This time its' much worse than Koinange Street
Our politicians in Kenya are really ahead of the world in all the wrong things. The latest controversy where Ministerial perks have been dramatically increased and MPs (whatever excuse they are using) also "want something" is nothing short of immoral when you consider the hardships and great difficulties that Kenyans are currently going through.
To this blogger there is really no difference in both sides of the house as Kenyans will find out if they make the mistake of shifting their votes to the other side of the floor hoping for genuine change to come from the nice rhetoric we are being treated to.
It is amazing what short memories Kenyan voters have when it was just the other day, early in the Narc administration when several top Narc officials including cabinet ministers were caught literally with their pants down in the notorious red light district that is Koinange street at night. (Is it any wonder that some are suspecting Gomorah-like hail and brimstone in the jinx of deaths, accidents and bad luck that has dogged this parliament and which started before they had even sat down for business?)
For the uninformed the sort of girls you would pick up on Koinange street in Nairobi at night are mostly under the legal age for sex – with consent or not. In other words it is a serious criminal offence to have sex with this poverty-stricken youngsters (whose equally-young mail siblings are usually out at about the same time carjacking and shooting innocent motorists dead).
One would be tempted to ask what the MPs are going to do with all the extra tax-payers money that they are eager to line their pockets with.
This bloggers answer: Members will of course patriotically pump it back into the economy via Koinange street.
Anybody who has illusions that the spending habits of most MPs will allow them to save the cash for the upcoming general elections should have their heads examined.
You will excuse my getting very upset and being on an extremely short fuse when discussing the conduct of members of the august house. Many readers of this blog have never been inside a cardboard house in the Mathare slums. Nor used the toilet facilities in the slums (nothing more than a polythene paperbag of your choice which you then hurl into the garbage heap nearby and thus increase the pollution which your nose can no longer detect if you've lived there for a couple of months).
Many readers of this blog also do not know what it feels like to go hungry and become so desperate because you have a family to feed and you have no idea where the next meal is going to come from.
In this kind of environment it is not only immoral but criminal for a cabinet minister to take home a million Kenya shillings. Fellow Kenyans prepare your voting cards and let’s vote in a new generation of Kenyans for better or for worse because things can surely not be left to continue the way they are.
Read the full disgusting details.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Tanzania's President Kikwete Has A Problem With Kenyans Living In His Country
In all the rhetoric we are being treated to about the proposed East African political federation a significant fact has stayed out of the news pages. And that is the fact that one partner, is very apprehensive about opening up her borders to the free movement of East Africans. That member is Tanzania.
Kenya and Uganda will open up their borders to free movement tomorrow, if given half a chance, but Tanzania is holding back everybody. And not without reason. Apart from the fact that it is easier for a Kenyan to obtain a work permit in the United States than it is for them to do so in Tanzania, there are recent developments that are of grave concern to the young government of President Jakaya Kikwete.
Since the beginning of this year Tanzania has been hit by a spate of violent crimes that is unprecedented in it's history and has included a number of high profile bank robberies. The authorities there and the press in general are not in doubt as to where the masterminds of these gruesome crimes come from (the mostly Swahili press keeps on using the phrase "criminal elements from a neighboring country").
It is now clear that as the war on crime in Kenya has intensified and as individuals and organizations have reacted by tightening security, those who live on crime are feeling the heat. And already there is evidence that many of them have gone regional (some hardened wanted criminals were recently arrested in Mozambique). It is quite likely that the source of heightened criminal activity in Tanzania is indeed Kenya.
The issue of crime is so worrying to the Tanzanian government that this blogger has reliably been informed that some Somali's were recently denied entry into Tanzania through the Namanga border. Immigration officials on the ground indicated that the new policy was to bar entry to persons of Somali origin. Everybody knows that these are the nice folks who engage in selling automatic weapons from a certain well known estate in Nairobi. But then not all Somalis are gunrunners just like not all Arabs are suicide bombers.
Genuine businesspersons and citizens of the three East African countries looking to benefit from the new East African initiative will obviously suffer the consequences of these new developments. Although criminals do not require work permits to operate and neither do they usually cross the border at designated border crossings, there is little doubt that free movement of the peoples of East Africa will be delayed for some time to come because of these recent developments.
Kenya and Uganda will open up their borders to free movement tomorrow, if given half a chance, but Tanzania is holding back everybody. And not without reason. Apart from the fact that it is easier for a Kenyan to obtain a work permit in the United States than it is for them to do so in Tanzania, there are recent developments that are of grave concern to the young government of President Jakaya Kikwete.
Since the beginning of this year Tanzania has been hit by a spate of violent crimes that is unprecedented in it's history and has included a number of high profile bank robberies. The authorities there and the press in general are not in doubt as to where the masterminds of these gruesome crimes come from (the mostly Swahili press keeps on using the phrase "criminal elements from a neighboring country").
It is now clear that as the war on crime in Kenya has intensified and as individuals and organizations have reacted by tightening security, those who live on crime are feeling the heat. And already there is evidence that many of them have gone regional (some hardened wanted criminals were recently arrested in Mozambique). It is quite likely that the source of heightened criminal activity in Tanzania is indeed Kenya.
The issue of crime is so worrying to the Tanzanian government that this blogger has reliably been informed that some Somali's were recently denied entry into Tanzania through the Namanga border. Immigration officials on the ground indicated that the new policy was to bar entry to persons of Somali origin. Everybody knows that these are the nice folks who engage in selling automatic weapons from a certain well known estate in Nairobi. But then not all Somalis are gunrunners just like not all Arabs are suicide bombers.
Genuine businesspersons and citizens of the three East African countries looking to benefit from the new East African initiative will obviously suffer the consequences of these new developments. Although criminals do not require work permits to operate and neither do they usually cross the border at designated border crossings, there is little doubt that free movement of the peoples of East Africa will be delayed for some time to come because of these recent developments.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)