Last week’s political deal between Kibaki and Raila has left very sour taste in many Kenyan politicians hitherto revered as indomitable. Leading the pack of casualties is immediate former president Daniel arap Moi. The loud silence from the self-proclaimed professor of Kenyan politics since last Thursday is NO mere coincidence but prompted by embarrassing circumstances and developments within our borders.
Never underestimate the collective will of a nation determined to reclaim their national pride. That must be clear message Moi failed to grasp from the 2002 political debacle with his Uhuru project. If Toro ever entertained the thought that of being a political phoenix capable reincarnation from the ashes then Kenyans have proved him wrong by consigning him to political irrelevance.
It is hardly 2000 days since Moi left power and it must look like eternity to him. Moi’s hollow catch dictum that Kenya was an isle of peace in a sea of chaos have been debunked to Siberia. The violence following last years disputed polls have proved to Moi and his ilk that Kenyans are averagely ahead of their leaders who only derive utmost pleasure in primitive ethnicity.
Reverse baptism with fire
Uncle Dan must be ruing the day four African ex-presidents landed in Nairobi with their sleeves rolled ready to excavate peace for Kenya. By then the poor old man from Sacho had lost any trace of relevance given his active partisan and polarising role in that very election fiasco. Moi must be suffering reverse baptism with fire.
To engrave Moi’s political epitaph is golden letters all his three sons resounding kissed defeat at the very polls. What is more, the hitherto baba na mama independence party Kanu has been submerged in turbulent Kenyan politics. Moi unwittingly drove the last political nail on both himself and Kanu.
But predictably Moi being an astute persona of unrivalled denial won’t accept this unpleasant truth. He will soon find his lips shamelessly placing the blame elsewhere. He perfected the art of DECEPTION that outgrew him and is now consuming him live before our eyes in his sunset days.
Well, nature is not cruel but only fair by dishing fairly out what you invest in it. And Moism will go extinct in our political landscape soon. The present political arena is replete with his faithful students ready to take Moism without Moi to new heights.
Tabu,
ReplyDeleteSurely the monkey is still on our backs,the so called professor in politics is part of the blame.Lets wait and see how the euphoria will sweep away the dirt and debris.River Nile is setting one of its tributaries in the Great Lake.Moi please surrender the billions you stole from hard working people of Kenya.Uhuru I NOW!!
Moi must be punished fairly and squarely that is the truth of the fact.
Its a safe bet that both ODM and PNU can safely target Moi as an example for corruption, tribalism etc before they jump onto each others throats - talk about finding common ground.
ReplyDeleteTaabu! Thanks for pointing out this fact.
ReplyDeleteAnd I got a question…..why isn’t some people appreciative of the fairness and the love that God has given them. I mean after age 70, did I not hear Pastor Muiru say the rest are bonuses? Surely, why don’t some people just get ready mentally to face the grave, design their coffins, cleanse where they nitrified and so forth? Did I not hear Muiru say that you have to be clean to knock at the heavens door? I assumed that in it, there will be no rigging to get in.
That said, shouldn’t Gefaki and Moi among others get ready and leave political affairs to the young ones? Surely, they should think in that line.
Hey Taabu, how sadist can you be??? You seem to derive pleasure from inflicting maximum pain in people. I have a feeling you are not in Kenya and that is why you were even counting tic toc tic toc towards Armageddon. Now that you found Kenyans in Kenya more sensible than that, you are now aiming your poisoned missiles at poor Moi. If your real name is Taabu, your mother saw it in your face as soon as you popped out your head. If it is a name umejibandikia, then you are a prophet of doom and it is surely working in your own life. Where is your humanity? Do you have a conscience? Does it ever tell you that you are wrong, or is it seared with a hot iron? I pity you.
ReplyDeleteHis Excellency the retired president of Kenya Daniel Toroitich arap Moi is the first president of Kenya who relinquished power willingly and lived to tell the tale. Remember, he had the choice of doing it the Mu7 or Mugabe way, and we would be suffering from a 60,000 percent inflation rate. We would be walking with KSh. 500,000 denominations in our pockets, and this would be just enough to buy two loaves of imported bread. Moi had several chances to make Kenya go into an abbys but he had a long neck like a giraffe and took the necessary step to forestall all that. If it was you, how would you have reacted to the attempted coup of 1982? If mere stealing of votes has brought us this near to Armageddon, what would happen if there was an attempted coup? Have you thought of that?
Moi is suffering from a backache. Instead of offering him a get-well-card, you are rubbing salt right into the wound. How sadist can one get?
Moi may have had his weaknesses (just like you also do), but overally he took us ahead, not backwards. Give him some credit for that, Bwana. If you learned in Kenya, you must either have drank maziwa ya Nyayo, gone to recuperate in a Nyayo ward, drank tea from Nyayo tea zone, watched a match at the Nyayo Stadium. And if you wanted to be at the coast fast, you must have alighted at the Moi International Airport. In Nairobi you walked with your girlfriend along Moi Avenue and visited a friend at Nyayo Highrise Estate. Sasa, ubaya uko wapi?
You are wondering why Moi is quiet. It is you Armageddon Prophet who should be even quieter because the play did not go according to your script. What are you yapping about now? Even Kiraitu was kinder to him when he told him to herd his goats and see how Kenya is governed (later they called him back from herding the goats to show them how an election is won!).
Mwafrika halisi hatukani wazee.
Mjukuu wa Nyayo
Nice jab at Moi but please...spare me. For how long will we blame Moi for everything? Kila kitu Moi, O Moi, O Moi...kwani Moi ni maid?
ReplyDeleteYes Moi had his share of problems but guys let's get real. Moi was not eating alone. I dare say that he infact did not do most of the eating. Everyone was eating. Just read the Kroll reports and articles in NY times. The problems that boiled over after the recent elections are squarely on the shoulders of one Mwai Kibaki administration. The buck stops with him becuase it happened under his watch. We never had events of this magnitude during Moi's tenure.
Moi, Kibaki, Raila, Ruto, Sally Kosgei, Uhuru etc. Their history, past, assets, business interests,families etc are deeply intertwined. Kenya is a very very small country. And the people traveling in these circles are very very few. So they know each other intimately. They are not likely to go after any one of their own too hard because that would undermine their own ground.
ReplyDeleteSo don't hold you breath on Raila prosecuting Kenyatta or Moi, or Kibaki going after Ruto.
This is a game of musical chairs. We as Kenya's citizenry must stop the music and take away the chairs.
If we leave it to the leaders, we'll be here, right where we started 40 yrs ago.
So, what are you doing today to hold your leader accountable?
@Mjukuu wa Nyayo thanks foro being SO ARTICULATE in appreciating TOKENISM. You can do better than the Zim PC who thought comparing Kenya to his country was rocket science. You can set the benchmarks so low. So you reved in Nyayo milk, well I won't benefit you with the dubious village philosophy behind that milk. Thanks for being such a schooled psychophant. If you get fascinated and intimidated by age under the facade if African wisdom good riddance. FYI aging graciously is a virtue and age and experience can also be trivialized to nothing more than a catalogue of accumulated errors in life.
ReplyDeleteNext time you feel like preaching bro start a church and share the congragation with Muiru. Preying into people's emotional and economic insecurities never makes you agenious but a conman. Thanks lakini for being macho na tuzidi.
Taabu's sentiments here are on point. I may not see everything through Taabu's lenses but on the Moi issue he is right on point. The old man might be given some credit for the peaceful transition in 2002 but look beyond 2002 and see the hypocrite Moi. Moi never saw the sense of declaring Kibaki fit in 2002 but he managed to endear himself to kibaki when he saw it fit. Come 2007 the old man was singing all sorts of praises for Kibaki, what had changed? He even said if he supported Raila he will be so stupid. This goes to show just how out of touch the old man was with Kenyan politics. No wonder all his leutenants have been confined to the political dungeon. Lets call a spade a spade, Moi is principal among the architects of what ails Kenya today. These are the leaders who have preyed on Kenyans through all sorts of tactics, from divide and rule to murder. Moi owes Kenyans an apology and return all stolen wealth. Then just then, Kenyans may forgive him.
ReplyDeleteRhyymemaster
Taabu,
ReplyDeleteYou are just confirming what I thought. NOW you can talk about tokenism because you are alive and can see things in retro-respect. Supposing you had been consumed by the raging civil war that was ominously hovering above our heads, where would you be to belittle Moi? When Martha was waxing hot with her hard 'go-to-court' stance, didn't I see people on this blog say that Moi was better than Kibaki? Now that things look a little better, you can now say Moi is a Devil. I'm not a prophet of doom like you, but being on the ground in one of the worst hit areas, we are not quite over the hill yet. People had armed themselves and anything that tilts the balance of the fragile stability we have now will lead to a quick degeneration into a long, deathly war than not even the UN, the US and its allies will stop in time.
People are healing now. We are being told to forgive those who killed our siblings, parents and children and we are still finding it difficult to tell those murderers and looters "Habari yako." We are trying hard, but then here goes Taabu (Problems) tearing into Moi's integrity. This is time to show that Kumekucha has a human side. What is Kumekucha doing to help the IDPs and those who have lost their jobs? Haaaaa! The closest I have seen you come to this is that you want to lobby for those living in diaspora to get dual citizenship!! This is what we call living in ivory towers. To you, as soon as Raila signed to be PM, the next person who really needed help was that unpatriotic man or woman who ran away from Kenya long before there was any sign of unrest. And he is in such stress that he/she must be given dual citizenship before the IDPs can be re-settled!! Sadists (I wish I had a stronger word).
Taabu, why don't you introduce the next thread by talking about the heroes of Kenya during the past two months? Then I will tell you of the Mzee who hid 800 "wrong tribe" fellow Kenyans in the forest and fed them when he knew it was very risky. I'll tell you about the Mama who closed her private School and allowed 2000 "wrong tribe" IDPs to stay there as she scrounged for food from other sources. If you do this, your thread will have more than 200 contributions-mostly from Kenya. But if you keep belittling wazees, I guarantee you that this thread will not have more than 20 contributions. And if they do, it is because they will be supporting me. So, remove the moderation and let's move it.
Mjukuu wa Nyayo.
Don't be tiresome.
ReplyDeleteKANU is the party of independence, it is the only ideological party in all Kenyan history (assuming, for the moment, that ethnocracy is not an ideology), and it is the only party in Kenya that has ever been genuinely popular throughout the nation.
MOi was an import from KADU, and even he was a nationalist in his own way. He went bad after the coup, and worse after multi-partyism. But he willingly relinquished power when th time came. In short, he was a brave, bad man. To attack him in his dotage is to combine cowardice and bad taste.
I beg to differ with your analysis. Moi et al. are actually winners in the current impasse in that nobody is talking of repatriating Kenya's looted funds stashed by Moi and his ilk in foreign bank accounts. By the time Kenyans are done going through the ghosts that the election fraud brought on them, many years will have passed thereby giving the looters the much needed breathing space.
ReplyDeleteunder moi you did not have 1,000,000 internally displaced persons and 2,000 dead. if it had been moi you would have had an agreement Jan 1st not March 1st - this is because moi put the ordinary kenyan first;
ReplyDeletemoi bulit churches; some kenyans destroyed those churches...
TAABU has clearly been FLOORED this time around and boy, do I say quite hard! No wonder he/she responded quickly by the usual matusis to a point of calling Pastor Muiru a conman! Pole sana Taabu I think you are quite angry with the whole world. Anger, they say is a luggage and a sin, so you must be one big tired and angry sinner. Here's a challege for you Taabu. How about gritting your teeth and forcing yourself to write something positive for once? It sounds like a dare to you but to me it's a double dare!
ReplyDeleteam sure you murderers think you have gotten away with the slaughter of thousands of Kikuyus, Kisiis and Kambas.
ReplyDeleteThe silence of the kyuks about this power sharing thing should tell you something. Kibaki is a traitor and he will be dealt as such.
You sucker punched us and thought you had a victory. Just wait..Nairobi will be the next flashpoint and at the end of it, Kenya will roughly be divided into two with Molo as the border. Mark my words. this year will not end before this happens
Taabu, MOi did his part, though it had its issues, Moi never took us the route that Kibaki did and on that i am grateful. Yes mjukuu wa Moi the days i remeber were the days we were taking milk in school and it is one thing i drum into the ears of children, Moi taking a trip by road from Kabarnet to Nairobi just so that he was in touch with people. Trust me right now i miss Moi more than ever my old man tells me days were tough but they were still able to afford basic needs.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing that i am worried about is that since the peace deal, he has been a bit quiet...It is worrying but we thank God for him he was able to make the country stable....Yse Anon 9:58 Moi put the country and the kenyans first, unlike someone who is elected but lets a clique of people rule him and lord their issues to us. Kibaki "MIGHT" have had the 7% economic growth but what is there to show, and dont talk about farmers are being paid...My grandma is a sugar cane farmer and i know what i am talking about. Yes at this time in this quagmire...I MISS MOi and i dont have to apologise to anyone.
Ivy
How can you say Prof. Moi has lost in the current prevailing political reality?? He raised Ruto and Mudavadi to political adulthood and one of them is certainly going to be a deputy PM. And president Kibaki was Moi's understudy for many years. That is not to mention that Raila was a KANU Secretary General under Moi and an allottee of the Kisumu Molasses public land by Moi. The whole system is full of Moi-lings - Saitoti, Kalonzo, Kosingeys etc. How many political fathers can boast of such success?? Like a father/teacher with many students, Moi had to choose to support some of his students in the last elections, but that doesn't mean he did not father and "successfully" raise all these politicians. In your euphoria don't belittle his fatherhood in matters political. The more you think that things have changed in Kenya the less they have. The only slight difference is that when it came to ethnic cleansing, the ODM followers outdid Moi. My advice is that you leave Moi alone and concentrate on nursing your dream of Armageddon. Otherwise don't spread your hatred for others clothed in pseudo-intellectual analysis.
ReplyDeleteIf there's anybody who understands and appreciates Moi's spuriousness and divisiveness, then it's us Kalenjins. Moi is too cunning a leader, and just as Kibaki said jana that he had to reflect to his fifty years of politics, what about Moi? Moi might not have the university degrees Kibaki and Raila have, but surely, that man knows how to play his cards.
ReplyDeleteKalenjins threw his sons out and resisted his dictation because we know him to well. Divide and Rule. He's better at it than any other African leader, and that is why he was able to play Muppet show with the whole country for 24years.
His campaign for Kibaki wasn't genuine as people want to believe. Ati so that his sins are forgiven...Kwanza, Moi made sure that everyone who benefited from his government got into some fishy deal at one point so that no one would ever have the guts to accuse him alone.
Secondly, you just can’t place a finger on him, he was too sly a thief and he made sure everything else was based on speculation and perception. No hard evidence can suffice against him. Did you see what he did with Pattni?
Thirdly, do you really think he forgot what Kibaki did to him in 2002? Even after Moi had decided to be a statesman and not to rule by the gun like Kibaki tried to do juzi?
For one, Moi knew how much Kenyans didn’t like him, and knew how much his projects fell through. After the dissent that rocked KANU after the NDC that proposed UHURU for chairman, Moi knew that pay back would come.
It was simple, join the Kibaki bandwagon, get to have clearance on some pending loopholes and subsequently seal them, get closer to Kibaki, and since he knew that majority of voters didn’t like his dictatorial declarations, he decided to "dictate to Kenyans to vote for Kibaki" , Kenyans remember his legacy, and he would just sit back and watch Kibaki get unpopular with the youth.
That is how Kibaki lost the vote..Leave the rigging aside....Then as Kibaki soled himself with moism, Moi, who had earlier told his sons not to venture into politics, watched as his creativity unfolded.
His ultimate plan was to push Kibaki to the wall and let Kenyans see who he really was. If anything, Kibaki and all our politicians were all Moi's subordinates and he know all of them and their traits.
I wouldn’t' be too quick to dismiss Moi, because as Kalenjins, we know that whenever he plays dirty, he never credits him to himself. He is too calculative. And he succeeded, Kenyans have forgotten about the "so called second liberation" of 2002 and messiah Kibaki is no more. Moi get to retire in peace. Think about it.
Under Moi what we had was the fear of expressing ourselves if you can call peace "peace" under a dictator that is what we had ... stop pretending during Mois time you would not even dare starting up a Blog...
ReplyDeletearap chito said... your argument is very persuasive I would not put it past the grand old man to hatch a chess game while we are concentrating on checkers!
ReplyDeleteAs a man who was forced by circumstances to be a KANU member during the eighties, I dare say some of the commentators above have got no idea what life was like under one-party dictatorship called NYAYO.
ReplyDeleteFirst of, there used to be a compulsory KANU membership card that each citizen was required to buy at 10/- and then update it with stamps each year. For example, being stopped by cops in downtown NAirobi meant a night in the cell if you dis not have your KANU membership card with up-to-date stamps. For an adult population of say 8 million then, this is was not a bad investment for farmer/businessman/teacher/baba wa taifa number one.
Secondly, you only need to look at what is left of Kenneth Matiba to see how much people of this country suffered through the infamous Nyayo house tourture chambers and the detention without trial. Matiba is very lucky to have escaped with his life, but many others right from University students to lecturers, politicians and doctors were killed in mysterious circumstances because of their political beliefs.
Thirdly, many say we witnessed development during Moi's time, and I ask, which ones? For instance, I would like anyone to point out any major highway that was constructed during the 24 years that Mopi was president. The roads which were built originally by wazungus in colonial times and then upgraded by Kenyatta are the same one's we still use to this day, 50 years after independence, half of that time under Moi. Which state parastastal flourished during Nyayo's time? None at all. Most of them went down. KCC, ICDC, KNTC, KP&LC, KP&TC, KR, KFA, NBK, KCB, the list is endless.
Instead of facilitating development, Moi created a record number of white elephants and in the process enriched himself and his chronies to multi-billionaires. One of his chronies is Mr. Nicholas Biwott a man whose history is well known and well recorded.
My post is not about the merits and/or demerits of the retired President Moi.
ReplyDeleteRecently when Kenya was on the brink of an abyss, an event took place that was quietly reported in the papers. What surprises me is that no commentary has made reference to that event when it would have been appropriate to do so here. Mediator-extra-ordinarie Former UN Secretary-General Koffi Annan had reached the end of his wits. He was almost out of options. Was there anybody with influence who could talk to the Protagonists? Somebody must have whispered in his ears, try the 'Professor of Politics'. All that was ever reported and pictured was that Mr. Annan went to Kabarnet Gardens and returned. No other details of his mission were reported, so safe to say that he returned empty-handed. Suffice to say that Mzee Moi – what ever his reasons then - missed the opportunity to leave a lasting legacy. This place in History of those who helped avert a Country's catastrophe, will instead be shared by Annan, Kikwete, the international community and the millions of long suffering Kenyans who include martyrs who said enough was enough.
Phil and Arap Chito, your comments are quite on point!
ReplyDeleteForget Moi. He is a bad leader with blood stains on his palm. RAILA is the only serious Kenyan politics professor.
ReplyDeleteA professor is someone who can predict. What Agwambo talked about some years ago are today visible.
"The violence following last years disputed polls have proved to Moi and his ilk that Kenyans are averagely ahead of their leaders who only derive utmost pleasure in primitive ethnicity." What a dumb statement!
ReplyDeleteHow can violence prove any advancement? Who proved how primitive they were except the ODM and their 41 against 1 strategy? What have they really achieved? Raila becoming a PM? What will they do when the realization sets in that Raila is nothing more than a glorified Prefect with no real effective power? Take to the streets? Burn more babies in a church?
If anything, what the violence has gone to prove is that Moi was right after all. Multi-partyism would cause tribal animosity and "watu watalia"! And so it has come to pass. What does that now make Moi, a prophet? Your call.
'Third Party Law -
ReplyDeleteA THIRD PARTY MUST BE PRESENT AND UNKNOWN IN EVERY QUARREL FOR A CONFLICT TO EXIST.
OR
FOR A QUARREL TO OCCUR, AN UNKNOWN THIRD PARTY MUST BE ACTIVE IN PRODUCING IT BETWEEN TWO POTENTIAL OPPONENTS.
OR
WHILE IT IS COMMONLY BELIEVED TO TAKE TWO TO MAKE A FIGHT, A THIRD PARTY MUST EXIST AND MUST DEVELOP IT FOR A CONFLICT TO OCCUR.'
L HUBBARD
Is Moi the unknown Third Party?