HURRAY! ORDINARY KENYANS WON!

[miguna]

HURRAY! ORDINARY KENYANS WON
By MIGUNA MIGUNA* - 21 November 2005

Hurray! It is now official - we won. It was a fantastic score; a wonderful goal by the overwhelming majority of Kenyans against President Kibaki’s fraudulent attempt to impose a monstrous mongrel draft constitution on the Kenyan people.

The victory does not simply belong to the Orange/No team; it mainly belongs to the ordinary Kenyans who braced presidential insults, massive government intimidation, threats, bribery and blatant lies. Yes, it is the ordinary Kenyans who have finally conquered fear, police and GSU truncheons and bullets and humbled the swaggering brats at or close to the centre of power. They did this, not through a violent bloodbath, but through a peaceful, disciplined, dignified and organized vote. The turnout was not just historical in its scale and size, it was simply too massive to allow for any doubts, confusion or gerrymandering by the inept bumbling bumpkins.

With this clear victory, ordinary Kenyans have finally announced that from now henceforth, they are in charge of their own fate, agenda, affairs and destiny. The time when the Big Man dictated everything in our lives has ended. It is buried. Sealed. Kenyans have proclaimed themselves independent of the politics of money and raw power. From now on, both the arrogant and corrupt politician has been put on notice.

Those who have suffered total defeat and vanquishment are not just the arrogant, pretentious, power hungry and gluttonous Banana/Yes team members (although they will need lots of time to nurse their gaping wounds), it has also sent a clear message to all those cynical and hypocritical media houses, pseudo-intellectuals, ethnic chauvinists and manipulators who unsuccessfully tried to frighten, confuse and divide ordinary Kenyans in the past few weeks, that the day when they used to reign supreme in our beautiful country is long gone. We are free forever!

Monday, November 21st, 2005 will be forever remembered in our history as the day when ordinary Kenyans redeemed and reclaimed the little dignity they still had left. They have been struggling against their self imposed, disrespectful, thieving and arrogant leaders since 1964. That was the year when the neo-colonial faction of both KANU and KADU successfully orchestrated a political coup against genuine freedom fighters, Kenyan nationalists, Pan-Afrikanists and liberationists. Firstly, Kenyatta fraudulently transformed himself into an imperial oligarch from a Prime Minister. And secondly, the oligarchy irregularly changed the colonial constitution granting the newly minted imperial president with both power and authority to do with Kenya and Kenyans as he wished. In the following decades, Kenyans were suffocated with unparalleled plutocracy, kleptocracy and brutal oppression.

All previous attempts at removing these criminal plutocracts from our backs (whether through peaceful or violent means) have been suppressed. The oligarchs have always - and literally - outgunned the ordinary Kenyans. Successive elections have been manipulated, rigged or otherwise bought. There was a time when most Kenyans nearly resigned and succumbed themselves to the weight of their new lords.

By peacefully and popularly rejecting the government’s attempts at the imposition of its unpopular will or draft on the people merely because it has a monopoly on big guns, hired strong muscles, propaganda machines and control over our resources, the majority of Kenyans have refused to be ruled by fear. The ordinary Kenyans have said a resounding “NO” to governance through deception, sophisticated manipulations, bribery and grand corruption. Kenyans are no longer prepared to tolerate anyone – no matter how big, rich or powerful – in leadership position if he or she does not take instructions from them.

That is the magnificent lesson of this referendum vote.

The challenge now facing the country is to carefully select a new crop of dedicated, patriotic, nationalistic and progressive leadership; a leadership that will respect the true needs and aspirations of the ordinary person. A leadership that will faithfully take instructions from the ordinary Kenyans; not from any special interest groups, tribesmen or women. A leadership with a clear vision for the interests, needs and future of the entire nation; not simply of a section of the country, community or class. Indeed, Kenyans demand a leadership that will only undertake initiatives that are popular and that will seriously address all their fundamental needs; the needs of the homeless, the landless, the hungry, the illiterate, the ill, the oppressed, the marginalized, the dispossessed, the alienated and the disenfranchised.

It is this new vibrant leadership (chosen democratically and not through modern manipulations) that will set up a Constitutional Convention in order to deliberate on the mechanisms of proclaiming the Bomas Draft as Kenya’s new constitution. Kenyans should, however resist any attempts to water down, tamper with or change the Bomas Draft so as to satisfy any particular parochial political faction.

I disagree strongly with cynics who have argued that the referendum has been battle between Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki. These cynics have attempted to portray a false picture of Raila Odinga as an insatiable and ambitious politician who will stop at nothing to get political power. The cynics have portrayed Kibaki as a benevolent leader who was “popularly” elected by Kenyans but who is now being undermined by Raila. And that in order to “deliver” on his promises to Kenyans, he must rid himself of Raila Odinga. These cynics would like us to forget the significant role Raila played in bringing Kibaki to power. They would also want us to forget that Kibaki has basically undermined each and every promise he made to Kenyans as well as to his own coalition partners. Rather than facilitate the proclamation of the Bomas Draft into a new constitution, Kibaki has consistently undermined it and attempted, through the referendum, to force us into accepting a draft that has no resemblance to the Bomas Draft. Whereas Raila has been consistent in his quest for a people-drive constitution (it is only his enemies and allies that keep changing while the purpose of his struggle has never changed), Kibaki has made a complete about-turn.

The referendum results show that Kenyans have lost complete trust and faith on both their president and his government. In order to keep our country united and functioning, we need a snap election so that, as the president’s Big Men said, we can separate the goats from the sheep.

The time for both parliamentary and presidential elections is now. That way, we can sort out all the foul-mouthed, lying, conniving and thieving politicians and replace them with a new breed that have shown their commitment to our national vision. And with our invigorated vigilance, we should be ready to recall any members of this new breed who undermine our dreams.

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*The writer is a Barrister & Solicitor in Toronto, Canada

[aeichener]

Ah.
A man with a crystal ball. A diviner of the future.
He knoweth already at nightly 1:14 AM Kenyan time what to ye ordinary mortals shall not be disclosed ere the sun sets.

He should set up a stall at the Nakuru Agricultural Show. Better attraction than the talking goat head.

Alexander

[miguna]

Monday November 21, 2005

My day to say 'No' to Wako Draft has now finally come
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By Dominic Odipo

There is a sense in which today, 21st November 2005, is probably the most important day in Kenya’s post- independence history. The country is crossing its Rubicon, no matter how the referendum voting turns out. Millions of ordinary Kenyans will be going to the polls today to tell the Government that they can no longer be taken for granted. They are going to the polls to tell the highest officials of the current government that it is their votes which put them in power and that it is those same votes which can throw them out.

For far too long, Kenyan governments, and Kenyan Presidents in particular, have taken Kenyans for granted. They have behaved not only as if we elected them kings but as if we elected them kings for life. They have used or rather misused State resources as if those resources were their personal property. They have grabbed thousands of acres of our most productive land while millions of our fellow citizens have continued to wallow in poverty.

They have appointed thieves, pretenders, ignoramuses and charlatans into high offices of State simply because these people happened to be their cousins, girlfriends, brothers, sisters, nephews or simply drinking buddies.

Kenyan governments controlled from Nairobi have raped our country with abandon and murdered our own people as if they were foreign occupying powers.

They have plundered the resources of the peripheries and concentrated them at the centre so that they could have total control over how these resources are allocated. They have defrauded their own citizens and hidden the proceeds in numerous foreign bank accounts.

Today, the ordinary Kenyan citizen is going to the polls to pass judgment on this history of government arrogance, cynicism, debauchery, fraud and total disregard for the interests of the true sons of this soil. This, at the end of the day, is the real issue at stake in today’s historic referendum. This referendum is way, way beyond oranges and bananas. It is about much, much more vital national questions. In one word, it is about whether the Kenyan people are sovereign and supreme or whether that sovereignty and supremacy is vested in the governments which they elect.

This morning I shall be going out to vote NO to this so-called Wako Draft of the Proposed Constitution. I shall vote NO because, after comprehensive and sustained analysis of its contents, I am absolutely convinced that adopting this constitution would be disastrous to our development as one single, prosperous and peaceful country. I believe that this constitution does not capture the aspirations, fears and hopes of the majority of our people. I also believe that this constitution has been specifically designed to entrench the interests of particular sections and cliques of our population to the detriment of the rest of the country.

There are thousands of people who will be going out to vote today, but who do not understand or appreciate the real issues at stake. God bless them. One day they will and God knows we have done our best in write – ups like these to shed light on the pertinent issues. There are some people, including very senior politicians, who are shouting "Banana" from Nairobi, but cannot visit their rural homes for fear of the backslash from their constituents.

But let all that be as it may. In 1513, Niccolo Machiavelli of Florence in what is today modern Italy, published a little book called The Prince in which he boldly enunciated those qualities that he thought made political leaders effective. The basic thesis of The Prince was that the political game had very little to do with morals or our general conceptions of wrong or right. Leaders, Machiavelli asserted, acted, at the end of the day, only in their own personal or sectional interests. They could honour treaties (or M.O.Us) or repudiate them. They could be belligerent or peaceful, all depending on what their perceived interests were. They could tell the truth or they could tell lies without caring too much about the morality of their changing positions. And when, in order to protect their personal or sectional interests, they deemed it necessary, they would murder their opponents, take responsibility for such murders or plant them on others, and just continue with the more important business of governing. Machiavelli’s The Prince has become one of the most important treatises ever to come out of the Italian Renaissance. Five hundred years later, it is still read avidly and faithfully by both students and practitioners of politics around the world. Its basic thesis remains as true today as it was in the Italy of the "Quattrocento" .

By the middle of 1969, it had become abundantly clear that Tom Mboya, the Minister for Economic Planning, had become a major political threat to the Kenyan ruling establishment. He was making a calculated, but very strong bid for the presidency and given, his intelligence, eloquence and riches, no one within that establishment could see how to stop him. So, one Saturday afternoon, in broad daylight, they shot him down in a Nairobi street.

Five years later, J M Kariuki, the then MP for Nyandarua North, also found himself on the wrong side of this establishment then led by the late President Kenyatta. In accordance with Machiavelli’s thesis, they cut him down and mutilated his body as a lesson to others of that ilk. The Wako Draft will protect and entrench the power and riches of this particular clique at the expense of the real interests of the rest of the Kenyan people. If you vote YES today, you will be handing supreme, almost perpetual power to this little group of wilful men around the President. If you join us and vote NO, you will be saying that supreme power should be returned to the Kenyan people where it truly belongs. That is the bottom line.

* The writer is a freelance journalist and consultant based in Nairobi

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[miguna]

Monday November 21, 2005

Commentaries


Plebiscite will be about ethnic politics with some communities and their chiefs being losers, winners
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By Jerry Okungu

Kenyans will know if they will have a new constitution by tomorrow.

....
In the Banana team, there are Kikuyus, Embus, Merus, Abagusii, Kuria, Bukusus and a sprinkling of Kambas and other Luhya sub tribes. Mathematically, we have 3 million Gema voters, 300,000 Abagusi and Kuria combined, 400,000 Bukusus, 200,000 Kambas aligned to Charity Ngilu and another 200,000 Luhyas aligned to Moody Awori and other Luhya MPs. Their total national voting power is likely to be 4.1 million votes if the voting rate is 100 per cent. In terms of the total registered voters, this figure would account for 33 per cent.

On the other hand, the Orange team has Kikuyus, Luos, Kalenjins, Luhyas, Kambas, Maasais, Coastals and Somalis. Assuming that the Orange team will have these tribes voting for them: Kikuyu 300,000 that voted for Uhuru, Luos 1.5million that voted in 2002, Kalenjins 2 million, Luhyas 600,000, Kambas 500,000, Maasais 200,000, Coastals 300,000 and Somalis 100,000, the total Orange vote will stand at 5.6 million if the voting rate is 100 per cent. The total votes would be 9.7 million or 83 per cent of the total voters registered nationally. The remaining 17 per cent would represent urban dwellers and other races that may not necessarily subscribe to ethnic politics.

[miguna]

Wuololo yaye...........

Nyachae, Saitoti, Awori, Ngilu, Tuju, Mungatana..... and all the other jokers; the pretenders to the throne; are beginning to taste what a political tsunami looks and feels like...They under-estimated Kenyans when we were engaging them; they abused, insulted and threatened Kenyans; they deluded themselves that we were all too foolish to know the difference between deception and integrity. Did I hear some say that I was dreaming when I called the vote before these political novices woke up?

For those still crying wolf and other things, let me rub it in a little:
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Tuesday November 22, 2005

Rude shock for Awori, Nyachae, Ngilu, Tuju and Saitoti
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Early results for Kenya’s fi rst referendum last night put the Orange team that is opposed to the Proposed New Constitution in an early lead.

By the time of going to press, Orange had taken 1,408,720 votes against Banana’s 901,211, a margin of 61 per cent to Banana’s 39 per cent.

The results of the historic vote started streaming in as early as 6pm after vote counting began soon after 5pm in some polling stations. By 11pm, the Electoral Commission of Kenya has released provisional results of only three constituencies Mvita, Limuru and Kisumu Town East.

In Limuru, the Banana team carried the day with 27,374 votes against the Orange team’s 3,953. But the Orange took both Mvita (14,085 against Banana’s 3,267) and Kisumu Town East with 22,904 against Banana’s 592.

The voter turnout was high in most areas, with Kenyans waking up early to make their views known.

Throbbing with excitement and buoyed by a resolution to accept or reject Wako Draft, voters

turned up in hundreds of thousands for the fabulously peaceful referendum.

Had the referendum been a Parliamentary vote, it would have claimed at least fi ve senior members of President Kibaki’s Cabinet, including Vice-President Moody Awori, as their constituents defi ed them to reject the draft.

Others are Energy minister Simeon Nyachae, Information minister Raphael Tuju, Education minister Prof George Saitoti and Health minister Charity.

The biggest upset of the evening was for Nyachae, who for the fi rst time in an illustrious political career, was rejected by constituents who have always voted him to Parliament.


But it is the loss for Ngilu that came as a surprise to most observers, having visited the State House twice, each time taking back to Ukambani a bag of goodies that included relief food worth millions of shillings, ahead of the referendum.

Also humiliated were Danson Mungatana of Garsen and Kibwezi’s Kalembe Ndile, two of the most vocal proponents of the Wako draft. Early results put the Orange team that is opposing the Proposed New Constitution in an early lead in Nyanza,

Western, Rift Valley and Coast Provinces.

The Banana team was, however, leading with a wide margin in Central Province. In the expansive Rift Valley, the prime vote basket with

2.6 million votes, Sotik, which had 54,063 registered voters gave Orange 41,170 and Banana 837. Narok North, the constituency of Cabinet Minister

William ole Ntimama, who in the in the No team, Orange already had 22,932 votes against Yes team’s 3267.

In Emgwen No had bagged 8410 and Yes 593. Out of 35 stations counted in Tinderet Yes had 910 against Orange’s 15,100. Baringo Central’s preliminary

results gave Orange 15,921 votes and Banana 226.

Yes trailed Banana in Mogotio with 84 against 3,903 already bagged by its opponent. Eldoret South had given Orange 15,183 and Banana only 1124, and in Eldoret

East Orange had 9055 and No 2,002.

In Kilgoris Orange had 23,328 and Banana 2,327. In Kuresoi the No team had 12,435 and Yes 6,337. However, No trailed in Molo with 2,737 against 6,777. Subukia

had given Orange 553 and Banana 7,733.

In Bomet No had 8677 and Orange 290 out of the 66,374 registered voters. Mogotio which has 22,857 registered voters had cast 84 to Banana and 3,903 to Orange while in Naivasha Yes

led with 7,446 against No’s 3,594.

Orange had scooped 4,558 from Eldama Ravine’s 39,942 registered voters and Yes 1,750. In Kacheliba Yes had only 33 against Orange’s 3,526. No also was leading in Laikipia West with 2,473 and Banana 1,658.

In Sigor Yes was yet to get a vote but No team already had 610 votes. In Western Province, results in by 9pm gave Orange an early lead, handing Vice President Moody Awori a major

upset even in his Funyula Constituency. At Moody Awori Primary School, Orange scooped 350 votes against Banana’s 204. At the Otiado Primary School polling centre

the No team took 291 votes against Yes team’s 273.

But at Wakhungu where the VP voted, Banana topped with 300 against No’s 277.

In Sabatia – the base of former Vice-President Musalia Mudavadi –Orange had already polled 23,767 votes in preliminary results against Banana’s 1,579. In Ikolomani, out of 20 polling

stations counted No had 3,974 against 3,897 for Yes.

In Vihiga, out of 32 stations counted, No was leading with 16,614 while Banana had 1,108.

In Hamisi out of 41 counted No had 16,000 against Banana’s 2,300.


In Webuye the fi rst four counted showed No had 890 and Banana 2076. In Kanduyi No had 2,689 and Banana 1,742.

In Trade Minister Mukhisa Kityui’s Kimilili Constituency No had 948 and Yes 3,256. In Lugari out of 41 stations Orange had over 12,000 and Banana slightly over 7,000. In

Butula out of 16 stations Orange had 4,579 and Banana 877.

In Nyanza Province, Orange gave Banana a wide margin in all polling stations counted. In Kisumu East, voters overwhelmingly rejected the draft with 22,904 votes against

Banana’s 592.


The story was the same in most other constituencies in Luo Nyanza. In Kasipul Kabondo, Orange had 10,641 votes against Banana’s 63 votes while in Karachuonyo, Orange had 7,439 votes against Banana’s 67. In Gusii land, Orange also took an early lead, with 2,001 votes out of Banana’s 933 in Energy minister Simeon Nyachae’s Nyaribari Chache.

And results in by 8pm showed the Orange taking an early lead in the Coast Province. Results from nine of the Coast’s 21 constituencies showed Orange with 24,766 votes while Banana

had 6,046 votes. But this was only a small fraction of the province’s 900,000 votes. However, in all polling stations so far counted, the Orange prevailed over the Banana with heavy margins.

Earlier, queues across the country were long but the determination of the voters unbreakable as they moved to the booths to immortalise their stand on the draft and 15 years of haggling and frustrating search for a new constitution.

The process was blissful so much unlike Kenya’s past elections characterised by abrasive chants and mob fights except for inordinate pockets of violence in Kibera and Kayole. In Kibera an Electoral Commission of Kenya van was pelted with stones as the driver tried to dodge youths demanding to be allowed to inspect the cabin.

Both the Banana team that is supporting the Proposed New Constitution and the Orange that rejected it exuded confi dence they would each win. But they also maintained

they would accept the results and struck a reconciliatory note.

President Kibaki slid his marked ballot paper into the ECK’s black box at 10:58am at Munaini Primary School in his Othaya Constituency. The President, who on Sunday went on live television to express his confi dence in the draft, arrived at the school at 10.51am, accompanied by First Lady Lucy Kibaki and members of his immediate family, including sons Jimmy

and Kagai and daughter Judy Wanjiku.

Orange leaders Roads Minister Raila Odinga and Kanu chairman Uhuru Kenyatta also led their supporters in voting against the proposed constitution. Raila, accompanied by his

wife Ida, arrived at the Old Kibera Primary School at 8:20am to a rousing reception by Orange supporters some of whom confessed to have spent the night milling around the polling station.

Uhuru dropped his vote in the box at Mutomo Primary School in his Gatundu South Constituency at 7:20am. The Government on its website reported observers from the Commonwealth,

European Union, the East African Commission and other organisations monitored the vote. A spokesman for the American Embassy separately reported his country deployed 42 observers to various areas.

Retired President Moi cast his ballot at Lena Moi Primary School in Tandui, Baringo Central.

Justice Minister Kiraitu Murungi said the Banana side was confi dent of winning and added that his team believed in democracy and would humbly accept the outcome.

In Othaya, President Kibaki enjoyed a rare mix with his constituents, shaking a hand here and there. Enjoying the homely welcome, the President introduced his family one by one. He caused laughter when he described as "watu wa fi tina" (gossips) leaders opposed to the Wako Draft.

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SERVES YOU RIGHT SUCKERS!

[miguna]

Folks, the following is a brief answer to some of my critics in something called "Africa-oped." I I believe that brief response is topical on some grumblings I've heard from some quarters on this forum. Like my Orange/No comrades did a day ago, I rest my case.
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Ndugu Matunda and other critics:


I was very pleased to read all your reactions to my early call on this referendum warm-up. I call it a warm-up because the mother of all battles is coming.

A close friend was good enough to forward them to me so that I could see what other Kenyans think.

It is interesting to see that my prescient declaration was roundly termed "propaganda", "hyperbole" and a few other nasty things. I am not surprised, given our own president's public abuse of the ordinary Kenyan as "pumbavu" and "mavi ya kuku". You see, like those Kenyans, my crime was to tell the truth.

Some of us have been privy to this truth since early 2003. In fact, I have repeatedly written about this. My commentaries have been published in Kenyan papers. I had even called for snap elections as way back as 2003.

It requires a bit of careless disrespect of the intelligence of the ordinary Kenyan for some of you to completely ignore the fact that only Central Province (read: Kikuyus) overwhelmingly supported this Executive Fraud that was being attempted by the Kibaki government. I gues to all of you, the rest of Kenyans are simply naive, stupid and confused. They jare just drunk with Raila Odinga's concoctions! It is you who portray Raila as a demi-god; not us. It is you who refuse to believe that the whole country, minus a minority like yourselves, have made a deliberate decision that they will no longer sit by and watch as the country is divied up into little "apartheid" enclaves of those without and those "constipated with stolen loot."

The ordinary Kikuyu must now decide whether he or she will get along with other Kenyans; start treating fellow Kenyans as equals; start treating the country as belonging to all of us, or the rest of the country will leave them behind. The ordinary Kenyans have made a decision. You are free to debate or quibble with them. Fortunately, I do not have to do that, even in my stupidity, madness or over-exuberance.Prescience, I have called it.It is something one has to be born with; it is not acquired through Western or Eastern forms of miseducation that the majority of the grumbling members of the confused market place are good in. As far as I am concerned, ordinary Kenyans have managed to seperate the cabal of conniving and looting tribalists from the overwhelming majority of people. The notice has been duly served.

When you see our Chief Thieves and tribalists such as Saitoti, Kibaki, Karume, Michuki and Nyachae, plus their students like Awori, Ngilu, Tuju, Mungatana, Nyagah, Koech, Maalim, Kibwana, Ndile, Kamanda, Mwaboza, Shakombo, etc, relegated to the dustbins, it clearly shows the intelligence of the ordinary Kenyan. It is spectacular!

You see, I was very lucky to have studied History, Literature, Political Science and Philosophy before I went to Law School. These disciplines taught me that understanding human beings is not like understanding figures. Like meteriologists that study winds and clouds, my winds and clouds are the pulse, feelings and thoughts of the ordinary person. Once completely mastered, one can predict ordinary human beings with the same kind of precision a meteriologist would foretell rain, hurricane or draught. If in doubt, please check the referendum results again.

However, once you have fully understood a people, you can predict their responses to specific issues just like some of you good in Math will be able to figure out a mathematical equation. 2 + 2 = 4, no matter which way one looks at it. All I did was use my pumbavu brains to figure out this referendum equation when you were still sleeping. I actually figured it out in 2003!

Call it madness, propaganda, or whatever. It will not change the results.

As my friend, Dr. Job Obonyo Babu recommended elsewhere, maybe I should prim up my office and make it ready for the arrival of some "sheep" and a few lost "goats" from Kenya in the coming months.

I had also called for snap elections way back in 2003, when the majority of our pseudo-intellectuals were still drooling with "anticipation" of Kibaki's appointments, some of which never materialized. I believe that my record speaks for itself.

Enough said already.

Peace and good luck. [unedited]


Miguna Miguna