Tough Executive Decisions That Have Led Kenya to the Brink

Last warning: prepare for the worst like you never imagined in your worst nightmares
Every leader is faced with those terrible, terrible decisions. The more powerful your leadership position the more terrible the decisions you will have to make. I am talking about the kind of decisions where you toss a coin and if it is heads people die and if it is tails more people die. If you choose not to toss the coin then it is even worse because you postpone catastrophe.

Faced with this kind of terrible decision early in his administration, our dear president true to form chose the third option as he has done many times before. The result is that even if you don’t know it yet (just like many Kenyans) we are on the brink of unprecedented economic troubles.

You will remember that shortly after being sworn in on that most memorable day in December 2002 President Mwai Kibaki made his first speech where he emphasized that the new government would have zero tolerance to corruption. Looking back today those words ring hallow and empty because there are those who say that corruption has increased rather than decreased under Mwai Kibaki’s administration.

In retrospect it is now clear as day that the president had very good intentions at heart but one of his major shortfalls was his managerial weakness of failing to make critical decisions with the speed they deserve.

Try and empathize with his position as you read the following scenario. Those hundreds of wannabes who regularly get off imagining themselves in State house as president of the republic of Kenya please pay special attention and make a decision to withdraw your candidature. Quit dreaming only of the gardens of State house without taking into consideration the extremely tough decision-making side of high office.

Imagine the following scenario for a minute. That you are the president of Kenya and you are having a meeting with your advisors one morning. You have come to the meeting with some enthusiastic proposals to round up all the drug kingpins whom you know very well (everybody in the political class has known them for years) and you also want to shut down Eastleigh because you know that most of the cash from piracy off the Somali coast and beyond ends up there.

But your advisors tell you things that cause you to apply emergency brakes to your enthusiasm. If you move against drug lords in the country you will be sure to cut your own “political feet” because these are the people who oil politics in Kenya and you Mr President are no exception. Secondly the repercussions to the economy will be colossal. Cash from the evil trade props up the Kenyan shilling and indeed the entire Kenyan economy. If the hard drugs traffic is interfered with, you promptly interfere with the Kenyan economy and those who will be worst hit will be the common wananchi.

And before you recover another of your advisors gets up with statistics showing you the disaster that will befall the nation’s economy if you dare move against Eastliegh and the cash flowing there from piracy in the high seas.

If you are a good manager who makes decisions quickly chances are that you will opt to do nothing. If you are Barrack Obama you will think outside the box and create a third option that nobody ever thought of before. Chances are that it will be quite controversial but at least it will buy you political time and at least it will be a decision. But if you are Mwai Kibaki you will do the most dangerous thing of all. You will make no decision.

That is exactly what happened in 2003 and tragically that indecision has caught up with us after a chain of events has quickly brought us to the current circumstances. I want to keep this post as short as possible so the chain of events that have led us to today will be the subject of a future post.

The current situation is that the Americans are on the war path against the drug trade and are determined to shut down one of the busiest transit cities in the world, namely Nairobi. How do you kill a snake? According to the government policy in Kenya currently you start by hitting the tail of the snake as hard as you can and you follow this up by concentrating all your efforts on the tail of the snake (KACA tactics). But the decisive Americans have a different approach they go straight for the head and if the snake had a jugular that is exactly where they would hit with pinpoint precision. And that is why the two names of Kenyans were released by the Obama administration. The effect has been phenomenal. For all intents and purposes the drug trafficking business in Kenya and the region will never be the same again.

But what many people are yet to do is link this recent happening to the catastrophe that is unfolding on the economic front. It started with the shilling going on a free-fall. As I write this it has sunk to it’s lowest point in history at one point exchanging at Kshs 91 to the green buck.

After weeks of shocked confusion, the Central bank finally decided to react. What they did was predictable; yesterday they raised the benchmark CBR (Central Bank rates from 6.25 per cent to 8 per cent. What this means is that the rates across the board will increase… dramatically.

Historically this has been the only avenue Kenya has followed to tame inflation. This time it is clearly the wrong approach at the wrong time. Most experts agree that what the drastic increase of rates will do will be to choke the economy and dramatically slow down what little speed is still there going forward. If businesses find it increasingly hard to borrow they will lay off people for sure and those already using borrowed money whose cost has suddenly shot up will pass on the cost to the consumer for sure, raising prices further. But the really tragic thing here is that all this would not have happened at a worse time when famine is spreading across Kenya and prices of the staple maize crop has reached where it has never treaded before in the history of the nation.

Moral of this post: Had we made the decision to do the house cleaning way back in 2003, we would not be in the deep hole we find ourselves in today. Do not imagine for a minute that I am saying I would have done better than Mwai Kibaki did. Hell NO. What I am saying is that the executive job is one that comes with numerous terrible decisions that make you lose hair and age quicker than anything else can age you in this world. Those who are eager to be president really, really need to chew on that… and withdraw their silly pipe-dream ambitions. If you have been MP for 20 years and your constituents still have serious water problems, sir with all due respect this office is NOT for you. Go sort out the water problems first.

Understanding Kamlesh Patni’s Goldenberg Scandal

Mwau Supporters Flood Kumekucha With Angry Emails

Quite a number of people have been sending me angry emails over the last few days about how inaccurate my information on Harun Mwau and William Kabogo is. One nice lady even supported Mwau’s ridiculous theory about the Americans wanting to finish the innocent Kilome legislator and wondered why I “trust the Americans so much.”

I have answered most of these emails politely but deep inside me I have felt very offended that people would want to insult my intelligence even if they think it is limited. Where do these people think I came from? Do they think I fell from the sky and landed in Kenya one day and promptly started publishing articles about drug kingpins by cutting and pasting information from some newspaper? Do they honestly believe that the story about Obama and the Americans wanting to finish Mwau can really, really be taken seriously outside the Mathari mental hospital in Nairobi? I know that the feared Tana River crocodiles of Kenya can swallow just about anything but it is like these people are expecting it to swallow a Mugumo tree that has not even been uprooted if they think we can buy their cock and bull story.

There was a time not too long ago when I was running for dear life. And one of the serious enemies I had made were some individuals in the local drug business (apart from the main threat who was a fellow involved in extra-judicial killings now facing Ocampo at the Hague). At the time nobody had ever dared name the said drug lords before. I was the first and I paid for it (if you have never been on the run for your life you will not have an inkling of what I am talking about when I say I paid dearly). And during that time I was informed about several other people running for dear life courtesy of Harun Mwau. But that is a post for another day.

As you read this Mr Mwau is just about finished. The Americans have convinced the world beyond any reasonable doubts that the evidence they have on the Kilome legislator (and others) is rock solid. This has come at a time when the police have recommended that Mwau’s bodyguards be charged with giving false information to the police. Some Kenyans feel that the bodyguards should be interrogated to ascertain where they got their instructions from (to try and fool the police). Local sleuths have evidence to prove that the bullets were not fired where the bodyguards say they were (simply because they were no spent cartridges on the scene, stupid) and the police are also convinced that the bullet holes on the car are consistent with a situation where they were fired when the car was stationary and not when it was moving as the body guards told the police.

So now the big question is what was the motive of the stage managed shooting?

It was to prove that indeed Obama had sent some people to kill Mwau (I am laughing even as I type this) and that his life was indeed in great danger. The idea was to draw sympathy from the public so that Kenyans find it easier to believe that the legislator is innocent and just being targeted for reasons unknown. I guess this is the kind of scheme that would have worked like a charm in 1960 and the kind that somebody dreams up in this day and age when they have been overtaken by the times. You and I know that when the Americans want to execute somebody (every government has to protect it’s interests) they will tend do it in a very clinical fashion and they will certainly not send some gunmen who can’t shoot straight to Garden square restaurant to lazily have a few beers before shooting aimlessly at the speeding car of Mwau after the target has been dropped off and then probably go back inside Garden Square to finish their beers and discuss the failed assassination. Come on!!! Even an amateur assassin straight out of primary school in Kenya just learning his trade would never be so hilariously incompetent.

DPP Keraiko Tobiko has the very first test before him. Kenyans are watching him very closely. Will he decide to prosecute? And if he does who will he prosecute? The bodyguards only? Or will the case seek to find out where these hirelings got their orders from?

But what has really hit Harun Mwau hard and below the belt is the fact that he can no longer do business with the United States or for that matter anybody in the United States. But what’s more is that his colossal assets in that country have been frozen.

In his heart Mwau must be seething with rage at the hypocrisy of the Americans having done so many key errands for Uncle Sam in the region over the years (mainly deals that had to do with gun running). The reality is that this is the nature of business and politics the world over. It is not personal it is pure business and very normal for what a friend calls the toilet paper syndrome to kick in. That is somebody whom you were a valuable business partner just the other day dumps you after he is done with you. That’s reality, that’s how the real world works.

But for many Kenyans celebrations will be in order over Mwau’s predicament and for many it is for very personal reasons. All those young Kenyans who have irreversibly been destroyed by hard drugs were somebody’s son and somebody’s dear brother or sister. Kenyans will also be celebrating the terrible wounding of impunity. Personally I am not popping any Champaign just yet. Mainly because I know for a fact that a hungry lion is much easier to deal with than a wounded one. The latter is terribly dangerous.

P.S. The reason why Tobiko will not touch the person who gave Mwau’s bodyguards orders to stage manage a shooting is because the legislator has serious connections across the political landscape. He was one of the major financiers of ODM and Raila Odinga’s bid for the presidency. Indeed he was offered a full cabinet post by PM (but declined) even when he and everybody else in the political class knew exactly how Mwau makes his money. So the poor bodyguards may just take the rap for somebody’s bad ideas. That’s Kenya for you.