Mon, 28 Jan 2008 05:18:29 -0800 (PST)

        – Sillah

Posted on behalf of Sillah by Jaluo Press.

    Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 02:45:12 -0800 (PST)
 

KENYANS,

  Justice and Constitutional affairs minister Martha Karua chooses to see the current national stalemate in a dualistic view. She does this by claiming that the incumbent won the elections and that ODM should seek redress from the courts due to a disputed election result. I fault her for interpreting a constitutional matter as purely legal. I wish to note that the dispute is political and constitutional than an electoral and legal issue. Kenyans are not only democratic but are able to understand the country’s electoral process. The hard-line stand by some around Kibaki is what is exacerbating further the crisis. Hon. Martha Karua ought to realize that Kenyans cannot be made blind when government deceivingly constitutionalizes electoral misconduct as a constitutional illegality while using selective constitutional interpretations to be in office. Kenyans should know that options for ODM are multiplistic and within the laid down constitutional framework. This include calling for a presidential re-run within 90 days or be allowed to share power equitably with the government for the sake of all Kenyans.

  What Karua has succeeded in doing is to structure he fate of ODM on a purely legal form than a political cum constitutional item. What Kenyans yearn to have is a universally accepted ethical option for all. But are the likes of Karua committed to equally unite the PNU and ODM factions and the rest of Kenyans who are now desperate?

  Certainly solving an electoral dispute in polar terms is risky and has dictatorial tendencies. The firm stand by PNU is since seen as a structure of the party’s own legal intellect and interpretation and not nationally accepted by the majority.

  PNU ought to observe the current political uncertainty, not as confusion but democratic diversity that is constitutionally legitimate. Isn’t the political impasse contextual and relative to our current challenge? And relative to the post-election crisis facing us!
  
  Thus any mediation and dialogue should have a variety of valid political and constitutional alternatives than to selfishly restrict ourselves to limited legal interpretations. For going to court would only take us back and forth and for a long time to come.

  On the other hand, Hon. Karua should cease to be a legal activist and a sectarian politician and government servant and be able to distinguish between a constitutional fact and a political folly.

  PNU should also know that the questions we all share are more important than the answers they selectively choose to give to Kenyans. We only become worse when we commit ourselves to both knowing and doing than to listen to what others have to say.

  Lastly, is this institutionalized reverse psychology with a legal basis anchoring a political angle to favor the incumbent?

  Regards,
  Mundia Mundia Jnr.
  

Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 17:44:28 -0800 (PST)
   

              January 2008           
 
 
POST-ELECTION KENYA: SHOULD IT BE SUSPENDED FROM THE COMMONWEALTH?
 
by Ali A. Mazrui
Chancellor, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology
 
 
                Nairobi, Kenya

  
              Kenya should be flattered, rather than insulted, by the amount of international attention it has received from the African Union, the European Union, the United   States, other African Leaders and the indefatigable Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  If the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had received half the attention Kenya has got since the election, two million Congolese lives might have been saved.  If the Congo has been the most internationally neglected African crisis of this 21st century, the Kenya crisis since the last week of December 2007 has been the most responded to internationally.

              One of the major reasons is that until the last week of December 2007 Kenya had been one of the beacons of hope in sub-Saharan Africa.  In 2002 a political party which had been in power since independence in 1963 was thrown out of office by the electorate.  Mwai Kibaki peacefully became the new President of Kenya, in alliance with Raila Odinga.

              Although interparty relations in Kenya deteriorated, the Kibaki regime created a more open society.  The Press became much freer, both printed and electronic, in spite of periodic harassment by the police.  Preventive detention of political opponents became more and more rare, though Muslims were targeted more often.  The government encouraged an annual accountability of performance in human rights, including the equivalent of National Ombudsman in Kenya.  The Kibaki regime attempted to deal with judicial corruption by sacking certain judges.  President Kibaki vetoed parliamentary legislation which would have forced reporters and journalists to disclose their sources for stories about corruption.  This particular veto by President Kibaki put Kenya ahead of the United States in the protection of the sources of journalists and reporters.  In the United   States in 2007 a high profile New York Times reporter went to prison for refusing to disclose her sources.

 All the evidence before the December elections indicated that the legacy of Mwai Kibaki as President would be a celebration of a more open society in Kenya.

              And then came the elections of December 2007.  The parliamentary part of the elections would have vindicated a Kibaki legacy of “the open society.”  One powerful Kenyan after another was voted out of his or her parliamentary seat.  Half of the members of Kibaki’s cabinet were angrily thrown out of power by the electorate.  The stage was set for a probable electoral defeat of the Kibaki regime.
 
             Kenya seemed to be on the verge of a great democratic milestone – the defeat of an incumbent president and his gracious acceptance of the verdict of the electorate.  The defeat of an incumbent president had previously happened in Zambia, Malawi, Senegal, Mauritius and elsewhere.  A version of it had also happened in Ghana when Jerry Rawling’s party was electorally defeated.

              But the tables were turned on the Kenya presidential elections in circumstances which cast doubt on the fairness of the outcome.  None of the external observers were prepared to confirm President Mwai Kibaki as a fairly and democratically elected president.  There were no open congratulations from even the White House and No 10 Downing Street.  There was a serious risk that the Kibaki legacy would change from the architect of “the Open Society in Kenya” to the architect of “the Broken State”.

              A major reason of the international concern was to avert the prospect of Kenya becoming another failed state in a region which already had too many failed states (Somalia, Rwanda, Congo-Kinshasa,  Burundi, and the semi-flawed States of Ethiopia, Uganda and Sudan).  In the past Kenya was the asylum state for the refugees from Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia and elsewhere.  The Kenya elections of December 2007 has reversed the flow of refugees.  There are now thousands of Kenya refugees in Uganda, instead of the other way around.

              While international statesmen have come to Nairobi to try to persuade the two sides to compromise, none of the international actors came with the threat of real sanctions if the two sides did not seek reconciliation. If there is to be an ultimatum to Kenyans to end the crisis or be ostracized, the ultimatum has to be specific and unequivocal.

              The African Union talks loosely about “PEER REVIEW”.  Should the African Union suspend Kenya’s membership if there is no effort to solve the stalemate?  The African Union has tried to deny legitimacy to a government produced by a military coup.  Is there such a thing as a civilian coup?  If the Kenyan presidency was stolen, should Kenya lose its seat at the meetings of the African Union until the problem is resolved? The African Union has often been more an apologist for Robert Mugabe than a correction officer. But the Commonwealth has been reedier to reprimand and ostracize Zimbabwe.

              Pakistan has been suspended from the Commonwealth more than once before!!  Its Commonwealth Status was at stake when President Musharraf suspended the Pakistani Constitution even recently in 2007.  Pakistan’s membership in the Commonwealth was at stake much earlier in the clash with East Pakistan (today’s Bangladesh).

              Are the Luo of Kenya in 2008 the equivalent of the Bengalis of East Pakistan in the early 1970s?  The Luos are far less separatist in orientation in 2008 than the Bengalis were in the early 1970s. But the Luo are now leaning towards federalism (majimbo) in Kenya.
 
             If Kenya does not want to be suspended from either the African Union, the Commonwealth, or lose friendship with the wider Western World, we need to engage these alienated groups into a new global order of democratization.  Our reputation internationally is tarnished.  Our stability at home has been seriously compromised.
                   

- Sent by John O.

Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 11:46:43 -0500
   
Dear Kenyans,

We are at a crossroad. A dilemma. Is it a curse? Did we get ourselves to this problem or did the problem just get us?

Whatever your answer is, we are here, at a crossroad, a dilemma, a crisis which could lead to civil war.

Fellow Africans are not able to help. They whisper, “Do not interfere with a fight of two brothers, its a family thing.” Meanwhile they wait in the periphery to benefit from the fallout, encouraging us to join them in the miasma of poorly managed and war ravaged economies.

The Imperialists are indifferent.

Their procrastination on what appropriate action to take is consistent with the mongrel of the very democracy they introduced and have shoved down the throat of African nations even when it is apparent we are allergic to it. Their priority is self interest rather than saving human life, and as usual will regret and shed crocodile tears as they witness the reality of the aftermath, what with the case in Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, Somali, Congo, Liberia, Chad and others.

I am sitting in my living room depressed about Kenya. We are paying tribute to MLK’s life, work and we enjoy the benefits which tricled down. I cannot help but wonder why a powerful nation like the mighty USA listened and changed course regarding civil rights. True, theirs were mostly peaceful and nonviolent demonstrations. However, when the demonstrations got violet, and protesters looted or teased police, Jim Crow and the police did not use live ammunition on its citizens no matter what they did, whether some were still thought of as slaves and in presence of acknowledged discrimination. Why couldn’t the US authorities do to its citizens what the illegitimate Kenyan authorities are doing to wananchi? I will come to that in a bit.

The scenes from Kenya of brutal and barbaric police action on innocent unarmed citizens make MLK’s civil rights protests look like a funeral procession. After seeing those horrible pictures and videos from Kenya, I plead temporary insanity. Those acts and scenes also render many temporarily insane, and I question their actions. Some argue that we should not be allowed to see those scenes? The answer is no, we must be part of this history. Not to see is what will cause a to repeat in future. We must tell and show our children what happened.

The reason why what is happening in Kenya could not happen in the USA is that the US citizens are allowed to bear arms. History indicate that the freedoms enjoyed in the US are embedded in the right of the people to bear arms, to defend themselves from intruders and robbers and to protect the rights of civilians. In fact, due to fear that the government itself might grow horns, become too big and even dictatorial, the drafters of the US constitution encouraged the existence of militia as a check and balance.

Someday, the crisis in Kenya will diminish not end. While writing and fine-tuning the constitution, it may be prudent to consider allowing common citizen, or provincial militia the right to bear weapons for self defence against dictatorial regimes like Kibaki’s and for self defense against bandits like Chinkokoro and Mungiki.

In the mean time, I am wondering why it is taking the military so long to realize that there is civil war in Kenya, and that the police are compromised to the extent they are unable to maintain peace and order. More so, only the president’s tribesmen in the police force are able to follow orders, effectively rendering the police force a GEMKA (Gikuyu, Embu, Meru, Kamba) outfit. Taking the rule of Kenya from its civilians now may be the next fair thing if Kibaki cannot step down from a stolen elections. What is taking them so long?

If the military does not have the will power to take over the government from Kibaki, the provinces should secede from the central government and declare independence forthwith.

It is the urgency of now that MLK talked about. Just do it!

- Joram