Post by Onyango Oloo on Dec 31, 2005 12:05:46 GMT 3
from Onyango Oloo in Nairobi
Also carried in the December 31st issue of the Kenya Times
Saying Good-Bye to 2005…
And a Hello to the New Year.
What a year it has been: famines, fruit wars; ministerial tribal blackmail, first lady temper tantrums; five per cent growth rates amidst increasing social misery; foul-mouthed presidents and swaggering hangers on; cabinet reshuffles in the wake of a cataclysmic referendum; crackdown on plain speaking journalists; forgery of unregistered political formations; triumphant lady boxers; victorious volley-ballers; philanthropic marathoners and successful twenty-something professional soccer players.
I wanted to nominate the Kenyan Clown of the Year- before I realized it would a 10 way tie.
But there is definitely a WORD of the year: the notorious Presidential Pumbavu which is not a word anymore but a Kibaki punctuation mark.
We welcomed the year just ending somberly as we joined in solidarity with the mourning tsunami survivors of Sri Lanka, Thailand and elsewhere; later on we commiserated with the Third World in a First World victims of Katrina and her cousins.
We are ending it with tears of sadness as we see the reality of famine up close and personal in our own country-underscoring our terrible food insecurities and widespread class and regional socio-economic disparities.
The main story of course was the referendum campaign on the much contested and controversial Wako Draft.
This was the government project which helped to hammer in the last nail in the NARC coffin as the ruling coalition of NAK and LDP disintegrated in a sewer of ethnic chest-thumping and growing national resentment. Some sanctimonious fence-sitters turned up their supercilious noses at those Wananchi who dared to take sides between a government determined to consolidate the executive powers of the president and a loose coalition of forces that wanted to build on the gains of the national constitutional conference that did produce a draft waiting to be ratified as Kenya’s new national constitution.
Kibaki’s vindictive purge of the referendum victors from his cabinet, far from showing a head of state in charge, demonstrated the growing isolation of his NAK faction from the rest of the Kenyan populace. His tawdry pork barrel politics of indiscriminate give-aways in the weeks leading up to the November 21st referendum voting day had in case gone a very long way in causing irreparable damage to his credibility and integrity.
The tragic burlesque of Musikari Kombo and Charity Ngilu holding the President hostage until a hefty tribal ransom had been paid was another manifestation of how ethnicized Kenyan politics had degenerated under Mwai Kibaki.
Away from the national political contestations for supremacy an alarming trend revolving around violence against children kept cropping up in the headlines of the dailies: early in the year, a 10 year old girl who had been raped by a policeman in Kericho gave birth; at the height of the referendum campaign an innocent 13 year old schoolboy was shot to death by trigger happy cops detailed by the state to repress peaceful pro-democracy activists in Kisumu; sometime in late November or early December a brand new infant was flung into a pit latrine by a young mother desperate to meet the job requirements for a Nairobi based middle-class woman who wanted an ayah with no child; the case of a mother from Mt. Elgon who beat her small child to death because the kid could not count up to five; around the Christmas festivities, sadness in Butere/Mumias as a mother mourns her five young daughters throttled savagely by human brutes- with the shocking possibility that their own father may have supervised the slaughter.
Who can forget the labour unrest as nurses, civil servants and other workers downed their tools demanding better conditions- even as the ministers and parliamentarians fought tooth and nail to safeguard their obscene perks.
The courage of Kenyan journalists was exemplified by the bold opinion pieces by Kenya Times scribe David Ochami who continued with his fearless unvarnished columns-after being released from the coolers. Indeed collectively members of Kenya’s print and electronic media took over from the civil society organizations as the main whistle-blowers exposing the grand graft scandals and the acts of political chicanery on the part of the powers that be.
As we end the year, personally I am quite optimistic. My positive outlook is particularly anchored in the sheer determination of the Kenyan wananchi to keep fighting for Kenya Tuitakayo na Katiba Tuitakayo- in the face of the arrogant machinations of the powers that be.
The adrenalin rush flowing from the decisive NO victory is bound to act as more than as a catalyst as the Kenyan people mobilize and galvanize to wrest more democratic space from the ruling elites.
As we begin a new year, I am certain that Kenyans are closer to a new democratic dispensation in the year 2006 than they were on the morrow of the December 27th 2002 NARC electoral rout of KANU.
By the way, kudos and hongeras to Conjestina Achieng’, Paul Tergat, the Kenyan Women’s Volley Ball team and Dennis Oliech plus other Kenyan sports heroes and sheroesfor their achievements in the sports world.
Onyango Oloo,
Nairobi
Also carried in the December 31st issue of the Kenya Times
Saying Good-Bye to 2005…
And a Hello to the New Year.
What a year it has been: famines, fruit wars; ministerial tribal blackmail, first lady temper tantrums; five per cent growth rates amidst increasing social misery; foul-mouthed presidents and swaggering hangers on; cabinet reshuffles in the wake of a cataclysmic referendum; crackdown on plain speaking journalists; forgery of unregistered political formations; triumphant lady boxers; victorious volley-ballers; philanthropic marathoners and successful twenty-something professional soccer players.
I wanted to nominate the Kenyan Clown of the Year- before I realized it would a 10 way tie.
But there is definitely a WORD of the year: the notorious Presidential Pumbavu which is not a word anymore but a Kibaki punctuation mark.
We welcomed the year just ending somberly as we joined in solidarity with the mourning tsunami survivors of Sri Lanka, Thailand and elsewhere; later on we commiserated with the Third World in a First World victims of Katrina and her cousins.
We are ending it with tears of sadness as we see the reality of famine up close and personal in our own country-underscoring our terrible food insecurities and widespread class and regional socio-economic disparities.
The main story of course was the referendum campaign on the much contested and controversial Wako Draft.
This was the government project which helped to hammer in the last nail in the NARC coffin as the ruling coalition of NAK and LDP disintegrated in a sewer of ethnic chest-thumping and growing national resentment. Some sanctimonious fence-sitters turned up their supercilious noses at those Wananchi who dared to take sides between a government determined to consolidate the executive powers of the president and a loose coalition of forces that wanted to build on the gains of the national constitutional conference that did produce a draft waiting to be ratified as Kenya’s new national constitution.
Kibaki’s vindictive purge of the referendum victors from his cabinet, far from showing a head of state in charge, demonstrated the growing isolation of his NAK faction from the rest of the Kenyan populace. His tawdry pork barrel politics of indiscriminate give-aways in the weeks leading up to the November 21st referendum voting day had in case gone a very long way in causing irreparable damage to his credibility and integrity.
The tragic burlesque of Musikari Kombo and Charity Ngilu holding the President hostage until a hefty tribal ransom had been paid was another manifestation of how ethnicized Kenyan politics had degenerated under Mwai Kibaki.
Away from the national political contestations for supremacy an alarming trend revolving around violence against children kept cropping up in the headlines of the dailies: early in the year, a 10 year old girl who had been raped by a policeman in Kericho gave birth; at the height of the referendum campaign an innocent 13 year old schoolboy was shot to death by trigger happy cops detailed by the state to repress peaceful pro-democracy activists in Kisumu; sometime in late November or early December a brand new infant was flung into a pit latrine by a young mother desperate to meet the job requirements for a Nairobi based middle-class woman who wanted an ayah with no child; the case of a mother from Mt. Elgon who beat her small child to death because the kid could not count up to five; around the Christmas festivities, sadness in Butere/Mumias as a mother mourns her five young daughters throttled savagely by human brutes- with the shocking possibility that their own father may have supervised the slaughter.
Who can forget the labour unrest as nurses, civil servants and other workers downed their tools demanding better conditions- even as the ministers and parliamentarians fought tooth and nail to safeguard their obscene perks.
The courage of Kenyan journalists was exemplified by the bold opinion pieces by Kenya Times scribe David Ochami who continued with his fearless unvarnished columns-after being released from the coolers. Indeed collectively members of Kenya’s print and electronic media took over from the civil society organizations as the main whistle-blowers exposing the grand graft scandals and the acts of political chicanery on the part of the powers that be.
As we end the year, personally I am quite optimistic. My positive outlook is particularly anchored in the sheer determination of the Kenyan wananchi to keep fighting for Kenya Tuitakayo na Katiba Tuitakayo- in the face of the arrogant machinations of the powers that be.
The adrenalin rush flowing from the decisive NO victory is bound to act as more than as a catalyst as the Kenyan people mobilize and galvanize to wrest more democratic space from the ruling elites.
As we begin a new year, I am certain that Kenyans are closer to a new democratic dispensation in the year 2006 than they were on the morrow of the December 27th 2002 NARC electoral rout of KANU.
By the way, kudos and hongeras to Conjestina Achieng’, Paul Tergat, the Kenyan Women’s Volley Ball team and Dennis Oliech plus other Kenyan sports heroes and sheroesfor their achievements in the sports world.
Onyango Oloo,
Nairobi