in the VIP lounge at Wilson Airport.

It used to be that for you to even consider yourself a leader of men, you had to have total command of your emotions, only letting lose when it suited you and benefitted you. Daniel Moi is a pastmaster of the poker face, but when he used to demonstrate a hint of anger, the whole country trembled. This new breed of political leaders do not understand the value of a cool head in hot circumstances, and many of them are ruled by their passions, like wild dogs or big cats or some similar volatile beast of the wild. They have become an embarassment.

No matter how much schooling one has undergone, it matters not when one is an elected representative. A well-travelled, knowledgeable and apparently erudite governor with a resume that had taken him to the highest levels of the private sector couldn't restrain himself in the face of provocative acts by a gauche hairdo with the wit of a tub of lard. He lost my respect the day he lost control and physically assaulted her then lied about it. Now that you have members of the parliamentary leadership exchanging blows in public with their challengers, I don't think we can rely too much on common sense and logic prevailing in this Parliament.

It explains the President's frustrations in the war on graft. Kanu's reign of graft inculcated a sense of invincibility among the eaters and their enablers. While Baba Moi kept a cool head at all times, he encouraged the basest instincts of his most ardent and loyal foot-soldiers. Mwai Kibaki didn't have Mr Moi's deft hand, and neither does Uhuru Kenyatta. Mr Kibaki used his Sphinx-like silence to terrify his acolytes into obedience, though that strategy barely worked if at all. Uhuru Kenyatta has attempted to deploy his anger and rage to corral his underlings; it has only brought him grief.

The passions loosed upon Parliament will not be tamed; there is no incentive to tame them. We have become a nation of the entertained. Nigerian movies will no longer do, not even as they raise their game in special effects and script-writing. We are no longer held in thrall by their complicated love-triangles-with-uchawi-in-the-mix stories. Political verbal and physical combat is what commands our attention, and the more vulgar the verbiage and more slapstick the physical combat, the more entertained we are. 

The United States has the lunatic fringe of the GOP like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Ben Carson to keep them entertained while their retirement savings accounts are wiped out by sweetheart deals between big banks and the White House. Kenyans have their parliamentary leadership, a large dose of African software, a billion missing dollars and a fourth estate so somnambulant it is a wonder it hasn't sleepwalked its way into a fatal accident. When they say that we are on our own, these people are not fucking around about it.

We are experts, yeah?

I have watched every iteration of The Expendables, Die Hard, The Terminator (yes, even the execrable Rise of the Machines and Salvation), Lethal Weapon, Rambo, James Bond, Blade, and Transporter. I can, therefore, speak on authority on the merits or otherwise of AK-47s, Sig Sauer P224s, BTR-80s, the Abrams M1A2, the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon, the Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion and the various merits and, yes, demerits of Israel's Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, the United States' Central Intelligence Agency, the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service, and similar acronymed spy organisations of dubious repute.

Do not labour under the illusion that armchair spymasters have no merit. After all, having immersed ourselves in the vast bulk of spy movie and action movie offerings of the past quarter century, we can predict to an eerie certainty when the bad guy will make an appearance, what he is likely to say or demand, what outfit he and, increasingly, she is likely to wear, and whether or not the protagonist/hero/anti-hero gets the girl or boy, or dies while heroically piloting a doomed airliner/cruise ship while saving the lives of the president/prime minister, et cetera. We are national security experts without the hassle of a relevant university degree, practical experience or inner circle information. And boy do we like to prove our intelligence chops.

Kenya is funny that way. Everyone is an insider. Everyone knows what is going on at State House, Vigilance House, that Survey of Kenya place that houses the NIS, GSU HQ in Ruaraka, DoD HQ somewhere in Karen, and similar places that usually have a "No Photography Allowed" sign emblazoned all over so that you can be in no doubt that they are "Security Zones." (Funny story: Did you know there's a police cell in the bowels of Parliament? No? Neither did I till I made a stupid joke the other day. Smelly place. I don't recommend a visit.)

We are all security experts because of our Rambo-James Bond-John Maclaine obsessions and our rather too frequent extortionate interactions with Joseph Boinnet's boys, AK-47s at the ready with their hands out for a handout, and I don't mean the handouts Rautta-Athiambo refused to hand out when Hiram, Joseph, John B and I were struggling to make heads or tails of "bankruptcy." We watch the Northrop F-5s fly past during Jamhuri Day flypasts and think of ourselves as aces-in-the-making. We watch my friend Eric and his brothers in arms maneuver through the sky in their Harbin Z-9s and imagine we could pull the same stunt Bond pulled in the opening sequence to Spectre. We are security experts in the same way that the Chairman, Qweh, is the boss of me. (Okay, he's the boss of me, but still.)

So because we are experts, we snigger with smug self-satisfaction every time there's a snafu with the President and Commander-in-Chief's safety and security, and we knowingly wink and nod about "security failures." We think to ourselves, "If I was in charge..." and daydream like the Hollywood-addled zombies that we are about how we would kick down doors, takes names and put bullets in heads in the name of the State forgetting that we had the opportunity, once, to wake up in the asscrack of dawn, join other shivering juveniles from our village in the nearby primary school with a football pitch, opened up our jaws wide enough to swallow the morning water buffalo for the potbellied afande to inspect our teeth, outrun the zombies from the village over in the ten kilometre foot race, paid the required bribe and joined the ranks of the kurutus at Lanet or wherever it is they send the army types for training.

We are experts because we are ashamed to admit that by the time we were getting shoved out the doors of Masaku School or Patch or Changes or Quabbz or Bush, most of us were probably twenty-five kilos over the recommended weight for our height, had worked through all our teeth enamel with our enthusiastic quaffing of fizzy drinks, were diligently and assiduously working towards advanced vodka-induced cirrhosis of the liver and were about as patriotic as a general selling charcoal in Yemen. If we were called today, between the order being given and the Land Rovers being despatched to find us, we would have found every conceivable loophole in Chapter Fourteen of the Constitution and the Kenya Defence Forces Act, 2012. Experts we may be, but we are the only ones who know it. As it should be, my friend Eric will say as he lines up the thirty milimetre cannon on his target.

The false promise of ethno-chauvinism

Every now and then, when the planets align and the stars are bright and there is a blood moon in the night sky, the gods do what gods do: they grant me a favour. Being that it is a Thursday, and I completely forgot my Woman-Crush Wednesday duties, I will not be pooh-poohing this gift that today's favour has taken. A respected member of the Kenyan Bar has had this to say about the nation and the tribe,

Open letter to Kalenjin Nation

Ill will is blowing against our nation, the Kalenjin Nation. Kalenjin Nation?? Yes. Kenya is made up of 42+ Nations. A Nation is an ethnic group that shares same or near same language, culture and beliefs. Ethno-nationalism and ethno-centrism has been discussed and written about by such outstanding scholars as Herodotus (484-425 BC) of Ancient Greece to Prof. Hans Kohn (1891-1971), Jewish American Philosopher to Prof. Francis Fukuyama, the current world top Professor of Political Science: nation-states as we know now are artificial constructs. The real nation is the tribe that share an ethnic language.

Before Kenya is, are tribes that are separate nations. To build a strong Kenya, each tribe must have self-unity. It is for this that I call on the Kalenjin nation to rally behind H.E. William Ruto. We must protect him from those that may want to destroy him or his power. He is the pre-eminent and the only leader of the Kalenjin nation. Kalenjins have a sacred duty to protect and support him. And we must begin in the Kericho by-elections. His candidate has to win. Kalenjin culture abhors those that expose their nakedness to outsiders. Before we engage other tribes, we must be united first under our only leader.

This would be an uncontroversial and unremarkable screed if it wasn't for the startling declaration,

He is the pre-eminent and the only leader of the Kalenjin nation. Kalenjins have a sacred duty to protect and support him.

Mr Ruto is the senior-most political leader after the President, Uhuru Kenyatta. Does this automatically make him the "pre-eminent and only leader of the Kalenjin nation"? Does the Kalenjin nation, according to this lawyer's screed, share the "same or near same language, culture and beliefs"? I recall reading somewhere that "Kalenjin" was cobbled together by the colonial government and includes the Elgeyo, the Marakwet, the Kipsigis, the Nandi, the Pokot, the Terik, the Tugen, the Sebei, the Endorois, the Ilchamus, and the Sengwer, and speak a family of a dozen Southern Nilotic languages spoken in Kenya, eastern Uganda and northern Tanzania. When was pre-emindent sole leadership of the "Kalenjin" bestowed on Mr Ruto and by whom? And do the Elgeyo, the Marakwet, the Kipsigis, the Nandi, the Pokot, the Terik, the Tugen, the Sebei, the Endorois, the Ilchamus, and the Sengwer have a sacred duty—a holy duty—to protect and support him?

Much has been asked of Kenyans on account of their ethnic identities, but very little has been given back, in kind or in any other way. Take the case of the Endorois—they have been kicked off their land in the name of environmental conservation and tourist development, scattered to the four winds, and have been denied compensation by not one but three governments, of which all three had pre-eminent Kalenjin leaders in positions of great power. The less said about the ongoing trials and tribulations of the Sengwer and Ilchamus, the better. Suffice to say, these are members of the Kalenjin nation whose sacrifices have gone unnoticed and unrewarded. Pray tell, what holy duty do they have to anyone who has done nothing for them or their welfare?

You can tell that the lawyer has a dim view of other institutions that wield power among the people, concentrating as he is only on the political realm and the levers of governmental power. He is just another Kenyan who imagines that in Kenya the only power worth having is the power conferred by a political process, such as an election, and the office to which an elected leader ascends. The moral power commanded by faith leaders or the economic power commanded by business leaders are of no use to him. Real power is political power, and the senior-most elected politician of an ethnic "nation" is, ipso facto, the most powerful and, ergo, the pre-eminent and only leader.

The people may be slow to the ways of the political world, but they are no longer sheep to be led by the nose. The twenty-first century, which this lawyer enters with trepidation, is built on the ability of the peoples of the world to connect on levels other than the nativistic. The political world will bow down to the commercial one because the people, with access to untold founts of information and knowledge, are free to associate with whom they desire, without immersing themselves in the mudpits of one of the most dysfunctional political environments in the world. That there are apparently well-read and educated men incapable of seeing this simple truism shocks the mind completely and weeps for those swayed by the false promise of ethno-chauvinism.

I am loyal, but not a yes-man

For the record, I neither love nor loath my government; I am loyal to it, though, and I serve it, in my own querulous way because, after all, I am a civil servant Sorry, I am a public officer. Second, I do not believe that my colleagues in Government are quick-fingered, five-fingered-discount-loving pilferers out to amass wealth in creatively unlawful ways. Many are honest, hardworking and dedicated, who go over and above their duty t serve the public. 

 

Third, there are a few men and women who do not share my rose-tinted-glasses view of my government and have lost absolute faith that it is capable of improving the lives of Kenyans. There is little I can do about their pessimism. Finally, I believe that the leadership of Government was legitimately elected. We may argue over judicial integrity in election petitions, but unless proof is adduced to demonstrate that the electoral and judicial process was corrupted from the start, I will act as if I am serving the legitimate Government of Kenya as I will serve the next one and the one after that.

Despite all this, my loyalty does not mean that I am the perennial yes-man, sucking up to the powers that be and ignoring the toads among us. My Government will be ill-served if I do not speak out when bad people do bad things in the name of Government. I am not an amanuensis; I have a duty to point out that a particular scheme is bad if it is indeed bad. To that end, I will speak my mind in the hopes that I will contribute to the improvement of the lives of the people I serve.

There are those among us who forget that loyalty and sycophancy are two different things. Loyalty, to some extent, implies a measure of trust by the loyal servant to the leader. Sycophancy, on the other hand, is blind and unquestioning loyalty. The former requires judgment, while the latter eschews it completely. Even in our constitutional scheme, blind loyalty is frowned upon and, especially public officers, we are called to challenge unlawful orders. The spirit of the Nuremberg Trials infuses modern constitutionalism: it is no longer a defence that "I was just following orders." Sycophants don't get that.

I have had occasion to match wits with sycophants. The modern version of a sycophant is frequently very intelligent, capable of rationalising even the basest instincts of his master's voice, incapable of applying his brilliance to reason or logic. Challenging his outrageous assertions is a test of ones intelligence and forbearance, because for every rational and reasoned proposal, the sycophant will find a black-letter-law justification for why the proposal is disloyal or treasonous. My loyalty has been challenged many times, and I have been accused, believe you me, of trying to sabotage the Government simply because my interpretation of the Constitution and the law, for which I have been very well trained, does not square with the wild imaginations of some men and women close to the seats of power.

For these reasons, when I see that a scheme is wrong, or bad, or unlawful, I will speak out. It is in our interests that our leadership attain the highest degree of integrity and honesty in order to command our deepest loyalty, both as Kenyans and as public servants. If any one among them threatens this goal, they must be exposed and hounded from public life. Pessimism is not a solution; whingeing about how bad things are without offering solutions is not sustainable. We must support every effort to help our leaders be better than they are, so that we, in turn, can be better than we are.

2017 is a-coming

By my count, these are the men and woman who have decided that they think the presidency is a sweet deal and they'd like a piece of it in 2017: Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka, Moses Wetang'ula, Martha Karua. There are those for whom speculation puts them at the will-they-won't-they stage: William Ruto, Alfred Mutua, Evans Kidero. These people must have seriously inflated senses of themselves because come 3rd August 2017, Uhuru Kenyatta will be the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Kenya Defence Forces. You don't need a crystal ball to tell you that.

Everyone elses office is on uncertain terrain. Raila Odinga would do us a great deal of service if he remained the "unofficial" leader of the Minority party, outside Parliament with an eternal axe to grind, bitching about every single tender and sacred cow. As the perennial bugbear of the Kenyan Establishment, Mr Odinga has accomplished more for this country than any other man, president or not. Whether we want to admit it or not, without Mr Odinga shining a light into every nook and cranny that took his fancy, NYS would be ten times the size of Ango-Leasing.

The less said about Messrs Wetangula and Musyoka, the better. It is instructive, though, that both are lawyers. As is Ms Karua, though she is a whole other ball of yarn. For smarts, few come close to the Iron Lady of Gichugu. For guts, she has no equal, not in Government and not in the Minority Party. For stubbornness, she has demonstrated that sometimes, running water will not erode stationary stone.

If you are still living under the illusion that one day, maybe not in 2017, Dr Mutua and Dr Kidero will take their place among the pantheon of Presidents and Commanders-in-Chief, well, I have a bridge in London that I think yo might be interested in acquiring. It is only Mr Ruto whose ascendancy should be considered post-2017. He has come a long way and accomplished a great deal to get to a heartbeat's distance from the Big Chair. He is at his most vulnerable. He is also at greatest risk of going too far to secure his future.

Kenya is not the United States where there is an elaborate pantomime to winning the nomination of your party in order to run for the presidency. In Kenya, there are no parties, at least not as a Yankee would understand it, and the people don't get to weigh in on the choice of candidate nominated by the party. The best they can do, and it is the only thing they can do, is to cast a ballot and vote for the least odious candidate on the ballot. Mr Ruto need now worry about the coalition, alliance or party; all he need worry about is that he may not be the only deep-pocketed candidate post-2022 and the 2013 and 2017 campaigns may not be replicated with the same success in 2022. Unless, of course, Mr Kenyatta finds a less polarising running mate in 2017.

The indignity of theft

We cannot dignify theft.—Wangari Maathai, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, 2004

We may not be able to dignify theft, but we are giving it the old college try going by the efforts of the sanitation departments of the various public agencies, bodies and arms of government to declare so-and-so to be beyond reproach when it comes to the touchy subject of who has their hand deep inside the public cookie jar.

The Leader of the Majority Party in the National Assembly was at one point or the other especially voluble and vocal about the absolute innocence of the then Cabinet Secretary for Devolution and Planning when the goings on at the National Youth Service came to light. Come to think of it, so too did the newly minted Deputy Leader of the Majority Party in the Senate. Now it could be that both were doing what party hacks have a tendency to do, but in light of her recent revelations in an affidavit-by-affidavit spat with another suspect in the unfolding NYS saga we have no choice but to ask whether these two worthies we doing their bit to put the lie to Prof Maathai's words. Because in the past two weeks, they have used extremely unparliamentary language as they distance themselves from the former waziri.

They are not unique. A popular comedian with a TV show of his own has done his bit to make Prof Maathai to be a liar. A con man pretending to be a preacher, whose own mother was a con woman pretending to be a preacher,was caught on camera swindling Christian faithfuls. He was unapologetic and called on his congregation to come to his aid, which they did in their hundreds. He was roundly condemned on social media, news media and newspaper editorials and commentaries. But the comedian "invited" the con man to his popular TV show to "explain himself" and the rest, as they say, is history. The Director of Public Prosecutions has been unable to find a crime that the fake preacher committed; the Attorney-General has been unable to publish rules to control the activities of this con man and others of his odious ilk. If it is not unlawful, then it is not immoral or bad, seems to be the official serikali reaction.

Some of the worst thefts involve the theft of the innocence of children. The Governments of Kenya, Malindi, Mombasa, Kilifi and Kwale have done a pretty good job of ignoring the sexual exploitation of children at the coast at the hands of both foreigners and locals. It is such a pervasive scourge that it has almost acquired the veneer of normality. Whenever there is a public outcry, wrists are slapped and more police are deployed, but by the end of the month, the issue passes from the public's imagination and children at the coast go back to being the playthings of adult monsters.

What is wrong remains wrong, regardless of the foreign accent we slap on it, or the approval of the white man whose approval we always seek. Political corruption is as old as organised government, and Kenyans did not invent the systematic theft of public resources. We have always known it is wrong and it is why thieves seek to cover themselves in the cloaks of political and administrative legitimacy and when those cloaks fail, to hide behind presidential skirts and tribal victimhood. Now we have injected a dose of sexist bias in things. It will not work. Kenyans may be slow to point fingers, but no matter how hard you try, once you are branded a thief, the stench will follow you wherever you go. It will not be a dignified journey.