Team told of Mungiki visit to State House

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Team told of Mungiki visit to State House
Story by SAMWEL KUMBA Publication Date: 7/23/2008
Members of the outlawed Mungiki sect are said to have visited State House in the wake of post-election violence, the Waki Commission heard Tuesday.
Lawyer Muriuki Mugambi, for the police, asked Ms Muthoni Wanyeki, the executive director of Kenya Human Rights Commission, to shed more light on the subject.
However, human rights lawyer Haron Ndubi intervened, telling the commission that the information had already been shared in camera.
Ms Wanyeki had in the morning given her evidence in camera, where she named the actual perpetrators of violence.
They included names of individuals and politicians who bankrolled post- election violence.
More deaths
Information about the Mungiki visit to State House is contained on a DVD that was on Monday produced as an exhibit to the commission.
The election investigations team was also told that had PNU and ODM failed to enter into dialogue and subsequently struck an agreement, more deaths could have occurred.
Ms Wanyeki said there were misplaced priorities in the deployment of police officers during the post-election chaos.
Asked by Mr Mugambi to provide the figures, Ms Wanyeki said she did not have the actual figures, but that from mere observation they were not deployed on a needs basis.
According to her, more policemen were needed in Rift Valley and other volatile areas than in Nairobi.
The KHRC boss said her organisation had not supplied the police with the data it submitted to the commission in camera Tuesday as they were still establishing the best way to release it.

PC refutes R-Valley oathing allegations

http://www.kbc.co.ke/story.asp?ID=51568

PC refutes oathing allegations Written By:Collins Anampiu , Posted: Wed, Jul 30, 2008

Rift Valley PC Hassan Noor Hassan Wednesday denied that there was oathing done to bind Kalenjin youth to fight other communities prior to the general elections last year.
Testifying before the Justice Waki Commission inquiring into the post-elections violence in Nakuru Noor defended security forces and officers in the provincial administration against accusations that they abetted the violence during the post election skirmishes.
Noor disputed an assertion by Lawyer Mbuthi Gathenji that some of the youth partook of an oath called "Mumiat", at a ceremony held at Kenegut Primary and Secondary schools in Kericho in August last year, to prepare them to fight other communities.
He said he was only aware that circumcision ceremonies took part in various parts of the province and that he did not consider such ceremonies to be a threat to security.
The PC told the Commission that the Rift Valley Provincial Security and Intelligence Committee (PSIC) that he chairs had anticipated the violence that followed the elections regardless of the outcome of the elections.
He said as a result of the violence, some 376 people, 20 of whom have never been identified, were killed and some 39,200 residential and 400 commercial buildings torched.
Forty Government offices that included administration and forestry department offices were also razed with 69 vehicles torched of which 9 belonged to the government.

3 leave Narc-K for GNU

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3 leave Narc-K for GNU Story by MACHARIA MWANGI Publication Date: 7/27/2008

An assistant minister and two former legislators have deserted Narc-Kenya for the newly formed Grand National Union.
Energy Assistant Minister Mwangi Kiunjuri and former MPs Joshua Toro and Nderitu Gachagua said GNU will soon embark on a vigorous campaign to popularise the new party.
“We will be targeting the youth who are the majority of voters once we hit the campaign trail,” said Mr Gachagua, following the party’s two-day retreat in Naivasha to strategise on how to popularise it.
Party of the future
He added that GNU was firmly in the Party of National Unity as a corporate member. He also denied press reports that the PNU unity meeting resolved to dissolve affiliate parties.
Mr Gachagua termed the campaigns for the 2012 presidential election by some politicians as premature. He said the coalition government had more pressing issues to deal with like the plight of the internally displaced persons, and should instead focus on those. He asked leaders to concentrate on improving the lives of Kenyans.
Mr Kiunjuri, on his part, said that GNU had less than five months to comply with the Political Parties Act or risk being disbanded. He said the newly formed party was the party of the future, which was why they were targeting Kenyans below the age of 35, and they make up the majority.
He said the party decided this section of the population would be their target because the youth still lacked an appropriate political party they could comfortably identify with.
Provide leadership
“At the moment we don’t have the so-called political heavy weights but this is certainly the party of the future,” Mr Kiunjuri said.
The party constitution, Mr Kiunjuri said, allowed the youth to provide leadership at the national level. Addressing the issue of the party’s presidential candidate, Mr Kiunjuri said it was not on GNU’s priority list.
“We shall be consulting with party members from time to time regarding the issue of the presidency,” he said.
He added that the party would open offices in Nairobi before being officially launched.

Governments of national unity bad for democracy

http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/459/641692

Governments of national unity bad for democracy
Tuesday, 29th July, 2008

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By Don Wanyama IT is now clear that the warring political factions in Zimbabwe will form a government of national unity in the coming weeks comprising members of Robert Mugabe’s ZANU/PF party and the opposition Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party. To Zimbabweans, whom peace and order had become elusive in the past months, this should come as a relief. They expect the country to become stable and probably the inclusion of the West’s blue-eyed boy Tsvangirai into the government will help resuscitate their ailing economy. On the surface, this looks a juicy deal but deep down it is a travesty to justice and democracy. The purpose of holding elections is to enable voters pick a candidate they consider their favourite. The criteria of choice may differ from aspects like tribalism, ability to solve economic problems or even physical appearance, but the rationale is that the most popular candidate at the end of the day should be declared victor. But looking at this new fashion of coalition governments, it is obvious that Africa is slowly murdering the purpose of elections. In Kenya, which also has a government of national unity, it was common knowledge that President Mwai Kibaki had been given a bloody nose by Raila Odinga’s ODM. Unwilling to hand over power and with blood being shed, Kibaki agreed to ‘share’ power. The biggest beneficiary was the loser in the elections. The same scenario replays in Zimbabwe. Defeated on March 29, Mugabe made it difficult for his opponent to freely campaign in the run-off. With his thugs, he terrorised opposition supporters until Tsvangirai threw in the towel. He went on to sweep the one-man poll with a ‘landslide’ victory! Knowing how illegitimate his government is, Mugabe is now willing to ‘share’ power, probably cede some cabinet posts to the opposition and create a semblance of normalcy. Thereafter, it will look like business-as-usual. But the biggest loser in these arrangements is democracy. We should not conduct elections where people are sure they will rig blatantly and thereafter give a few concessions to their opponents and all seems well. Of course the opposition can be blamed for this. One wonders why they choose to share power with people they have defeated in elections. But probably their decision is understandable. They are like the mother of the baby in the Biblical story of King Solomon, who unwilling to see her baby chopped and divided between her and another woman, opted to give up on her claim to ensure that the toddler lives. The bottom line is that many leaders, unwilling to leave power, are going to use this new phenomenon as a soft landing. They will rig opponents out of victory and offer the olive branch in form of a government of national unity. Different political parties offer different manifestos while seeking votes. Therefore, to bandy them together after contested elections is to ignore why they sought power. In Kenya, the divisions are glaring. When the Grand Regency scandal, which led to the censure of finance minister Amos Kimunya, came to play, the cabinet cracks were along PNU and ODM lines. The implication is that despite being in the same cabinet, the ministers put party loyalty first. They do not view themselves as one unit and this surely is not good for state affairs. And questioningly, this concept is being fronted by the West yet they cannot adopt it themselves. Otherwise, we would have seen George Bush ‘share’ power with Al-Gore after the disputed Florida poll. We should, therefore, have elections where the winner is declared fairly or we just forget about voting. There should be no middle line between democracy and totalitarianism.

Elections 2012: Kibaki is irrelevant but politics must go on

Elections 2012: Kibaki is irrelevant but politics must go on

By TOM MSHINDI ContributerPosted On: 18/07/2008 17:09:22 Comments: 25 The embarassment caused to the President by the party in which he is the only individual member – the incongruously named Party of National Unity (PNU) – has helped to debunk two fallacies: One is the relevance of the President as a player in the current political equation, and the other about the place of politics in the normal order of things. President Kibaki became a lame-duck on February 28, 2008, immediately he signed the grand coalition deal that ushered in the twin-headed governance structure. And Kenyans will be happy to know that their perpetual preoccupation with politics is not an aberration. Every society politicks all the time; it is the quality and purpose of politicking that differs. When the parties affiliated to PNU met and the bigger among them shut out the President’s proposal that they coalesce into one large entity to effectively stave off ODM’s onslaught in Parliament and fully enjoy the public funds available since July 1, the message was simple – he has no role to play in how politics shapes up in the coming years. Had he wanted to be relevant, at least for five years, he should have picked up Raila Odinga’s gauntlet for a re-run of the December 2007 polls. A clean electoral mandate would have assigned him the prerogative to bribe, cajole or browbeat party members into seeing things his way. By signing away half of the powers of the presidency to someone so unambiguously ambitious and so ruthless in the pursuit of that power, he signalled his willingness to be a ‘‘ceremonial’’ president for the remainder of this term. Not that he has much to lose in the process – he simply wanted to be president, just like he was in his first term. Statements from Raila that the two work well together are actually true – one largely does not really care, the other has to work because he still aspires to be elected Kenya’s president. So you now know why he is officiating at all functions – those he has been invited to and those that Mr Kibaki has no time for, yes, even in Central Province. Strategy and energy are elements that Raila has never been short of. The second fallacy has flourished partly because of the dynamism of people like Raila who see in every event (or non-event) an opportunity to chase his ambition to rule. The grouse we hear often is that politics dominates Kenya’s social interactions to an unhealthy degree. Our Vice-President lamented recently that we should shelve politics until the next round of electioneering, which will be in 2012. The President’s own ‘‘no vacancy’’ invocation exposed similar concerns. However, why should anyone think that Kenyans are any different from other nations? Show me any one country where politics is shelved after elections and I will show you a frozen system. In every society, apart perhaps from North Korea, two forces clearly define and shape social relationships and interactions – the ambition to lead and the desire to be rich (politics and money). Which of the two dominates is a function of the sophistication of business because money ultimately drives politics. The illusion that Western societies do less politics and more business is created and reinforced by the volumes of trade transacted and the sophistication of those markets. Of course there is the entertainment media’s almost total dominance of the attention of the youth and young at heart. But politics is alive and well. It is just that little attention is paid to it except when mega-prices like the presidency or premiership of some rich country is being contested or investigated over corruption. In the less sophisticated economies like Kenya’s and those in most of Africa, politicians become the big players, the celebrities whose actions then take on a disproportionately large profile. This is evident in Uganda where President Museveni has a permanent cast of ‘‘peasants’’ he relies on to ward off the elite from ‘‘cities’’. It is there in every African country where destinies of countries are still shaped by what, when and how politicians say things, hand over power, and how they play one against the other. One reassuring fact for Kenya is that businesses are growing in size and sophistry, and with it, the dominance of politics is waning by the day. Sooner rather than later, what Bidco’s Vimal Shah or EABL’s Gerald Mahinda say will be bigger attention-grabbers than Raila’s or Danson Mungatana’s proclamations. But it will not mean that politics has been shelved; rather it will just have been right-sized and prioritised as appropriate.

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