Rethink the proposal for terror to address boda bodas

I am wholly prepared to concede that the boda boda menace has completely gone out of control. Today's fatal accident between a Citi Shuttle and a boda boda that resulted in the death of the boda boda rider and the subsequent attack by his compatriots that resulted in the bus being set on fire harkens back to the early days of the Mwai Kibaki presidency when his Minister of Transport, the authoritarian John Michuki, attempted to rein in the out-of-control matatu industry.

We all remember how the matatu industry came to be so dominant. The fateful decision by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta to accommodate the demands of "investors" in the matatu sector, while simultaneously undermining the urban public transport jointly operated by City Hall and Kenya Bus Service at the time, would eventually end up with the organised criminal enterprise known as Mungiki becoming a law unto itself. Mr. Michuki, both as Minister of Transport and Minister of Internal Security, waged a violent and relentless war to rein in the Mungiki and the matatu sector.

When his war started, it was waged entirely through enforcement of the existing regulatory framework enacted by the central government (Traffic Act) and City Hall (Nairobi City by-laws). The decisions made by Mr. Michuki regarding road safety led to the imposition of new traffic rules on speed governors, night driving for PSVs and seatbelt use by PSV passengers. They were not enough; the road fatalities continued to climb. The Mungiki had morphed into an army and it took great extrajudicial violence to rein them in: Mr. Michuki oversaw a bloody campaign of abductions and extrajudicial killings that finally broke the Mungiki's back.

The war on the Mungiki had terrible knock-on effects. Police forces, especially the dreaded CID, were later on to be unleashed on "terrorists" and "terrorist sympathisers". It will never be known how many innocent Kenyans fell victim to the violence on Mr. Michuki's orders; what is known is that the framework of abductions and murders became entrenched. The allegations against the police forces arising out of the June 2024 and June 2025 public protests hammer home this view.

In the 2025 protests, "goons" were deployed by elected representatives to counter-protest the so-called Gen Z protestors. Many of the "goons" were ferried to protests by boda bodas, and many of the "goons" were, in fact, boda bodas. This was a culmination of a decade of lax regulation of the sector. From as early as 2012, it was clear that without a coherent road safety policy for boda bodas, they would become ungovernable. Half-hearted efforts to control them always came a cropper, whether it was confining them to designated parking spaces in Town or the wearing and use of safety equipment.

What is certain is that the transformation of what we know as public transport has not been followed by a rethinking of existing road transport policies. The design of roads remains rooted in a desire to move large numbers of passenger motor vehicles from one place to another. Other road users - including mkokoteni pullers, boda bodas, traditional taxicabs, digital taxicabs, licensed and unlicensed matatus and traditional buses - are afterthoughts, if they are thought of at all. Their needs are only addressed long after the needs of passenger motor vehicle road users have been addressed and even in this arrangement, there is a hierarchy of motor vehicle roads users. At the top are Government officials in their massive Toyota Land Cruiser Prados and chase cars; at the bottom are the owners of sub-1000cc ex-Japan shitboxes.

The chaos fomented by boda bodas is part of a larger dysfunction in road transport policy. Chasing the boda bodas from public roads will not solve the other parts of the dysfunction. A holistic approach is called for. One area of focus that would improve the situation is the rehabilitation and upgrading of non-motorised transport infrastructure, particularly footpaths and on-street business (otherwise incorrectly called "hawkers"). What public investment that has been set aside for new roads should be dedicated to rehabilitating non-motorised infrastructure to ensure that pedestrians, on-street vendors and non-motorised transportation like mkokoteni are effectively incorporated in the infrastructure. In my opinion, this would eliminate half of the congestion on public roads, with pedestrians and the vendors who serve them being confined exclusively to the pavement, and out of harms way.

Secondly, more off-street parking should be prioritised, and new PSV termini for off-peak parking developed to accommodate the massive number of PSVs that spend half the workday parked on the street, taking up valuable public road space that could otherwise be used to move motor vehicles within the CBD. This should be done concurrently with an upward revision of on-street parking fees. The current parking fee is the CBD and its immediate environs is too low which has the effect of making it ineffective in regulating availability of on-street parking. The proposal to introduce a motor vehicle tax from the 2024 was intended, in part, to solve this problem but in typical ham-fisted, deaf-eared serikali fashion, it was not introduced honestly and was shot down together with that accursed tax law in which it was contained.

Mr. Michuki's draconian tactics to subvert the Mungiki's hold on public transport ended up creating a monster that continues to consume us, more than twenty years after the destruction of Mungiki. Messrs. Chirchir (Roads and Transport) and Murkomen (Interior and National Administration) need a different approach, one that has the highest chance of transforming road transport into a safe and efficient system, and one that does not need coercive force to work. It would also have the added incentive of creating new public procurement opportunities that will create jobs at every level, which is something this Government is determined to address. But proposals to employ tiger same draconian measures beloved of the late Mr. Michuki will not only not work, but will guarantee that the Government is reviled going into the next general election.

Kizuri chajiuza

Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi did not sing his own praises. For that, he had an entire choir composed of stalwarts like Sharif Nassir, JJ Kamotho, Ezekiel Barng'etuny, William Ole Ntimama and the Muungano Choir. Longevity in Kenyan electoral politics - he was first nominated to the legislative Council in 1952 - had turned him into a household name and not even the Kihika Kimanis of the 1970s could deny that Mr. Moi's place in the firmament of Kenyan politics was well-established, if not rock solid.

Mr. Moi's successors were never that lucky. Though, of the three of the them, Mwai Kibaki was the longest in politics, he did not have the political presence that Mr. Moi had, relying instead on his place as the longest leader of the Official Opposition and his ability to unite disparate Opposition leaders into a workable coalition. Mr. Kenyatta, and his successor, unfortunately had neither Mr. Moi's legitimacy nor Mr. Kibaki's broad acceptability, instead being welded to each other with the accusations by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court of crimes against humanity stemming form the post-election violence of 2007/2008.

What they brought to presidential politics is a PR machine that was unrivalled; Mr. Raila Odinga's Coalition for Reforms and democracy was saddled by old men with very old ideas intended to prosecute old school politics in the twenty-first century. CORD was defeated, but only barely, because despite the PR razzmatazz, the vast majority of the voting public were impressed by neither coalition. Unlike Jomo Kenyatta who was intimately connected to Kenya's independent, the least not by how he and the other members of the Kapenguria Six were jailed by the colonial government, the presidential candidate and his running mate in Jubilee had nothing to point to as their place ion Kenya's political narrative and so they could only sell PR and very little more.

It must frustrate mightily that few people have strong enough feelings to voluntarily sing ones praises, despite ones highly developed sense of worth and importance. You inherit a national government whose coffers are running empty, saddled by foreign debts that threaten to overwhelm, and with dedication and determination, one has found a workable formula to keep the economic wheels turning. And yet, the men and women who should, MUST, acknowledge you political genius continue to pay attention to other less-important things like extra judicial killings, rampant corruption, tens of thousands of kilometres of potholed roads, uneven healthcare services and similar wasteful pursuits. You wonder, "What is wrong with these people?"

So, you make the fateful decision to sing your own praises. The expression, "kizuri chajiuza, kibaya chajitembeza" does not feature in your formidable repertoire of popular phrases. An extensive period of PR driven political manoeuvring is hurtling to its denouement, and the best one can do is say, "I am the best!" None can predict time; so it remains to be seen what good vainglory will bring.

Prof. Mutua's anti-boda boda crusade is misplaced

I see boda boda becoming an existential threat to the republic. - It's time to get rid of boda boda (Prof. Makau Mutua, Sunday Nation, 27th July, 2025)

Many boda boda riders are reckless and dangerous. Many boda boda riders, including their passengers riding pillion, have been involved in serious accidents, many fatal. It has gotten so bad that public hospitals have entire wards dedicated to victims of road traffic accidents involving boda boda. In Nairobi City, boda boda are driven dangerously and recklessly, almost always in complete disregard for the High Code, and have become major contributors to the chaos on public roads, leading to traffic gridlock, and wastage of hundreds of man hours everyday.

Many who patronise boda boda transport services do so because all the other options are either too slow, too expensive, or too inefficient. For example, when it comes to courier services in the City, boda boda riders are a cut above the rest, including global behemoths like Deutsche Post and EMS Speedpost. They are fast, reliable and efficient and, barring the teething problems of the early years of operation, they are also the trusted couriers for food delivery in the City. A vast swathe of Nairobi residents have a boda boda guy on speed dial.

Prof. Mutua, though, is offended by their existence, and he has marshalled his considerable intellect to deconstruct the many ways that boda boda pose a national security threat to the republic. In the late Mr. Shakespeare's words, the lady doth protest too much, methinks (Hamlet - Act III, scene II).

He alleges, without proof, that boda boda will soon become something akin to a militia with warlords to be commanded by the thuggish Kenyan political classes, and so it is in the national interest to not just control boda boda, but we must be rid of them. Maybe he is right, but absent of any credible proof of not just the inherent, unique, criminality of boda boda and the possibility that it will be converted into militias under the sway of politicians, his prescription for the boda boda problem should be taken with a massive dose of scepticism.

Prof. Mutua is now a more or less permanent resident of Nairobi City so he cannot pretend not to see that boda boda are just one element of the public transport dysfunction in the City, and in the republic. Nairobi City's public (and private) road network is badly and dangerously designed. It prioritises the mass movement of passenger cars, and eschews many modern safety features to reduce road traffic accidents and promote the safe, efficient and effective movement of people from place to place.

If Prof. Mutua cares to remember, the 1970s and 1980s public transport system in Nairobi City resembled that of many European cities. Of course, the private motor vehicle ownership numbers were quite low, the City's population had not succumbed to the mass influx of rural Kenyans after the collapse of agriculture, and City Hall and the Public Works Department had not fully embraced procurement fraud to the extent they did. Boda boda, and many other transport sector scofflaws like matatus, simply took advantage of a broken system, and continue to operate with impunity because the corrective measures necessary to protect Kenyans and provide them with safe, efficient, affordable and effective transport services are not being prioritised by the Government.

If we were to compare Prof. Mutua's bugbears to private motorists, many similarities emerge. A substantial proportion of private motorists do not observe the Highway Code, often drive into oncoming traffic, will not give way even when they are required to, will park in undesignated places, will flee from road accident sites if police are not immediately on-scene, will install ultra-bright LED and halogen headlights and switch them to high beam even when it is not necessary, and on and on and on. Indeed, much of the animus against boda boda is because private motorists cannot get away with half of the stunts that boda boda get away with and it makes private motorists, like the chauffeur-driven Prof. Mutua, green with envy.

A small subset of private motorists are so much worse than boda boda: the senior public officer in hurry. Many road users have been the victims of GK-plated Land Cruiser Prados driven on the wrong side of the road, usually with three or four chase cars in tow, at high speed, horns and sirens blaring, and ultra-bright halogen lights flashing in oncoming motorists' eyes, making already terrible traffic situations worse.  Prof. Mutua talks of the risks posed by no-plate boda bodas and refuses to even acknowledge the existential threat prosed by no-plate silver/grey Subaru Foresters and Subaru Outbacks operated by heavily armed and masked un-uniformed secret police units abducting Kenyans off the streets in broad daylight. What is good for the goose, sir, is good for the gander. Boda boda are a reflection of the Government and the Government's priorities. Boda boda stared into the abyss that is public transport in Kenya, and the abyss stared right back.

Before Prof. Mutua addresses the speck in the boda boda's eye, he should take time to remove the massive mote in the Government's eye. If we address the shortcomings in public transport in a holistic fashion, the boda boda menace will be tamed. Thus, we must begin by prioritising the safe, efficient, affordable and effective movement of people from place to place. This can be done by slowing down the massive investment in extra public roads and extra public road lanes, and increasing the public investment in bus termini, bus stages, dedicated bus lanes, safe and inclusive pedestrian walkways (you would be shocked how difficult it is for persons with disabilities to traverse the Central Business District), and the operations of PSV buses and matatus. I hope Prof. Mutua and his fellow unhappy wabenzi are listening.

The effects of antisocial media

Online spaces have lost much of the utility they offered when they were first popularised in the early 2010s. They have become spaces where highly motivated agitators will go to wage wars that, on closer inspection, advance no fresh ideas or address any matters of contemporary notoriety. Trolls have taken over, and trollish behaviour is encouraged. Complex software algorithms channel the worst trends o your timeline and it is only an active curation of your timeline that will ensure that you do not fall prey to the machinations of the trolls, though this doesn't always work.

In Kenya, the social media space is dominated by young people, classified in the popular lexicon as GenZ. Some are thoughtful and wise beyond their years. The vast majority, though, are badly educated and aren't shy about flaunting their bad education for all the world to see. What they are interested in, it seems, is the total number of likes and retweets they will receive for the stuff they spout. In short, they seek widespread notoriety, if not fame or infamy, no matter what.

What is increasingly noticeable about them is how very little they read about the things they purport to speak about. Few of them have taken the time to review the documents of their civic life, whether it is the Constitution or the Laws of Kenya, or the foundational documents of the various societies, organisations and associations they happen to be members of. They extract a sentence from these documents, apply their own biased lenses to any analysis of those sentences, and then publish their half-baked views for all the world to see and when they are called out for it, instead of taking lessons from the criticism, they double down and invite hordes of equally-uninformed trolls to support their viewpoints.

These people are, as a result, easily manipulated. You can tell by how easy it has been for the 527/= gangs to hijack hashtags and promote reactionary views that are contrary to the stated desires of GenZ agitators. Instead of prosecuting their ideas, GenZs are forced to counter the subversion of their agenda by the 527/= gangs, and in the end, their GenZ agenda is never implemented and the movement of the day fizzles out.

This is apparent in the way GenZ have been outmanoeuvred when it comes to public finances. The victory they won at such terrible cost in 2024 with the withdrawal of the Finance Bill has not been replicated. Though a valiant effort was mounted in 2025, and the same terrible outcome for GenZ was visited not hem once more, they have not fundamentally altered the structure of public finance or how public money is collected, spent, ad accounted for. This was recently revealed by their utter lack of understanding of what it means for the Government to borrow.

Many of us, whether GenZ, Gent, Millennial or Boomer, are motivated with deeply selfish interests and nowadays, we are not shy about stating this upfront. It is no longer about the commonweal; what matters is the individual stomach. Because reactionary forces, whether political, professional, social or cultural, have spent the decades since Mwai Kibaki's presidential electoral victory in 2002 subverting the common good, and promoting selfish person interests, the structures that would have built resilience among and for the people have withered and atrophied. Brief spurts of harambees for Genz protest victims only starkly reveal how far apart we are as peoples.

If rational discussions cannot be held among people, regardless of the stated desire for reform and change, little will occur, and shattered dreams will litter the online spaces, where performative wailing and gnashing of teeth will take place. The irony of faster and wider telecommunications among the largest proportion of the population being used to divide them and poison the civic bonds among them is not lost on me. Social media, it turns out, is dangerously antisocial.

Don't fall for it, Hanifa.

Someone has set a trap for Haifa and it will be interesting to see whether she will fall into it. Let me explain.

One of the most effective ways to undermine civil society in Kenya has been to co-opt its members into the firmament of the State. After 2002, Mwai Kibaki was acutely aware that he would not govern if he was constantly facing off against civil society. So he appointed its members to public offices, and promoted the political ambitions of others. His government enacted laws that created positions for civil society representatives. (The Law Society of Kenya was a prime victim of this tactic.) It paid off.

If it wasn't for the KANU holdovers in Kibaki's government, and Kibaki's own KANU-ist instincts, epitomised by the reckless and wanton extra-judicial killings and widespread looting by Kibaki and his cronies, civil society would never have gotten the second wind it did that culminated in the 2010 constitution. But the principle of the thing remains true: co-opted civil society hard-asses will spend so much time trying to "reform government from within" that they will fail to realise that they have been swallowed by Leviathan.

There is a nascent, but seemingly determined, effort to put Hanifa up as a candidate in the next general election as the woman representative of Nairobi City County. If she falls for it, she will lose everything she has built for herself the past two years, the least not being her name and her identity. If you think this is hyperbolic fearmongering, search on YouTube for the video of the day the President signed the Finance Bill into law and see the meek image that Millie Odhiambo cut at State House. She looks so out of place and one wonders if she knows that she is no longer the fearless lioness she was when the Security Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2014, was introduced in the National Assembly.

There is no institution better at sanding down your naturally rough instincts to stand up for the weak and forgotten than Parliament. It doesn't matter whether you enter Parliament as an independent or as a member of a political party; your name and identity are swallowed up in the maw of an institution that no longer represents the interests of the people but only the interests of parliamentarians and, whenever it is profitable so to do, the interests of the executive branch of the Government. And if Parliament will not co-opt you, it will isolate you, and you will be a lone voice in the wilderness, a person of legislative irrelevance. Can you think of one effective reformer in Parliament today?

As a member of the Committee of Experts, Otiende Amollo agreed with and promoted the constitutional principle of the separation of powers. The executive would make and implement policies, including development policies. Parliament would enjoy the power of the purse, that is, it would decide whether or not to fund any of the executive branch's development policies. But witness the recent determined push by Mr Amollo and his colleagues to "entrench CDF in the Constitution" so that they can undermine several judgments of the constitutional court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court that "CDF is unconstitutional". The reformers, like Mr. Omtatah, have been isolated and ignored and their strongly held beliefs about the role of Parliament have been received by their parliamentary colleagues the same way one receives a fart in a poorly ventilated room.

A woman representative is just one person among 349 parliamentarians, a single member of an institution that requires collective action to get anything done. Mr. Omtatah, frustrated that he has not gotten any of his colleagues on his side, has spent a great part of his time in the Senate litigating in the constitutional courts to hamstring the work that the Senate (and National Assembly) has done and continues to do. He has had limited success, but this is exactly what he did when he was in civil society before he was elected. His election did not change the trajectory of his life; in fact, it could be argued that it undermined it greatly.

Hanifa faces the same challenges that Judge Maraga faces. Unless she can marshal a cohort of like-minded women and men to contest for the 349 elected parliamentary seats and 1,150 elected county seats, she will be a lone voice in an institution that is expert at co-opting, or stifling, lone voices. She shouldn't fall into this trap.

Saba Saba at Thirty-five

I was a boy when Kamukunji became a battleground between the restore-multiparty zealots and Baba Moi. And a boy, I filtered the political questions of the day through the lens of my parents' anxieties. It is thirty-five years since "the opposition" forced Moi to decree that Section 2A of the former constitution would be repealed and Kenya would be restored to multi-party politics.

The more things change, the more thee stay the same.  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. - Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr  (1849).

History is a funny thing. The longer you live, the more you forget, the more you must be reminded by those who are younger than you. The Seven Bearded Sisters initiated a sequence of political events that culminated in the restoration of multiparty democracy. They could not have predicted how wildly the pendulum would swing against the principles they held or, even more wildly, how many of the pro-democracy campaigners would betray those principles or how.

Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel Moi and Mwai Kibakli oversaw a security apparatus that murdered pro-democracy campaigners with impunity. Extra-judicial executions of Kenyans fighting for a more democratic political environment defines some of the darkest moments of the Kenya political project. In 2025, the political environment is redolent of the accusations of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. In many cases, the same faces feature. Where once they were bit players in a larger political narrative, today, they are star players.

What has not changed is that the pro-democracy campaigners are young, educated and highly motivated. They will not win, though, unless they learn the lessons of the 1990s and 2000s. They must eschew the narrative that revolutionary change ends with the toppling of an existing order. They must accept that the project they are engaged in is a multi-generational one, one that will require the highest level of dedication and sacrifice for the longest period and that it shall need to be handed off to successive generations who, even in the most optimistic scenarios, may not enjoy the fruits of.

One of the defining features of the 1990s was the fracturing of "the opposition" and the co-option by Moi's KANU of opposition stalwarts. Many "ate ugali" in State House. They never lived down the accusations of betrayal and died as pariahs. Many "crossed the floor" of the National Assembly and entered into "coalitions" with the ruling party. What they got in return was lucrative public tenders that were never closely scrutinised by the Controller and Auditor-General - or Parliament.

I was in India when the Congress government of Inder Kumar Gujral fell. I was still there when the BJP government of Atal Behari Vajpayee succumbed to the anti-Muslim Hindu supremacism of the RSS and Sangh Parivar culminating in the Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom. The six years between the two events demonstrated to me the value of a coherent ideological consistency for a political party. The relatively swift destruction of the Congress's socialism between the election of Haradanahalli Doddegowda Deve Gowda and the resignation of IK Gujral was mirrored by the ascension of AB Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. In the former, the party stopped believing in its own ideology; in the latter, the party solidified its ideology, purged the party of Doubting Thomases, and cemented its own rule for the next two decades, culminating inn the ascension of the Hindu purist, Narendra Modi.

Kenya's Gen Z, violently effective as they may be, do not have a coherent political ideology. They will never take political power so long as this remains true. They are a mirror to the ideological nakedness of the Second Liberation Movement: it was only invested in the restoration of multiparty democracy, and no more. Saba Saba 1990 forced Moi to recalibrate his politics; it did not establish an alternative political philosophy and therefore, it was easy to fracture the opposition.

We are in 2025. The names in the parliamentary Hansard are almost all new. The same narrative is being told, though. Laws that make no sense. Constitutional amendments that cement politicians' power but offer nothing for the electorate. "Activists" demanding "change" but whose members are only held together by vague promises of "full implementation of the constitution" and not much else. The Gen Z may have developed into a political force; but they have no political identity or ideology. (These contradictions befuddle me, I promise.) Thirty-five years after Saba Saba, the shedding of blood is the same; the lack of ideology is the same; will the political outcome be the same?

What goes around, comes around

Toadies are an exhausting lot. There is one in the senate, and I won't say for whom he toadies, who's fat smug face arouses a deep and baleful rage that it is a wonder he has not been smothered in his bed by the woman he shares it with. There is another one in the National Assembly who speaks with cut-glass kizungu who does so much to remind the people why they hate her and hate her with a passion that it boggles the mind that her not-so-great wealth and power has so far managed to insulate her from the national bile she inspires.

These sorts of people can be found in all sorts of places. They all have the same qualities, though: they are just decently smart enough to be noticed but not so smart as to make anything meaningful of themselves. They are very good at sussing out the direction of the wind, even if the wind happens to be their patrons farting in their face. And because their noses are so finely tuned to wind-direction, they know when to lay supine for the boss's belly rub and when to push whoever happens to be in the vicinity into the path of their boss's inevitable rageful flip-out. And their bosses ragefully flip out a great many times.

They are excellent snitches and, in this day and social media age, expert snitch-taggers. The more successfully they toady, the more they are rewarded, and they usually turn these rewards into armies of 578/= snitch-tagging bloggers who do nothing but parrot the praise-singing of the toadies. They are also well acquainted with the use-and-dump philosophy; so long as it is in their masters' interest, they will use you, abuse you, and dump you faster than they dispose of the prophylactics they use during their more careful assignations. Yet, they forget, they too, are equally disposable.

This is, in fact, their defining characteristic. They assume airs and turn their noses up at the rest of us, believing that the boss would never turn on them. They step on toes and bury knives in so many rivals' backs, it is a wonder that don't notice the blood trails they leave behind wherever they go. This blindspot stays firmly in place until the day they are replaced by brand new toadies. When their usefulness ends, because they no longer pay attention to the task at hand, their fall from grace is so abrupt and so violent, many never recover.

A former chief justice cuts a pitiable sight these days. When he was at the height of his powers, members of the Bar and Bench feared him, and grown men and women quaked in their shoes in terror whenever he turned his attention to them. He wielded power with a brutal viciousness, all in the service of the man he served. He was pitiless. He was remorseless. He was relentless. He did it all to please his master. Then the end came. It was quick. It was brutal. One minute he was in in. The next minute he was a pariah.

Gone were the whispered silences whenever he entered a room; he no longer had rooms to enter. Gone were the furtive glances whenever he passed one by; now even children stare him dead in the eye without fear. Gone was the respectful attention with which people listened to his declamations; now he is lucky if a matatu kange notices he has asked for his thirty-bob change back. Toadies think that they will reign with their masters forever. And while karma doesn't exactly work that way, what goes around, comes around.

What is Judge Maraga playing at?

When Mr. Okiya Omtatah was elected in 2022, his election as declared at several polling stations in Busia County. Several judgments of Kenya's superior courts have ruled that the election results at the polling station are final; the results at the county level declaring, for example, Mr. Omtatah to be elected as the Senator of Busia County, are tallies of the results from the polling stations within the county. If Mr. Omtatah wanted to ensure that he was not cheated of his victory, he would have had an agent to represent his interests in each of the 760 polling stations in Busia County.

Now Mr. Omtatah, and Chief Justice Emeritus David Maraga are eyeing the presidency. Mr. Omtatah is familiar with the cut-and-thrust of an election to the senate, though on a considerably smaller scale to that of a presidential election which in 2022 consisted of around 56,000 polling stations. Judge Maraga is not so lucky.

While he may have a clue as to the scale of a presidential election - after all, as Chief Justice he presided over a presidential election petition at which statistics were bandied about by the parties - he has not yet participated in a cutthroat contest such as the one a presidential election usually is. What little we know of his plans to secure victory in the presidential election does not inspire confidence.

The presidential election consists of the election results at each of the 56,000 polling stations as captured in Forms 34A, the tallies at the county level captured in Forms 34B, and the final tall at the national tallying centre captured in Form 34C. If he is well-prepared (and well-resourced), he will have at least one agent at the 56,000 polling stations, 47 agents at the county tallying centre, and a battery of agents, lawyers, political operatives and supporters at the national tallying centre to ensure that none of his votes is stolen. For this to be true, he needs to have started the onerous job of setting up from scratch a ground game to mobilise supporters who will volunteer time, resources and energy to support his candidature, whether he stands in the election as an independent or as a candidate sponsored by a political party.

Since he has not declared that he is a registered member of a political party yet, we shall assume that he is still mulling where to pitch his tent or he is seriously considering a dark horse campaign as an independent. Either way, he still needs a team to help him organise his campaign.

First, he needs forty-seven county team leaders. They will help him map the 290 and constituencies and identify the current 1,150 elected county assembly representatives, 290 constituency representatives, 47 county woman representatives, 47 senate representatives, 47 county governors and deputy county-governors, 47 speakers of county assemblies, 47 clerks of county assemblies, 47 county secretaries, and the nominated members of the National Assembly, Senate and County Assemblies, together with he political parties that sponsored them to the various legislatures, and the strength or weakness of the incumbents.

He will need all this baseline data to decide whether he should sponsor his own slate of candidates or poach the incumbents from the political affiliations they are members of. The dossiers will be voluminous and tedious to read. But read he must. This is not swotting for the Bar; its way more difficult than that.

Second, he will need to commission several polls to gauge his level of popularity at this point, to gauge the most resonant political questions that he can exploit, to gauge the level of support the incumbents enjoy, to gauge the level of opposition he is likely to face when the campaign is up and running, among a host of many other political issues.

Third, he will need to identify the sources of his campaign finances to pay for the cost of campaigning. County offices. County staff. County volunteers. Cars. Airplane tickets or charters. Airtime. Internet data bundles. Computers. Mobile phones. Meals. Hotel accommodation. Several thousand line items in a complex budget.

Fourth he will need to form a headquarters team of campaign staff. Lawyers (of course). Accountants. Personnel managers. Finance managers. Transport officers. Drivers. Bodyguards. IT technicians. Webpage developers. Telephone operators (or their modern-day equivalent). Mailroom gremlins. Secretaries. Personal assistants. Messengers. Dozens of jobs that have nothing to do with politics have to be staffed up over a matter of months.

Fifth, he needs to fashion a manifesto. The Message he will campaign on. The political brand he will fashion for himself. It is not just vibes and Inshallah. Professional politicians have been doing this for as long as he has been an adult. He is starting the race at the back of the pack and whether he can build a brand that can surpass the current brand in power is all a matter of intuition and storytelling. Judge Maraga is not an intuitive or natural storyteller.

So far, he appears happy to portray himself as a man who has announced that he intends to seek the presidency. He doesn't not appear to be doing much else. While there is a coterie of social media mavens and dingbats who will sing his praises to the moon and back, they do not appear to be a political campaign team of any sort. Time flies when you're in the aluminium siding business, as they say in the United States. If he is not careful, Judge Maraga will blink and find himself locked out of the ballot for want of a real political campaign strategy.

The people shall

This is my view, and no one else's: a constitution is a piece of paper until enough citizens take the necessary steps to respect, protect and uphold the constitution. In Kenya, the mistake that many learned friends have made is to assume that the constitution will only be "implemented" after the state, state officers, state agents and state organs respect, protect and uphold the constitution. They are, respectfully, wrong.

There is a lot that the state can do to celebrate the highest principles of the constitution, but the state will not do any of those things unless the people make it. Kenya's Second Republic was promulgated in 2010 and one very day thereafter, there are many courageous Kenyans who took it upon themselves to live according to the edict in Article 3, Clause (1) of the Constitution of Kenya. One of the seminal moments in this battle was the decisive (after a fashion) defeat of the BBI process that sought to ameliorate the suffering of the political classes while trampling on the wishes and desires of the peoples of this fair land.

I say "ameliorate" because a careful examination of the proposals that received the greatest support of the political classes was the expansion of the unelected offices that politicians would be entitled to after a general election. These unelected positions, ostensibly to ensure that "no part of Kenya is left out of Government" were intended to establish a post-election coalition in all but name between the majority party, the minority party and the unhappy losers in presidential and gubernatorial elections so that they would not foment opposition to the government of the day.

Household economic questions were given short shrift; the cost of living is the highest it has ever been, never mind the posh-sounding pablums by the Council of Economic Advisors. Mr. Miguna Miguna's proposal to slash the take-home salaries of elected state officers did not even receive the courtesy of a response. The proposal by Mr. Ekuru Aukot to create a more equitable parliament, fifty/fifty between men and women and fewer in number (aka Punguza Mizigo Bill), was rejected out of hand. Mr. Okiya Omtatah's campaign to audit the public debt has been opposed at every turn by successive governments. In short, the people's needs were not on the table; the needs of fat-cat politicians, used to the truffles of the state, took centre stage.

It is only when enough citizens impose their will on the state that the constitution will be implemented in full. It will not be implemented only if the only thing you have in your hand is a court order. Take the BBI fiasco as a guide: while it was defeated in the law courts, the current parliament has taken upon itself to revive the process on its own motion, with a few parliament-specific goals in tow. This time round, despite several judgments of the superior court, parliament is plowing full-steam ahead with parliamentarians' desire to "entrench CDF in the constitution". Mealy-mouthed explanations about the "benefits of CDF" fly in the express findings of the superior courts: Kenya does not need wasteful public funds purporting to implement programmes of national and county governments.

It has been twelve months since the government faced the brunt of the anger of young Kenyans and the president "withdrew" the Finance Bill 2024 after it had been enacted by parliament. What Kenyans did on that terrible day last year was to espouse the highest principles of the constitution to respect, protect and uphold the constitution. They were back on the streets of many cities and towns of Kenya on the one year anniversary. Their resolve does not appear to have waned despite a year of propaganda and search engine optimisation by propagandists of the state. Constitutions are not self-executing instruments; they require the blood, sweat and toil of the people to make any kind of sense. Kenyans demonstrate this truism with a resolve that should terrify the men and women who have chosen to suborn and pervert the constitutional order.

Judge Maraga's other choice

Chief Justice Maraga (Emeritus) gave an interview on the 18th June, 2025, where he announced that he intended to stand in the net presidential election. The interview covered a broad range of current political questions, and the announcement was treated with little enthusiasm by the interviewer, Mr. Joe Ageyo. It is a sign of the seriousness, or lack thereof, that Judge Maraga's presidential ambitions is treated.

A very, very small straw poll among my online horde (which is not dispositive of anything) supports the idea that Judge Maraga is in the wrong campaign. He beat out a relatively strong field to be appointed as Kenya's second Chief Justice under the 2010 Constitution. As head of the Judiciary, he tried his best to advance the administration of justice by expanding the real estate development of the Judiciary and keeping out of political contests. That is until his Supreme Court nullified the 2017 presidential election which he followed up by calling for the dissolution of Parliament for failing to meet the Tw-thirds Gender Rule. Anyway, I digress.

Judge Maraga was a good judge and a good Chief Justice, never mind what the likes of Senior Counsel Ahmednasir Abdullahi say about him. During the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic, he ensured that the courts continued to function efficiently and even after Uhuru Kenyatta and his henchmen "revisited" the Judiciary by slashing the Judiciary budget so viciously it is a wonder it continued to function in the dying days of Uhuru's presidency. Even his leadership of the Judicial Service Commission did not elicit the kind of carping that accompanies those sorts of high offices. Nevertheless, I am slowly succumbing to the argument that despite his many qualities and qualifications, he is not well-suited to be elected Kenya's sixth president.

Lawyers, especially Kenyan lawyers who have had long legal careers like Judge Maraga, generally, make for bad politicians. A perusal of the parliamentary Hansard on the performance of lawyers in both the National Assembly and Senate reveal that they are champion debaters, but they are too easily enamoured of legalism to make proper political choices that will benefit not just their constituents but the Republic as well. If you look at the decision by the lawyers sitting in the National Assembly to defy the Supreme Court regarding the Constituencies Development Fund, you will see what I am talking about. These people, in my estimation, should not be trusted to hold elected office, certainly not the presidency.

In Judge Maraga's case, if he truly wishes to serve, there is one place where his particular strength of character will be of immense value: the State Law Office. Kenya is ripe for an Attorney-General who is not afraid to do the right thing, liwe liwalo, and Judge Maraga has demonstrated the ability to cut through the political faff and present the legal case over matters of national importance. Of course he will need to brush up on his political and interpersonal skills, but what he currently possesses is well-suited to being Mwanasheria Mkuu and Mkuu wa Sheria all rolled into one.

This is true of the other lawyers cosplaying at politics. Their particular skills are well suited to sitting on the Bench or representing the State at the State Law Office or the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Indeed, if we are to amend the current statutory framework, I would recommend amending all the laws that provide that the chairman of a constitutional commission should have the qualifications of a judge. If you are not appointing a Judge or magistrate, that qualification only serves to entrench lawyering into administrative frameworks for which lawyering is a liability, not an asset. And yes, that includes the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, Commission on Administrative Justice, National gender and Equality Commission and Judicial Service Commission (which should never, ever have been headed by the CJ to begin with).

If Judge Maraga wishes to serve the people of Kenya once more in a consequential way, he should eschew the presidency and instead hitch his wagon to a presidential candidate who has the necessary probity he wishes to bring to the table and serve in that government as the principal legal advisor to the Government. In that position, he would have the opportunity to sweep away the legacies of odious monsters like Charles Njonjo and instead, revivify among the State Counsels a sense of duty and honour that seems to be waning these days.

Will the real Judge Maraga please stand up

Some of the men (and women) whom we think are incorrigibly stupid only appear to be so because of the facade they put on. Anyone who can persuade a constituency to re-elect him, election after election, can hardly be described as stupid, even as he (or she) does a whole bunch of things that make no damn sense. What we must ask is this: how come so many bad men (and women) keep getting elected while the paragons of virtue who we have placed on pedestals keep falling by the electoral wayside?

The answer, I believe, lies in the ability of the so-called bad candidates to organise politics organisations dedicated to their election/re-election and the inability of their novice would-be challengers to do the same. There is the much larger population of such truly unpleasant men (and women) who will never get elected, even if they did the hard work of establishing political machines in support of their electoral ambitions.

It is damnedly difficult to set up an election ground game in Kenya at the best of times. It is twice as difficult if you want to set one up without an existing (and successful) political party to offer any form support. While Kenya has a massive number of registered political parties, few of them have successfully sent a candidate to Parliament or a county assembly, and those that fail to build up on electoral successes tend to flat out at the next general election. Be that as it may, a well-organised and well-run political party is essential to electoral success.

I say all this to speculate at the chances of Chief Justice emeritus David Maraga. Judge Maraga appears to have cast his die in presidential electoral politics and is traversing the country and appearing at political events to sell himself as a candidate at tech next general election. Those who support his campaign point to his integrity (which is considerably high). So far, he has not given any reason to consider that he is not fit to be president of this republic. Except one.

He does not appear to be a member of a political party and no political party appears to have hitched its wagons to his prospective candidacy. While he appears to be surrounded by a team of committed supporters, that is all it seems: in the absence of a political structure of any sort, I am let to wonder whether the men and women singing his praises wherever he goes, who shout the loudest about his credentials, and who bristle at any doubt against their candidate, are the parasites that afflict all political candidates and suck out the lifeblood of a political campaign.

Judge Maraga, at this stage in the proceedings, should have completed the arduous task of establishing and registering a political party (especially if he was never joining an existing political outfit). He should have began to identify candidates for the 1,350 elected county assembly seats, a slate of special interest seat nominees (women, youth, PWDs), candidates for the 290 elected national assembly seats, 47 woman representative seats, 47 elected senate seats, and the slates of special interest seats in both chambers of Parliament. And collectively, they should have started recruitment of members of their political party and, crucially, fundraising from these members to sustain their campaign. He does not appear to have done any of these things. How does he expect to be elected?

"Integrity" is not a political philosophy or ideology. What, beyond, "anti-corruption", is his politics made up of? How much of the public purse is he going to dedicate to the brick-and-mortar "development" or roads and affordable houses and how much of it is going to dedicate to paying a real wage to the perennially neglected healthcare workers and basic education teachers? Will he expand the size of the presidential fleet with diesel-guzzling armoured SUVs and German limousines or will he, finally, abolish VIP transport for the entire national and county executive and, instead, invest that wasteful expenditure in public safety? These, and dozens upon dozens of ideological questions remain unanswered and undermine his presidential campaign before it has even official began.

If Judge Maraga wants to be President and Commander-in-Chief of the Kenya Defence Forces, he cannot afford to confine his political campaign to visiting courtrooms where "activists" are being prosecuted or "GenZ" rallies where the most important feature of the rallies is his presence. If he doesn't build a political movement, consisting of a political party, electoral candidates, a political ideology, and a campaign finance fund-raising team, he will be remembered (if at all) for being just one more dilettante who showed so much promise and flamed out so pitiably.

Time's up, boomer

Kenya’s leadership is overwhelmingly grey and male. Captains of industry, ministers of religion, government bureaucrats, elected politicians and, yes, trades union leaders, are more likely to have seen more decades on Earth than the average Kenyan. Many die while still in their harnesses, having clung on to their positions of power and authority long beyond it made any sense for them to be there in the first place. Many cling on because they fear the obscurity that comes with being “retired”.

Some, though a precious few, maintain a quick mind, possess and share a wealth of wisdom, and offer leadership when the impatience of youth rears its head and threatens the established order of things. The vast majority of the geriatrics who won’t let go keep to themselves. But a small minority simply can’t let go and won’t shut up about what they have done for us. They are a pestilential plague upon the land.

In recent days, one of those old men has taken it upon himself to justify his continued presence atop one of Kenya's most important institutions, an institution that was established to champion the rights of unionised labour. He knee-jerk response to the demand by a youthful rights activist to step aside and allow fresh blood at the helm of the institution is par for the course for old men who believe, almost always erroneously, that they are indispensable.

In an inexplicable screed that was published in one of Kenya's leading tabloids, he set down in excruciating detail what he had done to bring Kenyan labour closer to employers and closer to the government in a tripartite agreement that he is absulotely certain has been a boon to Kenyan employees. (Why the tabloid chose to publish this remarkable waste of column inches only the misguided editors of that rag can explain.) He followed up with a spectacularly insanely long tweet trying to paint the object of his animus as an untrustworthy conwoman who stole millions of shillings entrusted to her for the care, treatment and support of victims of police violence during the anti-Finance-Bill-2024 protests.

It was completely lost on him that everything he had written down in response to what he had been accused of - overstaying in leadership beyond all reason - did not once address that core question. In his mind, because he "oversaw" the enactment of five landmark labour laws, and "contributed" to the promulgation of Article 41 (found in the Bill of Rights) of the Constitution on labour relations, there was no reason to respond to the fact that he had overstayed in leadership and that it was high time he stood aside and allowed younger persons to step into the breech.

This sort of intellectual intransigence is all too common in all manner of institutions. But change is coming, whether the old men accept it or not. Voters have begun the arduous task of weeding out the geriatrics from Parliament and the drip-drip-drip of electoral replacements will become a flood soon enough. C-suites in corporate Kenya are seeing wazee being put out to pasture; more and more CEOs are men and, increasingly, women in their forties and fifties, rather than cranky grey-hairs in their seventies. Ministries of religion have many Gen Z preachers, though much of their religious ministry causes great spiritual discomfort even among their youthful flocks.

This old man's time is up. Only he seems to think that it is not.

The glue of our politics

The glue that holds Kenya's politics together is hypocrisy. Would-be saviour, those ones with the Uranus-sized egos, those whom the gods whisper in their ears, "You are the one", they practice hypocrisy to such perfection that not even the approbation of their families sticks to them. We have been witness to their machinations for generations yet we still fall for their false promises and outright lies because our need to believe is greater than our instincts for scepticism and doubt.

We used to be able to tell the charlatans from the lesser charlatans. Our politics may have been deeply tribalistic and very violent, but we were never under the illusion that the men and few women we sent to bunge were driven by our interests. We knew who they were and for the most part, we didn't care too much what they did so long as they didn't steal our wives (which they still did, but not too much) or our goats (which they continued to do, but not all of them) and contributed to church fundraisers (where they gave their small-small thousands and kept their mouths shut about it).

Then we elected Mwai Kibaki and for a brief ninety-day period, we were the Most Optimistic People In The World. We fell for a terrible lie: One Man Can Change The World. What came before laid the foundation for that optimism: Raila Odinga and the rest of the Opposition somehow found the will to set aside their tribal animosities to unite against Baba Moi's project: Uhuru Kenyatta and Musalia Mudavadi, one the son of Kenya's first president-for-life, one the son of one of Baba Moi's most loyal tribal satraps.

Mwai Kibaki, Leader of the Official Opposition, and Raila Odinga, son of Kenya's most difficult vice-presidents, joined hands, and strung together a winning presidential campaign that began with "Kibaki Tosha!" and culminated in "Yote Yawezekana Bila Moi!" It didn't last. By the end of the ninety days, Mwai Kibaki was an invalid, and his Mount Kenya tribal satraps had pushed out Raila Odinga from any kind of decision making, the V-P would soon die in a hospital in London, his successor would keep his head down and eat his supper in silence, and Kenya hurtled towards a constitutional referendum that would shatter the 2003 illusions to smithereens.

By the time the dust had settled after the 2005 referendum, the die was cast; Kenyans would never see an honest bone in any politician ever again. You can see the aftermath of that referendum in some of the political operatives flitting about TV studios these days. Some have come up as a result of the activism and advocacy of young people, particularly after the 2024 anti-Finance-Bill protests, and they have swiftly adopted the hypocritical positions of political godfathers who will discard them as soon as their youthful usefulness is spent. One of the political gadflies of the day, with a penchant for fancy three-piece suits and an English vocabulary that hides the shallowness of his ethics, is a particularly galling example of the extent to which political hypocrisies have spread.

But it is the middle-aged cohort that continues to appall and disconcert in equal measure. On TV, they say all the right things. On WhatsApp, they bow and scrape before the doyens of political hypocrisy with such fervour, it is a wonder they don't develop a permanent crick in their spines for all the contorting they have to do. One, claiming bona fides in energy justice, is particularly expert at running with the hares and hunting with the hounds, painting herself as a champion of the weak and vulnerable all the while seeking a place at the high table of energy sector decision-making.

We should know better. Our window of opportunity to put Kenya on the long and arduous road to political and economic revivification came and went in the smoke and mirrors of grand corruption and the looting of the national coffers. That opportunity will not come by ever again unless the gods deign to give us another chance.

Thy name is vanity

How many thought that Mr. Omtatah's "exploratory committee" would run out of steam this fast? While Mr. Omtatah's novel approach was encouraging, it was hobbled by a common mistake made by all also-ran presidential candidates since the return of multi-party politics: the hubris of one man who thinks that he doesn't need the political party that sponsored him to Parliament.

Mr. Omtatah's path to the Senate was a relentless one. A stalwart of the "good governance" civil society set, he set himself apart by suing the Government (and winning) over the way public money was spent. His litigation record is the envy of many and his achievements cannot be gainsaid. When he put himself forward to stand in the Busia County senate election, I feared that his victory would not lead to the kind of change he thought he could bring to Parliament. I was right; Mr. Omtatah does not appear to have sponsored a single Bill since his election. He has kept on suing the national executive over the Finance Bill; but he has not sponsored a single Bill.

He is not the activist-turned-elected-politician to discover that governing, unlike activism, is not a one-man show. As a member of the Senate, he is part of the Government, and as part of his remit, is participating in the law-making function of Parliament. Sponsoring and participating in litigation has its benefits; but it is a costly affair and does not always lead to the outcome one hoped for. As the Finance Act 2023 demonstrated, even when you win, you still lose.

Mr. Omtatah was elected to the wrong chamber. For sure, there's a lot that the Senate can do to improve the lives of the people but the Senate is not where one wants to be of one hopes to affect real change to the way public money is spent. For that, one needs to be in the National Assembly where the Budget Outlook and Review Paper, Budget Policy Statement, Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure, Finance Bill and Appropriation Bill will be introduced and debated.

But even more important than that is the ability to "work well with others". Mr. Omtatah does not appear to have found that gear yet. Parliamentary practice is replete with the kind of horse-trading that undermines public confidence in the institutions of government. In the modern parlance, such horse-trading is the necessary evil one must engage in if they wish to change lives for the better. Mr. Omtatah's lack of a legislative record would seem to imply that he does not want to horse-trade with his Senate colleagues. I don't see how he will have a successful parliamentary or presidential career if he believes that he can govern alone.

It might be that his exploratory committee has gone quiet so that it can collate the data it has collected since it was appointed last year. If that is so, the members of the committee might want to tell him that he needs to work with his parliamentary colleagues even if it means holding his nose in the process. He must put forward legislation he believes will help the people. If he won't even do that, why should the people even consider his putative presidential candidacy as anything but a vanity project?

Mr. Omtatah's faith and our rights

Clause (2) of Article 32 of the Constitution states that, "Every person has the right, either individually or in community with others, in public or in private, to manifest any religion or belief through worship, practice, teaching or observance, including observance a day of worship." One of the ways one manifests their religion is to wear or display symbols of their faith, for example, like wearing a rosary.

"Every person" includes candidates for political office, such the office of president, the very office Okiya Omtatah is seeking. Not everyone is amused by how Mr. Omtatah's communications team has presented him so far in his exploration of whether or not he should offer himself for election as president. In one of the publicity photographs that accompanied his announcement, he is seen to be wearing a rosary. As usual, people are saying things about it and I am saying things about the things they are saying. QED.

One of the argument goes like this: Article 8 says that there shall be no state religion in Kenya. Therefore, Article 8 limits the right protected under clause (2) of Article 32 because Mr. Omtatah cannot seek the presidency with his religion as key cornerstone of his campaign. This is the wrong way to read Article 32 with Article 8.

First, if Mr. Omtatah proposes to seek the presidency on the basis that he is a good Catholic, he has every right to not only do so, but to campaign on the basis that his presidency will be influenced by his Catholic faith.

Second, what Mr. Omtatah cannot do is to impose Catholicism on Kenyans as a state religion or purport to appoint the Attorney-General, Cabinet Secretaries, Principal Secretaries, the Secretary to the Cabinet, the heads of the national security organs, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the chairpersons of state corporations, ambassadors and high commissioners, merely because they, too, profess the Catholic faith, and that the legislative proposals, statutory instruments, public policies, government programs and projects they initiate will be based entirely on the principles and values of the Catholic Church.

Third, the manner of limiting a right or fundamental freedom protected under Chapter Fourteen of the Constitution, including Article 32, is provided in Article 24. It is not Article 8 that limits the right protected under clause (2) of Article 32. A plain reading of Article 24 will demonstrate this. Three of the grounds for the limitation of a right or fundamental freedom are that the limitation shall be based on human dignity, equality and freedom. The demand that Mr. Omtatah must not profess his faith when campaigning, must not display the symbols of his faith whole campaigning, and must eschew the values and principles of his faith when campaigning, offends his dignity, denies that his reasons for seeking the presidency (if they include reasons tied to to his faith) are not the equal of more secular reasons, and denies himself the freedom protected by Article 32. The demand is unreasonable and unjustifiable in an open and democratic society.

In my opinion, Mr. Omtatah is not barred from seeking the presidency on the grounds that he professes the Catholic faith. That is not a valid ground from barring him from elected office. Anyone who objects to such a public display of religious values and principles that he or she disagrees with should campaign against Mr. Omtatah, by pointing out the risks he or she thinks Mr. Omtatah poses if elected. That person may point out to the harm done by men and women who profess the Catholic faith and why he or she thinks that so long as Mr. Omtatah publicly relies on his Catholic faith to make decisions affecting the lives of other Kenyans he should not be elected as Kenya's president. But there is absolutely no constitutional or legal ground for barring him from seeking the chance to stand in the presidential election.

This, I think, is the trap we fall into whenever we debate these things. We conflate our personal views about a person with sometimes erroneous interpretations of the law and then use this fallacious argument to support a patently wrongful conclusion. There are many Kenyans who are offended by the positions Mr. Omtatah has adopted because of his Catholic faith and his associations with organisations that promote many retrogressive ideas that are based on Catholicism. They fear that Mr. Omtatath's and those organisations' positions and ideas are a threat to Kenyans' rights and fundamental freedoms. If they feel strongly about it, the solution is not to find arbitrary justifications to violate Mr. Omtatah's rights and fundamental freedoms; the solution is to campaign against Mr. Omtatah or to campaign for a better candidate than Mr. Omtatah. That is what clause (2)(b) of Article 10 demands: human dignity, equity, social justice, inclusiveness, equality, human rights, non-discrimination and protection of the marginalised.

Early days

Okiya Omtatah will not save you.

Let me explain.

Our political education seemed to have ended when Daniel Moi's Project was defeated in December 2002. Even after Mwai Kibaki and his acolytes conspired to not just perpetuate the Moi kleptocracy they inherited, but to supercharge it, we seemed to have given up on anything resembling civic mindedness and political education. Things came to a head in the 2005 constitutional referendum where even professors in the academy stated without irony or shame, "If Raila Odinga has read the draft constitution, who are we to read it for ourselves?" as we were shepherded in rejecting the draft Constitution.

Today, we are confronted with the desire in certain quarters to put Mr. Omtatah forward as Kenya's Sixth president in 2027. On the strength of his activism, especially the public interest litigation cases he has successfully prosecuted, Mr. Omtatah certainly has the approval of many Kenyans. His is not burdened by a history in which he was a full-fledged member of the Kanu eating classes or a beneficiary of the Kibaki lootocracy that robbed Kenyans of their second chance at political success. He was the thorn in UhuRuto's side, and his bona fides during the anti-BBI era are plain to see.

But we know very little about him and his leadership credentials. For sure, his successful election as a senator point to some of it, but the fact that he does not appear to have sponsored any Bills in the Senate is not encouraging. But more importantly, he has demonstrated that he prefers lone-wolf tactics, and refusing to participate in the messy horse-trading characteristic of legislative processes the world over. This may be a good thing, but I don't think so.

On one hand, he has stuck to his principles and has done everything in his power not to compromise them, even if means that he will not be credited with any legislative programme in the Senate. He can rely on the argument that legislating is the collective responsibility of ALL parliamentarians, and not just the sponsors of Bills. On the other hand, even if legislative is a collective responsibility, individual parliamentarians are expected to sponsor Bills to advance the issues their consciences and principles declare to be for the public good. Those Bills, if they receive the support of other parliamentarians, are proof that one has the capacity to work with even odious people in advancing a people-centred agenda. This does not appear to be Omtatah's style, hence his reliance on public interest litigation and his eschewing of legislative processes. It begs the question: why sit in Parliament if he is unwilling to act as a parliamentarian?

The second issue revolves around whom he has surrounded himself with in his political work. Little is known of his National Reconstruction Alliance Party of Kenya beyond the registration status with the Registrar of Political Parties and the annual reports by the Auditor-General on the finances of the party. Much is known of his stance on the Government's budget and human rights, but little is known about his positions on labour rights, universal access to education and healthcare, youth employment, environmental degradation, public investments, and dozens of other subjects for which a president must have more than a passing familiarity with. Moreover, little is know about what the people surrounding him think or have said about these issues.

Consequently, many Kenyans treat him as a tabula rasa, ascribing to him their own biases, without wondering at all if he will stand by them or pursue a different path. You can see this confusion manifesting itself in the many positions being adopted by people regarding his putative candidacy. There are those who support him regardless of what his positions are and are being mocked for their naiveté, and there those who wish to know more who are being shouted down for their scepticism.

The truth of the matter is that it is still too early to even conclude that he will be a presidential candidate in 2027. A great deal of work is still to be done to flesh out his political identity outside of anti-Finance-Bill litigations. Perhaps the establishment of the exploratory committee will provide greater insights as t who Okiya Omtatah the Politician actually is and whether that is a man Kenyans can vote for in 2027.

Mr. Omtatah's homework

In 2016, Miguna Miguna offered himself as a candidate in the general election. He sought the office of the Governor of Nairobi City County. He participated in the campaign by appearing on TV shows, publishing long-winded screeds on social media (particularly Twitter and Facebook) and making public comments on a rash of political questions of the day. His campaign would not be described as a softly-softly hearts-and-minds one; he relied on a sharp wit and a sharper tongue to excoriate those who dared to challenge his political bona fides. In the end, his campaign failed out in spectacular fashion and Mike Mbuvi Sonko was elected as Nairobi City's second, and epically disastrous, Governor.

Today, Okiya Omtatah has appointed an exploratory committee to "gather, analyse, evaluate, and act on information on the viability of the Senator's presidential bid for the August 2027 general election". Mr. Omtatah represents Busia County on the Senate as a member of the National Reconstruction Alliance Party of Kenya. I don't think I have ever heard of that political party; I don't know any of its other officials, or even if Mr Omtatah is its only representative in Parliament. So, it is enough to say that Mr. Omtatah has a long road to State House ahead of him.

Mr. Omtatah starts with one advantage over Mr. Miguna; very few people actively hate him. He is popular among a diverse group of online constituents and, obviously, in Busia from whence his senatorial campaign bore fruit. Many of his public positions have the support of professional associations and the political actors. Indeed, his reputation as a fighter for the people is unrivalled; only the Katiba Institute appears to have the same level of public legitimacy for the public interest litigation it engages in, a ball that was truly set rolling by Mr. Omtatah. Millions of Kenyans thank Mr. Omtatah for delaying the draconian taxes imposed under the Finance Act of 2023.

Therefore, Mr. Omtatah comes to this campaign with many positives in his favour. However, he is not a superman. He cannot do it all because he does not know it all. One of the things for which his knowledge still has large gaps is how the machinery of government truly functions. A perusal of many of the pleadings he has filed in many of his suits against the Government will show that he has a superficial understanding of the machinery of the Government but a fundamental lack of appreciation about its complexity.

If he is to offer himself as a viable chief executive of the Government, he must educate himself on how the Government is run, why some pieces of it are efficient and effective and others are wasteful and corrupt money pits. Not all Government institutions are the same, or equal, or suffer from the same malaise. In order to  know whether reform is possible, he must know what is reformable and what must be eradicated root and branch. He must resist the urge to buy Parliament or the Judiciary, something no president has successfully been able to do since Jomo Kenyatta engineered the 1964 constitutional amendments that turned Kenya into a Republic.

Mr. Omtatah is intelligent but he is also a parliamentarian, where intelligence sometimes is sacrificed at the altar of expediency. The horse-trading among parliamentarians is how so much of the peoples' interests receives short shrift. It is also notable that Mr. Omtatah has not used the parliamentary process to advance any of his pet projects; the Senate website indicates that he has not sponsored a single Bill on any subject, even his pet subjects of fiscal probity and tax justice. This is not reassuring. Every president needs to know how laws are made and why bad laws are enacted and good laws are sabotaged.

I don't know if Mr. Omtatah's committee will recommend that he moves forward in his bid for the highest political office in Kenya but I hope that if he does, he does the necessary homework to know how to govern, when to rule with ruthlessness and when to use a light touch to get shit done. If he doesn't do his homework but is nevertheless elected, his will be a tumultuous and tempestuous presidency, more than that of his predecessors. Mark my words. Kenyans are no longer interested in presidential dilettantes; that ship went down in flames in August 2022.

In Kenya, we don't abolish empires

The Government is in the empire building business, not the empire killing business. I saw an interesting tweet: I am getting to that point whereby I’ll vote in anyone who vies and promises to stop Housing Levy and SHIF deductions. I immediately saw the flaw in the wish: your candidate will stand in the election and promise to abolish the Affordable Housing Levy (AHL) and Social health Insurance Fund (SHIF) deductions but the moment he takes office, he will abandon his promise and, instead, find a million ways to make you comply with the law. Let me illustrate with a story about the consequences of the Constituencies Development Fund (CDF).

When it was initiated in 2003, it was meant to facilitate greater citizen involvement in development decisions at the grassroots level, and complement the central-government-led development framework that revolved around the corrupt provincial administration. It was a resounding success in its initial stages and many citizen-focussed development projects were completed that immeasurably improved lives and livelihoods.

The model was thereafter expanded to youth enterprise development and women empowerment with establishment of the Youth Enterprise Fund (YEF) and the Women Enterprise Fund (WEF). These were later followed by the Uwezo Fund and National Government Affirmative Action Fund (NGAAF). Suffice to say, the Funds succumbed to the corruption that eventually took root in the Kibaki Government and they have concisely lost billions for years with little to no accountability.

Facing a severe cash crunch, in 2019 Uhuru Kenyatta's Government attempted to roll all the various enterprise funds into one, the Biashara Kenya Fund, and wind up the other funds by transferring their balances into the new one. Parliament was having none of it. The Funds had become empires unto themselves and nothing short of an act of God is going to wind them up. This is true of the Affordable Housing Levy and Social Health Insurance Levy.

The monies raised by the two new programmes is so enormous - tens of billions of shillings per month - that no one in the national executive or Parliament is interested in winding them up. So long as this Government stands and so long as its parliamentarians enjoy a majority in the National Assembly, Kenyans will pay through the nose for "affordable housing" and "social health insurance" even if the majority will never get an affordable house are receive comprehensive social healthcare.

The only time the Government abolishes one of its empires is when it is replacing it with another bigger one. The original NSSF was replaced by a new NSSF. NHIF was replaced by SHIF. CDF was replaced by NG-CDF (and all this in the face of judicial decrees). If Biashara Kenya had been structured as two replacements for YEF and WEF instead of one, it would have gone through without a hitch. The AHL and SHIF empires, with all their inequities and iniquities, are here to stay.

The false dream of a national dress

Every once in a while, someone with little to no business about it tells me how to do my job. They ("they" are people with a bit of power and, perhaps, a bit of seniority, but very little technical ability, if any) look over my shoulders as my fingers flit, with nimbleness and confidence, over my very expensive mechanical keyboard, and attempt to tell me what to draft (and much, much worse, how to think about a legislative sentence). Those kinds of attempts are made only once by these sorts of people and they never darken my door again. One even had the temerity to try and pull of an appeal to authority fallacy on me. Anyway, this is not about my challenges dealing with the professionally feeble-minded in my profession but about the "Kenya National Dress", a national government cultural boondoggle that has consumed tens of millions of dollars for dogs' years with nothing to show about it.

The Government has tried on many occasions to impose on the Kenyan peoples a national dress. It has failed. The Government has made these failed attempts because its instinct to control every aspect of the Kenyan peoples' lives, especially their cultural lives, has endured from the moment a white man set foot on the shores of Nam Lolwe and decreed that the bare-breasted women of the Kavirondo should cover up because he felt some type of way. Rather than educate himself on the culture and lives of the peoples he encountered, mzungu imposed on the "native" peoples his culture and enforced his cultural norms with a combination of biblical interpretation and coercively violent police power. The Government has carried on this tradition without batting an eyelid, explaining the obsession with a "national dress". So long as the effort for a national sartorial identity is driven by the Government, the effort will fail abjectly.

The several state-sponsored institutions of high learning employ cultural scholars of no mean repute who have documented so much of the Kenyan peoples' cultural histories. Even in the grasp of an overweening government that sought to police how they could write what they wrote, these men and women have published truly ground-breaking work on what the peoples of the land that eventually became Kenya spoke, did, ate and dressed in, and why. Bethwell Ogot's truly magisterial "A History of the Luo-Speaking Peoples of East Africa" is indicative of the gifts our historians are capable of bestowing on us if the government kept its grubby controlling fingers out of the kitchen.

Government ministers, and the mandarins they command in their ministries, are not scholars, though these days the corridors of the national and county executives are festooned with men and women brandishing PhDs (both real and honorary) like weapons. But these people are not employed in the government because they are scholars; they are employed in the government because they are (or are capable of being) able administrators. Their output is not composed of scholarly works but rules, regulations, policies and a mysterious document called a budget. So it beggars belief that government ministers (and their minions) think they have the cultural intelligence to supervise the development of a "national dress" that will unify the over fifty cultural traditions that are to be found in the borders of the Republic of Kenya. This kind of arrogance is why many Kenyans have lost faith in the senior-most ranks of the public service, and more and more Kenyans are treating the entire public service like a nuisance at best and an invasive cancer at worst.

The government, this Government, exists to control the people it is supposed to serve. It has long-struggled to cede control to the people despite the bold declaration in Article 1 clause (1) of the Constitution that states that All sovereign power belongs to the people of Kenya. And so, tens of millions of dollars more will continue to be wasted as ministers and ministry wankers look high and low for inspiration to create, finally, the Kenya National Dress and parade it in all the runways of the world. That kind of arrogance beggars belief. In the face of thirty years of abject failure, these people are still forging on in search of an elusive, unattainable dream. To paraphrase Henry II, will no one rid us of this pestilential and wasteful white elephant?

Will the Koome Court ever achieve greatness?

I saw an astonishing series of social media videos yesterday: the Judges of the Supreme Court gravely and seriously declaiming about the jurisprudence of the Court. Then the members of the Court, led by its president and deputy president, presided over a televised spectacle at which Chief Justices emerita and the leading lights of the executive, the President and Deputy President, were in attendance, and the subject du jour was the twelve years of jurisprudence by the Court. The PR game has finally alit at the Supreme Court of Kenya.

The judiciary of Kenya has a long and complex relationship with the peoples of Kenya, the complexity revolving around the way the judiciary was used to dispossess Kenyans of their property, violate their rights and fundamental freedoms, entrench human rights abuses within the fabric of the justice system, and perpetuate and sustain two dictatorships in rapid succession (three, if you count the tyrannical dictatorship of the colonial government).

The promulgation of the new new constitution in 2010 was supposed to be the birth of a new judicial dawn. Just as the defeat of Baba Moi's project was supposed to be in December 2002. Instead, the Kibaki era gave us the Radical Surgery that was neither radical nor surgical. And the Uhuru Kenyatta era gave us Judicial Vetting that did very little actual vetting. The outcome, in both epochs, is the sad realisation that "independence" as understood in Kenya is the independence to spend public money on projects of doubtful value without oversight or control.

From the moment the Ministry of Finance handed over the Income Tax House to the Judiciary, and it was repurposed as the Milimani Law Courts, the Judiciary has been spending our money like drunken sailors on shore leave. Willy Mutunga, CJ emeritus, supercharged the profligate squandering of public funds with his expansive real estate projects in the name of construction of law courts to bring justice closer to the people. For sure, the courts came to the people, but justice remains just as elusive.

David Maraga, CJ emeritus, was more successful in his efforts to bring justice closer to the people. Despite the reckless sabotage by the Law Society of Kenya, he set in motion the rollout of the Small Claims Courts that will have far greater impact on the lives of litigants that the seventy or so new law courts that Dr. Mutunga built.

The incumbent Chief Justice does not have a real estate empire to build or a brand-spanking-new judicial paradigm to shift. The judiciary she heads is a grab bag of judges who have found lawyerly arguments to get around their obligations to make judgments in the best interests of the child (that means you Mr. Chitembwe) or have not had the best luck staying out of political contestations (as ex-DP Riggy G can attest). All that she is left with is a strong desire to be seen to do something, anything, even if it means publicity that is inexplicable and confusing.

Even the most dull-witted and uniformed Kenyan knows the case of Roe v Wade. A few of the more ambitious among us can give a solid explanation of the holding in Giella v Cassman Brown. Heck, I was in Nanyuki in May and one of the nicer servers at the hotel I was staying in had very strong opinions on the Muruatetu Case. Despite Willy Mutunga's real estate shenanigans, his Supreme Court set precedents that we shall cite for decades. The current Supreme Court, alas, will be reduced to PR as it waits for a real case to come before it. And that is its tragedy: it is seeking the chance to be a consequential court and in its desires, it is making mistakes that will cost the Court its legitimacy in the long run.

William Shakespeare remains the source of many, many quotable quotes. This one from Twelfth Night is apposite: Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them. The Koome Court was not born great. It can only hope to achieve greatness if it steels itself against the temptation to seek greatness in the political wilderness. But it is mistaken if it thinks that Kenyans, and the politicians Kenyans have elected, will thrust greatness upon it. The PR stunts of the past week are not the way to achieve greatness.