A Kenyatta Day Exit Strategy for Kibaki

[Onyango Oloo]

Onyango Oloo Offers a Face Saver for the Bananiacs- Free of Charge...

PART ONE


Wikipedia informs me that an

exit strategy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_strategy) is:

a means of escaping one's current situation, typically an unfavourable situation. An organization or individual without an exit strategy may be in a quagmire. At worst, an exit strategy will save face; at best, an exit strategy will peg a withdrawal to the achievement of an objective worth more than the cost of continued involvement.

That is what I want to provide President Kibaki and his beleaguered Bananiacs.

I may get speared fatally by some of my fellow Orangemates because this is giving succor to the so called "enemy".

I prefer to look at things differently.

One of the gravest dangers wrought by this campaign is this perception of "enemy camps" forgeting that we are actually talking about is a very spirited national democratic debate pitting Kenyans who have different visions and agendas for the country.

As a Marxist-Leninist I do not buy the bleeding heart, wishy-washy weepy liberal hand-wringing of Rodney King’s "Can’t We’all Just Get Along?" fretting.

Kenya is divided into social classes with diametrically different interests; our ideological differences, when these are present are ultimately based on these social class cleavages. That is why I do not think there is such a thing as a Luo agenda, a Gikuyu agenda, a women’s agenda , a youth agenda, a Wazee’s agenda and so on and so forth. Not all Luos think alike; not all Gikuyus sing from the same hymn book; a rich woman who lives in Muthaiga like, say the First Lady has very little in common with the niece of her maid who lives in Korogocho; a teenager whose father is a cabinet minister or millionaire tycoon can not claim to know what it is like to wake up as a standard eight drop out tending his grandpa’s goats in Ikomero. Our country is already divided and therefore the referendum will not tear us apart.

So that is NOT what I am worried about.

What concerns me is that we may be losing sight of one of the most valuable lessons of our emerging democratic experience as Kenyans.

Can we, for instance, go through a referendum as feisty as the one we have immersed ourselves in without concomitantly planting the seeds of generations’ long seething feuds?

I believe we can and we must.

For the last five years I have lived in Quebec- which is a country or a province depending on whether you are a Sovereignist or a Federalist in Canadian terms. This region in North America has gone through TWO referenda in the last 25 years,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Quebec_referendum

one in 1980 and the other one in 1995. Both were fractious, ferocious and pugnaciously contested right down to the wire. Tears of joys and tears of bitterness flowed freely from the passionate eyelids of Quebeckers and Canadians either celebrating their side’s victory or cursing out convenient scapegoats for their unfortunate loss.

But you know what:

There have been no Commissions of Inquiry set up to investigate Anglo-Franco communal bloodbaths. Simply because there were none. The people of Quebec went through two highly charged referenda in which political careers were made or lost- but ultimately the losing side accepted the razor thin verdict of the electorate. In both cases, the losing side happened to be the provincial government of the day. Rene Levesque the legendary PQ leader in 1980 did not shed off his dapper suits to launch a guerrilla campaign against the Federal government led at that time by Montréal home boy Pierre Trudeau; in 1995 Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau made some comments between gritted teeth widely interpreted as borderline racist and even coded anti-Semitism (alleging that the Sovereignist side lost because of “money and the ethnic vote”) and obviously Bloc Quebecois leader Lucien Bouchard was not exactly jumping for joy; none of the two leaders of the Yes side however sulked away from Canada or threatened to “deport” Jews, Caucasians of British descent or English speaking immigrants to Alberta, Ontario and BC.

Instead, life went on, not as usual, but life went on as the Sovereignists (derisively referred to as “Separatists” by the Federalists) mulled over the future of Quebec. As I write these lines, Quebec is still part of the Federal Government of Canada- and still plotting its escape to its presumed independent destiny.

In our Kenyan case, this is the first time we are dealing with a referendum and perhaps it is tempting to see more to the referendum than is actually there. The Republic of Kenya will not collapse and disappear if this side or that side loses.

One side is going to lose for sure and I have already stated quite categorically that it is the Yes side, the Bananiacs who are going to lose and lose badly- even if they stuff the ballots, even if they organize massacres; even if they lock up all the Orange leaders and detain them a week before the referendum- they are still going to lose and lose handily, without any ambiguity whatsoever. It will not even be a close vote.

(CONTINUED)

[Onyango Oloo]

PART TWO

Earlier today I was writing a speech in my head for President Kibaki to deliver on October 20, 2005. Of course President Kibaki has NOT commissioned Onyango Oloo to compose any such speech- but neither did he commission me to compose this little spoken word campaign piece on December 23, 2002:

216.17.145.92/uploads/2005/04/kurakwakibaki.mp3

Why was I writing that speech?

I am a patriotic Kenyan and I thought, well, Oloo, your President is on Sh*t Creek without a paddle so why not help him out?

It was going to be a lyrical speech; it was going to flow with exhortations as to our national purpose and how we could transcend our pedestrian pursuits and keep our eyeballs frozen on the democratic prize. I was going to reach into the reservoir of poetic diction and philosophical erudition; I was going to go for patriotic cadences and the musicality of our cultural diversity; simply put, I was going to go for it, in terms of giving it my best expositional, narrative, argumentative and descriptive literary application of effort.

But that was before the Nairobi dailies hit me in the solar plexus with the tawdry, the mawkish, the vomit inspiring donkey trade at Ikulu between our foul mouthed President and our sulking, litigation happy health minister.

My friend Adongo Ogony has already dissected this embarrassing cashing in of political principle for ephemeral expediency- I need not go on a literary rampage, or what do you say long suffering readers of my elongated digital interventions?

Let me be uncharacteristically curt and restrained:

What a shame, Mrs. Charity Kaluki Ngilu, what a shame. Is this how much you are worth politically, Honourable minister? Because by setting out your five conditions, Mrs Ngilu, you indicated to the President that your values, your principles, your convictions, your tenets indeed the entire contents of your weltanschauung were mere wares, vendibles, baubles on sale. You put a price on your political integrity and national credibility, Mheshimiwa Waziri and it was met in the neocolonial market place by political merchants only too eager to pay you from the swag plundered from this country’s millions of tax payers. What is not clear, Hon. Ngilu, is whether the sordid wanasiasa infested market where you offered your democratic conscience is a buyer’s or seller’s market because you, Mrs. Charity Kaluki Ngilu who inspired millions of Kenyans with your first stab at the Presidency in 1997, you Madam Minister, you have, as of this instant, practically purchased your own, hand-picked political casket, chosen your own customized grave-yard in Kitui District and must now await patiently for the inevitable hour when you are scheduled to be buried by a landslide of ferocious voter indignation that will plow over your political remains in the year 2007. You, Mama Rainbow officially became TOAST on Friday, October 14, 2005 with your shameless and open betrayal of your constituents, your supporters and your admirers. Mheshimiwa Waziri, call me a Mpiga Ramli, call me a Montreal Kajiwe or call me a Kenyan Sangoma, call me a North American Mchawi, but I have, as of this morning, Friday, October 14, 2005 Madam Minister, officially placed an incurable and irreversible political LAANA on you, dear minister of health. Even as I do this, I remember how you gladly held the hands of my teen son back there in Whippany when I asked you if you could take a picture with him. This is nothing personal. I just have a curse to deliver this early on a mid- October morning on behalf of some of my dispirited and disappointed democratic friends and former cheerleaders of the one and only Mama Rainbow.

Having dispensed with that small business of cyberuchawi, let me get back to the point of my essay.

(CONTINUED)

[Onyango Oloo]

PART THREE

Yes.

I was saying that I was looking forward to writing a speech for His Excellency the President Mwai Kibaki, MP. I am not even sure if we still call our Presidents ‘Mtukufu’ or if that went out with the Mzee from Sacho.

Anywayz.

One of the reasons I opted for a speech is because as a Communist, I am not exactly a praying man- so I could hardly go down on my knees and pray for the President and his Quixotic Banana Ensemble.

But why am I doing this?

Do I pity the President?

Not really.

It is not about pity because that is often a very patronizing or matronizing stanceyouknowwhatiamsaying?

It is more about being sober and upon reflection realize from my far off North American vantage point where one can be very lucid, distilled from the upfront cacophony of assorted sycophants. Those of us outside the country sometimes read the country more closely than those Kenyans inside the country who are deeply immersed in the topsy turvy mud fights and the arm-wrestling taking place up close and personal almost akin to a deathly hand to hand, street to street, gichagi to gicagis combat pitting former friends and allies as irreconcilable political adversaries.

I still don’t think I have answered my own question.

Go back to the opening quote about an exit strategy.

As per the quotation, an exit strategy is "…a means of escaping one's current situation, typically an unfavourable situation. An organization or individual without an exit strategy may be in a quagmire. At worst, an exit strategy will save face; at best, an exit strategy will peg a withdrawal to the achievement of an objective worth more than the cost of continued involvement."

I was penning the speech in my head to later offer it over the information superhighway to use the old school Clinton era term for the mtandao.

I was going to offer it over the internet to the President of Kenya as an EXIT STRATEGY.

And I would only offer it as an exit strategy if I felt that there was a need for Kibaki to find a means of escaping from his faction’s current unfavourable situation which is practically a quagmire. Now a quagmire, to refresh our collective lexiconic memories, is "a usually low-lying area of soft waterlogged ground and standing water: bog, fen, marsh, marshland, mire, morass, muskeg, quag, slough, swamp, swampland, wetland.." or in other thesaurus equivalents, a “difficult, often embarrassing situation or condition: box, corner, deep water, difficulty, dilemma, fix, hole, hot spot, hot water, jam, plight, predicament, scrape, soup, trouble, bind, pickle, spot” and if I were to slip into our national lingua franca, "janga, shida, mashaka, kayaya, chokochoko, fazaa, beluwa, chachari, mushkeli ama kikwazo".

But why on earth, my fellow Orangemates will ask, scratching their perplexed noggings, would Oloo want to offer a mwiko to somebody ambaye ameamua kujikaanga na mafuta yake mwenyewe?

Well, for one, I am not a cannibal and therefore do not feast on fried human flesh no matter how well marinated and how well done.

I prefer mutton, beef or lamb- horrifying my vegan friends who only slaughter plant life.

In any case, I sympathize and empathize with the Banana Maniacs who have been given to gobbling entire bunches of bananas every time they see a press photographer on the horizon. Apart from a potential case of epidemic indigestion, I discern and diagnose a more severe malaise- involuntary mass political suicide. Now, having seen the horrors of Jonestown on the Idiot Box, I thought I should rush to the political rescue before the Bananiacs drink the yellow flavoured Kool Aid.

Call it a case of political First Aid and emergency democratic resuscitation, call it what you will, but just as Oloo dashes to the rescue; ladies and gentlemen of the Banana Republic this is to formally notify you that I will try and make a last ditch attempt to save the Yes Camp before they fall on their own political swords.

(CONTINUED)

[Onyango Oloo]

PART FOUR

Let me inject a little bit of seriousness into this essay.

OK. I have wiped off that impish grin and brutally suppressed that recurrent chuckle. See, a serious visage and solemn demeanor is what you witness when you train your organic optical equipment in my general direction.

I want to offer a Resurrection Miracle to Mwai Kibaki.

Just so that we are clear, you have to be dead FIRST before you are resurrected.

As far as the referendum goes, political rigor mortis has already set in.

But I want to revive the Banana Camp, raise them from the dead- keeping my fingers crossed that they do not leap back to life as werewolves, vampires and other gargoyles and goblins.

Here are the key ingredients of a face saving exit strategy for the Yes Camp.

There is ONLY PERSON who can execute it. He has to play ball and he HAS TO FOLLOW MY INSTRUCTIONS TO THE LETTER. ANY DEVIATION and WHOOPS! They are back to the Land of the politically UN-ALIVE.

Here are the DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS for President Mwai Kibaki:



1.Call an EMERGENCY CABINET meeting in Nairobi between Friday, October 14, 2005 and Tuesday, October 18, 2005. One item will dominate the agenda for that meeting- setting the PRECONDITIONS for a CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY to complete the task of the constitutional review process. Here is what the President should offer to the 7 ministers spearheading the Orange campaign: The Yes Camp will IMMEDIATELY and UNCONDITIONALLY withdraw the Wako Draft from any further consideration. Instead a newly convened CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY comprised of ALL THE BOMAS DELEGATES plus ANY FORCES LEFT OUT of the last national constitutional conference will take the BOMAS DRAFT, plus ANY OTHER DRAFTS and any other submissions ALREADY COMPILED and subject all of these to a wide ranging democratic debate, discussion and dissection, without REHASHING any of the agreed upon areas BUT INSTEAD FOCUSING on the so called “contentious” areas like (a) the executive (b) devolution of powers (c) religious courts (d) the bill of rights. Put a TIME CAP on this CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY such that it embarks on its SPECIFIC work on November 1, 2005 and complete its deliberations no later than December 1, 2005 with a goal of having reached a GENUINE, DEMOCRATIC and NATIONAL CONSENSUS of what the elements of our national democratic constitution will be like. This consensus should be FORMALIZED in a UNANIMOUS PROCLAMATION of this CONSENSUS DRAFT as our new constitution by December 12, 2005. Within TWO MONTHS of the promulgation of the new constitution, DISSOLVE the NARC government and SEEK A FRESH MANDATE on the basis of the new constitution. Have elections held no later than March 15, 2006 and have a new government ready to be sworn in no later than April 1, 2006. Done this way, there will be no need for underhanded power intrigues- EVERYONE WILL BE JOCKEYING OPENLY, LEGALLY and OFFICIALLY for POLITICAL POWER.

2. Convene a SPECIAL SESSION of PARLIAMENT in which President Kibaki gives an ADDRESS to the National Assembly detailing the SOLUTION that I have outlined above on Wednesday, October 19th, 2005.

3. During the October 20th National Holiday, have President Kibaki address the Nation reiterating the plan I outlined above. Also declare a plan to recognize our freedom fighters.

4. Invite former South African President Nelson Mandela, Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to a SPECIAL CEREMONY at Uhuru Park where the Orange Camp and the Banana Camp officially BURY THEIR HATCHETS on the DAY AFTER Kenyatta Day.

5. Hand over matters to the Electoral Commission of Kenya to officially CALL OFF THE REFERENDUM.

6. Have a formal COOLING OFF PERIOD during which the CONSTITUTION is NOT discussed at all publicly between October 25th and November 1st, after which the DISCUSSION take place within the framework of the CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY with members of the cabinet back to their normal ministerial duties.

7. Implement the rest of Oloo’s Win/Win Solution.


That’s it.

You think it can work?

You think mindsets are flexible enough to even consider something this audacious, this outlandish this late in the game?

We’ll see.

Onyango Oloo
Toronto.

[Onyango Oloo]

From: "nyakwarotiya" <nyakwarotiya@...>
Date: Fri Oct 14, 2005 5:15 am
Subject: Re: A Kenyatta Day Exit Strategy for Kibaki


wuod gem,

in your well thought out insha on how president kibaki, beleagured by an acute political stasis, can face up to the constitution review imbroglio, you suggest an exit strategy that i agree with in principle, but disagree with in terms of the approach. elswhere, i have already made my opinion on the honorable ngilu, the grand dame with good looking legs, i must say.

in your position, of which i have been a fervent champion, you rightly suggest that the president should withdraw the constitution bill and summon the cabinet to a crisis meeting. you suggest that upon withdrawal of this bill, and upon assuring cabinet of this withdrawal, " all bomas delegates and any forces left out", should convene for a bomas four.

i beg to disagree.

in my view, this would only lead to further name calling and slugging matches.

the way to go about it, i suggest, is that after the maswala tatanishi (which in my view are the chapters on devolution, executive and transition clause) have been identified, leaders of both orange and banana teams and all the washikrika dau <stake holders> should be involved in selecting international legal experts and arbitrators to fine tune the bomas draft- the one passed at the kongamano la kitaifa - for it to eventually be subjected to a national referendum. one of the people that could be included in this team is askofu desmond tutu. that he is one of the people you suggested for the hatchet burying ceremony(which i do not see the need for anyway) is extraordinarily coincidental.

then, after the promulgation of this constitution,muungano tawala la narc should be allowed to rule till its term expires in 2007 thus paving way for a general election to be held under a new constitution.

that is the time when all competing political parties should table their blue-prints on how they would add a spinal engine to kenya's quest for economic development and growth.

be blessed.

n`otiya

[Onyango Oloo]

nyakwar otiya:

thanks for your feedback.

i appreciate your prompt, deep and thorough cerebral response.

there is a lot to mull over what you are saying and that is one reason why it has taken me this long to get back to you- i read your piece at least six times.

where we part company is the part where you start speaking of international legal experts.

as my friend miguna observed here the other day, there is no shortage of experts who are legal and who are kenyan- inside and outside the country. and again to echo miguna, the ivy league campuses of the world are inundated with mensa quality braniacs who can whip up the perfect constitution. one could, to paraphrase my friend further, even do a google search, locate very good constitutions and do simple cut and paste jobs on them.

but that is NOT the point of the katiba making process in my opinion. what daniel arap moi did not understand when kenyans repulsed his seemingly commonsensical suggestion of six expert drafters from overseas is that katiba making is essentially a collective, POLITICAL and participatory process than involves millions and millions of citizens coming together to determine the building blocks of their collective destiny.

when folks like dr.willy mutunga, erastus wamugo, makau wa mutua, njeri kabeberi and the people who were at the core of the citizens coalition for constitutional change- when the pioneers of the four cs kicked off the kenya tuitakayo series of democratic debates and discussions on constitutional reform in the early to mid nineties, they had the option of reducing the whole thing to an in-house fundable project- viz., they could have simply said, hey willy and mugo why don't you two wakilis sit in that corner over there and compose the perfect constitution for kenya- and then we are going to sell it to moi and if he buys it, hey presto we simply throw out the old constitution and replace it with another one...

but you see, nyakwarotiya, they did not do that. instead, they saw it as their primacy task(and here i am rolling into one paragraph hundreds of little informal chats i had with people like willy and njeri kabeberi- especially between the years 1992 and 1998- was to help bring about a national awareness around the need for a people driven constitution. the emergence of the ncec was the crystallization of these desires. just in passing, it is often overlooked that my former lawyer kiraitu was one of those people who jumped ship at the last minute undercutting the radical proposals of the ncec to cut a deal with kanu in the context of the infamous ippg con trick that derailed the momentum of the constitutional review process just before the 1997 elections- but i digress.

my point is that the struggle for a new katiba is a manifestation of our struggle for a new kenya, because that new katiba really should be about kenya tuitakayo rather than kenya tulionayo- and that is why it should be for posterity as everybody says and should be wanjiku driven.

a couple of pointers about the mythological wanjiku. she is of course a manifestation of the EVERYPERSON the EVERYKENYAN whose aspirations should be reflected in that supreme document. about a month ago, you may recall me responding to someone who wanted to know who wanjiku was through the following lines:

"NOTE: Somebody asked this question on a sister forum and I attempted to answer it...

From: "Onyango Oloo" <[e-mail]>
Date: Sat Aug 27, 2005 3:20 pm
Subject: Who is Wanjiku, Veronica Wonders


Who is Wanjiku, you ask, Veronica....

Well, let me attempt an answer.

Who is Wanjiku?

Wanjiku is a woman, Wanjiku is a man, Wanjiku is young, Wanjiku is old; Wanjiku is a Mgikuyu, Wanjiku is a Luo, Wanjiku is a Maasai, Wanjiku is a MNandi, Wanjiku is a Chuka, Tharaka, Tigania, Chonyi, Degodia, Ajuran, Sakuye, Abasuba, Pokomo, Mshela, Mpate, Mduruma; Wanjiku lives in Keroka and North Horr; Wanjiku is in London and Harare; Wanjiku is a market lady; Wanjiku is makanga; Wanjiku is a doctor; Wanjiku is an engineer;

Who is Wanjiku?

Wanjiku is your mother and your father; Wanjiku is your neighbour and her daughter in law.

Who is Wanjiku?

Wanjiku is a member of the DP and the LDP; Wanjiku is a life member of FORD-Kenya and founder of FORD-People; Wanjiku is in KANU and Sisi Kwa Sisi; Wanjiku is a Muslim; Wanjiku is a Christian; Wanjiku is a Hindu; Wanjiku is a conservative; Wanjiku is a communist;

Who is Wanjiku, Veronica you ask?

You are Wanjiku, so is your brother.

Wanjiku rides on a donkey- when she is not driving her BMW.

Wanjiku eats muthokoi- when she is not frying kadzora.

Wanjiku wears a hijab- when she is not bedecked in Maasai beads.

Wanjiku is a post-graduate fellow- Wanjiku never saw the inside of a
classroom.

Who is Wanjiku? Wanjiku posts on this forum and a dozen others.

Wanjiku does not have a computer and has never been online in her life.

Wanjiku's other names are:

Tumaini
Uhuru
Umoja
Maendeleo
Haki
Usawa
Wanjiku loves her home which she calls Kenya.

For sixty eight years Wanjiku battled with monkeys, chimpanzees and orang otangs who raided her shamba every afternoon.

For the last forty two years, Wanjiku has been trying to chase away the hyenas and vultures trying to feast on her still living flesh.

Who is Wanjiku?

Wanjiku is that Kenyan cowering outside in the cold while Wako, Kiraitu, Kathurima, Kibaki, and the rest of the NAK gang betray her dreams and aspirations, her hopes, her vision...

Who is Wanjiku?

I could still tell you more tales about Wanjiku- how much time do you have, Veronica?

Onyango Oloo
Montreal

now, the whole point about the kongamano la kitaifa was not to provide a ruse for weekly handouts to unscrupulous politicians feeding at the public trough, but rather have a coordinated and focused national conversations in which wananchi from all over- turkana pastoralists, gikuyu entrepreneurs, wahindi professionals, luo academics, mijikenda scientists- women and men, young and old, religious and secular, domestic and overseas, radical and conservative kenyans debated, discussed and hopefully came to a consensus.

with all its perceived imperfections, i think that bomas met and surpassed those expectations, all carping about kanu zoning to the contrary. one of the unspoken schisms between bomas and her detractors has to do with the rural/urban elite/plebian divide. suddenly some of the people who thought they had trade-marked the katiba making process found out hey, we need to open, and keep the doors open for all those unschooled cucus and kwaras from deepest homskwead and ushake storming the hotels and motels of nairobi, uncomfortable with their umma na visu, not always sure whether the desserts came before the hors'douvres- and not giving a heck, really because they did not come to nairobi to be tested on their genteel table manners but rather, determine what was the best way to milk their cows in emusalaba, harness their asali in katse, improve their revenues in maralal or do something about the stinking mitaros in zimmerman and githurai.

when we talk of legal experts we invite an almost automatic knee-jerk reaction from the real wanjikus because there is implicit imputation that they are kinda stupid. i remember how my good friend and political comrade willy got in a pickle when a local daily misquoted and misreported him as allegedly saying that the bomas delegates "had reached the end of their intelligence"- of course he did not say that, but by the time the newspaper came out, the damage had been done and to this day, there are some people you cannot convince that those words never passed through willy's lips.

you know something jared, as a socialist i find serious weaknesses in the zero draft passed at bomas. its pro-life credo of "life beginning at conception" is a slap in the face of women and their struggle for reproductive rights; the fact that both sides of the referendum debate are trying outdo each other in their homophobic rantings tell me that it will be a very long time indeed until kenyans who are gays, lesbians and bisexual people- including some ministers, assistant ministers, mps, judges and magistrates we could name, were we so inclined- are considered to be human beings with equal rights. as an atheist, i could have made a lot of noise about the secular rights of non-believers- and as long time member of the canadian working class i believe that labour rights were given rather short shrift in the zero draft.

but you know what? so what?

the zero draft was not being made for socialists with radical, anti-imperialist, gay positive and feminist opinions like onyango oloo and his coterie of leftwing friends- that is something that could have been part of a pronunciamento on the morrow of a successful revolutionary uprising.

what we had instead was a draft document that was made from the raw materials of our concrete history- a country that had barely emerged from a 40 one party dictatorship with fascist tendencies; a country that has just celebrated a mere ten years of legal political pluralism after a decades long hiatus; a country where all the mainstream politicians, almost without exception were products of the same patronage machine created by the neo-colonial state; a country where urban based civil society groups and rural-based community based organization were only just now carving their own independent territory....

as a marxist-leninist who uses dialectical and historical materialism as a guide to action, i could clearly see that the subjective and objective conditions in kenya entailed nothing more "progressive" than a liberal-democratic consensus- to socialists and anti-imperialists, the zero draft hit all the high notes of a MINIMUM program for democratic reforms. the zero draft in its wildest dreams was light years away from a constitution tailored to a country like cuba or vietnam- or even south africa.


why?

simply because, as kenyans, we have not yet traveled that far down the road yet. we are still at the initial stages of liberal democratic reforms- just at the stage where we are trying to convince the neo-colonial state that democratic debate is kosher; that internal dissent is halal, that denouncing corruption is not haram. the fact that kenyan mps can still be hunted down in the precincts of parliament by goons sent by their political adversaries tells us that we are not quite there yet; the fact that our ostensibly independent chief justice still has to wait to consult with the inner cabal of the ruling clique before convening a press conference to comment on constitutional affairs tells us that we are not quite there yet.

it is precisely BECAUSE the bomas draft was such a broad compromise with a lot of concessions to very conservative elements that some of us on the LEFT felt that it was ACTUALLY A GOOD DOCUMENT. sounds paradoxical? well, let me try and explain.

like i said, we did not expect the bomas delegates to be marxist-leninists, members of the central committees of yet to be formed kenyan communist parties, international delegates from the fourth international, fire breathing feminists or flamboyant drag queens.

rather, some us expected our parents, our former schoolmates, our rural cousins, our urban upstairs neighbours, our ethnic watanis from gicagi, our fellow mega riders- the people we bumped into at bottoms up and carnivore- you know the kenyans we meet each and everyday- including kenyans who only grab a newspaper when they are looking for a piece of paper to wrap their waru or obambla- you know, your average and not so average wananchi who had very firm and definite opinions about what kind of kenya they would like to live in.

over the years, i have moonlighted as a consultant for a host of community based groups that have retained me to write project proposals for them. when i come in as an outside hired hand, i may have my own notions about what is "good for them." ultimately i have to throw out my subjective day dreams and instead do what some one once described as the SUAL technique- where SUAL stands for Shut Up And Listen- listening twice longer than i talk, trying to synethesize the aspirations of the community-based group back to them. it is only after doing that i have the credibility to weigh in with any technical insights i may have about the internal consistency of their plan, its actual viability, the likelihood that it will be funded, the mechanics of setting up the project, the logistics of timelines, the nitty gritty of project implementaton the nuances of monitoring and evaluation and the donkey work of coming with follow up phases of the initial project.

to a certain extent, that is how i have viewed our quest for a democratic constitution. at this point in our nation's history, these are the ideological, political, financial and administrative parameters of what can and cannot go into a new constitution and what forms the basis of future amendments to that same constitution.

for instance, i would have been very comfortable as a pro-choice kenyan, to pass the constitution with its pro-life credo intact because i know at the end of the day, it is through organized mass based political struggle that women, youth, workers and progressive elements win and maintain their democratic rights- we put the cart before the horse. it is not the presence of nice sounding words in a document which allows freedom of assembly and freedom of expression. on the contrary, freedom of the assembly was placed in the bomas draft via muoroto, saba saba, nane nane, tisa tisa and kumi kumi; political pluralism was paid for via the detentions of the matibas, rubias, railas and others; freedom of the press was purchased through the lashes on the backs of gitobu imanyara and the fire bombing of the society editorial offices; freedom of expression was embedded in the bomas draft via the detentions of the mutungas and the oyugis and the imprisonment of the mwandawirosa and bukes.

likewise reproductive rights has already been paid for by the life of the late dr. katini nzau ombaka and other kenyan feminists and it is only a matter of time of ensuring that these sacrifices are recognized in the supreme document of the land- even if these come via constitutional amendments.

constitution making is a dynamic, organic process informed first and foremost by organized democratic struggles and pressure. an indicator of how progressive a country's katiba is can be gauged by calibrating the strength of the country's social movements- especially the workers, particularly the women and certainly the youth, but most important the bulk of the wananchi living in the countryside. how strong are the rural based movements? how strong is the women's movement? how about the trade unions and the youth groups?

if you can answer those questions in relation to the kenyan constitutional reform process, then you can actually predict the level of progressive content that will go into any constitutional document.

it is idle for example for someone like onyango oloo who has very radical political opinions to mistake his subjective ideological consciousness for the national mindset.

and this brings us back to the whole question of experts. to my mind is doubly insulting. first of all, you alienate the process from the wananchi. but then you go even a few more steps forward by flying out of the country to tell these "foreign experts" that millions of kenyans are not good enough to decide on their own what is good for them as kenyans. this kow towing to foreign, and especially western expertise smacks of the same kasumba of ukoloni mkongwe and ukoloni mamboleo that we are trying to eradicate from our collective psyches.

one of the main sparks of the anti-wako draft storm arises precisely because of the arrogance of the andu aitu cabal who first sulked and later stormed out of the final bomas session when they could not get their way, made sure they stalled the review process for almost two years and THEN had the GALL, the NERVE to ship off some fat cats, first to kilifi, and later to another swanky reclusive resort for a bunch of political hirelings recruited by counter-democratic quislings to craft a blue print for a tribal based imperial presidency- with some homegrown "experts" in tow.

to conclude:

that is why i think, jared oluoch nyakwarotiya that your suggestion for the importation of experts or the exportation of our national democratic reform process to some "international experts" sullies your otherwise very thoughtful, progressive and patriotic intervention as regards to an exit strategy for kibaki out of the self-created nak constitutional imbroglio.

an afterthought...

what spurred me to pen that exit strategy was based on my understand of the core demand at the heart of the orange campaign and the broader kenyan democratic movement- and that is the realization of a true, democratic katiba that is ACCEPTED by our people rather than rammed down our throats after the ngilus, kombos, chiabas, koigis, tujus, onekos, dzoros and nyachaes had been bribed, co-opted, corralled or recruited into a parochial scheme to usurp the sovereignity of the wananchi via the conduit of the wako mongrel. at the same, i was trying to apply in a real world kenyan context the lessons i have learned doing conflict transformation work in canada. i have spoken previously of the need to look at the third side:

www.thirdside.org/


onyango oloo
toronto

[Onyango Oloo]

From: "n`otiya" <nyakwarotiya@...>
Date: Sat Oct 15, 2005 8:15 am
Subject: Re: Gentle Rejoinder to Nyakwar Otiya...


nd oo,

sorry for the delayed response. i was hanging out with my friends who graduated from u nairobi for the better part of yester night, and have been in church since morning. btw, they took exception to the recently released world university rankings that put them behind their counterparts from east africa.

it may take me a little longer to justify my preference of foreign legal experts from what are widely dubbed ivy league universities, but which i prefer to call cinderella universities, to help us sort out the review impasse. as for now, i assure that i received your rejoinder well.

best,

n`otiya