It was Kabete MP Paul Muite who first coined the term "the project" to describe Uhuru Kenyatta's candidature for the presidency in 2002. Now the majority of Kenyans believe that Nicholas Biwott is the new project for 2007 and was handpicked by the same person who picked Uhuru about 5 years ago.
In a KTN viewers sms poll last night a clear majority of well over 70 per cent indicated that they were certain that Biwott was a government project. (Or to put in the poetic language of one viewer, "Biwot is a total government project headed for total failure.") The real significance of this poll will be lost on many Kenyans so let me emphasize it. I will start by telling a popular joke that emerged from the 2002 general elections.
This rib-cracking, extremely funny joke commences with the question; in 2002, which Kenyan hero of the opposition did the most to unite the opposition (NPK, DP, Ford Kenya, Safina etc) when all else had failed? The answer is of course President Moi. And he did it by pushing Uhuru Kenyatta forward as his preferred successor.
It would seem that the same man has pulled it off again and united the vast majority of Kenyans behind ODM. By elevating Biwott to chairman of Kanu, Moi has caused many of the stanch Kibaki supporters to suddenly sit up and pay attention. Chances are high that their vote will now be anti-Biwott meaning that they will vote for the candidate opposed to Biwott's candidature.
It would seem that the self-proclaimed professor of politics has made yet another major blunder that will hand over easy victory to the opposition, or has he?
Many political analysts are now of the view that Moi anointed Uhuru knowing full well that there was a high possibility of his being defeated. However Moi was not worried because the way he had carefully played his cards, he was going to emerge the winner whichever of the two candidates won the elections. The Sunday Nation analysts poured a lot of ink on newsprint this week explaining how Kibaki was in fact Moi's first choice to succeed him and the former president sent many feelers in his direction. We are even told that there was actually a meeting that took place between the two. However everything seems to have fallen apart because Kibaki did not trust Moi. (Well at least that has changed now and Moi is today one of the President's most trusted advisors).
The Sunday Nation analysts go even further to give clear evidence to prove that whichever side the coin was going to fall in 2002, Moi was home and dry. This is in the fact that he completely ignored intelligence reports that clearly showed that Kanu and Uhuru were headed for defeat. It is said that this was the first time, Moi had ignored intelligence reports in his long tenure as president and especially after the failed 1982 coup.
Well, the stakes are much higher this time and if Moi was careful in 2002, this time he will be paranoid. (Have you noticed how Moi's political activity has dramatically increased as elections draw nearer). It is clear that the sharks are circling and closing in and Kenya's second president could easily lose everything and have his favorite son in prison for Goldenberg and other "sins" against the people of Kenya. Moi will go to any length (and I stress any length, even murder) to make sure that that does not happen and this is why Nick "executioner" Biwott is back.
There are a number of people who if elected as President in 2007, will not give Moi a single sleepless night. Here is the List;
1. Mwai Kibaki
2. Kalonzo Musyoka (running on ODM ticket. Still a very close friend of Moi's. Has publicly told the Kalenjin community that he will protect them from prosecution of elected president)
3. Musalia Mudavadi (running on ODM ticket. Said to be related to the former president. His mother is a sister to Moi.).
4. Uhuru Kenyatta (If Moi goes down for sins of the past, chances are high the Kenyatta family will also have to go down with him)
5. Mutula Kilonzo (still the President's lawyer. If Moi has a file on him, then one room is not enough to house it).
6. William Ruto (akiwa mgumu [if he is stubborn] Moi just needs to leak a little information about the YK92 – Youth For Kanu '92 organization. This organization single handedly impoverished millions of Kenyans overnight by flooding the Kenyan market with cartons of Kshs 500 notes, ushering in unprecedented hyper inflation that will take us decades to recover from – if we ever recover, that is.).
Here is the list of persons who according to Moi, must not be elected at all costs;
1. An outsider (a new clean broom that will emerge from nowhere according to prophecy, with no excess buggage, and no file in Moi's office of personal sins committed that can be used against them.)
2. ???????? (Name removed after my recent investigations. See explanation below. This person's name appearing here would seem to explain recent speculation that there are people who want to assassinate him.)
I have deliberately not put Raila Odinga's name on this second list because Moi has got too much on him. Besides he owes Moi a big one – the fact that he was not hanged for his involvement in the 1982 coup attempt when others who played much smaller roles are now with their maker. My very latest investigation has also unearthed evidence that Raila is fully aware (like many people in parliament today) of who killed former foreign minister Robert Ouko and the reason why. So Agwambo, (I know your people will read this and inform you) you are our hero and we are all looking up to you, especially due to the fact that of all the trash we have in Kenyan politics currently, you are the cleanest. Now, is Robert Ouko's gruesome murder not important enough? Is it not more important than any debt you may owe Moi? Please prove that you are different from the rest.
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Who was the main brain behind the 1982 attempted coup? We now know of Raila's involvement but to this day, it is not known who within Moi's government was the main mastermind behind the coup attempt. The sad thing is that many Kenyans lost their lives, some of them at the gallows, and countless innocent Kenya Airforce officers were dismissed from the service, court-martialed and jailed, yet the main mastermind never spent a single day in jail. You will find out who this mastermind was in this week's Kumekucha Confidential. Subscribe now and get it Free (to subscribe just send a blank email to kumekucha-subscribe@yahoogroups.com now). Subscribe now and beat the rapidly approaching deadline after which an annual subscription for new subscribers will be charged. Those who subscribe before then will never pay a single cent.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
The Mind Of The Kenyan Criminal
A volunteer from Australia working for an organization that cares for orphans and vulnerable children who was gang raped in March this year by armed robbers at her home in Nairobi, bravely recounted her ordeal in a local newspaper recently. She describes how the thugs openly joked about what the law would do to them if they were convicted of armed robbery and rape (the crime they had just committed). One of them even confessed that he was expecting to die soon.
This attitude reminded me of a movie I watched recently titled; City of God which was based on a true story about a notorious thug who emerged from the slums of Rio De Janeiro in the 80s. It paints a grim picture of hopelessness in the slums where people without hope are literally forced into crime.
This seems to be the situation we are in, in Kenya today. Of course Nairobi is nowhere near being as dangerous is Rio de Janeiro is, but we're getting there fast.
The President has displayed naivety and a lack of understanding of the situation by publicly warning criminals that they would be caught up with. This kind of approach was effective in the 60s and 70s where I am told violent bank robbers gave up their guns in terror when a certain Kenyan was appointed CID boss. But it will certainly not work today because the typical violent Kenyan criminal today who robs and rapes (isn't robbing somebody enough without having to rape them as well?) has the following characteristics;
i) They prefer death to a life of hopelessness and poverty. In other words, they would rather rob and kill than hang around jobless and hopeless in poverty.
ii) They are on drugs, many of which stimulate sexual desires as well as wiping out all traces of fear of the repercussions of their activities. This dramatically increases the chances of rape taking place during a robbery.
iii) With the kind of role models we have as politicians, they view what they are doing as the lesser evil. After all they rob from individuals, while politicians rob from masses of humanity at a time.
This situation is very similar to the state of emergency in the 50s in Kenya. Mau mau thugs (they were not fighting for the independence of Kenya as many Kenyan fairy tales suggest) were landless and hopeless in poverty after the white people who had grabbed their land started making it increasingly difficult for them to survive. They were taxed and the new economic order imposed by the colonialists meant that it was difficult to live without a job, yet the jobs were not forthcoming. Many preferred to rob and rape and face the consequences rather than lie down and quietly wait for their inevitable fate. Meanwhile the golf-playing colonialists talked about how they had improved "the economic situation" after finding "nothing". Africans were advised to work hard and seek loans in banks to set up businesses and prosper.
History surely repeats itself.
The first step in reducing crime must be to remove the hopelessness in ordinary Kenyans. The way to do that is to radically fight corruption at every level and for the presidency to take a leadership role in launching programs that address the urgent problems facing ordinary Kenyans today. For instance slums can easily be eliminated if there is enough political will.
You DO NOT remove hopelessness by carrying out coups in political parties that are sanctioned by the state.
You DO Not remove hopelessness by telling the whole nation that the economy has improved when they and their friends have sunk deeper into poverty. This is a clear message to them that they are not part of the economy that matters.
The general view amongst the rich in Kenya is that nothing can be done because there will always be poor people and rich people. That is true but the situation in Kenya is that many of our rich people have gotten rich at the expense of other less powerful Kenyans and government policies have actively created and promoted poverty over the last 40 years. The result is that there are just too many poor people in Kenya today for anybody with money in their pocket and clothes on their backs to be safe.
====================
Who was the main brain behind the 1982 attempted coup? We now know of Raila's involvement but to this day, it is not known who within Moi's government was the main mastermind behind the coup attempt. The sad thing is that many Kenyans lost their lives, some of them at the gallows, and countless innocent Kenya Airforce officers were dismissed from the service, court-martialed and jailed, yet the main mastermind never spent a single day in jail. You will find out who this mastermind was in this week's Kumekucha Confidential. Subscribe now and get it Free (to subscribe just send a blank email to kumekucha-subscribe@yahoogroups.com now). Subscribe now and beat the rapidly approaching deadline after which an annual subscription for new subscribers will be charged. Those who subscribe before then will never pay a single cent.
This attitude reminded me of a movie I watched recently titled; City of God which was based on a true story about a notorious thug who emerged from the slums of Rio De Janeiro in the 80s. It paints a grim picture of hopelessness in the slums where people without hope are literally forced into crime.
This seems to be the situation we are in, in Kenya today. Of course Nairobi is nowhere near being as dangerous is Rio de Janeiro is, but we're getting there fast.
The President has displayed naivety and a lack of understanding of the situation by publicly warning criminals that they would be caught up with. This kind of approach was effective in the 60s and 70s where I am told violent bank robbers gave up their guns in terror when a certain Kenyan was appointed CID boss. But it will certainly not work today because the typical violent Kenyan criminal today who robs and rapes (isn't robbing somebody enough without having to rape them as well?) has the following characteristics;
i) They prefer death to a life of hopelessness and poverty. In other words, they would rather rob and kill than hang around jobless and hopeless in poverty.
ii) They are on drugs, many of which stimulate sexual desires as well as wiping out all traces of fear of the repercussions of their activities. This dramatically increases the chances of rape taking place during a robbery.
iii) With the kind of role models we have as politicians, they view what they are doing as the lesser evil. After all they rob from individuals, while politicians rob from masses of humanity at a time.
This situation is very similar to the state of emergency in the 50s in Kenya. Mau mau thugs (they were not fighting for the independence of Kenya as many Kenyan fairy tales suggest) were landless and hopeless in poverty after the white people who had grabbed their land started making it increasingly difficult for them to survive. They were taxed and the new economic order imposed by the colonialists meant that it was difficult to live without a job, yet the jobs were not forthcoming. Many preferred to rob and rape and face the consequences rather than lie down and quietly wait for their inevitable fate. Meanwhile the golf-playing colonialists talked about how they had improved "the economic situation" after finding "nothing". Africans were advised to work hard and seek loans in banks to set up businesses and prosper.
History surely repeats itself.
The first step in reducing crime must be to remove the hopelessness in ordinary Kenyans. The way to do that is to radically fight corruption at every level and for the presidency to take a leadership role in launching programs that address the urgent problems facing ordinary Kenyans today. For instance slums can easily be eliminated if there is enough political will.
You DO NOT remove hopelessness by carrying out coups in political parties that are sanctioned by the state.
You DO Not remove hopelessness by telling the whole nation that the economy has improved when they and their friends have sunk deeper into poverty. This is a clear message to them that they are not part of the economy that matters.
The general view amongst the rich in Kenya is that nothing can be done because there will always be poor people and rich people. That is true but the situation in Kenya is that many of our rich people have gotten rich at the expense of other less powerful Kenyans and government policies have actively created and promoted poverty over the last 40 years. The result is that there are just too many poor people in Kenya today for anybody with money in their pocket and clothes on their backs to be safe.
====================
Who was the main brain behind the 1982 attempted coup? We now know of Raila's involvement but to this day, it is not known who within Moi's government was the main mastermind behind the coup attempt. The sad thing is that many Kenyans lost their lives, some of them at the gallows, and countless innocent Kenya Airforce officers were dismissed from the service, court-martialed and jailed, yet the main mastermind never spent a single day in jail. You will find out who this mastermind was in this week's Kumekucha Confidential. Subscribe now and get it Free (to subscribe just send a blank email to kumekucha-subscribe@yahoogroups.com now). Subscribe now and beat the rapidly approaching deadline after which an annual subscription for new subscribers will be charged. Those who subscribe before then will never pay a single cent.
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