Post by jakaswanga on Nov 23, 2014 20:27:59 GMT 3
MCA's: THE NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK: THE NEXT NECKS ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK.
We will remember Old Rome and her perennial power struggles featuring the people, the nobility (organised in the senate), and the royal family of the emperor –-Caesar or Dictator. It remains a classically bloody tale of a war-mongering, slave-holding state, a high-taxation racket and dis-industrialisation. Proximity to state power –--even by clientelism-- was a fast-track to accumulation. Sycophancy and cronysm run amok, but so too, did murder as a political instrument of conflict mediation or resolution. The constitution of the republic somewhat anchored the separation of powers, but real political practice paid only lip service to the ideal: a stalemate that produced a blackmarket for nefarious skills.
This precarious, inherently unstably situation, meant onflict had to be resolved otherwise, chiefly by murder. The bloody gladiatorial spectacles that served to entertain in the big arenas, were merely dramatised political reality. The acceptance of murder as the chief tool in political practice.
With that Roman political economy in mind, let me begin my story.
The state in Kenya remains the chief economic motor. Proximity to state power, gives a vantage point to tap tax-payer cash, enrich oneself by the usual 'constructions' like insider tenderpreneural dealings, brokerage, patronage and other forms of corruptible state largesse. The state is the author of cash, either as collected taxes, extra expropriation through uncompensated inflation, negotiated foreign and local loans (billed exorbitantly on the public), or as fictitiously created liquidity as in the policy of quantitative easing –-monetary growth.
In Kenya therefore, whether you are a pretender entrepreneur from the billionare first family of the Kenyatta's, your lineage of accumulation when subjected to pinpoint accounting, is nothing but state loot. Whether you are from the super-rich Arap-Moi dynasty, your accounting is still a tax-payer parasite of over two decades of looting impunity. Ex-president Mwai Kibaki too, for all his reputed economic brilliance like the mathematical acumen of George Saitoti, is a zero quantity in business genius, but an ordinary state bandit: a Mobutist kleptocrat. And to boot, if one delves into the details of mega scams like Anglo-leasing and Goldenberg, then even the top Indian multi-billionare moguls of Kenya, operating discretely in the shadows, are nothing but sucking probosces anchored parasitically to the treasury, sucking the tax-payer dry.
That is the short of the political economy of our paradise in the tropics.
(Read: Economics Intelligence Kenya: who is who and how they made their money. Used to be a French publication].
ENTER DEVOLUTION.
Now, a seismic event happened in the republic of [Kenya] in Rome. DEVOLUTION. The provinces achieved incremental leverage over the centre. This means would-be lowly provincial vassals, mini prefects and their local thugs and concubines, are catapulted to a RELATIVELY vantage position vis-a-vis state cash-flow; a position which, in b6k speak, places their trunks within dipping distance of the feeding trough. Yes, ticks perched at the jugular, tapping oxygenated blood routed to the brains.
That feeding trough is called PESA MASHINANI.
But the public, in the know, have dubbed it PESA MASHIMONI. On a second reading, one will notice the public wit in capturing the spirit of the times. The increased number of concubines the overwhelmingly male MCA's have amassed and are keeping at hitherto unreachable financial standards, and all within two years of devolution, is the humorous sting in the MASHIMONI quip.
Holes for cash! Na hazitoshi! Omera!
In Africa, like elsewhere, apparently one of the male trappings of arrived cash, is the acquisition of beauties, and the launching of a private harem. The better if one is not footing the bill himself. A private harem boasting ''women with'' is a universally fancied status symbol as Otishotish will testify for himself. Men are not interested in Prados or any big car for that matter, it is the ease with which the driver of a sleek car, or the beast in case of Obama, picks up a cun-nt that does the running. (Just that the ladies reading this do not get any wrong ideas, like men love cars. No, dear ladies, men love you women. But you women love cars! So a man has no choice!)
Graft comes in many forms. Some you can call entertainment allowance, or sitting allowance –-like the case of the CJ Mutunga and his much publicised JSC buttocks scam, but it is all PESA MASHIMONI. Looting the state, ripping off the tax-payer.
Well, Pesa Mashinani –-or Majimboism by other words, has transformed MCA's into a controlling –-budgetary-- authority. And, ganging up, they have realised the governor is a constitutional paper-tiger who, if he resists their scamming stratagems, can be intimidated to do their bidding, otherwise overthrown in a vote of no confidence. And Their Excellency's the Governors, have smelled the coffee. The county administrations have graduated into epicentres of graft. Nairobi copyrighted.
That is how you get such white elephants like the infamous –-Otishotish's--- ''tarram'' road built by Machakos's maendeleo chapchap guy.
This Roman power coup midwifed by devolution, has placed MCA's in total control of the county budgets, and, learning quick, they have mutated into what Digital Onyango Oloo famously called TENDERPRENEURSHIP. This tenderpreneurship is state economics. Tax payer paid up, just like the prosperity of college principals too is, as a function of the not-too-transparent fee structure.
THE RULE RATHER THAN THE EXCEPTION.
No hassle, permanent secretaries from Kenyatta to Moi to Kenyatta II regimes, have always formed proxy companies to award themselves or broker state tenders, and at inflated rates. –-The recent saga of printing Kenya currency being a minor example. The supply of several submarines to the Kenyan navy under Daniel Arap Moi –-by two Kenyan engineering firms, being another one. –-Of course we all know the Kenyan Navy has not graduated to doing submarine warfare, but well, may be there were meant as trainer-subs, in which case they were rounded metal drums, the elongated types usually mounted on road trailers transporting crude. But that is another story.
The idea here, is that ripping the taxpayer through graft schemes, one more loony than the other, has been institutionalised in Nairobi, and with devolution, logically devolved to the counties. And just as tender/cash wars marked some of the greatest political dramas in Nairobi, leading even to deaths, so too are the counties hot at war.
KISUMU PACHO
NB: These tender/graft wars led to the dissolution of the Kisumu county assembly by the then speaker Anna Adul. She was allied to governor Ranguma, and there has been a lot of back and forth with some garbage-clearing company called Madame-R. The MCA's of course laughed Adul off, called an assembly, replaced her as the speaker, and threatened her with prosecution for the monies she has allegedly misappropriated via exorbitant trips abroad. Madame Anna then ran to court to have injunction after injunction filed, barring her prosecution and eviction from both seat of speaker and related accommodation at the posh Mlimani estate in Kisumu! The courts granted her wish!
It is soap yes, but remember the governor of the central bank, professor Njuguna Ndung'u, is sitting pretty even after the evidence has been amassed to sustain a conviction on fraud/theft! How is he doing it? Ask lawyers and corrupt Judges running bent benches! –-Injunctions on Tobiko: thou shall not prosecute Njuguna! And you, his Excellency Muigai, shall not fire the thief neither!
As it happens in Nairobi, it happens in the counties.
www.nation.co.ke/counties/kisumu/Speaker-Ann-Adul-reconvenes-House/-/1954182/2515786/-/view/printVersion/-/12vmb7tz/-/index.html
In fact, a court in Kisumu even managed to rule that the vote of no-confidence passed by the MCA's had violated her civil rights, and therefore she could sue them! That is she has job guarantee: vote of no confidence my foot! loosing elections my arrrse!
NB: I should be contacting professor Lumumba PLO for a lecture on which legal philosophy these courts are running. I really think they are ''bandia'', mercenary. They leave us with only method of getting rid of public deadwood: assassination. As in Old Rome, murder.
A public official wont resign, neither be impeached, nor be sacked? Neither by voters nor peers, nor decency? What does history say? Murder. Murder is an effective tool enforcing permanent resignation.
TENDERPRENEURSHIP
In Siaya, the ancestral home of OO the proprietor of Jukwaa, MCA's own by cute constructions, all the construction companies tendered to the county. They are doing water-lines, road excavations, market constructions, chief's camp upgrades and school buildings. Polygamy too is back full swing in cute constructions, so that MCA's concubines can top up the mandatory quarter of business reserved for females. That means a gridlock on county resources by the administrators and their cronies, a system which can be typified as the construction of a cartel to effect a monopoly.
And then the tenders are inflated by the standard 30% rate, just like Isack Hassan and James Oswago of the IEBC are caught to have done with theirs. They ate 30% chicken, the story goes.
www.businessdailyafrica.com/Smith-and-Ouzam-bribes/-/539546/2525730/-/format/xhtml/-/5gk5dhz/-/index.html
ntv.nation.co.ke/news2/topheadlines/chickenscandal-who-ate-the-chicken-iebcs-ksh-49-3-million-corruption-disgrace/
NB: check the ''chicken rate'' in your county! And let us compare notes. Amen.
To be continued.
We will remember Old Rome and her perennial power struggles featuring the people, the nobility (organised in the senate), and the royal family of the emperor –-Caesar or Dictator. It remains a classically bloody tale of a war-mongering, slave-holding state, a high-taxation racket and dis-industrialisation. Proximity to state power –--even by clientelism-- was a fast-track to accumulation. Sycophancy and cronysm run amok, but so too, did murder as a political instrument of conflict mediation or resolution. The constitution of the republic somewhat anchored the separation of powers, but real political practice paid only lip service to the ideal: a stalemate that produced a blackmarket for nefarious skills.
This precarious, inherently unstably situation, meant onflict had to be resolved otherwise, chiefly by murder. The bloody gladiatorial spectacles that served to entertain in the big arenas, were merely dramatised political reality. The acceptance of murder as the chief tool in political practice.
With that Roman political economy in mind, let me begin my story.
The state in Kenya remains the chief economic motor. Proximity to state power, gives a vantage point to tap tax-payer cash, enrich oneself by the usual 'constructions' like insider tenderpreneural dealings, brokerage, patronage and other forms of corruptible state largesse. The state is the author of cash, either as collected taxes, extra expropriation through uncompensated inflation, negotiated foreign and local loans (billed exorbitantly on the public), or as fictitiously created liquidity as in the policy of quantitative easing –-monetary growth.
In Kenya therefore, whether you are a pretender entrepreneur from the billionare first family of the Kenyatta's, your lineage of accumulation when subjected to pinpoint accounting, is nothing but state loot. Whether you are from the super-rich Arap-Moi dynasty, your accounting is still a tax-payer parasite of over two decades of looting impunity. Ex-president Mwai Kibaki too, for all his reputed economic brilliance like the mathematical acumen of George Saitoti, is a zero quantity in business genius, but an ordinary state bandit: a Mobutist kleptocrat. And to boot, if one delves into the details of mega scams like Anglo-leasing and Goldenberg, then even the top Indian multi-billionare moguls of Kenya, operating discretely in the shadows, are nothing but sucking probosces anchored parasitically to the treasury, sucking the tax-payer dry.
That is the short of the political economy of our paradise in the tropics.
(Read: Economics Intelligence Kenya: who is who and how they made their money. Used to be a French publication].
ENTER DEVOLUTION.
Now, a seismic event happened in the republic of [
That feeding trough is called PESA MASHINANI.
But the public, in the know, have dubbed it PESA MASHIMONI. On a second reading, one will notice the public wit in capturing the spirit of the times. The increased number of concubines the overwhelmingly male MCA's have amassed and are keeping at hitherto unreachable financial standards, and all within two years of devolution, is the humorous sting in the MASHIMONI quip.
Holes for cash! Na hazitoshi! Omera!
In Africa, like elsewhere, apparently one of the male trappings of arrived cash, is the acquisition of beauties, and the launching of a private harem. The better if one is not footing the bill himself. A private harem boasting ''women with'' is a universally fancied status symbol as Otishotish will testify for himself. Men are not interested in Prados or any big car for that matter, it is the ease with which the driver of a sleek car, or the beast in case of Obama, picks up a cun-nt that does the running. (Just that the ladies reading this do not get any wrong ideas, like men love cars. No, dear ladies, men love you women. But you women love cars! So a man has no choice!)
Graft comes in many forms. Some you can call entertainment allowance, or sitting allowance –-like the case of the CJ Mutunga and his much publicised JSC buttocks scam, but it is all PESA MASHIMONI. Looting the state, ripping off the tax-payer.
Well, Pesa Mashinani –-or Majimboism by other words, has transformed MCA's into a controlling –-budgetary-- authority. And, ganging up, they have realised the governor is a constitutional paper-tiger who, if he resists their scamming stratagems, can be intimidated to do their bidding, otherwise overthrown in a vote of no confidence. And Their Excellency's the Governors, have smelled the coffee. The county administrations have graduated into epicentres of graft. Nairobi copyrighted.
That is how you get such white elephants like the infamous –-Otishotish's--- ''tarram'' road built by Machakos's maendeleo chapchap guy.
This Roman power coup midwifed by devolution, has placed MCA's in total control of the county budgets, and, learning quick, they have mutated into what Digital Onyango Oloo famously called TENDERPRENEURSHIP. This tenderpreneurship is state economics. Tax payer paid up, just like the prosperity of college principals too is, as a function of the not-too-transparent fee structure.
THE RULE RATHER THAN THE EXCEPTION.
No hassle, permanent secretaries from Kenyatta to Moi to Kenyatta II regimes, have always formed proxy companies to award themselves or broker state tenders, and at inflated rates. –-The recent saga of printing Kenya currency being a minor example. The supply of several submarines to the Kenyan navy under Daniel Arap Moi –-by two Kenyan engineering firms, being another one. –-Of course we all know the Kenyan Navy has not graduated to doing submarine warfare, but well, may be there were meant as trainer-subs, in which case they were rounded metal drums, the elongated types usually mounted on road trailers transporting crude. But that is another story.
The idea here, is that ripping the taxpayer through graft schemes, one more loony than the other, has been institutionalised in Nairobi, and with devolution, logically devolved to the counties. And just as tender/cash wars marked some of the greatest political dramas in Nairobi, leading even to deaths, so too are the counties hot at war.
KISUMU PACHO
NB: These tender/graft wars led to the dissolution of the Kisumu county assembly by the then speaker Anna Adul. She was allied to governor Ranguma, and there has been a lot of back and forth with some garbage-clearing company called Madame-R. The MCA's of course laughed Adul off, called an assembly, replaced her as the speaker, and threatened her with prosecution for the monies she has allegedly misappropriated via exorbitant trips abroad. Madame Anna then ran to court to have injunction after injunction filed, barring her prosecution and eviction from both seat of speaker and related accommodation at the posh Mlimani estate in Kisumu! The courts granted her wish!
Kisumu county speaker Anne Adul impeached over frequent wrangles in the assembly
Added on October 22nd, 2014
Kisumu county speaker Anne Adul has been impeached in what seems to be a continuation of wrangles in the assembly. The MCA’s chose to suspend a debate on the county’s finance bill in order to make sure that Anne Adul was thrown out. In an impeachment motion moved by West Nyakach ward representative James Omollo, Adul was removed on seven grounds including allegations of abuse of office and lack of integrity for having blocked an investigative report by public investments committee (PIC) and public accounts committee (PAC) at county level that the MCA’s claim implicate her and the county assembly service board in corrupt activities. The MCAs also accuse Mrs. Adul of recklessly abandoning the assembly while on session without any formal adjournment.
Added on October 22nd, 2014
Kisumu county speaker Anne Adul has been impeached in what seems to be a continuation of wrangles in the assembly. The MCA’s chose to suspend a debate on the county’s finance bill in order to make sure that Anne Adul was thrown out. In an impeachment motion moved by West Nyakach ward representative James Omollo, Adul was removed on seven grounds including allegations of abuse of office and lack of integrity for having blocked an investigative report by public investments committee (PIC) and public accounts committee (PAC) at county level that the MCA’s claim implicate her and the county assembly service board in corrupt activities. The MCAs also accuse Mrs. Adul of recklessly abandoning the assembly while on session without any formal adjournment.
It is soap yes, but remember the governor of the central bank, professor Njuguna Ndung'u, is sitting pretty even after the evidence has been amassed to sustain a conviction on fraud/theft! How is he doing it? Ask lawyers and corrupt Judges running bent benches! –-Injunctions on Tobiko: thou shall not prosecute Njuguna! And you, his Excellency Muigai, shall not fire the thief neither!
As it happens in Nairobi, it happens in the counties.
www.nation.co.ke/counties/kisumu/Speaker-Ann-Adul-reconvenes-House/-/1954182/2515786/-/view/printVersion/-/12vmb7tz/-/index.html
Ms Adul was impeached by Assembly members last month over claims of gross misconduct before the High Court in Kisumu issued orders reinstating her pending the determination of her case.
NB: I should be contacting professor Lumumba PLO for a lecture on which legal philosophy these courts are running. I really think they are ''bandia'', mercenary. They leave us with only method of getting rid of public deadwood: assassination. As in Old Rome, murder.
A public official wont resign, neither be impeached, nor be sacked? Neither by voters nor peers, nor decency? What does history say? Murder. Murder is an effective tool enforcing permanent resignation.
TENDERPRENEURSHIP
In Siaya, the ancestral home of OO the proprietor of Jukwaa, MCA's own by cute constructions, all the construction companies tendered to the county. They are doing water-lines, road excavations, market constructions, chief's camp upgrades and school buildings. Polygamy too is back full swing in cute constructions, so that MCA's concubines can top up the mandatory quarter of business reserved for females. That means a gridlock on county resources by the administrators and their cronies, a system which can be typified as the construction of a cartel to effect a monopoly.
And then the tenders are inflated by the standard 30% rate, just like Isack Hassan and James Oswago of the IEBC are caught to have done with theirs. They ate 30% chicken, the story goes.
www.businessdailyafrica.com/Smith-and-Ouzam-bribes/-/539546/2525730/-/format/xhtml/-/5gk5dhz/-/index.html
Prosecutor, suspects spar over ‘chicken’ dished out to officials
By VICTOR JUMA. Posted Monday, November 17 2014 at 19:40
In Summary
Three-part exclusive report reveals anatomy of bribery ring that took cash payments from security printer.
Inside Kenya’s well-documented mega corruption industry, illegal payments to public officials — be they traffic policemen on the road or members of multi-billion-shilling tender committees — are commonly known as chai (tea) or kitu kidogo (something small).
Related Stories
UK court exposes bribery at Kenya’s poll agency
How local agent helped British firm deliver bribes
But that seems to have been stale or too familiar for the comfort of the UK printing firm Smith and Ouzman’s top management who decided to give it a new name, injecting hilarity into the serious matter of corruption that is before a London court.
‘Chicken’ is the name they gave the millions of shillings that the UK prosecutors accuse them of paying Kenyan election officials to influence the award of printing contracts at the centre of the corruption case.
By VICTOR JUMA. Posted Monday, November 17 2014 at 19:40
In Summary
Three-part exclusive report reveals anatomy of bribery ring that took cash payments from security printer.
Inside Kenya’s well-documented mega corruption industry, illegal payments to public officials — be they traffic policemen on the road or members of multi-billion-shilling tender committees — are commonly known as chai (tea) or kitu kidogo (something small).
Related Stories
UK court exposes bribery at Kenya’s poll agency
How local agent helped British firm deliver bribes
But that seems to have been stale or too familiar for the comfort of the UK printing firm Smith and Ouzman’s top management who decided to give it a new name, injecting hilarity into the serious matter of corruption that is before a London court.
‘Chicken’ is the name they gave the millions of shillings that the UK prosecutors accuse them of paying Kenyan election officials to influence the award of printing contracts at the centre of the corruption case.
ntv.nation.co.ke/news2/topheadlines/chickenscandal-who-ate-the-chicken-iebcs-ksh-49-3-million-corruption-disgrace/
NB: check the ''chicken rate'' in your county! And let us compare notes. Amen.
To be continued.