Commission Of Inquiries And The Government’s Stale Old Tactics To Deal With A National Crisis

As predicted in an earlier post (see paragraph 7 in this post) a Nairobi lobby group says the government is preparing to appoint a commission of inquiry into the Anglo-leasing saga.(See story about this claim here)

But what has even more interesting this week is that finally the government strategy on dealing with the scandal has started to unfold. It is a strategy which clearly illustrates the problem which has dogged this administration right from the beginning. Namely 1970s-thinking and the same old now-stale solutions and delaying tactics. It is clear that there is a total lack of any creativity or new ideas, aspects that Kenyans need badly in their government in these unpredictable times.

This is the strategy:

- Get the cabinet to issue a statement defending the President and pledging that investigations already under way will be speeded up. (This was done on Monday this week albeit with a poor showing of about 5 ministers cliaming to represent the entire cabinet).
- Damage control by warning the media that they have already over-stepped the mark by linking the President’s untainted name to the scandal and threatening legal action to discourage any brave gutter press from taking up the story and stating what has already been read between the lines clearly for those who don’t read between the lines to understand and comprehend.
- Politicize the whole issue by blaming it on enemies of the government (without being specific) keen to bring it down.
- Behind the scenes lobbying and pressure to bring things under control. Uisng the vast government machinery to its’ maximum.

Many Kenyans reading this article will be disgusted because the feeling on the ground at the moment is that the thieves behind Anglo-leasing should be prosecuted immediately irrespective of who they are in government. Period. Many Kenyans will therefore not see the point in my analyzing the very strategy that is designed to defend the culprits of Anglo-leasing and prevent them from facing justice.

The reason I have done this is to illustrate the weaknesses within the current administration which are responsible for fanning the political crisis the country is now faced with.

The strategy will fail for many reasons. I want to mention two of the main ones here.
Firstly it is not going to impress the donors (one important target group). In fact already the World Bank has announced the with-holding of 15 billion in development Aid until the government can show some seriousness in dealing with corruption (see story here)

Secondly it will definitely not impress the Kenyan voter who is now very experienced in sifting out the truth from the government propaganda (right from the days of the Moi administration to the promises of the Narc government that never even took off.

So who is the government speaking to?

Sadly this is a reflection once again of the kind of people calling the shots in the Kibaki administration – a couple of old men cushioned by their immense wealth from the current reality on the ground and still living very much in the 70s when there was only one government-controlled radio and TV station and when no newspaper would dare mention the name of the President in any article that had not been penned by the Presidential press unit or Kenyan News Agency. The cold war was still on and the world was a very different place.