Who switches Kenya's new dictatorship on and off?

Today is going to be my first full day back at work after a serious ailment that I at first greatly underestimated. At one point I struggled back to my computer with what I thought was just a slight temperature only to almost pass out. That is when I realized how serious it was.

But let's get back to some serious business shall we? Can you start by taking off that silly JUBILEE/CORD cap so that we have a serious and very urgent discussion as concerned Kenyans?

Let’s cut to the chase. When you get back to your desk officially in my  line of work, the first thing you do is a state of affairs report. This is mainly to update and bring yourself up to speed with what is really going on.

Now what I saw a lot of in my accumulated messages the minute I sat down is word from many of my moles on the ground reporting back the same thing. That Kenyans are now saying the country has slid into a dictatorship. If this is true then we are in very serious trouble. I mean the blood of some of the people who sacrificed their lives for the very freedoms that a dictatorship will never live with have hardly dried. I happen to have had the privilege of knowing some of them personally.

So is it REALLY true?

Let’ look at the cold facts without emotion.

Parliament passes a draconian media bill that would have made even Breshnev and his generation of control freaks in the old Russian blush. In the kitchen of the dreaded House of Representatives cooking right now is a bill that will effectively shut down NGOs as we know them in Kenya.

Then the same parliament ignores a court order to discuss JSC members and recommends their investigation which is a clever way of shutting down the judiciary and showing them who is really boss.

Now tell me what kind of leadership would want to control the media while cutting off the legs of civil society in one fell swoop hardly 6 months after coming into power. A dictatorship of course. NO OTHER answer here is correct or even comes close.

This parliament is more than a dictatorship. It is best described as a hungry dragon that wants to eat up anything and everything that dares to stand in its’ way. Remember the bill to do away with governors? Then there have been several stabs at the senate and the latest one is… you guessed it, we don’t need a senate at all. That one will soon be a bill under discussion, you can comfortably bet your next salary on that.

But there are some secret switches that control this dictatorial rule that Parliament has ushered into the country and some of those switches are in bedrooms. Read the rest of this article in my raw notes and get the details.

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Old friend almost 50 in serious trouble

An old friend whom I am sure you also know is in very serious trouble. The biggest problem here is that most people don't even have the slightest clue that there is any problem. Actually the right place where our mutual friend should be for his own good is nothing short of ICU in a good hospital and on life support. But instead somebody is pumping him with pills and energy injections so that he looks as normal as possible.

I am of course talking about that guy who is about to celebrate his 50th birthday called Kenya.

Kenyans are busy peering through their carefully selected party lenses and if those lenses are JUBIREE then all is well, seen no evil and never will hear any.

We have a parliament that is shaping up to be worse than president Moi's dictatorial regime(maybe 10 times worse or more). In fact so far it is making Moi and all his evils look like a nun of a leader in comparison.

Any crazy idea (and especially if it is unconstitutional) will be passed by the tyranny of numbers.

But what I would like to draw your attention to is the president's decision on Friday to suspend 6 members of the Judicial Service Commission as per the recommendations of parliament. Let me remind you (because we Kenyans have very short memories) that the debate that went on in the August house to reach this recommendation was done so illegally totally ignoring a high court order. The president had an excellent opportunity to fall back on the court order and ignore the recommendations. But those who have read my book This Man, The CJ will not be surprised at all that the president jumped at the chance of suspending the 6 and therefore "killing" the operations of the JSC. The JSC needs a quorum of 9 the surviving members are only 6.

You can be pretty sure that there is a very good reason for disabling the JSC just now...

Anyway happy birthday Kenya. All indications are that you will survive this as you always have but I cringe to think what kind of "animal" you will be when you emerge out of this one.

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