Tricky because we have been treated to four years of buck-passing, amendments that favour politicians and even stalling by the powerful who have carefully analyzed some of the implications on crucial implementations to our new constitution. The result is that we still have structures that are too weak to withstand the madness that catches on around election time.
It is in that backdrop that a special edition of my raw notes (available for free since the beginning of this year) reveals what we are set to face.
Please bear with me I start this with a story.
It was late 2002 and we were all wildly celebrating the end of the Moi and KANU era. Nobody and I mean nobody could have predicted what happened that memorable December 2002. Even famed Mutahi Ngunyi had said before the elections that it is naïve and unrealistic for anybody to imagine that KANU could possibly be uprooted from power.
Wise old Njenga Karume (now deceased) had abandoned his old ally and bossom buddy for many years, Mwai Kibaki to move to KANU and the Uhuru Kenyatta camp. He was VERY SURE that KANU was going to remain in power. Those who have read my book Dark Secrets Of The Kenyan Presidency will quickly understand Karume (a member of Jomo Kenyatta’s inner circle) and why he would have had this mindset. Karume was of course familiar with the Magana prophecy which predicted that an offspring of Jomo Kenyatta would one day be president of Kenya. And that was long before even Jomo himself became president.
Well, people were buying drinks left right and centre and mostly for total strangers and the party of the century was in full swing.
I remember we were watching one very excited Kenyan dipping himself into the murky waters of the pond in Uhuru Park when this friend of mine walks in.
I saw him when he was at the door of the crowded pub and I said to myself, this man must be sad. No more think tank duty for him. No more large cash deposits from his benefactor. Still I was eager to hear what he had to say.
“You poor Kenyans do not know what is coming to you. You should be in mourning. Do you know Kibaki?”
That was the wrong thing to say in the wrong place and a scuffle almost erupted with somebody on the table actually trying to swing a punch. Somehow we managed to cool down tempers reminding everybody that this was what the democracy we wanted and were about to get for the first time was all about. People were going to be free to speak their mind without fear.
Being Kumekucha (even in those days 3 years before the launch of the Kumekucha blog) I was still curious. Like everybody on the table I wanted to strangle this man and dump his body in Kabarak (joking) where his friend, Moi was about to be flown to, to look after goats for the rest of his life. And so we had a quiet conversation away from all the celebration.
I had known this man for years. Nobody else on that table knew but he was a key member of one of Moi’s informal political think tanks (the president had several of them as I was made to understand). And much as I hated what he had to say, nothing he said that day failed to come to pass in the following years. Admittedly as I stored it all away in my brain I was telling myself that this man was very wrong and out of his mind. At one point I even felt pity for him believing that he had been overtaken by the times.
He assured me that State House had been aware for months that Kibaki was going to win the elections. It was one of the scenarios they had started looking at 4 years earlier.
“Chris, no election result in the history of Kenya has ever surprised State house,” he said several times during that conversation.
So the big question is what do the powers that be already know about the forthcoming elections? What have the fixers fixed well in advance? The answers to those questions will be disturbing to some and terrifying to most who love their country. As usual my raw notes do not pull any punches nor tread carefully around what needs to be said without favouring any side of the political divide. (Download the raw notes now and read for yourself).
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See also our top story from our business specialist the other Chris;
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