Post by adongo12345 on Jan 6, 2006 19:47:51 GMT 3
By Adongo Ogony
The fiasco over the failed Kibaki/ODM meeting has exposed some grave issues that Kenyans have to address not only to move the constitutional review process forward which is a priority for the nation, but also to protect the interests of Kenyan voters who elected someone by the name Emilio Mwai Kibaki as our president on Dec 27, 2002.
I think many Kenyans will agree with me that nobody elected Njenga Karume, Kiraitu Murungi, John Michuki, Simeon Nyachae and Amos Kimunya as Kibaki’s co-presidents. In fact Nyachae was a Ford-P presidential candidate opposing Kibaki, if anybody can still believe that and Njenga Karume was leading the charge against Kibaki in Central Province the very place where he now leads the obnoxious campaign to protect the 'Kikuyu Presidency' To the best of my knowledge, and I stand to be corrected, Kibaki never presented himself to Kenyans who voted for him from every corner of the land as a “Kikuyu President”. Kenyans thought they were electing a president for the whole country, not a tribal king. How wrong we all must have been.
As everybody knows, President Kibaki met Raila Odinga, one of the ODM luminaries in the lobby of the Safari Park Hotel during the opening of the Commonwealth Speakers Conference.
After a hearty hand-shake in front of a grinning Francis Ole Kaparo, the Speaker of Kenya National Assembly, the two apparently agreed on a quick meeting to be held at State House as a prelude to other similar meetings and consultations between the president (with his team of course) and Raila with his ODM team. Soon after the president’s aides including Francis Muthaura, Secretary to the Cabinet met with Raila and his colleagues and set up a meeting between the President and the ODM team to be held on Friday January 6, 2006 at 4.00p.m at State House. Practically all media in Kenya carried the story including the date and time for the meeting. There was a sense of joy among many quarters who felt dialogue between the groups represented by the president and the ODM is good for the country, but personally I thought it was going to be one of those feel good events that would lead nowhere. I will explain my position shortly.
Twenty-four hours later, just as the ODM team was getting ready to descend at State House, Raila received another call telling him the meeting had been cancelled. The ODM team all ready and dressed up for the big dance then held a press conference informing Kenyans that the much anticipated meeting has been cancelled because Mzee was too busy.
Following the ODM press conference State House, through the PPS, came up with a bizarre press release telling Kenyans that there was no meeting scheduled at all between the President and Raila with his team.
Why is this bizarre?
Because we all know State House is not located somewhere on the moon.
Surely if anybody there read the papers and listened to the news they would know what the whole country already knew for one full day.
Reports about the scheduled meeting complete with dates and time was all over the media.
Was everybody at State House asleep?
Of course not.
It turns out the president had been holed up in a marathon meeting with his much despised Kitchen cabinet. From media reports, the members of the cabal that apparently owns the Kibaki presidency were furious about such a meeting taking place. They prevailed on the president to cancel the meeting and some reports indicate some of them threatened to resign if the president went ahead with the meeting
To cut a long story short it appears someone read the riot act to those who wanted the meeting and the rest is history.
The excuse from some elements within the Kibaki monarchy is that the ODM is not a registered group and has no legitimacy, never mind that 3.5 million Kenyans voted in support of the movement defeating the pathetic lot around the president who were confined to one province. To the Kibakites political legitimacy in Kenya is obtained at the registrar’s office and not from the masses of the Kenyan people. Little wonder the so- called Kibaki strategists are so busy stealing names and registering them to fight their opponents. Good luck.
It should be obvious to everybody by now that the ODM does not need any permission from Kibaki or anybody in his government to exist. The movement has been embraced by millions of Kenyans who see them as a legitimate and representative political force in the country as opposed to the little confused cabal who control the Kibaki presidency. In fact I would say it is Kibaki who needs legitimacy from the ODM, particularly on the issue of completing the constitutional review process. But that is a story for another day. For now let’s address some basic problems emerging from the failed meeting.
Number one President Kibaki has no right to outsource his duties and responsibilities as the elected president of the Republic of Kenya, to this small cabal that we all know and which has done everything to ruin his government and legacy, sabotage the people-driven constitutional process, destroy the Narc Kenyans elected and still tell us he is the duly elected president of the republic of Kenya. If the president is unable to make decisions for health or any other reasons then let’s deal with that problem.
It is ironical that the same people who tell us Kenya cannot afford a ceremonial president are busy making Kibaki a ceremonial president. If the president needs a proxy of inside circle mandarins to act on his behalf, at least let’s put it in the constitution. What Kibaki and his cohorts are doing is the worst form of usurping power through the back door. May be that is why they are so obsessed with others allegedly seeking power through the back door. They know exactly where it is. Sooner than later Kenyans are going to kick them out through the front door regardless of how they got in there. I am sure they know that and that is why they are tetemekaring all over about the ODM.
Of course we know like my friend Onyango Oloo has asserted elsewhere that Kibaki is not sitting idle on the sides as a hostage to this dreadful cabal. He is a key part of the same, but I think events like this expose the tight rope he has to walk to please his owners.
Like any president, Kibaki has a right to choose his advisors. What he does not have a right to do is to impose on us the will of his friends because we never elected his friends. He has no right to burden us with public officials and cabinet ministers whose policies have been rejected and denounced by the public and most important of all he has no right to surrender the presidency to a third party except as provided for under the constitution.
Kenyans want to know: Who is our president? Is it Mwai Kibaki? Is it John Michuki or Kiraitu Murungi? Some of the fellas have serious credibility problems with Kenyans and we want to know in whose name they seek to rule the country.
For the record let me say that from a purely tactical point of view this was yet another dumb move by the “Kibaki Control Panel”. Kenyans hate that kitchen cabinet. The Kitchen cabinet need Kibaki who is fairly liked by Kenyans to survive. By making Kibaki look like a puppet they are burning their bridges. They are better off pretending that the president is in charge. The way they worked on the cabinet was good for them. Kibaki pretended to be consulting “wide” regarding the cabinet then basically called his hounds and told them to pick what they wanted. Even Musikari Kombo and Charity Ngilu who thought they were key players were reduced to pulling childish tantrums just to get crumbs to feed their own hounds. If they were smart they should have allowed Kibaki to go ahead with the meeting, talk about vague things and promise another meeting in the future. That way Kibaki can come around and say he is “consulting widely” about the constitution. Anyway they don’t pay me to advise the “Control Panel”. Let them keep digging.
The second obvious problem is the false agenda of the Kibaki/ODM meeting even if it were to take place. What we have been told is that the talk will be about the constitutional impasse. That is good enough, but when it gets to reducing the issue on how Kibaki should appoint a committee to “jump-start” the review process it gets dicey. What exactly is this committee supposed to do?
Is the Kibaki Committee going to draft a constitution? Based on what? The Kibaki monarchists have indicated they still want to start from the Wako Draft and fine tune it. They are going to argue that at least the Wako Draft has been put to public test and should therefore be the basis of a new draft. The reality is that by the same argument we should trash the Wako Draft in the garbage. We know for sure the people have rejected it.
Alternatively, is this new Kibaki Committee going to collect information from the public like the CKRC did? In his Jamhuri Day speech the president almost said as much. If that is the case, what information will they be collecting? Will they for example confine themselves only to so-called contentious issues and seek public input on those issues or will they go the full stretch and try to re-invent the wheel?
Then there are the legal questions. The Amended CKRC Act (With the Imposed Consensus) is dead by Jan 10, 2006. For all intents and purposes the institutionalized constitutional making process (through a legislative Act) dies with that act. To continue the process, our first stop is the Kenya Parliament. I am perplexed that Kibaki and his team are so busy putting a committee together before they enact the necessary legislation to anchor the constitutional review process with the laws of the land. Under what statute will this committee operate or is it simply a presidential advisory group?
As the NCEC stated in their New Year message, the first duty of the present political leadership is to salvage the review process by moving fast and enacting a new law to facilitate the process. Kibaki and the ODM should be meeting to talk about mechanisms that would facilitate a healthy and democratic parliamentary consensus on a new constitutional amendment act not meeting to talk about membership to an amorphous entity, ati to “jump start” the constitutional process. This thing has been jump started so many times only to be grounded shortly thereafter. May be it is time we checked to see if the mechanics are right in the first place.
The fourth issue, which I think is fundamental is this: What happens to the much talked about Constituent Assembly? Will this Kibaki Committee replace the need for a Constituent Assembly? In other words, will this committee actually turn itself into a “Constituent Assembly” by producing the final document to be taken to the referendum?
You notice I am not even speculating on the possibilities of parliament scrapping the need for the referendum altogether in the new Constitutional Amendment Act. But knowing the people we are dealing with we should put that in the back of our minds. You know the funniest thing, some of those who fought for the referendum finally came to really regret it. I would not be surprised if they don’t try to circumvent it by claiming it will “divide” the country and create a situation where parliament would have a final say on the new constitution. Remember if that were the case, today the Kibaki constitution would be the law of the land. Scary?
My point is that as far as the constitutional review process goes, the Kibaki government as usual has things upside down.
.
The way we should go is to have a new constitutional amendment legislation that first deals with the problems we have with Sec 47, of the current constitution so as to facilitate the actual constitutional transitional when Kenyans finally agree on what they want and also provides the roadmap on how to get there.
Kiraitu himself confessed in the heat of the political and legal battles during the referendum campaign that the reason the government could not try to amend Sec 47 of the current constitution is because they could not get the two thirds majority required to do so. Of course that is a pathetic excuse to break the law, but that is the Kiraitu Murungi Kenyans have come to know.The reason the government was not able to get the necessary two thirds majority in parliament was because the Kibaki/Kiraitu team was not interested in real CONSENSUS.
Let’s always remember one factor that emerged very clearly during the negotiations and consultations about the constitution all the way from Bomas I, II & III to the Kilifi fraud. That factor is that for the Kibaki/Kiraitu team “consensus” means everybody else has to agree with their point of view. The Wako Draft was supposed to be a consensus, wasn’t it? Why then did Kenyans reject it? Because it was a false consensus. It was a consensus among those were considered “friendly to the government”. That is exactly what Kibaki is trying to do again. Look at the names they are proposing for the Kibaki Committee. We have well known NAK activists like father Wamugunda one of the architects of the failed Yes campaign. They dragging Bishop Sulumeti back to coin yet another NAK friendly “consensus” Rabid anti Bomas elements like Prof. Makau Mutua are being mentioned. It is not hard to see the criteria being used to decide who this so-called prominent Kenyans are going to be. Obviously vinyangarikas like Adongo Ogony need not apply.
The bottom line is that the same “experts” who gave us the “Wako Consensus Draft” now want to give us a new “ Kibaki friendly consensus draft”. How lucky we must be that all these geniuses love us so much? They have stuff lined up for us, one after the other. Well we await them eagerly.
In my view there is no need for a Kibaki Committee. We need a new Constitutional Amendment Act of 2006 that should provide for a Constituent Assembly in a form and format agreed upon by at least two thirds of the MPs. The task of the Assembly would be to review the Bomas and Wako Draft, identify contentious issues., discuss and resolve them democratically and hand over their resolutions to a competent and objective drafters to present to Kenyans a Draft Constitution to be voted on in a national referendum.
I don’t see what role a committee of so-called prominent Kenyans is going to play except giving the politicians another chance to find away to cheat the people of their right to make their own constitution.
As for the ODM, I would advise them to stop wasting time seeking meetings with Kibaki to legitimize his fraud once again. How about meeting with the millions of Kenyans who supported you. What are you folks afraid of? Do you need permission from Kibaki to talk to Kenyans about finishing the battle for a new constitution? The ODM needs to get its priorities right. They are beginning to look like wimps and opportunists who are really desperate to be seen around the president. Take it from me, Kibaki has nothing for you, my dear brothers and sisters. The people of Kenya that is where your future is. Of course I know the value of a truce, but it has to be mutual, doesn’t it?
The writer is a human rights activist.
The fiasco over the failed Kibaki/ODM meeting has exposed some grave issues that Kenyans have to address not only to move the constitutional review process forward which is a priority for the nation, but also to protect the interests of Kenyan voters who elected someone by the name Emilio Mwai Kibaki as our president on Dec 27, 2002.
I think many Kenyans will agree with me that nobody elected Njenga Karume, Kiraitu Murungi, John Michuki, Simeon Nyachae and Amos Kimunya as Kibaki’s co-presidents. In fact Nyachae was a Ford-P presidential candidate opposing Kibaki, if anybody can still believe that and Njenga Karume was leading the charge against Kibaki in Central Province the very place where he now leads the obnoxious campaign to protect the 'Kikuyu Presidency' To the best of my knowledge, and I stand to be corrected, Kibaki never presented himself to Kenyans who voted for him from every corner of the land as a “Kikuyu President”. Kenyans thought they were electing a president for the whole country, not a tribal king. How wrong we all must have been.
As everybody knows, President Kibaki met Raila Odinga, one of the ODM luminaries in the lobby of the Safari Park Hotel during the opening of the Commonwealth Speakers Conference.
After a hearty hand-shake in front of a grinning Francis Ole Kaparo, the Speaker of Kenya National Assembly, the two apparently agreed on a quick meeting to be held at State House as a prelude to other similar meetings and consultations between the president (with his team of course) and Raila with his ODM team. Soon after the president’s aides including Francis Muthaura, Secretary to the Cabinet met with Raila and his colleagues and set up a meeting between the President and the ODM team to be held on Friday January 6, 2006 at 4.00p.m at State House. Practically all media in Kenya carried the story including the date and time for the meeting. There was a sense of joy among many quarters who felt dialogue between the groups represented by the president and the ODM is good for the country, but personally I thought it was going to be one of those feel good events that would lead nowhere. I will explain my position shortly.
Twenty-four hours later, just as the ODM team was getting ready to descend at State House, Raila received another call telling him the meeting had been cancelled. The ODM team all ready and dressed up for the big dance then held a press conference informing Kenyans that the much anticipated meeting has been cancelled because Mzee was too busy.
Following the ODM press conference State House, through the PPS, came up with a bizarre press release telling Kenyans that there was no meeting scheduled at all between the President and Raila with his team.
Why is this bizarre?
Because we all know State House is not located somewhere on the moon.
Surely if anybody there read the papers and listened to the news they would know what the whole country already knew for one full day.
Reports about the scheduled meeting complete with dates and time was all over the media.
Was everybody at State House asleep?
Of course not.
It turns out the president had been holed up in a marathon meeting with his much despised Kitchen cabinet. From media reports, the members of the cabal that apparently owns the Kibaki presidency were furious about such a meeting taking place. They prevailed on the president to cancel the meeting and some reports indicate some of them threatened to resign if the president went ahead with the meeting
To cut a long story short it appears someone read the riot act to those who wanted the meeting and the rest is history.
The excuse from some elements within the Kibaki monarchy is that the ODM is not a registered group and has no legitimacy, never mind that 3.5 million Kenyans voted in support of the movement defeating the pathetic lot around the president who were confined to one province. To the Kibakites political legitimacy in Kenya is obtained at the registrar’s office and not from the masses of the Kenyan people. Little wonder the so- called Kibaki strategists are so busy stealing names and registering them to fight their opponents. Good luck.
It should be obvious to everybody by now that the ODM does not need any permission from Kibaki or anybody in his government to exist. The movement has been embraced by millions of Kenyans who see them as a legitimate and representative political force in the country as opposed to the little confused cabal who control the Kibaki presidency. In fact I would say it is Kibaki who needs legitimacy from the ODM, particularly on the issue of completing the constitutional review process. But that is a story for another day. For now let’s address some basic problems emerging from the failed meeting.
Number one President Kibaki has no right to outsource his duties and responsibilities as the elected president of the Republic of Kenya, to this small cabal that we all know and which has done everything to ruin his government and legacy, sabotage the people-driven constitutional process, destroy the Narc Kenyans elected and still tell us he is the duly elected president of the republic of Kenya. If the president is unable to make decisions for health or any other reasons then let’s deal with that problem.
It is ironical that the same people who tell us Kenya cannot afford a ceremonial president are busy making Kibaki a ceremonial president. If the president needs a proxy of inside circle mandarins to act on his behalf, at least let’s put it in the constitution. What Kibaki and his cohorts are doing is the worst form of usurping power through the back door. May be that is why they are so obsessed with others allegedly seeking power through the back door. They know exactly where it is. Sooner than later Kenyans are going to kick them out through the front door regardless of how they got in there. I am sure they know that and that is why they are tetemekaring all over about the ODM.
Of course we know like my friend Onyango Oloo has asserted elsewhere that Kibaki is not sitting idle on the sides as a hostage to this dreadful cabal. He is a key part of the same, but I think events like this expose the tight rope he has to walk to please his owners.
Like any president, Kibaki has a right to choose his advisors. What he does not have a right to do is to impose on us the will of his friends because we never elected his friends. He has no right to burden us with public officials and cabinet ministers whose policies have been rejected and denounced by the public and most important of all he has no right to surrender the presidency to a third party except as provided for under the constitution.
Kenyans want to know: Who is our president? Is it Mwai Kibaki? Is it John Michuki or Kiraitu Murungi? Some of the fellas have serious credibility problems with Kenyans and we want to know in whose name they seek to rule the country.
For the record let me say that from a purely tactical point of view this was yet another dumb move by the “Kibaki Control Panel”. Kenyans hate that kitchen cabinet. The Kitchen cabinet need Kibaki who is fairly liked by Kenyans to survive. By making Kibaki look like a puppet they are burning their bridges. They are better off pretending that the president is in charge. The way they worked on the cabinet was good for them. Kibaki pretended to be consulting “wide” regarding the cabinet then basically called his hounds and told them to pick what they wanted. Even Musikari Kombo and Charity Ngilu who thought they were key players were reduced to pulling childish tantrums just to get crumbs to feed their own hounds. If they were smart they should have allowed Kibaki to go ahead with the meeting, talk about vague things and promise another meeting in the future. That way Kibaki can come around and say he is “consulting widely” about the constitution. Anyway they don’t pay me to advise the “Control Panel”. Let them keep digging.
The second obvious problem is the false agenda of the Kibaki/ODM meeting even if it were to take place. What we have been told is that the talk will be about the constitutional impasse. That is good enough, but when it gets to reducing the issue on how Kibaki should appoint a committee to “jump-start” the review process it gets dicey. What exactly is this committee supposed to do?
Is the Kibaki Committee going to draft a constitution? Based on what? The Kibaki monarchists have indicated they still want to start from the Wako Draft and fine tune it. They are going to argue that at least the Wako Draft has been put to public test and should therefore be the basis of a new draft. The reality is that by the same argument we should trash the Wako Draft in the garbage. We know for sure the people have rejected it.
Alternatively, is this new Kibaki Committee going to collect information from the public like the CKRC did? In his Jamhuri Day speech the president almost said as much. If that is the case, what information will they be collecting? Will they for example confine themselves only to so-called contentious issues and seek public input on those issues or will they go the full stretch and try to re-invent the wheel?
Then there are the legal questions. The Amended CKRC Act (With the Imposed Consensus) is dead by Jan 10, 2006. For all intents and purposes the institutionalized constitutional making process (through a legislative Act) dies with that act. To continue the process, our first stop is the Kenya Parliament. I am perplexed that Kibaki and his team are so busy putting a committee together before they enact the necessary legislation to anchor the constitutional review process with the laws of the land. Under what statute will this committee operate or is it simply a presidential advisory group?
As the NCEC stated in their New Year message, the first duty of the present political leadership is to salvage the review process by moving fast and enacting a new law to facilitate the process. Kibaki and the ODM should be meeting to talk about mechanisms that would facilitate a healthy and democratic parliamentary consensus on a new constitutional amendment act not meeting to talk about membership to an amorphous entity, ati to “jump start” the constitutional process. This thing has been jump started so many times only to be grounded shortly thereafter. May be it is time we checked to see if the mechanics are right in the first place.
The fourth issue, which I think is fundamental is this: What happens to the much talked about Constituent Assembly? Will this Kibaki Committee replace the need for a Constituent Assembly? In other words, will this committee actually turn itself into a “Constituent Assembly” by producing the final document to be taken to the referendum?
You notice I am not even speculating on the possibilities of parliament scrapping the need for the referendum altogether in the new Constitutional Amendment Act. But knowing the people we are dealing with we should put that in the back of our minds. You know the funniest thing, some of those who fought for the referendum finally came to really regret it. I would not be surprised if they don’t try to circumvent it by claiming it will “divide” the country and create a situation where parliament would have a final say on the new constitution. Remember if that were the case, today the Kibaki constitution would be the law of the land. Scary?
My point is that as far as the constitutional review process goes, the Kibaki government as usual has things upside down.
.
The way we should go is to have a new constitutional amendment legislation that first deals with the problems we have with Sec 47, of the current constitution so as to facilitate the actual constitutional transitional when Kenyans finally agree on what they want and also provides the roadmap on how to get there.
Kiraitu himself confessed in the heat of the political and legal battles during the referendum campaign that the reason the government could not try to amend Sec 47 of the current constitution is because they could not get the two thirds majority required to do so. Of course that is a pathetic excuse to break the law, but that is the Kiraitu Murungi Kenyans have come to know.The reason the government was not able to get the necessary two thirds majority in parliament was because the Kibaki/Kiraitu team was not interested in real CONSENSUS.
Let’s always remember one factor that emerged very clearly during the negotiations and consultations about the constitution all the way from Bomas I, II & III to the Kilifi fraud. That factor is that for the Kibaki/Kiraitu team “consensus” means everybody else has to agree with their point of view. The Wako Draft was supposed to be a consensus, wasn’t it? Why then did Kenyans reject it? Because it was a false consensus. It was a consensus among those were considered “friendly to the government”. That is exactly what Kibaki is trying to do again. Look at the names they are proposing for the Kibaki Committee. We have well known NAK activists like father Wamugunda one of the architects of the failed Yes campaign. They dragging Bishop Sulumeti back to coin yet another NAK friendly “consensus” Rabid anti Bomas elements like Prof. Makau Mutua are being mentioned. It is not hard to see the criteria being used to decide who this so-called prominent Kenyans are going to be. Obviously vinyangarikas like Adongo Ogony need not apply.
The bottom line is that the same “experts” who gave us the “Wako Consensus Draft” now want to give us a new “ Kibaki friendly consensus draft”. How lucky we must be that all these geniuses love us so much? They have stuff lined up for us, one after the other. Well we await them eagerly.
In my view there is no need for a Kibaki Committee. We need a new Constitutional Amendment Act of 2006 that should provide for a Constituent Assembly in a form and format agreed upon by at least two thirds of the MPs. The task of the Assembly would be to review the Bomas and Wako Draft, identify contentious issues., discuss and resolve them democratically and hand over their resolutions to a competent and objective drafters to present to Kenyans a Draft Constitution to be voted on in a national referendum.
I don’t see what role a committee of so-called prominent Kenyans is going to play except giving the politicians another chance to find away to cheat the people of their right to make their own constitution.
As for the ODM, I would advise them to stop wasting time seeking meetings with Kibaki to legitimize his fraud once again. How about meeting with the millions of Kenyans who supported you. What are you folks afraid of? Do you need permission from Kibaki to talk to Kenyans about finishing the battle for a new constitution? The ODM needs to get its priorities right. They are beginning to look like wimps and opportunists who are really desperate to be seen around the president. Take it from me, Kibaki has nothing for you, my dear brothers and sisters. The people of Kenya that is where your future is. Of course I know the value of a truce, but it has to be mutual, doesn’t it?
The writer is a human rights activist.