Post by adongo12345 on Oct 29, 2005 4:37:56 GMT 3
By Adongo Ogony
Today I was going to administer a lie detector test on the referendum campaign. This is because all we have had about in the last little while are accusations about “lies”, “lies” and more “lies”. But I have been hijacked by events.
So as a matter of national urgency I think we should put some attention to this big hullabaloo about an impending coup d’etat against the government we all elected on December 27, 2002, under a different name of course.
Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka apparently have done it again. We are being warned by the powerful and mighty, you know them- the main peddlers of the Wako Draft Constitution, that the duo ( Raila & Kalonzo) are up to some tricks in the coup department.
From the furious warnings it looks like the two already have an advanced plan to topple the government of Emilio Mwai Kibaki. This is d**n serious, don’t you think? I can hear the laugh, but hold it and let’s get through with the thinking of these people who actually have powers of life and death over you as you will soon ascertain.
According to John Michuki, the Internal Affairs Minister who had been, until now, safely sequestered behind the gates of State House helping Kibaki distribute the goodies to banana leaders trooping for handouts in the last little while, Raila and Kalonzo are “treading on dangerous grounds”.
In his Press conference prominently reported on Kenya Broadcasting Corporation and other media avenues, Michuki warned the two Orange Campaign leaders telling them that “if anyone thinks that what happened in 1982 can be replicated he is highly mistaken and ill advised”.
Michuki went on to warn the alleged coup plotters, whose activities he claimed were well known to the government, that the security forces were already on full alert to thwart their plans. And you thought the Kenya Armed Forces had better things to do than waiting for fake coup attempts manufactured in the fertile minds of stranded Yes campaigners, but I digress.
Michuki was taking the lead from his boss, President Mwai Kibaki himself, who earlier told Kenyans to “ignore threats” from the Orange team. President Kibaki actually went on full alarm mode almost indicating there is an actual coup plan against him which he is prepared to crash.
“Who are you threatening? You cannot defeat all Kenyans” the president uttered to the imaginary enemy and invisible. Good Lord.
“Those who are planning to cause chaos think they have the might. They cannot defeat God” Kibaki continued. Defeat God? Am I missing something?
“Atakae leta fujo tuta onana huko” Mtukufu Rais endelead. This is the stuff from fiction books and spy novels, but Kenyans have seen this drama many times before and we know besides the entertainment value it speaks volumes of a failed campaign for a bogus constitution that is getting desperate and almost comical.
Predictably the president made these dire warnings to Kenyans about the dangerous dissidents(real or imagined)as he received, dined and entertained large delegations of “allegiance swearers” from places like: Kamanda's "Nairobi Area".
From Nyachae's "Gusiiland"
The old Gravy Train with tax paid helicopters for free
And Last but not least from Turkana
Remember the era when a week never passed without opportunist leaders looking for money and favours leading folks like sheep to go and swear allegiance to the head of state at State House? Yes the good days are back in full swing. It used to be funny because most of these guys would be fighting over the money and goodies they pried from State House as soon as they got back home and they would all soon forget what took them there in the first place. Anyway that is a story for another day.
Even Kiraitu Murungi who had been in literal hiding, God knows in which cave, as the constitutional debate raged on emerged from the woodworks. Finally he had something important to tell Kenyans.
“As a minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, I would like to bring to the attention of the two ministers that under Section 40 of the Penal Code any person who plans to overthrow the Government by unlawful means is guilty of treason, which is punishable by death” the good minister bellowed.
We all know Kiraitu would love an opportunity to put a hangman’s rope around the necks of a few people, but surely are Raila and Kalonzo actually planning a coup attempt. Come on. And they had to announce it to the media.
And then the Mzee from Kisii who had been holed up in his own constituency trying to get civic leaders in his community to support the bananas promising to take them to State House to have a chat with Mtukufu Rais and get a few districts thrown their way. This was an opportunity Mzee Nyachae wasn’t going to miss. After all he has had nothing to talk about since the circumcision diatribe backfired on him.
Nyachae probably thinking he is still the powerful Secretary to the Cabinet called on Kibaki to immediately launch a probe on the coup plotters. Just when you thought Mwai Kibaki might have more important things to do with only weeks to what might end up to be a disastrous referendum campaign.
Even Paul Muite found time between his heavy responsibilities of representing his besieged colleague in the Banana campaign, Mr. Chris Murungaru, in two different countries, to chip in and condemn the evil Raila. Muite called a press conference to declare that Raila “is a despot, who is determined to seize power using any means”. Of course Muite has enough education and hopefully enough common sense to know that one cannot become a “despot” until they have acquired and abused power by repressing others. I for one do not remember the last time Raila Amolo Odinga was our president and how he abused that position. But what the heck, we are dealing with desperate people with a desperate agenda and anything goes.
Anyhow, after all these dire warnings which were beginning to take the form of a national emergency, I decided to go back and check what the offending Orange team could have said that was bringing so much venom from the powers that rule the land.
I had read both the Raila and Kalonzo statements the day before and nothing struck me as alarming and demanding of such high level national attention.
But now I am thinking may be these two “devils” have coded massages, you know the ones that drive George Bush and the CIA crazy when they receive those Osama tapes. So here I am again reading the statement Raila and Kalonzo issued which we are being told amounted to coup threats and which according to Michuki has sent our national armed forces on full alert.
“The Wako Draft is inviting Kenyans to the culture of military coup d’etats while we are in a democracy. Let us avoid coup d’etats by having a Constitution that is amendable” Musyoka Kalonzo is reported to have said(Daily Nation Oct. 28, 2005) So far so good. No coup plots yet. Certainly nothing to disturb the army about.
Raila on the other hand is reported in the same paper (Daily Nation 28/10/05) and elsewhere to have said that it is the lack of alternative routes for constitutional change that led countries like Cuba and Uganda to adopt military methods (actually armed struggle) to bring change and greater democratization in the respective countries.
The simple truth of the matter is that the two Orange leaders were drawing attention to a section of the Wako Draft which stipulates that before any amendment is made, once the Wako Draft becomes law, those who want to amend it would need to collect 1 million signatures, get two thirds vote in parliament and then take the amendment to a national referendum to change the constitution. The signatures, by the way, have to be verified by the ECK and there is no time limit on when that should be done.
In other words if a constitutional amendment process was started say after the election, it would take a year or so to collect the one million signatures, another two or three years to get the ECK to verify the signatures, we don’t know by what method, and after that we need a referendum. Surely one doesn’t have to be Albert Einstein to figure that that the constitutional amendment process for the Wako Draft is simply unworkable and unrealistic.
Lets not forget that even the staunchest supporters of the Wako Draft agree that it is flawed and needs to be changed to be workable. Mukhisa Kitiyu as much a banana supporter as they come told teachers the other day that the Wako Draft would have to be amended even before it can be implemented.
So even going by generally accepted notion that the Wako Draft is 80% good and 20% poison, the first question we need to ask is how do we purge the 20% poison once we swallow the whole thing with the good part.
Smart people will tell you any amount of poison is bad for the body. But for the sake of argument lets say we pass the Wako Draft and realize we need 10 or so amendments to make it realistic it would mean even before we get the Wako Constitution off the ground, we are going to need at least 10 national referenda to just get started. We are holding our first national referendum in 40 years of national independence and someone thinks we are going to hold ten in just one year to fix a rotten Wako Constitution? Forget it.
The mere fact that the Wako Draft does not provide for practical mechanisms to correct inherent mistakes, makes it insane and unworkable. It makes it dangerous for future generations to navigate their own constitutional framework(s). It could lead to more extreme methods being brought to bear on the rulers for change. That is all Raila and Kalonzo said and all of a sudden we have a coup plot and the army is on full alert. Please spare us the drama and the foolishness.
I am glad the coup talk is going to focus our attention on one of the worst aspects of the Wako Draft that we have barely talked about. We need a living constitution that can be changed with time to suit the circumstances of the future that we cannot even comprehend today. To tie a block around the necks of the future population and create a situation where they may have to resort to unconstitutional methods to determine their own constitution is selfish and irresponsible. We should applaud Raila and Kalonzo for pointing this out forcefully.
I know the Yes team is desperate to get something to harp on with the hope of discrediting the Orange leadership, but sometimes it pays to think before we open our mouths.
I am sure in the next week the Yes charlatans are going to be screaming from every corner and roof top about plans by Raila and the Orange team to carry out a coup against the Kibaki government. Michuki himself by making that irresponsible statement of the army being on alert is trying to create an atmosphere for that verbal diarrhea against Raila and company.
Michuki by the way is an old hand in vicious propaganda. He learnt his trade as a colonial agent fighting the Mau Mau freedom fighters in the 1950’s. And to hear the same Michuki now talking about protecting the Kikuyu community. Where was he when the Kikuyus were being massacred, castrated, tortured and sent to concentration camps to starve to death in the thousands a week. He knows where he was. Nowhere near the nationalists of the day, that is for sure. And these are today the leaders of the Kikuyu community! How ridiculous.
Yes, the Wako Draft has a very dangerous clause in terms of how it can be changed with time. People like Martha Karua have suggested this was done to ensure that politicians do not just change the constitution whenever they want. That is good, but it doesn’t mean you screw everything up and make the whole thing locked up for generations to come. More so when we know the Draft we are talking about has glaring mistakes and unworkable clauses.
Some will say these conditions could have been adopted from the Bomas Draft. It doesn’t really matter. We are voting about the Wako Draft not the Bomas Draft.
In my view the mess around how to amend the Wako Draft is more than enough reason to completely reject it. We are being asked to take a virus with our “sweet Wako food” and everybody knows there is no cure for the disease from that virus. Do they think Kenyans are nuts?
Instead of focusing on this very serious issue, some people want to manipulate what was said and revert to their familiar topic or “Raila the devil is plotting a coup.” Get real. Kenyans aren’t the idiots you take them to be.
My advice to Michuki is to leave the army alone and get out of State House and go campaign for the Wako Draft. Nobody is going to vote at State House.
I know all the others are going to come out of the woodworks where they have been hiding lately now that Mkubwa has given them a new topic to harp on. Sorry folks but it won’t work. Kenyans are too smart for these silly games.
For the next week and probably up to November 21, 2005 all we are going to hear about is not why we should vote for the Wako Draft but rather how evil Raila and Kalonzo are, why they should be fired and who is protecting the Kibaki presidency.
Mercifully we have heard all that crap before and it only got the Banana team to the bottom where they belong with that treacherous thing called the Wako Draft Constitution. So let’s just get more of the same and move on.
Remember when Raila warned Moi on the eve of 2002 General Elections that he would lead a million Kenyans to storm State House if the elections were rigged. They all cried the same “wolf wolf” yelp trying to warn wananchi about the “dangerous” and “power hungry” Raila. Nobody paid them any mind. So it will be now. Find something else to do.
Anyway with the little room left let me get to the falsehood peddlers about the Wako Draft and the whole referendum process.
For me the biggest LIE of all about the forthcoming referendum is the propaganda that Kenyans will be choosing between the Wako Draft and the old constitution. President Kibaki himself alluded to this at his Kenyatta Day address on Oct. 20, 2005. This is the worst form of political fiction anybody can try selling to Kenyans.
The referendum question is very clear. It asks Kenyans to say Yes or No to the Wako Draft. If you vote yes you accept the Wako Draft to be our new constitution. If you say No you reject the Wako Draft. The referendum question does not ask Kenyans whether they want to be governed by the Wako Constitution or the old constitution. If that were the case Kenyans would have a clear choice with the Wako Draft in one box and the old constitution in the other box.
The question is: what happens if we reject the Wako mongrel? Does that mean we are saying we love the old constitution? The answer is NO. Kenyans are not being given that choice. Why? Simply because everybody who has been around for a few years knows we rejected the old constitution a long time ago.
By rejecting the Wako Draft Kenyans will be saying that they want and must get something better and we know where to start. We have Bomas Draft and now we have the Wako Draft, once we let those who want to stuff it down our throats know that is not going to happen we will go back and work things out and get what Kenyan agree on.
So there you go. In my books, the number one liars are those telling Kenyans that we are choosing between the Wako Draft and the old constitution. I know we have been threatened that President Kibaki will not revive the constitutional process once his Wako baby is thrown out. He doesn’t have to. We wouldn’t wait for him, unless we are crazy and we are not.
The other group of dangerous liars are those telling Kenyans that the Referendum campaign is no longer about the constitution. According to them it is about power grabbers and schemes for 2007 elections. Of course all those elements have to be factored into a constitutional reform agenda, particularly when it has been narrowed to a referendum on a specific draft, which many people know is itself a fraud. But I am not dealing with that aspect today.
My concerns are two fold. One are the politicians mainly in the Yes camp who reduce everything to let’s fight Raila and protect Kibaki. I have said it before. But let me say again that I think Kibaki is probably going to get more protection from Raila than all the charlatans around him combined.
Secondly I am also concerned about people like Prof. Makau Mutua whose recent op-ed (Nation 28, 05) try to suggest everything is already lost and the referendum has nothing to do with having a good constitution for our country.
Let me put it this way if we let the Wako mongrel pass, our country will be condemned to a horrible, unworkable and autocratic constitution for generations to come. For that reason alone there can be no more urgent task for patriotic Kenyans than ensuring that this Wako Draft is rejected. Anyone telling you that when you vote to reject the Wako Draft you are not dealing with a constitutional issue is misguided or just plainly lying.
In my view the only way we keep our struggle for a better constitution alive is to reject the Wako Draft and fight for qualitative and democratic changes in the Bomas Draft before we take it to the referendum. If Raila, Kalonzo, Ruto, Uhuru and company support that position, they are fighting for a better constitution. If they bring another Wako later, Kenyans will throw it out too.
The third issue, is the question of the powers of the presidency. The Yes team has maintained all along that Raila and company are lying when they say the Wako Draft proposes an imperial presidency with more powers than Moi had. They claim the powers of the president are going to be checked by parliament and the judiciary.
Koigi Wamwere in his piece (Kenya Times 28/10/05) urging Kenyans to vote Yes tried to explain that there is no imperial presidency in the Wako Draft because the president does not have feudal authorities to transfer the leadership to their offspring and they cannot take people s property, certainly not their wives. I hope Koigi was talking tongue in cheek, because he knows better than that.
When we talk of presidential monarchy in the 21st century, particularly within the Kenyan context, we do not mean Moi, Kibaki. Kalonzo or whoever our president may be in future will bequeath the presidency to their offspring. That should be fairly obvious. We mean we are going to have a president who controls every aspect of governance on our resources and institutions.According to the Wako Draft, the future presidents will do everything Moi did and more.
Tell me one thing Moi was doing that future presidents wouldn’t do? Well may be they wouldn’t allocate land, but at the rate Kibaki is dishing them out to buy votes he probably wouldn’t need to.
The president will appoint the cabinet (some from opposition parties), he/she will appoint and fire the toothless PM (which is being promised to everybody) and do a million other things with some kind of approval from parliament which as we know will already be made subservient to the presidency through his/her control of the cabinet.
The president will be able to dissolve the district governments for whatever reason. As we already know president Kibaki is already furiously creating new districts and there are still requests coming from potential Yes voters for more districts.
Do I need to say more? In fact the duties of the president are more than a page and a half in the Draft while the duties of a PM are hardly a paragraph.
Simply this is not what Kenyans asked for. And yeah I remember Tuju saying at the debate that the president will no longer send his opponents to Nyayo House to be tortured. Should we be happy about this?
Someone should have told Tuju that actually even when some of us were rotting at Nyayo House, torture was still illegal. So people like Koigi should spare us the drivel that there will no longer be detention without trial.
What happens when people like Michuki or even a head of state invents non-existent coup plots and hang “the plot” around the necks of their political opponents? Would they still need detention and persecution enshrined in the laws of the land? I don’t think so. Not when they can count on instant chorus of supporters urging them to hang the “offenders”.
Is that the Kenya we want? That is the question Kenyans will answer on November 21, 2005.
There is no doubt in my mind that, through this constitutional renewal process now straddling close to two decades, Kenyans wanted an end to one-man rule and the Wako Draft wants to perpetuate the same. Anybody telling you otherwise is engaging a very dangerous lie.
I wanted to talk about the naked lie that the Wako Draft does not abolish the Provincial Administration system, but I think that is fairly obvious. At any rate I am not a great fun of the Provincial Administration. But then again I am not the one getting promissory letters from Michuki for future jobs.
I have also heard wild allegations of how the Wako Draft will ensure Kenyans have free education, free medical attention, access to land and poverty elimination. I know Kenyans are too smart for that crap.
One more thing. Am I the only one disturbed by the ugly head of the corruption cancer getting entangled in the Referendum debates and campaign?
None other than one of the most respected Kenyan politicians and a cabinet minister, Prof. Anyang’ Nyong’o himslef, has very publicly challenged well known Yes supporters who are also his fellow colleagues in the cabinet to come out and tell Kenyans about the Anglo Fleecing project, itself a major blot on the Kibaki/Narc regime, particularly in relation to its pretended war against corruption.
Is this serious? You bet it is. I mean if we can’t trust the Kibaki team with our money, how the hell are we going to trust them with our lives by endorsing the Wako mongrel, which has been cooked before our very eyes and is shortly supposed to be served by a clique of power mongers with connections to State House.
And then we have the
Murungaru Fiasco. Can someone tell Kenyans what is going on in the corridors of power instead manipulating emotions with alleged coup plots that surely will not help the Banana agenda. I think the president should be talking about why one of his closest associates is holding the dubious record of being the first Kenyan member of the cabinet to be barred from traveling to the two countries that we do most business with instead of treating the nation to juicy stories of fictitious coup plots.
Just a tip. The president said he is preparing for a big party after the referendum election results are out. Could someone from the Orange team please send an invitation to Mzee. Something tells me he might need it instead of being in a dead party at State House come November 22, 2005.
There is something I have always asked myself and I think I am going to answer that question today.
The writer is a human rights activist.
Today I was going to administer a lie detector test on the referendum campaign. This is because all we have had about in the last little while are accusations about “lies”, “lies” and more “lies”. But I have been hijacked by events.
So as a matter of national urgency I think we should put some attention to this big hullabaloo about an impending coup d’etat against the government we all elected on December 27, 2002, under a different name of course.
Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka apparently have done it again. We are being warned by the powerful and mighty, you know them- the main peddlers of the Wako Draft Constitution, that the duo ( Raila & Kalonzo) are up to some tricks in the coup department.
From the furious warnings it looks like the two already have an advanced plan to topple the government of Emilio Mwai Kibaki. This is d**n serious, don’t you think? I can hear the laugh, but hold it and let’s get through with the thinking of these people who actually have powers of life and death over you as you will soon ascertain.
According to John Michuki, the Internal Affairs Minister who had been, until now, safely sequestered behind the gates of State House helping Kibaki distribute the goodies to banana leaders trooping for handouts in the last little while, Raila and Kalonzo are “treading on dangerous grounds”.
In his Press conference prominently reported on Kenya Broadcasting Corporation and other media avenues, Michuki warned the two Orange Campaign leaders telling them that “if anyone thinks that what happened in 1982 can be replicated he is highly mistaken and ill advised”.
Michuki went on to warn the alleged coup plotters, whose activities he claimed were well known to the government, that the security forces were already on full alert to thwart their plans. And you thought the Kenya Armed Forces had better things to do than waiting for fake coup attempts manufactured in the fertile minds of stranded Yes campaigners, but I digress.
Michuki was taking the lead from his boss, President Mwai Kibaki himself, who earlier told Kenyans to “ignore threats” from the Orange team. President Kibaki actually went on full alarm mode almost indicating there is an actual coup plan against him which he is prepared to crash.
“Who are you threatening? You cannot defeat all Kenyans” the president uttered to the imaginary enemy and invisible. Good Lord.
“Those who are planning to cause chaos think they have the might. They cannot defeat God” Kibaki continued. Defeat God? Am I missing something?
“Atakae leta fujo tuta onana huko” Mtukufu Rais endelead. This is the stuff from fiction books and spy novels, but Kenyans have seen this drama many times before and we know besides the entertainment value it speaks volumes of a failed campaign for a bogus constitution that is getting desperate and almost comical.
Predictably the president made these dire warnings to Kenyans about the dangerous dissidents(real or imagined)as he received, dined and entertained large delegations of “allegiance swearers” from places like: Kamanda's "Nairobi Area".
From Nyachae's "Gusiiland"
The old Gravy Train with tax paid helicopters for free
And Last but not least from Turkana
Remember the era when a week never passed without opportunist leaders looking for money and favours leading folks like sheep to go and swear allegiance to the head of state at State House? Yes the good days are back in full swing. It used to be funny because most of these guys would be fighting over the money and goodies they pried from State House as soon as they got back home and they would all soon forget what took them there in the first place. Anyway that is a story for another day.
Even Kiraitu Murungi who had been in literal hiding, God knows in which cave, as the constitutional debate raged on emerged from the woodworks. Finally he had something important to tell Kenyans.
“As a minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, I would like to bring to the attention of the two ministers that under Section 40 of the Penal Code any person who plans to overthrow the Government by unlawful means is guilty of treason, which is punishable by death” the good minister bellowed.
We all know Kiraitu would love an opportunity to put a hangman’s rope around the necks of a few people, but surely are Raila and Kalonzo actually planning a coup attempt. Come on. And they had to announce it to the media.
And then the Mzee from Kisii who had been holed up in his own constituency trying to get civic leaders in his community to support the bananas promising to take them to State House to have a chat with Mtukufu Rais and get a few districts thrown their way. This was an opportunity Mzee Nyachae wasn’t going to miss. After all he has had nothing to talk about since the circumcision diatribe backfired on him.
Nyachae probably thinking he is still the powerful Secretary to the Cabinet called on Kibaki to immediately launch a probe on the coup plotters. Just when you thought Mwai Kibaki might have more important things to do with only weeks to what might end up to be a disastrous referendum campaign.
Even Paul Muite found time between his heavy responsibilities of representing his besieged colleague in the Banana campaign, Mr. Chris Murungaru, in two different countries, to chip in and condemn the evil Raila. Muite called a press conference to declare that Raila “is a despot, who is determined to seize power using any means”. Of course Muite has enough education and hopefully enough common sense to know that one cannot become a “despot” until they have acquired and abused power by repressing others. I for one do not remember the last time Raila Amolo Odinga was our president and how he abused that position. But what the heck, we are dealing with desperate people with a desperate agenda and anything goes.
Anyhow, after all these dire warnings which were beginning to take the form of a national emergency, I decided to go back and check what the offending Orange team could have said that was bringing so much venom from the powers that rule the land.
I had read both the Raila and Kalonzo statements the day before and nothing struck me as alarming and demanding of such high level national attention.
But now I am thinking may be these two “devils” have coded massages, you know the ones that drive George Bush and the CIA crazy when they receive those Osama tapes. So here I am again reading the statement Raila and Kalonzo issued which we are being told amounted to coup threats and which according to Michuki has sent our national armed forces on full alert.
“The Wako Draft is inviting Kenyans to the culture of military coup d’etats while we are in a democracy. Let us avoid coup d’etats by having a Constitution that is amendable” Musyoka Kalonzo is reported to have said(Daily Nation Oct. 28, 2005) So far so good. No coup plots yet. Certainly nothing to disturb the army about.
Raila on the other hand is reported in the same paper (Daily Nation 28/10/05) and elsewhere to have said that it is the lack of alternative routes for constitutional change that led countries like Cuba and Uganda to adopt military methods (actually armed struggle) to bring change and greater democratization in the respective countries.
The simple truth of the matter is that the two Orange leaders were drawing attention to a section of the Wako Draft which stipulates that before any amendment is made, once the Wako Draft becomes law, those who want to amend it would need to collect 1 million signatures, get two thirds vote in parliament and then take the amendment to a national referendum to change the constitution. The signatures, by the way, have to be verified by the ECK and there is no time limit on when that should be done.
In other words if a constitutional amendment process was started say after the election, it would take a year or so to collect the one million signatures, another two or three years to get the ECK to verify the signatures, we don’t know by what method, and after that we need a referendum. Surely one doesn’t have to be Albert Einstein to figure that that the constitutional amendment process for the Wako Draft is simply unworkable and unrealistic.
Lets not forget that even the staunchest supporters of the Wako Draft agree that it is flawed and needs to be changed to be workable. Mukhisa Kitiyu as much a banana supporter as they come told teachers the other day that the Wako Draft would have to be amended even before it can be implemented.
So even going by generally accepted notion that the Wako Draft is 80% good and 20% poison, the first question we need to ask is how do we purge the 20% poison once we swallow the whole thing with the good part.
Smart people will tell you any amount of poison is bad for the body. But for the sake of argument lets say we pass the Wako Draft and realize we need 10 or so amendments to make it realistic it would mean even before we get the Wako Constitution off the ground, we are going to need at least 10 national referenda to just get started. We are holding our first national referendum in 40 years of national independence and someone thinks we are going to hold ten in just one year to fix a rotten Wako Constitution? Forget it.
The mere fact that the Wako Draft does not provide for practical mechanisms to correct inherent mistakes, makes it insane and unworkable. It makes it dangerous for future generations to navigate their own constitutional framework(s). It could lead to more extreme methods being brought to bear on the rulers for change. That is all Raila and Kalonzo said and all of a sudden we have a coup plot and the army is on full alert. Please spare us the drama and the foolishness.
I am glad the coup talk is going to focus our attention on one of the worst aspects of the Wako Draft that we have barely talked about. We need a living constitution that can be changed with time to suit the circumstances of the future that we cannot even comprehend today. To tie a block around the necks of the future population and create a situation where they may have to resort to unconstitutional methods to determine their own constitution is selfish and irresponsible. We should applaud Raila and Kalonzo for pointing this out forcefully.
I know the Yes team is desperate to get something to harp on with the hope of discrediting the Orange leadership, but sometimes it pays to think before we open our mouths.
I am sure in the next week the Yes charlatans are going to be screaming from every corner and roof top about plans by Raila and the Orange team to carry out a coup against the Kibaki government. Michuki himself by making that irresponsible statement of the army being on alert is trying to create an atmosphere for that verbal diarrhea against Raila and company.
Michuki by the way is an old hand in vicious propaganda. He learnt his trade as a colonial agent fighting the Mau Mau freedom fighters in the 1950’s. And to hear the same Michuki now talking about protecting the Kikuyu community. Where was he when the Kikuyus were being massacred, castrated, tortured and sent to concentration camps to starve to death in the thousands a week. He knows where he was. Nowhere near the nationalists of the day, that is for sure. And these are today the leaders of the Kikuyu community! How ridiculous.
Yes, the Wako Draft has a very dangerous clause in terms of how it can be changed with time. People like Martha Karua have suggested this was done to ensure that politicians do not just change the constitution whenever they want. That is good, but it doesn’t mean you screw everything up and make the whole thing locked up for generations to come. More so when we know the Draft we are talking about has glaring mistakes and unworkable clauses.
Some will say these conditions could have been adopted from the Bomas Draft. It doesn’t really matter. We are voting about the Wako Draft not the Bomas Draft.
In my view the mess around how to amend the Wako Draft is more than enough reason to completely reject it. We are being asked to take a virus with our “sweet Wako food” and everybody knows there is no cure for the disease from that virus. Do they think Kenyans are nuts?
Instead of focusing on this very serious issue, some people want to manipulate what was said and revert to their familiar topic or “Raila the devil is plotting a coup.” Get real. Kenyans aren’t the idiots you take them to be.
My advice to Michuki is to leave the army alone and get out of State House and go campaign for the Wako Draft. Nobody is going to vote at State House.
I know all the others are going to come out of the woodworks where they have been hiding lately now that Mkubwa has given them a new topic to harp on. Sorry folks but it won’t work. Kenyans are too smart for these silly games.
For the next week and probably up to November 21, 2005 all we are going to hear about is not why we should vote for the Wako Draft but rather how evil Raila and Kalonzo are, why they should be fired and who is protecting the Kibaki presidency.
Mercifully we have heard all that crap before and it only got the Banana team to the bottom where they belong with that treacherous thing called the Wako Draft Constitution. So let’s just get more of the same and move on.
Remember when Raila warned Moi on the eve of 2002 General Elections that he would lead a million Kenyans to storm State House if the elections were rigged. They all cried the same “wolf wolf” yelp trying to warn wananchi about the “dangerous” and “power hungry” Raila. Nobody paid them any mind. So it will be now. Find something else to do.
Anyway with the little room left let me get to the falsehood peddlers about the Wako Draft and the whole referendum process.
For me the biggest LIE of all about the forthcoming referendum is the propaganda that Kenyans will be choosing between the Wako Draft and the old constitution. President Kibaki himself alluded to this at his Kenyatta Day address on Oct. 20, 2005. This is the worst form of political fiction anybody can try selling to Kenyans.
The referendum question is very clear. It asks Kenyans to say Yes or No to the Wako Draft. If you vote yes you accept the Wako Draft to be our new constitution. If you say No you reject the Wako Draft. The referendum question does not ask Kenyans whether they want to be governed by the Wako Constitution or the old constitution. If that were the case Kenyans would have a clear choice with the Wako Draft in one box and the old constitution in the other box.
The question is: what happens if we reject the Wako mongrel? Does that mean we are saying we love the old constitution? The answer is NO. Kenyans are not being given that choice. Why? Simply because everybody who has been around for a few years knows we rejected the old constitution a long time ago.
By rejecting the Wako Draft Kenyans will be saying that they want and must get something better and we know where to start. We have Bomas Draft and now we have the Wako Draft, once we let those who want to stuff it down our throats know that is not going to happen we will go back and work things out and get what Kenyan agree on.
So there you go. In my books, the number one liars are those telling Kenyans that we are choosing between the Wako Draft and the old constitution. I know we have been threatened that President Kibaki will not revive the constitutional process once his Wako baby is thrown out. He doesn’t have to. We wouldn’t wait for him, unless we are crazy and we are not.
The other group of dangerous liars are those telling Kenyans that the Referendum campaign is no longer about the constitution. According to them it is about power grabbers and schemes for 2007 elections. Of course all those elements have to be factored into a constitutional reform agenda, particularly when it has been narrowed to a referendum on a specific draft, which many people know is itself a fraud. But I am not dealing with that aspect today.
My concerns are two fold. One are the politicians mainly in the Yes camp who reduce everything to let’s fight Raila and protect Kibaki. I have said it before. But let me say again that I think Kibaki is probably going to get more protection from Raila than all the charlatans around him combined.
Secondly I am also concerned about people like Prof. Makau Mutua whose recent op-ed (Nation 28, 05) try to suggest everything is already lost and the referendum has nothing to do with having a good constitution for our country.
Let me put it this way if we let the Wako mongrel pass, our country will be condemned to a horrible, unworkable and autocratic constitution for generations to come. For that reason alone there can be no more urgent task for patriotic Kenyans than ensuring that this Wako Draft is rejected. Anyone telling you that when you vote to reject the Wako Draft you are not dealing with a constitutional issue is misguided or just plainly lying.
In my view the only way we keep our struggle for a better constitution alive is to reject the Wako Draft and fight for qualitative and democratic changes in the Bomas Draft before we take it to the referendum. If Raila, Kalonzo, Ruto, Uhuru and company support that position, they are fighting for a better constitution. If they bring another Wako later, Kenyans will throw it out too.
The third issue, is the question of the powers of the presidency. The Yes team has maintained all along that Raila and company are lying when they say the Wako Draft proposes an imperial presidency with more powers than Moi had. They claim the powers of the president are going to be checked by parliament and the judiciary.
Koigi Wamwere in his piece (Kenya Times 28/10/05) urging Kenyans to vote Yes tried to explain that there is no imperial presidency in the Wako Draft because the president does not have feudal authorities to transfer the leadership to their offspring and they cannot take people s property, certainly not their wives. I hope Koigi was talking tongue in cheek, because he knows better than that.
When we talk of presidential monarchy in the 21st century, particularly within the Kenyan context, we do not mean Moi, Kibaki. Kalonzo or whoever our president may be in future will bequeath the presidency to their offspring. That should be fairly obvious. We mean we are going to have a president who controls every aspect of governance on our resources and institutions.According to the Wako Draft, the future presidents will do everything Moi did and more.
Tell me one thing Moi was doing that future presidents wouldn’t do? Well may be they wouldn’t allocate land, but at the rate Kibaki is dishing them out to buy votes he probably wouldn’t need to.
The president will appoint the cabinet (some from opposition parties), he/she will appoint and fire the toothless PM (which is being promised to everybody) and do a million other things with some kind of approval from parliament which as we know will already be made subservient to the presidency through his/her control of the cabinet.
The president will be able to dissolve the district governments for whatever reason. As we already know president Kibaki is already furiously creating new districts and there are still requests coming from potential Yes voters for more districts.
Do I need to say more? In fact the duties of the president are more than a page and a half in the Draft while the duties of a PM are hardly a paragraph.
Simply this is not what Kenyans asked for. And yeah I remember Tuju saying at the debate that the president will no longer send his opponents to Nyayo House to be tortured. Should we be happy about this?
Someone should have told Tuju that actually even when some of us were rotting at Nyayo House, torture was still illegal. So people like Koigi should spare us the drivel that there will no longer be detention without trial.
What happens when people like Michuki or even a head of state invents non-existent coup plots and hang “the plot” around the necks of their political opponents? Would they still need detention and persecution enshrined in the laws of the land? I don’t think so. Not when they can count on instant chorus of supporters urging them to hang the “offenders”.
Is that the Kenya we want? That is the question Kenyans will answer on November 21, 2005.
There is no doubt in my mind that, through this constitutional renewal process now straddling close to two decades, Kenyans wanted an end to one-man rule and the Wako Draft wants to perpetuate the same. Anybody telling you otherwise is engaging a very dangerous lie.
I wanted to talk about the naked lie that the Wako Draft does not abolish the Provincial Administration system, but I think that is fairly obvious. At any rate I am not a great fun of the Provincial Administration. But then again I am not the one getting promissory letters from Michuki for future jobs.
I have also heard wild allegations of how the Wako Draft will ensure Kenyans have free education, free medical attention, access to land and poverty elimination. I know Kenyans are too smart for that crap.
One more thing. Am I the only one disturbed by the ugly head of the corruption cancer getting entangled in the Referendum debates and campaign?
None other than one of the most respected Kenyan politicians and a cabinet minister, Prof. Anyang’ Nyong’o himslef, has very publicly challenged well known Yes supporters who are also his fellow colleagues in the cabinet to come out and tell Kenyans about the Anglo Fleecing project, itself a major blot on the Kibaki/Narc regime, particularly in relation to its pretended war against corruption.
Is this serious? You bet it is. I mean if we can’t trust the Kibaki team with our money, how the hell are we going to trust them with our lives by endorsing the Wako mongrel, which has been cooked before our very eyes and is shortly supposed to be served by a clique of power mongers with connections to State House.
And then we have the
Murungaru Fiasco. Can someone tell Kenyans what is going on in the corridors of power instead manipulating emotions with alleged coup plots that surely will not help the Banana agenda. I think the president should be talking about why one of his closest associates is holding the dubious record of being the first Kenyan member of the cabinet to be barred from traveling to the two countries that we do most business with instead of treating the nation to juicy stories of fictitious coup plots.
Just a tip. The president said he is preparing for a big party after the referendum election results are out. Could someone from the Orange team please send an invitation to Mzee. Something tells me he might need it instead of being in a dead party at State House come November 22, 2005.
There is something I have always asked myself and I think I am going to answer that question today.
The writer is a human rights activist.