Will other cabinet ministers follow Kosgey to court? | Henry Kosgey Kalenjin politics

Something major has changed in Kenya in recent times. Yesterday the newspapers were splashed with photographs of a cabinet minister (Henry Kosgei who was the minister for Industrialization until he resigned on Tuesday shortly before his arrest) being escorted into court, something unprecedented in Kenya.

Al Kosgey?

The truth is that impunity is still alive and well and putting up a hell of a fight. And that fight could still go either way. However having said that, it is also true that this previous champion who would go through fights untouched is now receiving significant body blows.

The thing which stood out the most for me from the events of Tuesday was that journalists and eye witnesses concur that Henry Kosgey looked pretty shaken when he emerged from his session with KACA investigators before being whisked off to court where he was charged later in the afternoon. There is no denying the fact that this extremely rich man who financed a major chunk of the ODM campaign in the last elections has been very badly shaken.

Cabinet ministers have good reason to be very frightened just now. Especially when they take the time to carefully analyze the strategy used to nail Henry Kosgey. It is reminiscent of how the American government finally nailed organized crime king pin Al Capone in 1931. The notorious criminal was caught completely unawares when he was charged with tax evasion (and tax on illegally acquired income at that). Capone who was famously known for battering a colleague to death with a baseball bat—whom he accused of betrayal but never produced the evidence—during a meeting was a vicious and extremely powerful criminal who had put virtually all major officials in Chicago in his payroll of bribes. Read his amazing tale HERE

Kosgey is probably one of the most corrupt cabinet ministers ever and is credited with single-handedly bringing the once prosperous government-owned Kenya National Assurance to it’s knees stripping it of not only cash but prized assets, leaving in his wake a mere shell of a company that quickly folded. Thousands of Kenyans lost a livelihood in the process and Kosegy got away with it. Not to mention the fourth All Africa games where the same man is said to have pocketed huge sums given in sponsorship for the event and left the government holding all the bills. If Kosgey is found guilty of the charges of abuse of office then it will be like a serial killer found guilty of stealing a chicken.

Although the Kibaki government has been notoriously corrupt, under former president Moi excessive corruption that led to the collapse of public institutions was rampant. Read my book Dark Secrets of the Kenyan Presidency to little known incidents that were happening behind the scenes as his henchmen raped and plundered the Kenyan economy like there was no tomorrow. You can get the book free HERE.

It seems that the new KACA boss PLO Lumumba may be a fan of Al Capone movies or so it seems because he has borrowed heavily from this American strategy of the 1930s. Capone and impunity in cabinet and high office in Kenya have many similarities including the fact that it is extremely difficult to obtain any evidence that can stand up in a court of law against the evil that has been committed for decades. And yet it is widely known that many cabinet ministers are to this day way too corrupt (according to the Wikileaks cables American intelligence is convinced that virtually ALL in cabinet are corrupt, a view shared by this blogger).

Lumumba’s new legal strategy is very different from that of his predecessor and coupled with the intense international pressure for KACA to graduate from prosecuting traffic policemen caught taking Kshs 50 to the really big fish, it seems that we will be seeing a number of other political heavy weights in court in the months to come.

But what is going to be even more interesting to watch are the political repercussions of this heightened fight against impunity. A friend from the Rift Valley told me yesterday that the PM is finished in the Rift Valley after Kosgey’s appearance in court on Tuesday. And the same friend repeated something that I have heard for a long time now. That a certain ODM cabinet Minister is swiftly amassing a war chest at a sensitive ministry of government that touches on Internal security. This individual could well be the next person who is photographed next to a policeman making an appearance in court. Or perhaps what he knows is a threat to the security of the state. Well, Kumekucha is doing a little more digging and you can expect an explosive post here in the next few days.

Impunity: word of the moment

Leading Nairobi online directory's unique advertising opportunity.


Mombasa cars @Kshs 490,000 ONLY? Amazing car deals at Kumekucha's Car Market.

Gitobu Imanyara: The long suffering man who could be king

Gitobu Imanyara was our first runner up to the person of the year 2010 and once again this seemingly unlucky Kenyan politicial giant was denied the accolades after making some very commendable contributions in the year 2010. Is the guy jinxed or what?

Gitobu Imanyara as a school prefect in Nairobi School in 1973

Looking at the career of Mr Imanyara one cannot help but feel that he surely deserves much more than what life has handed to him so far. Let’s compare him to two very lucky Kenyan politicians who have played it safe contributed very little and reached the top. Namely Mwai Kibaki and Kalonzo Musyoka.

When Gitobu was getting in and out of police detention Mwai Kibaki was enjoying life as usual, flashing the one finger KANU salute. Indeed Mwai Kibaki has never seen what the inside of a police cell looks like. All his political career he has been the overcautious politician who would agonize for months when they reached the edge of a political cliff with nowhere else to turn except to jump down into the water below. A case in point was after the controversial 1988 infamous queue-voting general elections.

Gitobu Imanyara for President

An aside here to detail that amazing political occurrence is well worth it.

Bored handlers of president Moi itching for a challenge after having shot down everything that could move as far as a threat to the Moi presidency (real or imagined) was concerned turned their attention to the then cowardly and extremely harmless Vice President. They decided to rig him out of his Othaya parliamentary seat and everything was in place for the shock announcement that some obscure politician called Muriuki or something like that had defeated Kibaki in the 1988 parliamentary elections. But when Othaya constituents heard of the scheme most men (and some women) went home and fetched their pangas to come and hear the announcement of the election results. The DC sensed serious trouble and hurriedly called Nairobi for direction. In the end Mwai Kibaki was announced victor and his opponent needed heavy police protection to hurriedly get the hell out of town. Still when Moi announced his new cabinet a few days later the Vice President was a man called Prof Josphat Karanja and Kibaki was relegated to a mere Minister for Health. Still he did nothing and sat on the uncomfortable fence until Christmas day 1991 (the very last minute because elections were due in 1992) when he announced his defection from Kanu to a new political party that he had just formed with others called DP (Democratic Party of Kenya). That’s Kibaki for you.

Kalonzo Musyoka is not any different and was at the heart of Kanu mama na baba as Imanyara struggled to stay alive. Musyoka is now the Vice President while Imanyara is not even in the cabinet.

It seems Kenyan politics has always favoured the cowardly and the compromisers (read details in my landmark book Dark Secrets of the Kenyan Presidency. You can now get your copy for FREE HERE.)

And Gitobu Imanyara’s troubles seem to be far from over even when Kenya has gained so much democratic space thanks mainly to Imanyara’s personal sacrifices and endless suffering in police cells and torture chambers. What comes to mind right away is the recent incident where he was slapped by first lady Lucy Kibaki in State House.

This is the fascinating East African Standard report on the issue (the account was from Imanyara himself);

Imanyara said he had cut short a trip to South Africa to attend the meeting (at State House Nairobi), also graced by Vice-President, Mr Kalonzo Musyoka, and Internal Security minister, Prof George Saitoti.

Imanyara said after going through the security checks at State House, they were ushered into a conference room.

After taking a seat and introducing himself to the President, the MP said, State House Comptroller, Mr Hyslop Ipu, came in and whispered to him that he should leave the room.

“I thought this was quite rude for a junior officer to come where the President was and ask me to leave the room,” said a visibly angry Imanyara.

Shortly afterwards, Imanyara recounted, the Head of the Public Service and Secretary to the Cabinet, Mr Francis Muthaura, came to ask whether they could talk outside.

“At this time, I could hear loud screams of a female shouting all kinds of words. I did not know who it was,” said Imanyara.

The Imenti Central legislator said as he was talking to Muthaura, the First Lady burst into the scene screaming: “This is the man that took the First Lady to the courts. Nobody comes to State House without my permission!”

Imanyara said she went on: “You are a friend of the Luos. Foolish Merus voted for you.”

At this juncture, said Imanyara, the First Lady came forward and started throwing punches at him, which he ducked.

“Nobody takes the First Lady to court. Nobody gets away with it,” Imanyara quoted her as saying.

He said Mrs Kibaki vowed that he would not get any Government appointments as long as she was at State House.

And on allegations that he was punched, Imanyara said: “The First Lady is too short and no punch touched me, neither did I return any.”

Imanyara said security at the corridors of State House stood by and watched as the whole episode unfolded.

The MP said at some point, he was asked to leave State House and he obliged.

Speaking at the Serena Hotel, Nairobi, Imanyara lashed out at the First Lady for trying to create an impression that State House was her property.

“At this rate, we don’t know who is in charge at State House. Kibaki needs to remove the First Lady from State House,” said Imanyara.

So who is Gitobu Imanyara?

After Imanyara spent more than two years in Maximum Security Prison on charges associated with his work as a human rights lawyer, he founded the Nairobi Law Monthly in 1987. It was not supportive of Daniel arap Moi's one party policy and Imanyara was arrested for not registering the magazine.

He was again arrested 1n 1990 after writing a special issue entitled "The Historic Debate: Law, Democracy, and Multi-Party Politics in Kenya." At one point he was held in a prison psychiatric ward, though he re-released the issue following his own release. Receiving the International Editor of the Year by the World Press Review while in prison, he was called "the boldest voice for a free press in a country whose intolerant government does not hesitate to shut down publications and where most journalists practice self censorship."

Imanyara was arrested for a third time in April 1991 after police confiscated that moneth’s issue of the Nairobi Law Monthly. The offending information was about the formation of an opposition political party. It is instructive that he went on to become the founding secretary general of the Forum for the Restoration of Demoracy, FORD KENYA, 1990-2002. This was the first opposition party to be registered in Kenya for many decades.

While in custody, Imanyara developed a brain tumour. Luckily it was successfully treated. Kenyan aid money went down significantly after that arrest, and the U.S. State Department called it "another denial of freedom of expression in Kenya." Imanyara was awarded the World Association of Newspapers' Golden Pen of Freedom Award later that year, but due to authorities not allowing him to leave the country for it, Liberal International President Otto Lambsdorff brought it personally to Nairobi in early 1992.

At the Kenyan general elections in December 1997, he won a regional landslide victory and was elected MP for Central Imenti Constituency. He continued to publish his magazine, which was renamed the Africa Law Review.

Posted at the Nairobi School website www.oldcambrians.com. Imanyara is an alumni of the elitist boy’s boarding school in Nairobi:
# House Prefect, Scott House 1972
# Head of Scott and School Prefect 1973
# University of Nairobi 1974-1977, LL.B
# Kenya School of Law 1978
# Advocate of the High Court of Kenya, from 1979
# Member of Parliament 1997-2002
# Founding Secretary General, Forum for the Restoration of Demoracy, FORD KENYA, 1990-2002
# Founding Publisher and Editor in Chief, The Nairobi Law Monthly
# Internatinal Board Member, Article 19, The International Centre Against Censorship, London, 1990-2000
# International Adisory Editorial Board Member, Human Rights Quaterly,USA
# Chairman,The Great Lakes Parliamentary Forum on Peace,[Kenya,Uganda,Tanzania,Rwanda,Burundi,Zambia, Zanzibar] 1997-2002
# World Press Review's Internatinal Editor of the Year, 1990, New York
# World Association's Golden Pen of Freedom Laureate, Paris 1991
# Harvard University's Nieman Fellow's Louis m. Lyons Award Laureate, 1991, USA
# Liberal International's Prize of Freedom Laureate 1991, Switzerland
# Human Rights Award 1991 International Human Rights Law Group, Washington
# Internatinal Biographic Centre, Cambridge, UK's 2000 Outstanding Scholars of the 20th Century, 2000

Kumekucha salutes you Gitobu Imanyara. Our position is that you could make an excellent presidential candidate for 2012.

See also:
Gitobu Imanyara's brother died because of a piece of meat
My encounter with Lucy Kibaki
Book gives clues on Lucy Kibaki's condition
Advertise for free in the Nairobi Online Business Directory