Post by adongo12345 on Jan 25, 2006 21:56:46 GMT 3
By Adongo Ogony
A month and half ago there was a big scramble as to who will be reappointed to the new Kibaki cabinet after the president dissolved his pre-referendum cabinet. Many hoped, in vain as it turned out, that the president after suffering such a humiliating and predictable defeat in his effort to invent a constitution for himself and his friends would see some light and tuff out the political incompetents and paper tigers who promised him a victory that became an illusion and a huge embarrassment to himself and his regime.
Instead, Kibaki rewarded the losers and thumbed his nose on close to the 60% of the population who rejected his bogus constitution. Today representatives from most of the communities who rejected the Wako Constitution are nowhere in the Kibaki cabinet. In fact even civil servants, particularly chiefs who have been fingered by political “heavy weights” surrounding the president are being fired to be replaced by those who will in future support whatever project Kibaki and his cohorts cook up. I think with the Githongo revelation Kenyans are beginning to confirm their worst fears as to why the president is married for life to some of the rogue elements in his inner circle who have done so much damage to our country and to his regime as well as whatever legacy he may have. I’ll come back to that shortly.
Sometime back Raila Odinga then a Minister for Roads and Public Works lamented about how ashamed he was to be in the Kibaki cabinet. He was speaking soon after government police opened fire and killed innocent Kenyans whose only crime was to attend rallies in support of the ODM that opposed the Kibaki/Wako Draft Constitution. Raila was laughed out of town by those who felt that he should have resigned if he was that much ashamed of being in the cabinet. Some of the same big mouths that denounced Raila then are the ones who today have been fingered as the architects and/or protectors of the Anglo thieves. I am sure most of the members of the Kibaki cabinet are very proud and honoured to be serving among such distinguished crooks. In fact if the reports we have been receiving are anything to go by, a good number of them are planning to offer blanket defense of the same crooks under the guise of promoting collective responsibility in the cabinet.
My understanding is that if the Anglo rip off of public funds is not a collective undertaking by the cabinet, then the same cabinet has no business offering collective protection to the crooks involved. But then again I may be wrong. May be Anglo Fleecing was and still is a government project. After all we have been told the project was meant to help raise money to promote another government project, namely killing the Bomas Process and imposing a government Draft constitution on Kenyans plus getting the Kibaki government re-elected in 2007.
At any rate our ministers are so attached to their positions, what with the luxurious cars and benefit, that they would do anything to keep them. If that means their job is to protect the Anglo crooks, so be it. I almost fell off my chair with laughter when I read about Mr. Kulundu narrating to his constituents in a rather belated homecoming party how sad and stressed he was after Kibaki dissolved the cabinet
“Nilipitia kwa hali ngumu sana. Hata nilienda Mombasa nikifikiria ningepoa kidogo lakini ikabidi nitoke huko sababu ya mambo fulani iliokuwa ikinikabili tena wakati huo (I went through a hard time, I travelled to Mombasa with the hope of relaxing but left prematurely due to other pressing issues)”, (Kenya Times January 25, 2006).
www.timesnews.co.ke/25jan06/nwsstory/news5.html
It seems Kulundu could not fathom the thought of life without being in the cabinet. Pole sana Bwana waziri. Can anybody imagine this kind of a person standing up for anything that could jeopardize his cabinet position? Well we have thirty-five of them and more than forty assistant ministers.
Let’s get to the bottom of the matter.
John Githongo has finally unmasked the key Anglo suspects and those who have been protecting them for the last three years.
As everybody knows the chain of command on this heinous operation goes all the way to State House and to the big man himself. Githongo was clear in stating that President Kibaki knew what was going on with the Anglo Fleecing scam. He personally briefed him about it. Now what to do with the following?
1. President Mwai Kibaki
It is now public knowledge that that for almost two years, the president has known the most intimate details regarding the Anglo scam. He was fully briefed by John Githongo the PS for Governance and Ethics until he fled the country.
The president has known the individuals involved who happened to include his own Personal Assistant Alfred Gitonga and three of his closest political associates and cabinet ministers. To date the president has done nothing we know of to address this very grave matter while all the time preaching to Kenyans about the “commitment” of his government to fight corruption.
Alfred Gitonga is still President Kibaki’s Personal Assistant as we speak. Kiraitu Murungi, David Mwiraria, two of the key suspects are still President Kibaki’s key allies and bosom buddies in the cabinet. Worse still Kenyans are aware that President Kibaki practically abandoned his PS Mr. Githongo when the sharks of corruption threatened his life and forced him to flee the country.
Where does this leave us? Personally, I think it is too late to ask Kibaki to do anything about this cancer of corruption, which has impoverished millions of Kenyans for decades. We elected Kibaki specifically to fight corruption and now we know we made a huge mistake. I think it is unfair to ask the president to clean up the mess around him when we know he is fully stuck in the mud himself. It would be like asking the president to cut off his right hand to please his left hand. That can’t happen. We don’t want Mzee to bleed to death. Besides he is going to need both his hands.
I also think it is ridiculous to ask only the ministers named to step aside while investigations are being carried out. How about the president? Is he also going to step aside to allow investigations to go on without interference? Then who will run the country? His deputy? He is in the scam as well. Now you see where I am going with this.
The bottom line is that President Kibaki has no moral authority to govern the country for one more day. He has to go and the sooner the better. I know he is going to hang around and push his luck as far as he can, but he is on his way out. Kenyans cannot afford another government for the corrupt by the corrupt.
2. Justice Aaron Ringera.
This is the guy we pay 2 million bucks a month to fight corruption. I personally have never had any faith in Justice Ringera to do the job we hired him to do and I have said as much in the past, but now we have conclusive evidence that he is part of the problem and not the solution. I think this man should refund the money we have paid him and find another job, before we think of locking him up as well. Let me explain.
Mr. Ringera just like the president has known for the last year and a half all the intimate details of the Anglo scam. Last year he promised to complete the investigations on this scam and forward the files for prosecution. Almost a year later, Mr. Ringera finally went to the president according to media reports, to ask for his permission to question cabinet ministers involved in the scam. Why now? What happened in the last week or so to get Justice Ringera going? Well now we know. Justice Ringera was aware that John Githongo was soon to go public with his dossier on the Anglo file, so to pretend that something is being done from his end, Mr. Ringera hastily came up with his alleged plan to question people like Murungaru, Kiraitu, Mwiraria and Moody Awori whom he has known all along were implicated in the case. In other words Justice Ringera’s actions are not motivated by the need to protect public money and investigate corruption but rather to appear to be doing something when he is doing nothing. That in itself is a scam. And it gets worse.
When Ringera indicated he was going to grill the suspects in the Anglo scheme, he also announced he was summoning Moses Mudavadi and Chris Okemo both former cabinet ministers for grilling as well. We know Mudavadi and Okemo have not featured anywhere in the Githongo dossier and we have no evidence at all that they are involved with Anglo scam. So why are they being summoned? It appears to me that Justice Ringera apart from doing his Mickey Mouse “investigations” was also interested in doing political damage control for his masters. By involving Mudavadi and Okemo, Ringera wants to give the public the impression that it is not just the DP heavy weights who are being investigated for corruption, but also the ODM luminaries like Mudavadi. This is spreading the political risks involved so that corruption is perceived as an equal opportunity venture for Kenyan politicians. This is what we call political cover up and to the best of my knowledge that is not what we are paying Justice Ringera to do.
The other funny aspect of Ringera’s moves is that he announced that one of his strategies of dealing with the matter was to ask all the people he would be grilling to explain the source of their wealth. This may be alright, but it is certainly not the heart of the matter. What happens if say Murungaru has perfect explanation on how he got his wealth? Does that mean he is innocent? Shouldn’t Justice Ringera be more concerned about the details of the Anglo scam? Like the paper trail, the money transfers, who authorized what deal and when. My sense is that by reducing this matter to merely people explaining their wealth, something Justice Ringera may want all cabinet ministers to do anyway, the KACC top honcho is once again minimizing the damage that this matter could do to his political masters.
Lets not forget also that in his dossier, Githongo also mentioned that Justice Ringera told him clearly that he (Justice Ringera) would not touch any corruption investigation that leads to the president himself. May be that explains why he had to go to the president to ask for permission to do the job we are already paying him to do. My conclusion is obvious. If we are going to seriously fight corruption we cannot afford to give the task to people who are beholden to the same corrupt elements we want to root. Let’s get rid of this fella as quick as we can. Like I have said many times, it a bad policy and straight up self defeating to give the fox the duties of guarding the chicken house. This can be very dangerous to the chicken.
3. The cabinet:
The bloated Kibaki cabinet is a big embarrassment to all Kenyans. Now is the time for them to show a little empathy with the Kenyan public that they often despise. Please do us a favour and tell the suspects that you have no obligation to protect them under the guise of collective responsibility. Let everybody carry their cross.
I am not naïve enough as to ask those in the cabinet with any conscience to render their resignation to the president. I know some of you begged and cried not to mention the endless tantrums you had to go through to get those jobs and the big cars. Keep your jobs and let Kenyans decide what to do with you when the times comes, but rest assured that being in the Kibaki cabinet may not be the ticket to paradise you thought it was. It may very well be the ticket to the unemployment line come 2007, or is it sooner. We await you eagerly.
4. Parliament.
The move by the ODM to ask parliament to establish a Parliamentary Select Committee to investigate the matter is timely and is the right thing to do, but there are pitfalls. Just remember what happened to the Parliamentary Select Committee set up to investigate Ouko’s murder. It turned into a fiasco and the Kibaki government has basically pissed on the findings and nobody seems to be bothered at all. A Select Committee can easily be politicized to dilute its findings and turn it into a political contest. My advice to those who want to set up this committee is that be careful what you ask for.
The bigger role for parliament in my view is to tuff out the Kibaki government. It is going to be very tough. There is a reason Kibaki has close to eighty MPs in his cabinet. It is his insurance against possible vote of no confidence. And remember the president has practically ordered all his cabinet to be in parliament at all times. We all know why that is necessary. It has nothing to do with serving the public. It is about protecting the president. Besides MPs come cheap to those with money even though the Kenyan taxpayer is coughing out a fortune to pay their salaries and benefits. Conclusion? Nothing much is going to come out of parliament. Which leads me to my final conclusion.
The battle against corruption and bad governance is squarely in the hands of the Kenyan voters. It is time to kick some butt once again. It will be done.
By the way what do we do now with the Goldenberg report which we have been told for the umpteenth time is about to be released? We have spent a fortune on the inquiry and now it turns out those who were doing the investigations actually belong in the dock as well. How sad. Yap, it is going to get very interesting and very murky.
As for John Githongo, the big fella has done us proud once again. With patriots like this our country will be just fine. Hang in there. The nation needs you and thank you very much.
One more thing. I am sure Musikari Kombo must be rubbing his hands with glee right now. Finally his chance to become the Vice President looks very hopeful. Look for Ford- Kenya to start pulling tantrums, threatening to quit the government unless Kibaki fires the suspects and appoints Kombo his deputy. The nation is watching.
The writer is a human rights activist.
A month and half ago there was a big scramble as to who will be reappointed to the new Kibaki cabinet after the president dissolved his pre-referendum cabinet. Many hoped, in vain as it turned out, that the president after suffering such a humiliating and predictable defeat in his effort to invent a constitution for himself and his friends would see some light and tuff out the political incompetents and paper tigers who promised him a victory that became an illusion and a huge embarrassment to himself and his regime.
Instead, Kibaki rewarded the losers and thumbed his nose on close to the 60% of the population who rejected his bogus constitution. Today representatives from most of the communities who rejected the Wako Constitution are nowhere in the Kibaki cabinet. In fact even civil servants, particularly chiefs who have been fingered by political “heavy weights” surrounding the president are being fired to be replaced by those who will in future support whatever project Kibaki and his cohorts cook up. I think with the Githongo revelation Kenyans are beginning to confirm their worst fears as to why the president is married for life to some of the rogue elements in his inner circle who have done so much damage to our country and to his regime as well as whatever legacy he may have. I’ll come back to that shortly.
Sometime back Raila Odinga then a Minister for Roads and Public Works lamented about how ashamed he was to be in the Kibaki cabinet. He was speaking soon after government police opened fire and killed innocent Kenyans whose only crime was to attend rallies in support of the ODM that opposed the Kibaki/Wako Draft Constitution. Raila was laughed out of town by those who felt that he should have resigned if he was that much ashamed of being in the cabinet. Some of the same big mouths that denounced Raila then are the ones who today have been fingered as the architects and/or protectors of the Anglo thieves. I am sure most of the members of the Kibaki cabinet are very proud and honoured to be serving among such distinguished crooks. In fact if the reports we have been receiving are anything to go by, a good number of them are planning to offer blanket defense of the same crooks under the guise of promoting collective responsibility in the cabinet.
My understanding is that if the Anglo rip off of public funds is not a collective undertaking by the cabinet, then the same cabinet has no business offering collective protection to the crooks involved. But then again I may be wrong. May be Anglo Fleecing was and still is a government project. After all we have been told the project was meant to help raise money to promote another government project, namely killing the Bomas Process and imposing a government Draft constitution on Kenyans plus getting the Kibaki government re-elected in 2007.
At any rate our ministers are so attached to their positions, what with the luxurious cars and benefit, that they would do anything to keep them. If that means their job is to protect the Anglo crooks, so be it. I almost fell off my chair with laughter when I read about Mr. Kulundu narrating to his constituents in a rather belated homecoming party how sad and stressed he was after Kibaki dissolved the cabinet
“Nilipitia kwa hali ngumu sana. Hata nilienda Mombasa nikifikiria ningepoa kidogo lakini ikabidi nitoke huko sababu ya mambo fulani iliokuwa ikinikabili tena wakati huo (I went through a hard time, I travelled to Mombasa with the hope of relaxing but left prematurely due to other pressing issues)”, (Kenya Times January 25, 2006).
www.timesnews.co.ke/25jan06/nwsstory/news5.html
It seems Kulundu could not fathom the thought of life without being in the cabinet. Pole sana Bwana waziri. Can anybody imagine this kind of a person standing up for anything that could jeopardize his cabinet position? Well we have thirty-five of them and more than forty assistant ministers.
Let’s get to the bottom of the matter.
John Githongo has finally unmasked the key Anglo suspects and those who have been protecting them for the last three years.
As everybody knows the chain of command on this heinous operation goes all the way to State House and to the big man himself. Githongo was clear in stating that President Kibaki knew what was going on with the Anglo Fleecing scam. He personally briefed him about it. Now what to do with the following?
1. President Mwai Kibaki
It is now public knowledge that that for almost two years, the president has known the most intimate details regarding the Anglo scam. He was fully briefed by John Githongo the PS for Governance and Ethics until he fled the country.
The president has known the individuals involved who happened to include his own Personal Assistant Alfred Gitonga and three of his closest political associates and cabinet ministers. To date the president has done nothing we know of to address this very grave matter while all the time preaching to Kenyans about the “commitment” of his government to fight corruption.
Alfred Gitonga is still President Kibaki’s Personal Assistant as we speak. Kiraitu Murungi, David Mwiraria, two of the key suspects are still President Kibaki’s key allies and bosom buddies in the cabinet. Worse still Kenyans are aware that President Kibaki practically abandoned his PS Mr. Githongo when the sharks of corruption threatened his life and forced him to flee the country.
Where does this leave us? Personally, I think it is too late to ask Kibaki to do anything about this cancer of corruption, which has impoverished millions of Kenyans for decades. We elected Kibaki specifically to fight corruption and now we know we made a huge mistake. I think it is unfair to ask the president to clean up the mess around him when we know he is fully stuck in the mud himself. It would be like asking the president to cut off his right hand to please his left hand. That can’t happen. We don’t want Mzee to bleed to death. Besides he is going to need both his hands.
I also think it is ridiculous to ask only the ministers named to step aside while investigations are being carried out. How about the president? Is he also going to step aside to allow investigations to go on without interference? Then who will run the country? His deputy? He is in the scam as well. Now you see where I am going with this.
The bottom line is that President Kibaki has no moral authority to govern the country for one more day. He has to go and the sooner the better. I know he is going to hang around and push his luck as far as he can, but he is on his way out. Kenyans cannot afford another government for the corrupt by the corrupt.
2. Justice Aaron Ringera.
This is the guy we pay 2 million bucks a month to fight corruption. I personally have never had any faith in Justice Ringera to do the job we hired him to do and I have said as much in the past, but now we have conclusive evidence that he is part of the problem and not the solution. I think this man should refund the money we have paid him and find another job, before we think of locking him up as well. Let me explain.
Mr. Ringera just like the president has known for the last year and a half all the intimate details of the Anglo scam. Last year he promised to complete the investigations on this scam and forward the files for prosecution. Almost a year later, Mr. Ringera finally went to the president according to media reports, to ask for his permission to question cabinet ministers involved in the scam. Why now? What happened in the last week or so to get Justice Ringera going? Well now we know. Justice Ringera was aware that John Githongo was soon to go public with his dossier on the Anglo file, so to pretend that something is being done from his end, Mr. Ringera hastily came up with his alleged plan to question people like Murungaru, Kiraitu, Mwiraria and Moody Awori whom he has known all along were implicated in the case. In other words Justice Ringera’s actions are not motivated by the need to protect public money and investigate corruption but rather to appear to be doing something when he is doing nothing. That in itself is a scam. And it gets worse.
When Ringera indicated he was going to grill the suspects in the Anglo scheme, he also announced he was summoning Moses Mudavadi and Chris Okemo both former cabinet ministers for grilling as well. We know Mudavadi and Okemo have not featured anywhere in the Githongo dossier and we have no evidence at all that they are involved with Anglo scam. So why are they being summoned? It appears to me that Justice Ringera apart from doing his Mickey Mouse “investigations” was also interested in doing political damage control for his masters. By involving Mudavadi and Okemo, Ringera wants to give the public the impression that it is not just the DP heavy weights who are being investigated for corruption, but also the ODM luminaries like Mudavadi. This is spreading the political risks involved so that corruption is perceived as an equal opportunity venture for Kenyan politicians. This is what we call political cover up and to the best of my knowledge that is not what we are paying Justice Ringera to do.
The other funny aspect of Ringera’s moves is that he announced that one of his strategies of dealing with the matter was to ask all the people he would be grilling to explain the source of their wealth. This may be alright, but it is certainly not the heart of the matter. What happens if say Murungaru has perfect explanation on how he got his wealth? Does that mean he is innocent? Shouldn’t Justice Ringera be more concerned about the details of the Anglo scam? Like the paper trail, the money transfers, who authorized what deal and when. My sense is that by reducing this matter to merely people explaining their wealth, something Justice Ringera may want all cabinet ministers to do anyway, the KACC top honcho is once again minimizing the damage that this matter could do to his political masters.
Lets not forget also that in his dossier, Githongo also mentioned that Justice Ringera told him clearly that he (Justice Ringera) would not touch any corruption investigation that leads to the president himself. May be that explains why he had to go to the president to ask for permission to do the job we are already paying him to do. My conclusion is obvious. If we are going to seriously fight corruption we cannot afford to give the task to people who are beholden to the same corrupt elements we want to root. Let’s get rid of this fella as quick as we can. Like I have said many times, it a bad policy and straight up self defeating to give the fox the duties of guarding the chicken house. This can be very dangerous to the chicken.
3. The cabinet:
The bloated Kibaki cabinet is a big embarrassment to all Kenyans. Now is the time for them to show a little empathy with the Kenyan public that they often despise. Please do us a favour and tell the suspects that you have no obligation to protect them under the guise of collective responsibility. Let everybody carry their cross.
I am not naïve enough as to ask those in the cabinet with any conscience to render their resignation to the president. I know some of you begged and cried not to mention the endless tantrums you had to go through to get those jobs and the big cars. Keep your jobs and let Kenyans decide what to do with you when the times comes, but rest assured that being in the Kibaki cabinet may not be the ticket to paradise you thought it was. It may very well be the ticket to the unemployment line come 2007, or is it sooner. We await you eagerly.
4. Parliament.
The move by the ODM to ask parliament to establish a Parliamentary Select Committee to investigate the matter is timely and is the right thing to do, but there are pitfalls. Just remember what happened to the Parliamentary Select Committee set up to investigate Ouko’s murder. It turned into a fiasco and the Kibaki government has basically pissed on the findings and nobody seems to be bothered at all. A Select Committee can easily be politicized to dilute its findings and turn it into a political contest. My advice to those who want to set up this committee is that be careful what you ask for.
The bigger role for parliament in my view is to tuff out the Kibaki government. It is going to be very tough. There is a reason Kibaki has close to eighty MPs in his cabinet. It is his insurance against possible vote of no confidence. And remember the president has practically ordered all his cabinet to be in parliament at all times. We all know why that is necessary. It has nothing to do with serving the public. It is about protecting the president. Besides MPs come cheap to those with money even though the Kenyan taxpayer is coughing out a fortune to pay their salaries and benefits. Conclusion? Nothing much is going to come out of parliament. Which leads me to my final conclusion.
The battle against corruption and bad governance is squarely in the hands of the Kenyan voters. It is time to kick some butt once again. It will be done.
By the way what do we do now with the Goldenberg report which we have been told for the umpteenth time is about to be released? We have spent a fortune on the inquiry and now it turns out those who were doing the investigations actually belong in the dock as well. How sad. Yap, it is going to get very interesting and very murky.
As for John Githongo, the big fella has done us proud once again. With patriots like this our country will be just fine. Hang in there. The nation needs you and thank you very much.
One more thing. I am sure Musikari Kombo must be rubbing his hands with glee right now. Finally his chance to become the Vice President looks very hopeful. Look for Ford- Kenya to start pulling tantrums, threatening to quit the government unless Kibaki fires the suspects and appoints Kombo his deputy. The nation is watching.
The writer is a human rights activist.