Salary increase an insult to taxpayers

Daily Nation Editorial
Publication Date: 09/12/2006

Parliament shocked everybody on Thursday, when it awarded President Kibaki a massive salary rise and only put on hold proposals to give higher allowances to the Vice-President, Cabinet ministers, assistant ministers, House Speaker and MPs.

It was surprising that the members could think of anything so obnoxious as increasing their earnings when everybody else in the public sector is being asked to tighten their belts and when thousands of Kenyans go hungry.

A number of things were baffling about this whole thing. First, the President has not asked for any pay rise, so one wonders what motivated the award. Two, the Head of State is sufficiently cushioned financially as all his needs are taken care of by the taxpayers such that he really does not need any big pay.

As for the VP, ministers and MPs, the mere thought that they can award themselves further allowances is not only annoying but amounts to spiting the taxpayers. Here are members of a Parliament that has performed ridiculously poor in the past four years, yet it has a ravenous hunger for money.

How can they think of giving themselves such obscene allowances when the rank and file of workers are languishing in poverty? Take the case of the university lecturers, who just called off their month-long strike over poor pay last week.

All along, they have been told that the State has no additional cash to give then a pay boost. Where then did it get the money for this increase? Where is the fairness and how can the State convince anyone that it cares for all its workers?

The ministers and MPs have got so many new packages in the past three years that one is alarmed at their appetite for money. Yet, there is no commensurate service they offer their voters.

This is a national outrage, which is why Kenyans must demand for a system that locks out MPs from the task of determining their own salaries.

Better believe it, there are no foes in politics

COMMENTARY
Story by LUCY ORIANG'
Publication Date: 08/12/2006

BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID. When the political waters become so murky that you have former President Daniel arap Moi and Nicholas Biwott making a comeback into respected society, it is time to take a deep breath and make some hard decisions.

When these unlikely democrats begin to dictate the political tempo, there can be only one way to go – back to the drawing board and into the trenches.

Who would have thought, on December 29, 2002, that the regime we dispatched into the political wilderness would be influencing the direction we take a year to the next poll?

In the name of those who died for the second liberation, and those who suffered the kind of torture that would break the spirit of mere mortals, this needs to be said: Only a very desperate leadership would find it necessary to call back into duty a battalion of people who so thoroughly corrupted democracy in Kenya that we ended up a basket-case in the eyes of the international community.

Only a people who are self-seekers hungry for power – to quote a tiresome refrain that is usually used in reference to people opposing President Kibaki and his so-called government of national unity – can find it in their hearts to contemplate giving even an inch to a discredited cabal that did all it could to bring this country to its knees.

If Kenya is back on track today, it is only because there was a collective, albeit unspoken, decision that nothing would be gained by rehashing the past.

But we did make clear that we wanted a clean break with a less than glorious past.
Yet here we are today, bending the rules – on pain of losing whatever reputation we had – to beef up the Kibaki Government's arsenal ahead of a poll that is bound to be bitter and dirty.

That is a tactic which is, at once, cheap and costly.

The first because the current crop of leaders should have grown up enough by now to stand on their own feet and not need a prop from a man they called names.

The second because – and this I believe with all my being – Kenyans have proved once before that you can push them only so far and, having enjoyed that power, will not be taken for granted ever again.

Even more important, you cannot proclaim that you are proud to be Kenyan and return to the political platform a set of people who detained and systematically ruined people for the great sin of having a mind of their own. And through the back door, too!

IT IS DURING THE MOI REGIME that land clashes – some would call them ethnic cleansing – became the ultimate solution to political dissent. Corruption was the by-word for any economic or political advantage. And now we are cutting deals with this same man?

We spoke in whispers in our homes, lest we be thrown into torture chambers. Someone who worked at the Central Bank, I seem to recall, was even arrested over comments made in a letter to a relative in the US.

Yet we found the strength of will to legitimately throw out a regime that represented the worst that independent Kenya had to offer.

I received hundreds of emails from friends all over the world congratulating us for showing Africa that it was possible to get rid of a despotic regime without resorting to the gun.

Barely four years later, we have Mr Moi having high tea at State House and Mr Biwott the friendly leader of the official opposition. Suddenly we are bedevilled by coups and temper tantrums in just about any political party worth the name – and especially those that are not inclined to toe the Kibaki line.

To be fair, they were just falling back on a tried and tested formula. After all, the man Moi detained three times – Raila Odinga – had no qualms getting into bed with him during the National Development Party days, and also under the umbrella of the Orange Democratic Movement for purposes of last year's referendum.

And now he is in the same camp as the Duke of Kabeteshire, Mr Charles Njonjo. And with the Kanu rebels, the notorious Mr Tony Gachoka and former Head of the Civil Service Sally Kosgei.

I get a headache just trying to figure out the next unlikely member of ODM-Kenya, and who will be vowing undying loyalty to Narc-without-boundaries.

There is a saying that everything that goes up must come down. But we Kenyans, ever contrary, must add our own twist to everything. Here, whatever goes down must come up – especially in politics.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is time we stared the truth in the eye and asked ourselves this one question: Where did we lose the plot?

Fallacies of tribe divide and enslave our people

Commentary
From The Standard,
By Koigi wa Wamwere

Today, Kenyans from different communities are suspicious of, hate and fight one another more than ever before.

Because it is easier to hate, we have forgotten that it is better to love. But hate is very costly to the hated, the hater and the country. Apart from the ease of doing it, why do we hate one another? It is because of fallacies about other communities and we that fuel mutual hatred.

Negative ethnicity is created by ethnic elites who propagate fallacies that make our minds and hearts sick with tribalism. People protect their interests not as individuals, economic classes or Kenyans, but as ethnic communities in exclusion of others.

Communities should not think and their ethnic chiefs do it for them. Interests of ethnic chiefs and the elite are superior to those of their communities. If you go to Nyeri, Kisumu or Kabarnet and ask people what their problems are, they will not raise their own, but the power and protection of President Kibaki, Mr Raila Odinga and former President Moi.

We elect the President, MPs and councillors not to represent and speak for us in Government, Parliament and councils, but to enthrone our ethnic chief. After electing him, MPs and councillors speak for him and people are left without a voice.

Like bees that live for their queen, they live, not for themselves but their ethnic chiefs.

If you criticise, challenge or compete with a tribal chief from your community, you are labelled a traitor. If you do it from without, you are an enemy and must be dealt with. However able a person from another community is, he must never be our President.

Because of our different languages, hair texture, shades of colour, cultural practices and even traditional food, some feel better, superior to and more deserving than others. Others hate themselves in the belief that they are worse and inferior. Though all of us are somewhat tainted, we believe we are innocent and only others are guilty of tribalism.

Someone from another community is never right, but we are. When they speak, you do not listen. As people in the West used black people Jews as scapegoats for a long time, a person from another community is always the witch among us. If we lack something, he is responsible and to blame. To survive, we must rob our witches and find a final solution to them.

Our community will survive best not by loving and sharing with others, but hating, robbing and killing others with whom we must never unite or share.

As the rest of the world forms blocks of economic, political and military survival, tribal chiefs tell us that our future lies in the eventual fragmentation into ethnic states, majimbos or small ponds where ethnic chiefs can reign supreme.

If a leader from our community becomes or is President, we will all be rich or become so. Conveniently, we forget that though we have had a Kalenjin and two Kikuyu Presidents, most Kalenjin and Kikuyu people are poor.

We refuse to see that if presidents eat with the elite of other communities that help them govern, they do not eat with their people and the latter remain poor before and after their man’s rule. We believe the rule of our tribal chief is the best because it will usher us into eating. We forget that the exclusion of most Kenyans is ultimately suicidal when our turn is over.

If a leader from our community is or becomes President, we think we, too, are President or shall be. We talk of a Kikuyu, Kalenjin or Luo President, but the leaders have names — Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki. There will never be a President Luo, President Kikuyu, President Luhya, President Kalenjin or President Kamba.

Because two Kikuyus and one Kalenjin have been presidents, the fallacy is that every Kikuyu and Kalenjin is rich and people in other communities are poor. Conversely, if a President comes from other communities, they will automatically become rich.

To boost the fallacy, we refuse to see the rich in our own communities and only see the rich in others. When leaders from our communities become presidents, it is to make us rich, not serve all Kenyans or make their families rich. We refuse to interrogate ourselves and ask why families of presidents are rich, but 99 per cent of their communities and constituencies are poor.

Despite the assassination of JM Kariukis, Bishop Muges and betrayal of Mau Mau, we believe a President from our community can never hurt us.

Equally, we believe presidents from other communities will enslave and kill us. We thus follow bad ethnic leaders blindly and sing all the way to our grave and reject good leaders from other communities.

When we hate ourselves, we apologise for our ethnicity and instead of fighting for equality take refuge in the back seats of leadership.

Although ethnic elites know these are dangerous fallacies, they propagate them because they are politically profitable. By instilling fear of the devil in their people, they enslave and make them follow them to their slaughter. Tribalism is the elite’s greatest political capital.

For ordinary people, the village is their world and whatever reigns there rules them. Enslaved by ignorance and the tyranny of the so-called communal survival, they follow tribal chiefs to their own perdition. They have no idea that elites fan ethnic wind to fly their own kites, not the people’s.

The writer is the Assistant Minister for Information and Communication

What crimes politicians commit in thy name!

COMMENTARY
Story by CABRAL PINTO
Publication Date: 12/7/2006

IN HIS BOOK, Rogue Ambassador: An African Memoir, Smith Hempstone, who died recently, tells us that he contributed to the campaign of George Bush, Snr, for the US presidency in 1988 and requested that he be appointed ambassador to Kenya should Bush win. He got his job.

In some of the disclosures about the Anglo Leasing scandal, one Pereira is alleged to have paid presidential candidate Mwai Kibaki’s medical bills in London. Kamlesh Pattni gave the Jaramogi Odinga's Ford Kenya campaign Sh2 million according to Jaramogi’s own admission. Jaramogi died in 1994.

In the aftermath of Dr Wanjiru Kihoro’s death, it was disclosed, by her husband, that she was able to raise Sh16 million towards the Narc campaign in 2002.

There were people who helped Narc in other ways, besides raising funds. Scholars wrote blueprints. The international community also gave a hand. We have since heard allegations of foreign funds being channelled to Narc’s campaigns through friendly NGOs. Nobody knows how much the politicians raised in their many trips abroad, an exercise that is now being repeated.

WHAT WERE THESE INDIVIDUALS and organisations lobbying for? Was it just a political commitment that made them do whatever it took to help the party come to power? Were they lobbying for general, specific or personal interests?

No study has addressed these critical questions. We must learn our lessons and change.

Kenyans must be reminded of these stories because the struggle for political power in 2007 is furiously with us. Is this not the time to find out who are the real movers and shakers of this struggle? Are the monitors of free and fair elections ready to do their work and ensure the polls are not rigged in favour of anonymous stakeholders?

Are the human rights and social justice organisations that campaign against corruption ready to do their work and show which corrupt networks are at work to capture, enslave and own willing politicians?

Are our think-tanks at university, NGOs and consulting firms ready to tell us what the think-tanks of the status quo are really thinking? How can we talk about alternative leadership if this critical work is not being done?

When will we become serious and show Kenyans clearly and convincingly that the two political parties now vying for office, namely, Narc-Kenya and ODM-Kenya, are not simply errand girls and boys of vested interests, both national and international?

The truth is that the corrupt networks are already investing in the political fortunes of the prospective presidential candidates. The rich Kenyan grapevine tells of who is funding who and whose helicopters are at the beck and call of which politicians.

Evidence abounds on what the prospective presidential candidates are promising key stakeholders. Rumour has it that one has already promised his financier a speedy enactment of the Suppression of Terrorism Bill!

With proper inquiry, investigative journalism, and monitoring the activities of the prospective candidates, we can make the real evidence available to Kenyans before the 2007 elections.

Those Kenyans who constantly say that electoral politics is dirty are themselves guilty of intellectual laziness. We can make Kenya’s politics clean. We can keep dirty politicians and their backers out of Kenya’s politics. It is only when we can do so that we can talk of alternative leadership.

Poor Wanjiku! How many crimes are committed in thy name!

Nobody becomes president in Kenya without responding to the vested interests of political power-brokers inside and outside the country. When we talk of the status quo, that is precisely what and who we mean: Powerful political brokers. We do not seem to pay attention to these people at all.

Our media is not interested in taking up investigative issues. Political campaigns become campaigns that have nothing to do with the fundamental issues facing the country. The cult of personality is prevalent and you see the key players in the front pages each day of the campaign period. Before we know it, there is a new occupant at State House, and nobody cares how she or he got there.

It is time Kenyans thought seriously about what kind of leaders they need, and what values the leaders stand for. Let Kenyans seriously interrogate the political manifestos that politicians churn out during campaigns. Let us monitor and document who supports these politicians and for what reasons.

Mr Pinto is a Kenyan political scientist.