This government of Kibaki and Raila

The coalition government of Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga believes that it has done everything humanly possible to deal with the current hunger crisis in the country. After all we are told it is the worst drought in 60 years, that is not their fault is it?
The government spokesman representing the government of Kibaki and Raila went on national TV yesterday and with a straight face told Kenyans that the good government has no record of any Kenyan deaths as a result of hunger. That amazing TV broadcast was beamed into parts of Kenya where they were burying casualties of the current hunger. Before you bury anybody you need a burial permit which is usually obtained from the local chief in remote areas of the country. On that burial permit you have to state the cause of death. So this information has yet to reach the good government headquarters in Nairobi where there have been rains in recent days. So maybe the good government of Kibaki and Raila is wondering where the drought came from.

Either that or the government is grossly ignorant and incompetent. They can’t blame the death of Kenyans on nature when nature gave us a bumper harvest last year at a time when everybody knew that El Nina was coming.

But wait a minute, ODM diehards will tell you that it is the PNU side of the government that has fallen asleep on the job. Odd because none less than the PM himself the leader of Ohhhh Di EMMM who blasted the local media not less than a day ago for unfairly targeting his government which has done everything humanly possible to deal with the drought crisis.

PNU supporters will tell you that it is the ODM “jaruos” messing up the government. They will even point you to the most corrupt minister currently being from the ODM side. Last weekend some PNU geek spammed this blog with messages appealing to me to write an expose on Immigration minister Otieno Kajwang and his corrupt ways. The chap made it impossible for readers to focus on a thoughtful weekend special on embattled media magnate Rupert Murdoch. What they didn’t know is that what was breaking news to him is an old tired tale on Kumekucha (just search the site and see for yourself from previous posts). Anyway to PNU diehards all the good things are attributable to their crowd and all the bad ones to ODM “jaruos.”

Meanwhile there are other pressing and more urgent issues at hand. Like re-branding political parties in readiness for the 2012 polls (ODM Kenya did that this week shortly before the Mutua fellow told us that nobody is dying from hunger).

The good cabinet of Kibaki and Raila is also busy “editing” bills handed to them by the CIC and inserting clauses to deliberately cause ambiguity so as to delay the implementation or to protect themselves from the fire that is coming from a fully and properly implemented new constitution. Indeed the busy cabinet in an effort to quickly dispense with the issue of starving Kenyans hurriedly approved the importation of GMO maize into the country. They really don’t need to investigate how safe those food are because they themselves and their good families will not eat GMO (or so they think). Tip from Kumekucha: avoid GMOs like the plague including those abnormally huge bananas you see in the market these days, if anything make efforts to start planting your own food. I kid you not!

Meanwhile one of the members of the executive Hon Raila Odinga will seek your vote to be president of the republic of Kenya on the grounds that he has played a key role in bringing about many of the changes you see today including the new constitution that is causing the political class sleepless nights and some of them to pass waste in their clothes (excuse my crude language).

Welcome to the banana republic of Kenya where there is no evil which is impossible. And where no leader in their right minds will take resposnibility for anything. (Why do you want to blame Prof Ongeri for something that his juniours did?)

P.S. Statistics clearly show that there is usually a very high increase in gory and extremely bloody road accidents whenever the general elections are around the corner. I am not superstitious but I am not blind either.

Politics of starvation in Kenya

There are several instances where journalists have seen starving children in the course of their work and their lives have never been the same again. Some went as far as abandoning the profession and others even committed suicide.
If you didn’t know it even with the horror of starvation and drought we have seen in the news so far, there has still been plenty of editing in the images that many Kenyans are now seeing coming in from Somalia and the refugee camps within Kenya. Not to mention the starving Kenyans in many parts of the country. There are limits to what you can transmit in front of the dinner tables of Kenyan families taking in a meal as they take in prime time news.

Still even with the censoring, what has been beamed has evoked strong emotions and mostly very angry responses from the people. In my view the voters are getting even angrier against their government and the current crop of political leadership. And with good reason.

Two years ago it was public knowledge that we were expecting the El Nino phenomenon where we would get abnormally high rainfall to be followed by abnormal drought (La Nina). It was just a simple thing to plan ahead and save lives but instead all the thinking and resources went to fighting the ICC and Moreno Ocampo amongst other idiotic projects.

And even now the government response has been extremely slow, mostly too little too late and what is happening is that we are building up to a much bigger crisis down the road.

You see the hunger crisis will place additional pressure on food prices and this coupled with the weakening shilling could lead the country to some serious food riots before the end of the year. Food riots can be pretty ugly and if there is anybody in authority reading this then they should wake up and realize that the current fire fighting efforts are not enough and somebody needs to urgently plan ahead for the more serious crisis coming. Can we forget about manipulating the ICC for a minute? This is so serious that if nothing is done and there is no divine intervention than there will be no country left to fight to lead and manipulate.

Although experts are saying that the current drought in this part of the world is the worst in 60 years, the truth is that the people we call our leaders have done nothing over the years to help starving Kenyans when the rains fail all too frequently. Yes, Kenyans die of hunger almost every other year and that does not receive any media coverage so don’t fool yourself that this is the first time in 60 years that Kenyans are dying of starvation. In fact it would appear that the political class thrives on hungry citizens. Indeed the government has always used food hand outs to retain complete political control of large chunks of Eastern province, mostly Ukambani so much so that it will take many decades to get this handout mentally out of the psyche of Akamba people. Indeed William Ruto and Daniel arap Moi (by the way did you know what Moi's most guarded secret is?) used this little piece of information last August to straddle the Kamba community and get them to vote strongly against a constitution that was for all intents and purposes in their best interests (more so for them than for many other communities in the country). But that is a story for another post.

The bottom line is that the government has absolutely no excuse.

What the next government needs to do (we have completely given up on this excuse of a government) is to pursue serious rain harvesting initiatives (bore holes deplete the under ground water table and cause much more serious long term problems). Did you know that a country like Egypt which is virtually all desert and has only one great river grows surplus food? Take my word for it if you still don’t get it, Kenya should never have a food crisis, even if we had a 5 year drought.