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Monday, September 26, 2005

Pumbavu” The President’s Favorite word

For those who watched T.V. last night, they must have noticed the agitation on Kibaki’s face as he called L.D.P./Kanu group pumbavu for not interpreting the draft correctly to the people.

The local Kenyan press has interpreted that word to mean stupid (i think it means something more abusive).During my 39 years in this world, I can’t remember a parent, teacher, peer, etc. using the word. He must have ‘captured’ it in a local pub in Othaya before he became President.Shoudn’t our President measure his words on a public platform?
Secondly, are Kenyans not intelligent enough to do their own interpretation of the Wako draft?

Or maybe he was right, for indeed Raila was a "pumbavu" to have said 'Kibaki tosha' in 2001.

Who snubbed who?

By the way is it possible for a Kenyan President on an official visit to the UK not to call in on the Prime Minister. I think not, and I believe that President Kibaki may have had problems getting an appointment with Blair. The President’s spin doctors have of course totally denied that the President had problems getting to see Blair. They sa that Blair was not in his schedule. Hmm…

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Why Do All Mutahi Ngunyi Predictions Seem To Be Coming True?

After years of being an extreme optimist, this blogger changed shortly after the Narc government came to power and now I always fear for the worst and on a number of occasions I am mercifully proved right.

Regular readers of the Sunday Nation will remember controversial columnist Mutahi Ngunyi and his incisive and well thought out column. Somebody recently send me a column of his published in 2003 and pointed out how accurate his predictions have proved to be. My hope and [prayer is that his remaining predictions do not come to pass...

I reproduce the column below, read it and decide for yourself. But first, an excerpt from the same column...

"There is a lesson for President Kibaki here. He is increasingly becoming like Mr Moi during the 2002 elections. He is not yet paranoid, but his insensitivity could develop into ''political blindness''. Who knows how low he will have sunk by the 2007 elections? And this is what worries me.

Consider a hypothetical situation here. What would happen if President Kibaki decided to run for re-election in 2007 and lost? Would he and his men have the grace to hand over power peacefully? From the way they have behaved in the last one year, I doubt it. And where would that leave the country?

At the risk of sounding crazy, I want to suggest the following: If we thought that Mr. Moi would plunge the country into civil strife, he proved us wrong. Narc is the party to plunge the county into civil strife. You just have to listen to the FM stations and the call-in television programmes to see a pattern. From the name of the caller, you can almost predict what they will say and what side of the divide they will take. In a disputed election, such polarity would certainly take ugly proportions.”


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Sunday Nation, Dec 2003
Why our second liberation is yet to be completed

By MUTAHI NGUNYI

This week I want to give a suggestion to President Mwai Kibaki: He should fire his speechwriter! If we lived in a ''banana republic,'' these people would have actually been charged with sabotage.
What they gave the President to read on Jamhuri Day was flat and shoddy.

In fact, his speech on this day sounded like recycled material from the Madaraka Day and Kenyatta Day addresses. And what is worrying is that his speechwriters did not even seem to notice the repetitions. The question we should ask here is why?

The answer to this is simple: Maybe they also slept through the speeches! The long and short of things is therefore that someone is being negligent.

Let us now turn to the fact that the President has finally put his portrait on our currency. In my view, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, there would be nothing wrong if he put a family portrait on one of the currency notes.

What we must understand here is that President Kibaki is a human being. He has urges and excesses. To deny him some things is therefore ridiculous. It is like placing a pot full of honey in front of a little boy and expecting him not to dip his finger into the stuff! In other words, our new President is cuddling in the warmth and comfort of the institutions that shaped former President Daniel arap Moi. And, if this is the case, why should we be surprised if he ''hatched'' into a dictator?

What we have witnessed in the last one year is the degeneration of President Kibaki from a reformer to a ''Toad King''. This process begins with the President becoming insensitive. At this point, he breaks one pledge after another without feeling a thing. And, as he does this, the question in his mind is: Where can you take me?
In the case of the MoU for instance, we took him nowhere. The begrudged politicians yapped until the cows came home. Now the President has put his portrait on our currency and we will take him nowhere. The general attitude here is this: If you do not like it, you can sit on a pin!

Numbing his sense to popular voices will definitely degenerate into a state of paranoia. At this point, the President will make one blunder after another. And instead of correcting his mistakes, he will increase his speed in the direction of the wrong. This is where former President Moi was when he introduced ''Project Uhuru'' to the country. The crowds booed him, his loyal followers in Kanu abandoned him and even his own people questioned his wisdom. But the more we rejected his ''project'', the more determined he became.

There is a lesson for President Kibaki here. He is increasingly becoming like Mr Moi during the 2002 elections. He is not yet paranoid, but his insensitivity could develop into ''political blindness''. Who knows how low he will have sunk by the 2007 elections? And this is what worries me.

Consider a hypothetical situation here. What would happen if President Kibaki decided to run for re-election in 2007 and lost? Would he and his men have the grace to hand over power peacefully? From the way they have behaved in the last one year, I doubt it. And where would that leave the country?

At the risk of sounding crazy, I want to suggest the following: If we thought that Mr. Moi would plunge the country into civil strife, he proved us wrong. Narc is the party to plunge the county into civil strife. You just have to listen to the FM stations and the call-in television programmes to see a pattern. From the name of the caller, you can almost predict what they will say and what side of the divide they will take. In a disputed election, such polarity would certainly take ugly proportions.

But there are two possible ways out of this. The first one has to do with the agenda of the second liberation. This process was meant to achieve two things - to remove Mr. Moi from power and replace him with reform-minded leaders. This was done successfully. However, as we are beginning to realise, Mr. Moi was not the problem.
The problem was the institutions he inherited from the Kenyatta. To change the leadership without changing the institutions is like treating cancer with Malaraquin. This is partly why the ''institutional cancer'' in the presidency is beginning to affect President Kibaki.

Putting his portrait on our currency and junking the pre-election MoU are just manifestations of this cancer. This is why the other agenda of the second liberation was institutional reforms. Until this is completed, the second liberation will not have happened. More specifically, this refers to the constitutional review process. And, at this point I would want to address the delegates preparing for Bomas III on January 12, 2004.

It is my hope that you have had time to reflect on the issues at hand in Bomas III. We are also told that the politicians have spent this long break to bribe you. In my view you should take the bribes and use the money to enjoy your Christmas. You must realise at this point that you are involved in politics and that in this game there is no morality. As such, you should have fun on someone else’s account! However, when it comes to voting, you must reject the ''bribe givers'' and vote for the country.

This is important because of the following reasons. If the second liberation had two phases, the first phase of replacing the leadership had to be carried out by 3.1 million voters. Replacing Mr Moi and his cronies was in my view the easy part. The second phase is the tough one. And this is where you come in. You are only 600 people, and the future of our country depends on you.
I have two questions for you at this point. One, as you vote for issues, will you be thinking of your ''tribal chief'' or your children? In my view, your tribe is your children. If you make a constitution for your children, you will have made a constitution for Kenya.

Two, consider the question of the Prime Minister’s post. And the question to you is this: If this post had been created before the 2002 elections, do you think President Kibaki would have ''trashed'' the MoU? Do you think he would have put his portrait on our currency and retained corrupt ministers in his Cabinet? If the answer to these questions is no, then the cure to the ''institutional cancer'' in the presidency is the creation of this post. Do think about it!
The second possible way out of civil strife has to do with the Kikuyu. Now that the presidency has returned to the ''House of Mumbi'', some people from the community are convinced that it is there to stay. In my view, this kind of thinking is retrogressive and could result in ethnic animosity.

Kikuyus should come to terms with the possibility that they could lose the presidency in 2007. As such, they should do two things: One, ''bank'' with the other communities. This is important because they cannot survive alone in future. Two, they should disown the Kikuyu ''sharks'' in the Kibaki government.

Unless they do so, the entire community will be blacklisted simply on account of a few people. In future, a Kikuyu presidential candidate would be rejected because of the misdeeds of isolated people. My submission therefore is: They should not support this regime blindly!

Confused About The New Constitution? Here's The Most Accurate And Balanced Summary I Am Yet To Come Across

The best summary of the proposed constitution that I am yet to come across... from an ordinary Kenyan, I received it in my email this morning


"We had a very interesting session at the chapel last evening on the constitution. People would surely appreciate the devolution system down to the district level-but at the top the power is still centered at one apex. Apparently this document is vague and leaves virtually all the laws to be enacted by parliament. The people have to sit and wait for the same ‘hang’ and selfish parliament to decide their destiny."

Friday, September 09, 2005

Big Orange Shortage Predicted...

...But Once Again, Kibaki Strategists have Fooled Everybody

The way oranges are being distributed at public rallies to campaign for the “no” vote in the forthcoming referendum on the constitution, clearly points to a big shortage of this fruit soon.

Most Kenyans to whom an orange is usually a luxury that they cannot afford, are enjoying these “nutritious” rallies and there seems little doubt as to which direction the majority of the votes will go.

But before you start celebrating, many analysts have missed the clever strategy of Kibaki handlers.

It is now clear as day that the new government like the one before it, have no problem with the current constitution which turns the President into an all-powerful god. So they’ve created a new constitution that is not very different from the current one, knowing full well that whatever they did, they would be opposed. So the strategy is to use the opportunity to do a full dress rehearsal for the next elections. They are going all out for a win but even if they lose, they will still have actually won on two fronts.

(i) They will still have the beloved old constitution that makes them so powerful.
(ii) They get to find a strategy to win in 2007 from the valuable data they will gather from voting patterns.

So once again, Kenyans have been fooled…

Yes, it has been said that if the government loses the referendum, it will be political suicide. Those saying this have forgotten the Moi days where he went on to win two general elections after a massive opposition political rally in Nairobi that clearly showed public sentiment was heavily against Kanu.

Toss a coin.

If it falls on heads, Kibaki wins. If it falls on tails, Kenyans lose. That’s the referendum for you.

Central Bank Never Made A Loss Under Moi, Now Under Kibaki, The Impossible Happens…

As the Kibaki administration continues to set dubious new records, the latest touches an area where the government has been at great pains to show signs of improvement - the economy.

Kenya’s foremost fiscal policy regulator, Central Bank has just announced a whooping loss of Sh 4.1 billion, it’s worst performance ever.

The main culprit? It’s recent strange policy of maintaining a strong shilling. This widely criticized move protected importers but hurt exporters. Now you do not need to be an economist to answer the big question here. Who is more important to the Kenyan economy right now? The foreign exchange earner (Exporter) or the foreign exchange spender (importer)?

This latest development, more than anything else so far sends alarm bells loudly ringing that the economic policies of this government led by a brilliant economist of the 70s (President Kibaki himself) seem to be sending the country deeper into problems. It is now clear that the economy which was already in the ICU (intensive care unit) when Moi exites, now seems to be already in the mortuary (or as Kenyans living in the States would put it “in the morgue”).

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Would You Rather Have A Banana Or An Orange?

What Kenyans are saying through email...

I received this in my email today from one of my leading correspondents on the ground.

Fact: If you eat an Orange, you will remain with seeds to plant again.

Fact: If you eat a banana, you will have eaten everything; no seeds to plant!!!

Take an orange from Kivuitu, not a Banana.



Say NO to the new constitution if you love Kenya.