By JULIUS SIGEI

Saturday Nation reveals details of how these top officials’ retirement will further burden the taxpayer, already reeling from the high cost of living amid one of the most devastating famines in the country’s history.

Four messengers

President Kibaki can expect a life of luxury in retirement with 38 servants paid for by the public at his beck and call.

These include two personal assistants, four drivers, four messengers, four secretaries, two cooks, two housekeepers, two gardeners, two laundry persons, and four house cleaners.

Six security officers will be provided for his personal safety and six others to guard his homes.

In his bank account will be deposited a Sh17 million (183,486.24 USD) goodbye token.

This is calculated as the sum equal to his annual salary for the two terms he served as President as stipulated in the Presidential Retirements Benefits Act of 2003.

He will receive at least Sh950,000(10,253.64 USD) pension each month — calculated as 80 per cent of the salary of the next president.

He will be entitled to a housing allowance of Sh300,000 a month; Sh300,000 a month for electricity, water and telephone and a further Sh200,000 for entertainment.

Overseas treatment

He will also be entitled to two four-wheel drive vehicles with an engine capacity of 3,400cc and two others of his choice with an engine capacity of at least 3,000cc. To fuel the cars, he will get a Sh200,000 monthly allowance.

He and his wife are also entitled to full medical and hospital cover for local and overseas treatment from a reputable insurance company.

The taxpayer will also pay for a fully furnished “suitable” office for the retired president.

Chapter 11 of the 2003 Presidential Retirements Benefit Act says “a retired President shall, during his lifetime, be entitled to a lump sum payment on retirement, calculated as a sum equal to one year’s salary for each term served as President.”

Section 3, however, includes the caveat that the National Assembly may withhold the benefits if the retired president engages in politics or other misconduct.

His predecessor, Daniel arap Moi is enjoying benefits which easily put him among the best paid public servants in Kenya.

Treasury documents show that Mr Moi, who has largely kept to non-official duties and political campaigns, pocketed Sh58.4 million in allowances last year, reflecting a major increase in his retirement package from an average of Sh12 million since 2006. Treasury officials were tight-lipped on the sudden rise.

Mr Moi’s package was first included in the 2006/07 estimates. In terms of personal allowances, he took home more money than President Kibaki, who earns Sh16.1 million in personal allowances annually.

President Kibaki constitutionally vacates office in 2012/13 and his successor will inherit the same payments, according to the recurrent estimates.

Details of Mr Moi and his successors’ pay are contained in the recurrent expenditure estimates under the Consolidated Funds Services, the account from which constitutional office holders and debt services are paid.

Observers say the lavish perks were first mooted towards the end of the Moi administration to entice him to leave office quietly after what critics say were years of economic mismanagement, graft and repression.

Yet retiring presidents are really not some of the neediest citizens.

Reported to own seven impressive homes across the country and associated with 30 major companies, Mr Moi’s personal wealth has often been compared to that of Zaire’s late dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko.

   RETIRING IN STYLE: From left, Retired former President Daniel Moi, Retired Kacc boss Aaron Ringera
   and Retired Chief Justice Evan Gicheru.

While the Saturday Nation could not establish retired Chief Justice Gicheru’s retirement package, sources at the Treasury say Mr Gicheru will continue drawing his salary for the years left for him to clock his retirement age of 74.

Given that he is only 66, he will have earned in excess of Sh120 million by the time he retires in eight years’ time.

He has also retained two new cars — a Mercedes and a 4WD as well as a home in Karen.

Mr Gicheru was earning Sh916,500 per month and Sh400,000 in allowances and other benefits totalling Sh1.3 million per month.

Attorney General Wako’s retirement package is being worked out by the Solicitor General and will soon be handed over to Deputy Prime Minister and Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta.

Given the longevity of his service and the fact that he has not taken leave for a long time he is expected to go home with even more than the former.

Judges are also expected to go home with hefty retirement packages.

It is believed many would be opting to leave rather than face a potentially crushing interview and they would be leaving with huge perks, given their current earnings.

Justice Minister Mutula Kilonzo has in the past been quoted saying judges and magistrates who opt to retire would be assured of their perks.

Figures from the Judiciary showed that the basic salary of the highest paid judge is Sh481,000.

The basic entry salary for a High Court judge is Sh232,000 while that of a Court of Appeal judge is Sh292,000.

The Judiciary has 44 High Court judges and 11 in the Court of Appeal.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka can also expect to be paid hefty retirement perks if Parliament passes new laws on MPs’ salaries.

If they decide to quit politics, Mr Odinga will be entitled to Sh1 million a month while Mr Musyoka will take home Sh800,000.

The handsome packages are contained in reports by a tribunal set up to review MPs’ pay and the Parliamentary Service Commission headed by retired judge Akilano Akiwumi.

Legislators are, however, yet to debate the draft Bills.

The report proposes the enactment of The Retirement Benefits (Prime Minister, Vice-President and Speaker of the National Assembly) Bill 2010 to provide for a raft of benefits these officials will be entitled to.

The Bill, which was to be tabled in the House by Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyattta a year ago, proposes that the retired PM and VP each receive a monthly pension equal to 80 per cent of the last monthly salary earned while in office.

The report also recommended that the PM takes home a basic monthly salary of Sh1.3 million and the VP Sh1 million.

In addition, the Bill grants a retired PM and VP a Sh200,000 monthly housing allowance and gratuity, paid at the end of every two years and calculated at the rate of 20 per cent of their last monthly salaries while in office.

But Parliament, through a two thirds majority, may vote to deny them the benefits if they cease to hold office for violating the Constitution, gross misconduct or, since retirement, been convicted and sentenced to three or more years’ in jail or actively engaged in politics.

The bill has, however, not come before the House, with MPs in the know saying they decided to leave the Salaries and Remuneration Commission to do the job.

Both the PM and VP will receive a 3,000cc car, a new four-wheel drive car (not exceeding 3,000cc) and a Sh50,000 fuel allowance.

The taxpayer will also maintain the vehicles and replace them every four years.

There is also full medical cover for the PM (for life), the spouse (for as long as the spouse lives) and all children under 18 years.

The retired VP and PM will have a personal assistant, secretary, cook, butler, gardener, cleaner, two drivers and two security officers, courtesy of the taxpayer.

Former Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission boss Aaron Ringera enjoys the same perks he used to have while heading the anti-graft unit.

These include chauffeur-driven limousines and bodyguards for the next 10 years.

The contract was signed between him and the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission Advisory Board.

The document, which the Saturday Nation was reliably told cannot be revised without breaching the contract, entitles Mr Ringera to continue using the vehicles he used as Kacc director.

Also at his service are a driver, a bodyguard and a security officer at his home.

Maintenance of the vehicles, including fuelling, is also paid for by the taxpayer.

Work tickets in our possession show three GK vehicles — two Mercedes Benz and a Prado — as having been used by Mr Ringera as late as last week.

The documents bear the Kacc stamp with Mr Ringera signing for each journey as the authorising officer.

An official familiar with the contract said it was signed by the previous Kacc Advisory Board chaired by Mr Allan Ngugi and does not allow for revision by the current one headed by former Law Society of Kenya chairman Okong’o Omogeni.

Mr Ringera resigned after days of relentless pressure from the body’s advisory board, civil society, politicians and Kenyans.

While current office holder PLO Lumumba may not go away with exactly the same perks as his predecessor because of the manner the latter left office, the perks may not be any different given his high pay of Sh2.5 million a month.

The Akiwumi Commission gives the Speaker of the National Assembly Sh240,000 per month as pension, one year non-taxable salary amounting to Sh3.6 million per term subject to a maximum of two terms amounting to Sh7.2 million.

The new Constitution, however, requires all public officers to pay taxes.

He will also get a house allowance of Sh200,000 a month, two armed guards on request, a car — a Mercedes Benz E240 or a vehicle of equivalent value maintained by the State, which shall be valued after every three years.

The Speaker will get fuel allowance of Sh25,000 a month and a driver to be paid by the State.

Enquiries by the Saturday Nation revealed that former Speaker Francis Ole Kaparo takes home an accumulated amount of Sh354,000, which the Cockar Commission gave him.

The National Assembly and Remuneration Act, says an MP gets a winding up allowance at the end of five years, irrespective of whether he or she is re-elected or not.

This is now Sh300,000 per year, which translates to Sh1.5 million for the five years and is paid as a lump sum.

Given that there are 222 MPs, taxpayers will part with more than Sh300 million.

This figure is expected to rise exponentially with the increase in constituencies and incoming senators in the next Parliament.

The Exchequer this year began paying millions of shillings in lump sum and monthly payments that will see some former MPs earn more than Sh400,000 each month for the rest of their lives after the Treasury invoked the Parliamentary Pensions Act Cap. 196, which governs payment of MPs’ pensions and gratuities.

The law stipulates that an MP who served only one term will be paid pension refund but members who served more than one term will be paid a lump sum on application for the pension, which will thereafter be followed by monthly payments.

Top among the beneficiaries of the retirement law passed in June 2002 are MPs who have served for five terms, and these include former Keiyo South legislator Nicholas Biwott and former Speaker Mr Ole Kaparo.

The former speaker qualifies for a lump sum payment of Sh6.4 million besides a monthly payment of Sh405,000 for the rest of his life.

Five-term MPs will retire with a lump some package of Sh4.6 million and earn a monthly pension of Sh290,000 for the rest of their lives.

Economists warn that the real import of the pensions law is likely to be felt in the next 15 years when more than 300 MPs expected to have been sent packing by their electors qualify.

The strain will be felt in the Consolidated Fund, which will finance the pensions burden given the high rate of turnover in Parliament.

During the last General Election alone, only 71 members out of the 210 MPs who served in the Ninth Parliament made it to the 10th.

This means that the 139 MPs who were kicked out must be paid their lump sum pensions beginning this financial year.

MPs have a contributory scheme to which they pay 12.6 per cent of their earnings, with the government contributing an additional 25.4 per cent.

Each MP’s pensionable emolument is calculated from the total salary, perks for responsibility, constituency and house.

The annual pensionable emolument of an ordinary MP stands at Sh3.8 million while that of ministers and assistant ministers amounts to Sh4.2 million and Sh3.9 million, respectively.

Early this year, the Finance ministry’s pensions department issued a notice to all the former MPs asking them to file claims for payments of gratuity, pensions and other benefits.

“The Pensions Department will process benefits for MPs who were not re-elected to the 10th Parliament,” said the notice.

For example a former MP who served only one term will take home Sh4.4 million in pension refund.

But if the MP was a minister, he or she would take away Sh5.5 million. A one-term MP who was an assistant minister would earn Sh5.2 million.

Twenty ministers were voted out of Parliament while 25 assistant ministers did not make it to the 10th Parliament.

From this group alone, five ministers were first time MPs meaning that Treasury will part with Sh30 million.

Fifteen of the assistant ministers who did not see the inside of the current Parliament were first time MPs and will take home a cumulative Sh75 million.

The ministers and assistant ministers who were felled but had served more than one term in Parliament will take home about Sh200,000 more than the ones who served one term.

A minister who served more than two terms is entitled to a lump sum pension payment of Sh1.5 million besides a monthly payment of Sh95,000 for the rest of his or her life.

For an ordinary MP who served two terms, a Sh1.4 million cheque would be drawn on his name and he will be lining up at the pensions department at the end of every month for a Sh90,000 payment.

The MPs who served three terms and more would earn Sh142,000 every month in pension.

In rough estimates, taking into account that 142 MPs — who include seven nominated ones — did not make it to the 10th Parliament, the government will spend about Sh12.7 billion in monthly pension payments on them, assuming that all of them were two time legislators.

The Consolidated Fund Service was allocated Sh129.1 billion in the 2007/2008 budget. It is from this kitty that MPs draw their salaries and the same that will fund pensions for retired MPs.

Former MPs who spoke to the Saturday Nation admitted that they were already drawing the pensions from the Exchequer.

According to the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Dr Boni Khalwale, retirement benefits are a huge burden on the taxpayer, especially taking into consideration that younger people are getting appointed into top posts, most of which have two fixed terms and hefty severance terms.

“Even as we put everything on the shoulders of the Salaries and Remunerations Commission, we must remember that allowances and benefits must be seen to be in tandem with current economic realities,” said Dr Khalwale.

He said giving civil servants retirement benefits was the best practice all over the world but patriotism and honour for serving in such hallowed positions should be primary.

Dr Khalwale added that it was worrying that some leaders who were enjoying a cosy retirement at the expense of the taxpayer were actively engaging in politics, contrary to the law that granted them the benefits.

“Is it fair for example, to have a retired politician driving the same vehicle he was given to political rallies which further their interests?” asked Dr Khalwale.

Ruth tried half-heartedly to turn him away. But Obama charmed her with an onslaught of entreaties. He loved her to the core of his being. He adored their son and had yearned for them every day they had been gone. If she would only return with him, he vowed that everything would be different.

He would never pursue another woman again. He would not even look at another woman, he insisted.

What’s more, he had already lined up a new job. Starting in October Obama was to be the senior development officer for the newly created Kenya Tourist Development Corporation (KTDC), a high-profile government corporation charged with overseeing the blossoming industry and directing public investment in a spate of new hotels and parks. As the second highest-ranking employee in the organisation, Obama was to receive a handsome annual salary of 2,275 pounds.

Plum job

It was a plum job that put Obama squarely in the league of the government’s other ranking economists and at the forefront of an industry to which Mzee, the Swahili term of respect for an elder, Kenyatta himself was closely attuned.

It was not a permanent secretary’s post like Philip Ndegwa had landed or even the top job at the KTDC, but it was a good job nonetheless. And it gave him a much-needed chance to rehabilitate himself. Adding to Obama’s bounty, the job came with a lovely home in the exclusive Woodley Estate west of the city’s center, a neighbourhood that the Nairobi City Council developed expressly for Europeans in the late 1940s.

Since independence, however, a handful of prominent Africans, including members of Parliament and government ministers, had trickled into the handsome homes flanked by high green hedges.

Obama’s house was a welcoming stone bungalow with a red tile roof, complete with a separate servants’ quarters that could accommodate the trail of relatives that invariably followed him. Ruth soon abandoned her plan of staying in the United States and agreed to return with him to Nairobi.

But it wasn’t because of Obama’s promises of fidelity or even the goodies he dangled before her. “There was a connection between us, a passion, the type of love that holds a man and a woman together,” said Ruth.

“He loved me in a certain way, as much as he was able. It wasn’t just because I was white because surely that wears off. For myself, he was a man I had a very strong passion for.

I did not have that passion again in my life.” Once they were back in Nairobi, Obama’s promises lasted only as long as it took Ruth to unpack her bags. No sooner had the couple settled into their new home than Obama resumed his carousing ways, leaving Ruth to juggle her secretarial job at Nestlé and caring for his extended family with only the help of a housekeeper.

There were now three of his children living in the house along with a succession of visiting relatives.

Roy, his eldest son, who would later be known as Malik, attended the prestigious Lenana School, once exclusively for whites. Rita, later known as Auma, attended a day school before eventually enrolling in the Kenya High School.

Although Kezia regularly visited her children, bearing sweets and small gifts in the early years after they moved in with their father and his new wife, Kezia’s tearful demeanour annoyed Obama, so he had her visits abruptly stopped. Auma would not see her birth mother for nearly seven years.

There were also the young relatives who lived in the servant quarters out back. Not long after he returned from the United States, Obama had taken his first cousin Ezra under his wing.

Ezra was a clever and amusing boy whose father, one of Hussein Onyango’s brothers, was unable to pay for his son’s schooling. So Ezra moved into the squat servants’ quarters in 1967 and remained there for four years while Obama paid for his education.

He was not alone. When Wilson Obama, another cousin, showed up in similar need, Obama agreed to pay for his education and offered him a place to stay for close to two years. Amir Otieno Orinda, Obama’s half-brother with whom he shared the same mother, was in and out of the house as well.

Zeituni Onyango, Obama’s half-sister, stayed at the house for several weeks in the late 1960s and would later help to take care of Malik and Auma. As those and other Obamas came and went from the busy household, Ruth sometimes found herself passing people in the hallway who, she says, “I hadn’t the slightest idea who they were.”

Obama, meanwhile, had once again become a habitué of the city’s nightspots and would migrate from one elegant hotel barroom to the next.

Buoyed by his new post and the keen interest others took in his command of econometrics, Double-Double now had mingi?Swahili for “many”? drinking companions.

Flush with their new salaries and Harambee Avenue offices, a certain element of the new African elite cultivated a lifestyle richly steeped in alcohol. One of their favorite places was the bar at the newly opened InterContinental, called The Big Five in reference to the five most difficult and dangerous animals to hunt in Africa’s far-flung game parks.

The intimate retreat offered an eclectic mix.

Patrons lounging on the plush leather stools could as likely rub shoulders with a dewy-eyed tourist from New Jersey, a minister who had just strolled out of the nearby Treasury building, or a World Bank project manager making notations on his napkin, all under the glassy-eyed gaze of the lion and gazelle mounted on the walls.

It also drew from the senior ranks of the civil service and the top echelon of the business community. Some of the regulars among the African elite were Mwai Kibaki, Kenya’s current president and then Minister of Commerce and Industry, and Francis Masakhalia, Obama’s old Maseno School friend and by then an economist/statistician with the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development headed by Tom Mboya. Members of the nearby Parliament and a host of Treasury officers were often a part of the mix. When Obama tired of his double shots there, he often headed to the Panafric Hotel for a chaser or two of Chivas or Martel cognac.

To wrap up the evening he occasionally stopped at the Starlight Club for a spin around the dance floor before heading home to Woodley in the early hours of the morning.

Barely coherent

By the time he got there Obama was often stumbling and barely coherent. If Ruth or one of the children made the mistake of locking up before they went to bed, Obama would hammer loudly on the door and angrily demand that someone let him in. Gladys Ogolah, the next-door neighbour who knew Obama from their days at Central Bank together, heard every word of it.

“He would shout at Ruth, ‘Open the door, woman. Open the door,‘” Ogolah recalled. “He would say, ‘Why are you sleeping when I am not back at home. Open the door now.’ And then he would beat on the door, boom, boom, boom.”

Ogolah was hardly the only Woodley resident keenly aware of their baritone-voiced neighbour. Even when Obama was sober, his thundering voice wafted over the hedges and shattered the neighbourhood calm.

Sometimes, he was just calling to his children without making any effort to keep his voice down. But on the nights when he and Ruth got into an argument, his domineering voice could be heard the length of the Loddon Grove road and sometimes beyond.

Not long after they moved into the house, the Obamas had become a regular topic of neighborhood talk, little of it good. “Barack would come back from work or wherever he was in the middle of the night and they would fight very loudly,” recalled Ndolo Ayah, who lived nearby. “Everybody knew about it.

I think we all worried a bit about Ruth’s safety. Barack was not a violent person, but he could be very violent in his language.”

Gladys Ogolah and her husband, Boaz, got to know the Obamas well and not just because of the couple’s ongoing fighting. Boaz Ogolah was also an economist who worked in the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, and Obama respected his breadth of knowledge and experience.Sometimes Obama would drop in for a drink, and the two men would critique the other economists in government service whose academic credentials they considered inferior to their own.

Obama would also talk openly of some of the beautiful women to whom he was attracted.

“Barack was a Luo and a polygamist, and so this was no big deal to him,” said Ogolah. “He was very open about it.”

Just a few years younger than her neighbour, Gladys Ogolah grew to like her new American friend.

Ruth clearly enjoyed Kenya and appreciated many of its customs. Unlike some mzungu who tended to stick with their own, Ruth counted African women among her closest friends. She was also devoted to all of Obama’s children and even some of his closer cousins. She was the one who arranged their weekend outings swimming at the Panafric and Safari Park hotels or picnics in the countryside. And she was the one who drove them to their schools and doctors’ appointments and, at times, shielded them from their father.

“Ruth was a very great woman,” said Ezra Obama, sixty-one and a retired manager of market development for Coca-Cola living outside Nairobi. “She treated all of us children the same and I respected her very much.”

But no matter how much Ruth tried to make things run smoothly, Obama seemed always to have a complaint. And when his shouting developed into more aggressive behavior in the passing months, it was to Ogolah that Ruth often turned, running through the darkness to the safe haven of her neighbor’s kitchen. “Sometimes, when he came home late he would order her to cook for him in the middle of the night and if she would not he would hit her about the shoulders and neck,” recalled Gladys Ogolah.

“Ruth would run screaming down the road to our house crying. She was tired of being hit and tired of being called names. She had a very, very rough time and I was always worried about her.”

As a boy, Mark Ndesandjo was fearful of his towering father and tried hard to stay out of his way so he would not inadvertently trigger his rage.

“What I felt from him was coldness. There was fear. That is what I recall,” Ndesandjo said in an interview.

“I was physically afraid of him. He was a large looming man and you did not know what to expect. Is he going to hit you or your mother or other people in your family? He did not smile except when he was drinking or when he was with friends.”

Anxious as to what their father’s condition would be on his return home each night, the children passed the afternoon following school with mounting apprehension.

“Everyone in the house was totally on edge because you never knew when my father would be back,” Ndesandjo said in an interview. “When he got there he would probably be drunk.”

And then the light would go on and you would hear thuds and shouts and my mother’s voice rising and crying and screaming.

You would hear sounds like falling objects and it would go on and on and on and on. I instinctively bonded with my mother because she was afraid and she was also very protective of me. And that made my father even angrier.

He resented me because we were both now competing for my mother’s attention. I was my mother’s firstborn and she had shifted some of her attention away from him to me. Sometimes when she was holding me, he would shout at her, ‘Stop tending to that brat.’”

Nor was Obama’s abuse of Ruth confined to their home. As he became increasingly careless about shielding his attraction to other women, Obama repeatedly humiliated his wife in public.

“He would criticise me and flirt with other women right in front of me. Always, there were other women,” Ruth sighed.

“He took great pleasure in demeaning me because it made him feel better.” Ruth endured for two reasons.

The first was Mark Okoth, and the second would be named David Opiyo.

Within a few months of their return to Nairobi, Ruth learned that she was pregnant again and thus linked ever more inextricably to her husband.

Obama had made it clear to her that if she ever left him, he would prohibit her from seeing their children, and in Kenya’s patriarchal culture she had little doubt that he could do so easily.

Determined to raise her children as best she could while struggling to preserve the marriage that had produced them, Ruth took stock of her situation. Her job at Nestlé continued to provide both a professional outlet and much-needed emotional support.

Best of all, it gave her a source of self esteem that she was not finding at home. She also had an extensive network of friends, some of whom strongly urged her to take the children and flee under cover of night.

But Obama had never struck any of the children.

As long as it was only she upon whom he inflicted his rage, she felt she could manage. But it wasn’t easy.

One night Obama came home drunk as usual, but this time he had a pretty young woman clinging to his arm. It was not the first time he had done so. In the past Ruth had simply turned tearfully away as Obama and his woman friend slipped into one of the bedrooms together.

But on this particular night Obama insisted that Ruth leave their house so that he could use their marriage bed without her interfering. He was, after all, a Luo and had a right to any woman he might desire, he declared, his voice growing steadily louder.

But this time Ruth put her foot down. She refused to move anywhere, and as she screamed out her hurt, the neighbours, as ever, got an earful.

One of those neighbours was Achieng Oneko, one of the Kapenguria Six who were convicted in 1952 of supporting the Mau Mau rebels along with Kenyatta and sentenced to seven years in prison.

Oneko, who had abandoned his old cellmate to join Odinga and the Kenya People’s Union, was a legendary freedom fighter and a pioneering newspaper editor.

He was also a former Maseno student, although he attended many years before Obama.

Upset by the Obamas’ domestic furor, Oneko picked up the telephone and called his friend Ndolo Ayah. “He said, ‘You young people, you better talk to that friend of yours, Barack. He’s making a mess of himself,’” Ayah recounted. “So I got another friend of mine and we headed on over to Obama’s place to see what we could do.”

The situation was chaotic. Ruth was screaming so forcefully that it took her awhile to realise that there were visitors in the house. Obama was drunkenly explaining to her that, according to Luo tradition, “he could bring any woman into the house at any time.” said Ayah.

“I said, well, he comes from a different Luo group than ourselves because we are Luo and you don’t do this kind of thing. We tried to get Barack to come to Oneko’s place so we could talk it out but he just told us to go to hell, you know. And so we left. I suppose at some level we felt it was none of our business.”

Marriage strained

As his marriage with Ruth grew increasingly strained, Obama turned to his first wife, Kezia, for solace?at least that is what she maintains. While working as a waitress in a Mombasa restaurant in the late 1960s, Kezia says that Obama occasionally visited her when he passed through town on business.

As Ruth understood him, Obama’s reckless behaviours stemmed from a couple of sources.

The first were the rich and varied temptations of Nairobi life in the years after independence. Although Obama had managed to curb his more extreme inclinations while under scrutiny in the United States, once he returned to Kenya in the heady days of the mid-1960s, it was another story. On a scholarship in America, she noted, “he was being judged on a daily basis. He had to behave properly. There were parameters. But once he was back in Kenya and all his friends are saying,

‘Let’s go for the drink, let’s go dancing, let’s go find some women, let’s do this and that,’ he couldn’t hold back. All those pressures were too much for him. He just didn’t have the strength of character to resist.

And the more he succumbed, the more he succumbed.”

But Ruth believes the greater source of Obama’s undoing lay deeply embedded in his gnawing lack of faith in himself, exacerbated by the perils of Kenyan politics. Kenyatta’s chokehold on matters of state meant that little could happen without his sanction or that of members of his inner circle.

Obama had already been blackballed for his aggressive critique of Sessional Paper No. 10, and his critical commentary at Central Bank hadn’t helped matters. Much as he yearned to be a Big Man, Obama was far from it.

That his fortunes were dependent on favours from others and the shifting sands of Kenya’s powerful elites made matters only worse. Indeed, since his collision with Harvard administrators, he had found the doors to power closed to him at almost every turn.

Uncertainty, coupled with the Luo habit of self-inflation, drove him to chronic exaggeration intended to compensate for his perceived shortcomings. Although Obama had abundant company in his heavy drinking, he was driven by more than the cultural excesses of the moment. Also contributing to his dark mood was the evolving cast of Kenyatta’s inner circle, ever more authoritarian and intolerant of challenge. By the end of 1967 the mushrooming political schism between Kenyatta and the radicals led by Oginga Odinga had distinctly worsened.

Between 1966 and 1969 Kenyatta moved to stymie the opposition and isolate his Luo challengers.

With Odinga now effectively marginalised, Kenyatta’s Kikuyu coterie began to look increasingly askance at Tom Mboya, who now stood as the likely heir apparent. Mboya was not only immensely popular among a broad swath of trade union members and members of parliament but was also believed to have the critical support of the Western countries, particularly the United States.

As the aging Kenyatta’s health began to deteriorate, many Kikuyus were increasingly alarmed at the possibility of the presidency falling to a non-Kikuyu. Rumours about Mboya’s political intentions were rampant. That he was interested in the presidency was no secret. Some whispered that he was forging a secret alliance with Odinga to assume a spot within the KPU.

Others suspected a more devious agenda.

Either way, the hostility of Kenyatta’s inner circle toward Mboya escalated rapidly.

Unlike many who threw their lot with either one of the two Luo giants, Odinga or Mboya, Obama retained ties with both political camps, as he was drawn to aspects of each of their platforms. As he had expressed so forcefully in his critique of Sessional Paper No. 10, Obama believed that certain socialist principles that Odinga articulated should be a feature of the country’s economic underpinnings.

But he also saw a place for the capitalist principles that the West-leaning Mboya espoused. He was particularly incensed at the factions within KANU that were seeking to undermine Mboya, their own party’s secretary-general.

Mboya’s exalted cyle

Although removed from Mboya’s exalted circle, Obama continued to look to Mboya for guidance. Their relationship had grown more distant over the years as Mboya’s star rose ever higher, but they nonetheless maintained a friendship throughout. Mboya’s increasing political isolation gave Obama one more reason for dismay.

Like others disillusioned with the government’s performance, Obama regarded Kenyatta as a bitter disappointment. In the months after he returned with Ruth, it seemed that much of what he had long dreamed for his country had failed to materialize.

Far from standing as a boldly independent African nation, dependence on foreign capital still hobbled Kenya.

At the same time, its domestic assets were being amassed in the hands of a privileged few.

Obama was an economist who believed that free enterprise played a critical role in a democracy, but he also had a deep respect for African communalism. He felt strongly that the majority should share in the country’s bounty. Instead, he saw unfettered capitalism and, increasingly, a rampant tribalism eroding the promises of uhuru.

Although Obama clearly had difficulty with authority of any kind, he was hardly alone in believing that his own Luo roots were coming to be a distinct liability. As he grew increasingly frustrated with the Kikuyus’ tight grip on the country’s politics, he began to drink ever more heavily.

His frustration with the country’s course coupled with his own personal failure to attain the heights that he believed should have been within easy reach were fast congealing into an acid stew of resentment.

To be continued — Fom Nation Newspaper Online, Kenya

Kenya’s current President Mwai Kibaki is sheltering a fellow looter, former President Daniel Arap Moi. In 2007 these two crooks reached a pact: an electorally desperate Mwai Kibaki promised to protect Moi if he (Moi) backed Kibaki for a second term. The deal would ensure that Moi’s political base — a group comprised of several Kalenjin sub-tribes — would support Kibaki, ….so they thought.

The rest is history — Kibaki clearly lost the election, and like his predecessors proceeded to steal it, leading to the worst eruption of tribal violence in the history of Kenya.

Most Kenyans do not have the resources with which to unearth the extent of the vast criminal enterprise that dictator Moi’s regime ran during his 24 year tenure as the second president of Kenya, from August 22, 1978 to December 30, 2002. Even though press freedom has improved significantly in Kenya, journalists still fear for their lives — if and when they “cross the path” of some well-monied crooks with ties to the political elite.

The massive theft conducted by Moi, his family and cronies spilled over to the Kibaki regime, aided and abetted by western companies(with their neo-colonialist governments looking the other way). Typically, fraud on the Kenyan taxpayer is perpetrated through non-delivery of goods and services and incredibly massive overpricing.

Philip Moi was mostly associated with motor vehicle tax fraud and other low-down economic vices, whereas Gideon would mainly wait for government-funded projects to broker deals. At the local level there is(was) no single company in which Philip held(holds) shares directly. He used(uses) proxies who range from low key Asians and houseboys who know(knew) little about the wealth in their names.

The breathtaking extent of corruption perpetrated by Daniel Toroitich arap Moi and his hoodlum-offsprings is(was) breathtaking. Like his predecessor, the first president of Kenya, the ruthless and murderous Jomo Kenyatta, Moi was determined to be the biggest thief and landowner in the Republic. The “Professor of Politics” robbed his people with reckless disregard.

A 110-page report by the international risk consultancy Kroll in 2004, “alleges” that relatives and associates of Mr Moi siphoned off more than £1bn+ of government money. That puts the Mois on a par with Africa’s other great kleptocrats, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and Nigeria’s Sani Abacha.

The Moi Family: The Biggest Thieves in The History of Kenya

   Daniel arap Moi and Son Gideon Moi

The assets accumulated included multi-million pound properties in London, New York and South Africa, as well as a 10,000-hectare ranch in Australia and bank accounts containing hundreds of millions of pounds.

The report, commissioned by the Kenyan government, was submitted in 2004, but never acted upon. It details how:

•   Mr Moi’s sons – Philip and Gideon – were reported to be worth £384m and £550m respectively;

•   His associates colluded with Italian drug barons and printed counterfeit money;

•   His clique owned a bank in Belgium;

•   The threat of losing their wealth prompted threats of violence between Mr Moi’s family and his political aides;

•   £4m was used to buy a home in Surrey (England) and £2m to buy a flat in Knightsbridge. (England)

The Kroll investigation into the former regime was commissioned by President Mwai Kibaki shortly after he came to power on an anti-corruption platform in 2003. It was meant to be the first step towards recovering some of the money stolen during Mr. Moi’s 24-year rule, which earned Kenya the reputation as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

But soon after the investigation was launched, Mr Kibaki’s government was caught up in its own scandal, known as Anglo Leasing, which involved awarding huge government contracts to bogus companies.

Below is the copy of the leaked report by the Kroll associates on the extent of looting in Kenya by the Moi regime. The Current leadership under president Mwai Kibaki has kept this report under lock and key, reneging on the promise given to Kenyans for zero tolerance on corruption.

[ Click Here For The Kroll Report ]

OTHER RESOURCES:

1.   The Githongo Dossier [PDF] — Whistle Blower John Githongo’s Anatomy of The Anglo-Leasing Scandal a.k.a Anglo-Fleecing Scandal. President Mwai Kibaki received Githongo’s dossier containing details of corruption in the government. However, no one was punished and the case slipped from the public eye.

2.   Names of The Perpetrators of the 2008 Election Violence in Kenya [PDF]

3.   The Alston Report [Microsoft Word DOC] — Prof. Philip Alston, a UN human rights official, released his final report on Thursday, May 28 2009, in which he accused top Kenyan police officials of running death squads and describes Kenyan courts as “slow and corrupt“.

4.   The Waki Report [PDF] — The Waki Commission, officially The Commission of Inquiry on Post Election Violence (CIPEV), was an international commission of inquiry established by the Government of Kenya in February 2008 to investigate the clashes in Kenya following the disputed Kenyan presidential election of 2007.

5.   It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower — In her book, journalist Michela Wrong (In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz) tells the story of John Githongo (see item#1 above), a journalist and activist (and Wrong’s personal friend) who joined newly elected Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki’s administration in 2003 as anti-corruption czar. Githongo’s reformist hopes were betrayed when his investigation of a contracting scandal earned him the enmity of colleagues, death threats and smear campaigns. He fled to Britain in 2005, taking along secret recordings of conversations in which powerful officials implicated themselves in the scam. Githongo, a charming idealist with an intransigence bordering on egomania, is a magnetic protagonist for Wrong’s exposé of the machinery of corruption. She dissects the deeper problem of Kenya’s patronage system, which exploits the state as a source of loot and makes allowances for the tribal parties in power. The resulting graft and discrimination–which Wrong argues fueled the communal slaughter surrounding Kenya’s 2007 election–reinforces Kenyans’ view of existence as a merciless contest, in which only ethnic preference offers hope of survival. Githongo’s saga highlights this pan-African problem and addresses possibilities for change.

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INTRODUCTION

The above passage is drawn from Harry. M. Johnson’s, book, Sociology; a Systematic Introduction and its contents must sound vividly familiar to anyone versed in the gymnastic elasticity characteristic of Kenyan politics. All the defense phrases quoted within it abdicate one integral dynamic-responsibility. Kenyan political leaders never take responsibility for anything and to take responsibility for nothing is to be utterly irresponsible.

To evade responsibility, the Kenyan politician has adopted the split personality disposition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Message content is determined by audience rather than positional conviction and the end will always justify the means.

Uses of such defense slogans have been volubly heard from politicians in Kenya as investigations into the electoral violence of 2007-8 intensify. This circumstance has no doubt helped beam interrogative light on the personal and institutional conduct of Kenya’s political elite for the first time ever in the country.

Kenya’s political elite has perpetually lived way above the law and their very foreboding today in the face of likely prosecution by the International Court of Justice (ICC) for crimes against humanity is not only a sight to behold but literally a humbling and humanizing experience.

A Commission of enquiry headed by Justice Waki and created to investigate the election violence largely forms the basis of prosecution of the suspects. However, other unrecorded personal testimonies through eye witness accounts, prime news television footage(s) and survivor accounts will doubtless be introduced at the proceedings.

INSTITUTIONAL CULPRITS IN THE 2007 VIOLENCE

POLITICAL PARTIES

The conduct of key institutions in the 2007 Election pogrom requires critical investigation. These are the Orange Democratic movement (ODM), the Party of National Unity (PNU), the general public and the role of government security agencies.

Political parties represented two hostile points of elite interests in the run up to the 2007 general elections, the gullible public implemented their reprehensible designs and with the subsequent break down of law and order, the police joined in with calamitous results.

In fact, to prove their level of culpability, both political parties presented notarized memoranda to the investigative commissions of Justice Kreigler and Justice Waki, each accusing the other of masterminding the 2007 electoral conflict. As a result, the two clubs, in a bid to incriminate one another, unintentionally directed and limited the scope of suspicion and investigation to themselves exclusively. Accusations leveled against each other by the two blocks have borne a tragi-comical element. Both are defective and reflect moral lessons learnt from the story of the kettle calling the pot black.

Moreno Ocampo, the International Criminal Court prosecutor has publicly indicated that he will use the dossier presented by the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and the Party of National Unity (PNU) each detailing the others culpability in the 2007 Election violence outbreak to help determine the ICC case against the suspects.

Ironically, it is the evidence presented by the two institutions against each other that will facilitate conclusion of the case against their own party members expected to stand trial.

The political party in Kenya is a cross between a socio-political insurance agency and a stock brokerage dealing with human shares. It not only provides unmitigated access to the nation’s financial vault but also secures the raiders from possible prosecution.

Parties are conveniently used as requisite electoral vehicles but post elections transform into a concrete liberty insurance cover against any form of official scrutiny upon the leaders. Political parties as they are in Kenya today are nothing but modern day manifestations of the colonial mentality of dominate and exploit.

Neo-colonialist leaders in Kenya have ably and sometimes justifiably played this fear of domination and the threat of poverty to mobilize base ethnic support. The fears are unfortunately sometimes starkly real. So far, communities from which Kenya’s Presidents have emerged are a brazen illustration of just how quick the magic wand of power can selectively open the doors of the proverbial sesame.

As a public enterprise the political party thus carries with it the allure of a glamorous ethnic destination, a tribal Canaan of sorts. In Kenya, the political party applies pressure and pulls strings on the public/ private sector to secure incredible business deals for its leadership. In other words, to realize political power in Kenya is to secure the nations penultimate business deal. From the myopia of Kenya’s political leadership, this is a prize worth killing for.

As such a political party in Kenya is summarily a low capital investment with a potentially high dividend yield, human cost notwithstanding. In summary, political parties in Kenya primarily engage in the politics of business and the business of politics.

In orientation, the top five political parties in Kenya, the Orange Democratic Movement-Kenya (ODM-K), Kenya African National Union (KANU), the country’s independence party, the Party of National Unity, Orange Democratic Movement and National Alliance Rainbow Coalition of Kenya (NARC-K) are in substance and practice pale carbon copies of each other. The only distinction is the measure of political rhetoric and the personal character of the party leader. Currently all are in government which is proof of not only their similarities but also of their symbiotic relationship.

Expectedly, none proclaims any known ideology and each variously adopts doctrines considered momentarily convenient. Historically, every thing therefore is fluid from the lenses of Kenyan political parties and can be ‘sorted out’ including inordinate loss of human life.

The reality of this murky arrangement prejudiced the spirit of the 2007 general election. Everything was wrong, the history of the nation, the leaders and their inciting rhetoric, the ethnic political parties, and an angrily betrayed public. Couple this with the harsh economic conditions prevalent in the country and you have a social mine field.

From this perilous assortment of explosive canon fodder, the competing political institutions had a large menu from which to prowl and prowl they certainly did.

THE KENYA POLICE FORCE

The third institution in the violence was the dreaded Kenya police force which left an unprecedented trail of public blood in its wake. The Kenya police are a chronically ill institution. Over the years, it has habitually failed to neither investigate nor regulate its own excesses.

In the violence outbreak of 2007 it was clearly overrun by the public, a scary situation as the public now appear acutely aware of their breaking point ahead of the 2012 elections.

At one point it was actually difficult to differentiate between the police and the rioting hoodlums as each side exhibited similar conduct in regard to looting, murder, arson and propaganda. The Police force took a biased side and in the process lost officers to shootings in Kibera and the Rift Valley, shot dead by suspected criminals camouflaged within protesting mobs.

So gross was the police intent, that in Kisumu Town, a police officer was caught on tape shooting an unarmed protestor to death for merely making teasing faces at him.

Kenya Election Violence (Dec. 2007 into 2008)

The role of the police force is one that requires deeper diagnosis as it is plausible to suggest that the cops have customarily been used as pawns by the ODM elite wing to attract local and international media sympathy and as a repressive counter force by the PNU. This logic is scientifically provable by studying incidences of police versus political party combat during past political events including elections and by elections from 1982 to date.

THE KENYAN PUBLIC

The Kenyan public is as guilty as their leaders and too bears a sense of responsibility over the outbreak. A majority participated by not participating in stopping the violence. Others took sides with their rabid leaders and provided material and moral support to their ethnic militia to attack powerless neighbors. Lies were blatantly told to fuel the chaos in so far as it hurt the “other side” and favored their own polarized party interests. The gender victim machine gun for once fell silent as women leaders, according to the Justice Waki report, were also found to have played a decisive role in mobilizing, organizing and executing the violence.

It is indeed the political goodwill provided by the public that allowed political parties to murder or evict their opponents with such impunity.

INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE 2007 VIOLENCE

Responsible institutions always take full responsibility for the conduct of both its corporate and individual members. Likewise responsible leaders take full responsibility for failures within institutions they head just as much as they would gladly receive credit on its behalf. Common sense also dictates that institutions can only be as responsible as its leader.

Both the Justice Waki and Kenya National Human Rights Organization reports on electoral human rights violations notably fail to appropriate any form of institutional responsibility for the 2007 electoral violence to the two political institutions that brutally fought each other for political power.

Instead, both reports superficially apportion personal blame on the extensive brutality explosions upon individual politicians. This is in spite of the colossal magnitude of the 2007 electoral violence, its massive resource outlay and intricate organization which definitely bore corporate proportions. By dint of its sheer magnitude alone, the violence required well established networks with a clear command chain to effect.

Two typical examples come to mind. One is that of the select crew of kikuyu’ who allegedly met at State House to plot retaliatory attacks in the Rift Valley as narrated in the Waki document. They met not as members of the kikuyu tribe, but principally as members of the Party of National Unity with a specific agenda. The Party of National Unity is a legally registered political entity, with a patented list of office bearers and structures.

The product of their handiwork was supposedly the execution of the macabre massacres in Naivasha and Limuru-Tigoni. The Party of National Unity is led by President Kibaki and enjoys strong support in the stated affected areas.

It is here that hirelings suspected to be from the Kikuyu ethnic group of President Kibaki murdered and raped Luo and Luhyia people then looted their property before finally torching their homes. In one instance in Naivasha, a man of Luo origin lost eleven family members in a single arson attack after raiders locked his house and burnt his entire family to ashes.

Likewise, the Orange Democratic Movement allegedly unleashed attempts to cripple the country’s communication networks, uprooting railways, barricading and digging up roads, crippling bridges and well choreographed highway attacks on goods and passenger transport. Its leader is Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

The forms of violence were nationally generic for both parties and the uniformity of execution clearly rose beyond the realms of uncoordinated individual efforts. ODM perfected its craft in mainly urban locations while the PNU strand thrived in specific peri-urban settings. Each execution pattern bore signature applications. Sample another example.

Most horrifying was the apparent predilection for burning down churches by ODM brigade members. A church filled with fleeing Kikuyu women and helpless children was sealed then set ablaze by people suspected to be members of a Kalenjin vigilante group in Eldoret town of Kenya’s Rift Valley province. Children who attempted to escape the furious inferno were thrown back into the raging fire. There is also the tragic account of an elderly physically challenged lady of Kikuyu origin who disappeared during the violence only for her wheel chair to be recovered from the debris of the fateful church. She too had been burnt to ashes.

In Kisumu city too, a church were burnt down while others were vandalized then razed in Kibera area within Langata constituency of Prime Minister Raila Odinga. All the churches burnt were in strongholds of the Orange Democratic Movement.

In the initial stages of the violence, the pattern was as ethno-political as the parties but later acquired class overtones with the poorer masses indiscriminately targeting richer neighborhoods. The marauding gangs were homogeneously ethnic but the targets roughly common by social status.

In fact, to get to the root of the matter, a thorough interrogation of the histories of Hon. Mwai Kibaki, President of Kenya and Hon. Raila, Prime Minister of Kenya, their political utterances and engagements is vital to providing a clear indicator of the origin of political violence in Kenya.

At a glance, one would ask the ODM leader what he did to mobilize the violence and the President what he didn’t do as constitutionally mandated to stop the violence. To the Prime Minister, a probable charge with crimes of commission is feasible and to the President, a probable charge with crimes of omission is possible — both are crimes nonetheless and they the leaders..

A HISTORICAL COMPARISON

The Eldoret church incident bears striking similarities with another slaughter, carried out nearly 65 years ago in the French village of Oradour-Sur-Glane in June 1944 by Hitler’s SS. Erich Kahler in his study in modern totalitarianism, “The Tower and the Abyss,” writes in his book and I quote, “In reprisal for Resistance activity in the area, the Germans rounded up all the inhabitants and made them go to the market place. The women and children were herded into the village church. No one was alarmed at this stage-the Germans were laughing and playing with the babies.

Then, at a signal from the captain, the soldiers in the square opened fire on the men and massacred them all. The church was set on fire and the women and children burned alive. The children who managed to stumble out were thrown back into the fire.” End of quote.

So similar were the two cases, however apart by time and situation that one is compelled to ask “Had the Nazi historical occurrence of 1944 returned to replay itself in Eldoret, Kenya in 2008? If this trend of reasoning is to be followed, who was the Kenyan version of the Fuehrer?

PRECEDENTS OF INSTITUTIONAL LIABILITY

At the end of the World War II in 1945, the Nazi Party of Germany was proscribed and its top leaders charged with crimes against peace and humanity. Years later in Kenya, the Kenya People’s Union Party (KPU) was also banned in 1969 following skirmishes between its supporters and the Presidential security guard in Kisumu Town. Its leader, former Vice-President Oginga Odinga was placed under house arrest for engaging in subversive activities.

Likewise in Spain, the Batasuna Party was in 2002 dissolved after it was found to have contravened article 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Article 9 of the same Convention establishes that a party will be declared illegal when its grave and continuous activity makes democratic principles vulnerable.

Beyond political parties, other institutions in Kenya have also endured similar punishment. In 2009, sentence of dissolution of the Electoral Commission was noted to have been meted out not only to the institution but to its leader, Samuel Kivuitu as well.

In addition, the 1982 story of the then Kenya Air Force together with its leader suffered a similar outcome after the failed coup attempt of that year. The force was disbanded and its leader Major General Peter Karuiki jailed for four and half years. A new “82′ Air force” was formed after a fresh recruitment exercise. Major General Peter Karuiki was not punished for direct involvement in the coup, but because he failed to use the powerful instruments available to him as institutional head to stop it.

The postulation of institutional responsibility is a prerequisite measure to dismantling militia gangs in Kenya. Militia gangs operate as a political appendage for insurance against the law. Institutional responsibility widens the scope of accountability from a highly personalized perspective and places it upon an entrenched public establishment, the political party. By so doing, it spreads liability to all members of the institution as well for causes and effects for without the general approval of the party membership, however unofficial, such levels of transgression would have been impossible to accomplish by their leaders.

However, institutional responsibility in no way immunizes any culprits from prosecution, be they planners, financiers or implementers but carries with it the onerous task of tearing down the vessel(s) used to incubate and legitimize the heinous actions of the charged individuals. The Kenyan public actively participated and abetted the criminal violence against one another and they too must bear a responsibility and pay a penalty for their actions. Banning of the two major political institutions that took part in the 2009 electoral slaughter is indeed a necessity.

To date, all proposals and counter proposals between the two antagonistic institutions have been presented as corporate accounts by the Orange Democratic Party and the Party of National Unity. This fact practically stops the buck at the doorsteps of the two parties, first as institutions and secondly on their respective leaderships and thirdly on their members.

Those therefore charged in regard to the violence from the two parties should face the law as leaders and members of political institutions and not merely as individual political players.

In whose interest did the electoral assaults take place? Andrew Ombwayo, an advocate of the High court of Kenya based in Nairobi, correctly stresses that criminal liability is ultimately borne by the individual irrespective of whether the crime may have been committed in conformance to institutional edicts. While the Ombwayo argument is correct, his diagnosis remains incomplete because precedents have clearly been set otherwise.

Yet, in spite of self fingering over the 2007 violence, both the leaderships of the ODM and PNU parties today carry on as if the 2007 election massacres were a creation of the police force, the electoral commission and the media. In fact, every other peripheral institution appears guilty of the violence outbreaks except the political parties and leaders who stoked it all.

The heads of the political institutions of PNU and ODM must take full responsibility for what happened in 2007 and after and in this there may eventually be no escape.

Currently, the Attorney General, Amos Wako and the Chief Justice, Evan Gicheru have both been served with notice of intention by parliamentarians in regard to the poor performance of the institutions they lead. Both will ultimately suffer the burden of responsibility on behalf of their institutions. Another example is that of Former Police Commissioner, Brigadier Ali, he is today compelled to bear responsibility over the institutional excesses of the police in regard to the electoral debacle of 2007.Why not the two leaders and their two parties?

CURRENT OVERVIEW

As things stand today, it matters little who provoked the other or who retaliated in regard to the 2007 violence. The issue is now fait accompli, as focus is now directed towards judiciously sanitizing the consequent catastrophe.

The crimes committed fall squarely within the jurisdiction of human rights abuses. Even the Kreigler Commissions Report refuses to legitimize each sides claim to winning the fateful 2007 elections which denies both the accused any sound platforms upon which to lead the country.

One option gaining currency as the nation grinds to a halt is that the two leaders should call it a day and resign. Taking full responsibility is a way open only to statesmen and virtuous nationalists who would spare no act, or personal sacrifice to redeem their beloved nation from endemic hemorrhage.

Kenyans died for the two leaders and because of the two leaders, of that there is absolutely no doubt. The furtive desperation of the ruling elite is real as they ultimately have nowhere to run. In the event of an outbreak of chaos, for whatever reason, it is they who stand to lose the most, having stolen the most.

Practically, an exiled political leader is highly vulnerable, ask former Liberian President Charles Taylor, which makes exile only a compulsory alternative. Exile would make them easy pickings for international security agencies hot on their heels today. Only a peaceful Kenya provides sanctuary for criminals to live secure from prosecution, a factor which obliterates the threats of violence they so often issue.

Indeed, if an outbreak of chaos is the outcome the Kenyan leaders project as the result for their prosecution, then it may be a foul alternative but one definitely worth considering.

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By Oliver Mathenge and Bernard Namunane
[ Daily Nation, Nairobi ]

United States President Barack Obama has again used the Kenyan example to impress upon the African leadership on the need for policy change.

The US president is reported to have used a personal story about his Kenyan family saying that poor governance is responsible for their poor existence.

A top White House aide, Deputy National Security Adviser Michael Froman, told journalists that Mr Obama said; “My cousin in Kenya can’t find a job without paying a bribe, and that’s not the fault of the G8.”

This was during a meeting with leaders of Egypt, Algeria, Senegal, Nigeria, Libya and Ethiopia at the close of the Group of Eight summit at the l’Aquila town of Italy on Friday.

This was the second time he was making reference to Kenya to urge good governance in Africa.

African leaders

The US president also acknowledged the discussions with the African leaders during a press conference after the meeting.

“The point I was making was that my father travelled to the United States a mere 50 years ago yet now I have family members who live in villages, they themselves are not going hungry but they live in villages where hunger is real. And so this is something that I understand in very personal terms.

“And if you talk to people on the ground in Africa, certainly in Kenya, they will say that part of the issue here is the institutions aren’t working for ordinary people and so governance is a vital concern that has to be addressed.”

The comments came as the world’s most powerful leader headed for Ghana where he is expected to outline his administration’s policy for Africa. Mr Obama will make an address in Accra Saturday after arriving in the West African nation on Friday evening.

The US president is said to have shared that when his father, Barack Obama Sr., left Kenya, the country’s GDP was higher than that of Korea. He added that South Korea is now industrialised and relatively wealthy while Kenya, as well as much of Africa, is still struggling economically.

Skip Kenya

Mr Obama, who has skipped Kenya in his first trip in black Africa told the African leaders that it was important that development programs are implemented so they reach people who really need them. He said that any assistance granted should actually get to the farmers who should benefit from it.

Leaders at Friday’s G8 meetings committed themselves to a $20 billion initiative to help farmers in poor countries boost production. The investment, which is $5bn more than had been expected, will fund a three-year initiative to help poor nations develop their own agriculture.

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   President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga during the signing of the National Peace Accord on February 28, last year.
   Mr Annan has handed over the secret list to ICC prosecutor, Mr Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

Kenya’s attempts to delay punishment of top suspects accused of crimes against humanity on Thursday backfired after chief mediator Kofi Annan abruptly handed over the secret list to the International Criminal Court.

What started as recommendations for the formation of a commission of inquiry into the violence following the presidential election in 2007 is now formally an international judicial matter and Kenya’s options have all but ended.

Irritated by the deadlines set by the Panel of Eminent African Personalities, which brokered a deal to end the violence last year, the government sent a delegation to Mr Annan and later to negotiate directly with the prosecutor at the ICC, Mr Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

The reception in Europe was far from warm. Mr Annan thought Kenyan lacked the political will to punish the perpetrators of the violence.

His advice was for the leaders to speak to Mr Moreno-Ocampo first and then he would communicate his decision.

He summoned the other members of the panel of Eminent African Personalities, Mr Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania and Ms Graça Machel of South Africa and they decided to hand over the list of suspects to the International Criminal Court.

His “communication” on Thursday caught everyone by surprise and threw the government into a panic.

Both the Party of National Unity and the Orange Democratic Movement have paid lip service to the need to end impunity without real commitment to punishment for crimes against humanity.

ODM, according to a party apparatchik, is “focusing on… the officials who were in charge when innocent people were killed by police.”

The feeling in ODM is that more of PNU people stand to be prosecuted than its own.

The dossier it sent to the International Criminal Court in January last year consisted of evidence of murder by the State, including postmortem reports showing that victims had been shot.

On the other hand, PNU appears to believe that the bloody crackdown on protesters was a law and order issue, which is necessary to preserve the state, and that the Mungiki slaughter in Naivasha and elsewhere was “spontaneous” retaliation for killings and mass evictions reported in the Rift Valley and elsewhere. In other words, ODM started it.

In both parties, those responsible for the slaughter believe that they could threaten new violence to deter prosecutions.

Some have argued that what is needed is “healing” and “reconciliation” rather than prosecution.

This explains the fashionable idea of referring even the worst criminals to the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission.

Justice minister Mutula Kilonzo is on record as having said that a special tribunal would only be formed if it did not threaten stability, an indication that there has been no single-minded pursuit of justice.

All these are moot arguments now: According to the agreement entered into with the International Criminal Court, Kenya must establish a court or tribunal to try the suspects, offer proof that it was protecting witnesses and preserving evidence ? all by September.

The court or tribunal must not only be accepted by Parliament ? a near impossibility given MPs’ hostility to a local tribunal ? but must also have the broad support of many sectors of the society, according to Mr Annan’s letter.

To build consensus and get MPs to pass the necessary laws in three months would require the kind of commitment to ending impunity that Kenya is yet to demonstrate.

On Thursday, Mr Annan separately called President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to inform them of his decision, sparking a flurry of meetings at Harambee House, the President’s office, attended by both the President and the PM.

The two, it appears, did not expect Mr Annan to hand over the envelope to Mr Moreno-Ocampo, especially after last week’s visit to Geneva and The Hague by the government delegation.

“Mr Kofi Annan today (Thursday) informed President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga that the Panel had transmitted to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court the sealed envelope and supporting materials entrusted to him by the Waki Commission on 17 October 2008,” Mr Annan’s statement said.

To underline the importance of his calls, Mr Annan also wrote separately to the President and the PM to inform them of the decision taken by the panel.

He said the decision was reached after the government delegation of Cabinet ministers Mutula Kilonzo, James Orengo and Attorney General Amos Wako met Mr Moreno-Ocampo.

The prosecutor gave the government until end of September to show proof that it was prosecuting the prominent people behind the violence in which more than 1,133 Kenyans were killed.

Sealed envelope

Mr Moreno-Ocampo’s office confirmed receiving the sealed enveloped and materials bearing evidence of the killings from Mr Annan.

The ICC chief prosecutor, who is Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on a visit to several Africa countries, has stressed no one will be spared if the government fails to meet its side of the bargain.

Sources said the meeting between President Kibaki, Mr Wako, Mr Kilonzo and Mr Orengo did not agree on the kind of judicial mechanism that they would put in place.

ODM had expressed fears that a special division of the High Court may not meet international standards.

Mr Wako, Mr Kilonzo and Mr Orengo were tasked to quickly work out a judicial mechanism that would be acceptable to MPs, The Hague and the public.

Although Mr Annan had welcomed the government’s efforts to either establish a local tribunal or a judicial mechanism to try the suspects, he declared that it must meet international standards and be agreed on by all Kenyans.

The slow pace

However, he hit at the slow pace of putting in place a mechanism and warned that impunity must be tackled for Kenya to embark on a fresh chapter.

He reminded the government that the public was becoming restless with the delay in implementing reforms under Agenda Four of the National Accord.

“Justice delayed is justice denied. The people of Kenya want to see concrete progress on impunity. Without such progress, the reconciliation between ethnic groups and the long-term stability of Kenya is in jeopardy,” he warned.

A draft Cabinet paper on the establishment of the special court has been submitted to the President and the PM, although it appears that it will meet strong opposition in Parliament.

The proposal seeks to set up a special division of the High Court that will be composed of foreign and local judges. The prosecutor and the investigator will be non-Kenyans.

References:

1. Is Obama Africa’s saviour?
2. Koffi Annan: Why I Had To Strike
3. Obama hope amid dark memories

Ghana Welcomes Obama

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