Few were convinced.
Lipstick on a pig doesn’t make the pig something else. A pig is a pig. Kibaki’s record is his record…a colossal failure to lead…failure to unite…failure to stabilize…and failure to progress. Only success at fleecing public resources…and entrenching institutionalized tribalism.
Tribalism, insecurity, runaway corruption, the Great Somali Migration into Kenya & terrorism, PEV, extrajudicial assassinations, drug and gun smuggling, the Artur brothers, a rogue police force, impunity, impunity, and impunity ain’t anything to write home about. This fella delayed Kenya’s takeoff by years. It’s a dark legacy. Even former Kibaki stalwart Martha Karua has rated impunity under Kibaki worse than the Moi era impunity – a very fair assessment!This goes down in history as the only regime that opened its paramilitary barracks (& uniforms and guns) for PEV operations to kill its own citizens…blood-chilling things that Kenyans previously only read about regarding Idi Amin’s Uganda. Talking about lopsided development is an understatement regarding the Kibaki era.
If roads were built, they weren’t the priority roads for the nation (Msa-Malaba or Msa-Busia border). If donor funds were restored, most ended up in non-prosecuted corruption. If relations were established with the East, it only brought a flooding of cheap counterfeit goods into our market (with simultaneous smuggling of our exotic resources). Where FPE or AIDS fund were introduced, cash cows were established for connected bureaucrats. Every noble idea was hijacked by the mafia.
10 years under Kibaki saddled the country with hundreds of billions more in debt…for the Anglo Leasings, Ken Rens, and massive transfer of public wealth into the hands of a few greedy oligarchs (the Trans Century looters)…from our Railways, our Ports, Tana Land, Airport Land, Telecommunications, Grand Regency, Oil Refineries, and almost all other public entities….all skewed to Kibaki’s cronies and connected & corrupt foreign oligarchs.
These dirty deals leave outstanding debts that Kenyans and their children WILL BE paying into future…paying for the transfer of public wealth into the hands of a few well-connected thieves aka the Shetani crew (as per Uhuru).
That same enriched shetani crew is now diving the country politically, slicing and dividing voters, in readiness to perpetuate their stranglehold on the country’s resources. After robbing the poor of all their resources (public assets and land), their next agenda is to milk from the budding middle class.
Kibaki has deliberately timed his exit with yet another resounding warning to landlords who have worked so hard (sometimes in distant lands) to invest in real estate. The handpicked KRA boss (Njiraini) is now arm-twisting tenants (starting 2013) to issue personal details of their landlords for future assessment of more taxes – to be looted by the greedy lot. It’s not as if we are not already paying annual property taxes and land rates! The fraudster in Kibaki wants such misguided economic policies to be effected under the legacy of subsequent President…to justify his current massive borrowing under taxpayers name. Talk of an experienced thief!
Yet another of Kibaki’s dark legacy is the blurring of state matters with private financial concerns (ala the hanky-panky between Equity, CBA, Family Bank, Coop Bank & CBK), dalliances which depreciated the Kenya shilling massively. Illegal overnight borrowing from CBK’s discount window has minted a few Kibaki-crony billionaires.
Kibaki and friends at Equity Bank even get to collect Tourism revenues at Kenya’s biggest tourist attraction – Maasai Mara Park. Who the heck is going to know how much cash in reality came in, or how many tourist visitors checked in? They might as well report that no tourists came this year? Ama? These people think Kenyans are a bunch of idiots to be fooled and robbed from mercilessly without consequences. Mta do? That’s their attitude.
Right now as we speak, Uhuru Kenyatta’s banking concern, Commercial bank of Africa (CBA) has been parachuted a multi-billion shilling deal to be the official Shylock of ordinary Kenyans under a program disguised as – the MShwari savings and loan product (mooted along the MPESA model) – with collaboration with Safaricom. This 7.5% interest loan SHARK mooted under Kenyatta’s tenure as Finance Minister, will virtually wipe out SACCO societies.
Kenyatta wants to mop up all little change from struggling Kenyans using the State as business anchor. After all that is how they get all their businesses…all tied to the state one way or another…if not supplying VW Passats to the government, loaning Treasury at exorbitant profits, or hosting public bureaucrats in non-essential seminars at their five star resorts. Isn’t this the real reason why they won’t let go the Presidency and levers of State?
If not thinking how to fleece Treasury… its how to fleece unsuspecting investors (toxic stocks at NSE with crooked brokers stealing investor cash and getting away scot free)…fleecing investors of their life savings at Syokimau…or fleecing folks with pyramid schemes…and now Uhuru plotting to rob jua kali traders with his Mshwari toxic loan….This is one freaking rotten and distressing legacy….as has been the last Jubilee.. It has to give way!!!!!!
Haiyaiya, Chris, KUWA MPOLE, and change gear bwana, else you will give yourself a long term condition. Happy New year- & be Nice ;-)
ReplyDeletePhil,
ReplyDeleteHappy new year.
Your post must have been inspired by DARK FORCES. Otherwise it reads like a MOVIE.
This govt may have gone to the dogs but I guess SUPERVISOR was denied keys and manned closed doors, ama?
The same govt sanitized maize scandal and KKV ama?
I guess we will have to settle for lesser evils.
Kudos Phil, I agree with what you are saying.
ReplyDeleteEven Moi had a legacy that can be discussed. Is it the work of a president to build roads?
Only a president who has achieved nothing scrambles to the media to piece together and spin stories to try to convince Kenyans that they have done some good.
ReplyDeleteIf Kibaki did some good he should have let that good speak for him.
Let history be the judge, but the truth is that Kibaki is desperate to try and pinpoint his achievements. As anon has pointed out above roads are NOT for a president to build. And the very constitution he delivered, Kibaki has been busy flouting.
ReplyDelete5 years passed too quickly and caught him unawares so he had no option but to rig himself in for another 5 years which have flown so fast that I am sure Kibaki is surprised.
But he forgets that he slept away most of his term. I mean when you get out of bed at 11 am in the morning your day really starts at noon which means half your day is already gone. In real terms Kibaki has probably put in not more than 3 years of work in the last 10 years.
let this be a lesson to the next presidents of our banana republic. Sleep before you become a president my broda and then when you get there work 18 hour days. Otherwise it will all fly past way too fast and the end will come with you having done nothing but put out fires.
Chris Kumekucha
@Chris and @Taabu
ReplyDeleteThis blog is old enough to know what Kibaki's shenanighans have been in so far as comprehensive reforms are concerned.
Indeed, the Orange Democratic Movement was born out of one such referendum debacle in 2005 when Kibaki trashed the Bomas process and brought his own personal constitutional draft at the referendum. It was roundly defeated.
In 2007 when the bloodless coup was being engineered at KICC, again we saw Kibaki appoint half a cabinet after being sworn in at dusk sorrounded by wolves and hyenas, only for the country to plunge into unprecedented violence that then compelled the international community to step in and force Kibaki into a coalition government through AGENDA 4 (National Accord and Reconciliation Act 2008).
It is this AGENDA4 that has given birth to the reforms we currently enjoy although even then, Uhuruto are fighting tooth and nail to reverse those gains through their surrogates in parliament. I guess this country will only exhale when these two chaps are shipped out to the Hague, incidentally the same day the IEBC has pencilled in the run-off.
Now, without any shame, PPS is crediting Kibaki for having delivered the new constitution through some imaginary legacy. Can you believe this? Even school children know a curse cannot be a legacy.
The most appropriate headline I have seen in a long time. Kibaki's legacy is indeed a fallacy and historians will not be fooled by the 64 page special supplements.
ReplyDeletePhil, your concerns about the intended KRA's well calculated exploitation of ruthless landlord as well as greedy, uncaring and overly unpatriotic absentee landords living in far away (in foreign countries) is understandable to some extent.
ReplyDeleteHowever the two types of landlords have had a free and easy ride for far too long since the 1940s, and it is high time they were reined in and asked to pay their rightful dues to the local authorities and government through the soon to throughly cleaned arm of the KRA for a change.
The days of milking the real eastate cash cows without ever replenishing the grazing fields as well as taking good care of the cash providers and local paddock owners are over and long gone.
Hence, all landlords, be they domestic and foreign (absentee), will have to spend money on their properties and necessary dues or taxes in order to make more money from their clients because it goes with the territory.
There will be no two ways about doing business with the KRA since the KRA itself will now be under a strict watch twenty-four-seven and three hundred and sixty-five days.
On the other hand, couldn't have agreed more with you that Kibaki's so-called shinning 10 year legacy has been nothing more than a glimmering myth and delusion to say the least.
The proof is the failed pudding loaded with ...
a) Underdevelopment* (in most urban and rural parts of the country*)
b) Poor insfrastructure*
c) Poor communication and social amenities.
d) Political, economic and social marginalization has continued to widen under Kibaki's great legacy for the select few and well connected.
e) Internal strife and massive loss of lives.
f) State sanctioned impunity, corruption and looting of public coffers, etc.
g) Glaring unemployment.
h) Invasion of the country by foreign criminals from Nigeria (Africa), Asia, Middle East, Europe and North America.
First of all, the billion of funds wasted on the ... expressway to somewhere near Nairobi could have been better utilised on developing the Msa-Malaba, Msa-Busia, NBI-Namanga two-lane highways or expressways for the most good of the greater part and population of the country.
A modern two way broad gauge railway truck that "our foreign friends" were willing construct in the seven years from the port city of Mombasa to the capital city of Nairobi, then extend it all the way to Malaba, and other to Busia, should have been given top priority as opposed to the easy quicksand construction of the current ... expressway.