Post by Onyango Oloo on Oct 1, 2005 14:30:50 GMT 3
To the Five Musketeers of NAK: A Message to Nyachae, Karume, Michuki, Mirugi and Kiraitu
A Jeremiad from Onyango Oloo in Canada
PART ONE
Dear Ministers Spearheading the Yes Onslaught:
I have chosen to write to the five of you because I figure that of all the members of the Yes team, you have been at the forefront of wielding state power in pursuance of your referendum objectives.
You are also the five most odious, the five most arrogant and five ministers who are most likely headed for a fall mightier than Humpty Dumpty within the next two years.
I also ID you as the five ministers most likely giving President Kibaki the most misleading advice.
In summary I want to plead with the five of you to immediately practice some humility and remember that you are mere human beings and not the chest-thumping demi-gods you have deluded yourself to be.
Of your number, I have sat down to lunch with one of you; spent hours at one hotel lobby in southern Ontario with another one of you, said habari in passing at Bomas of Kenya to a third one and narrowly missed meeting another of you when you were passing through my adopted home city of Montreal.
Through you I want to direct a message to your like-minded colleagues in the Banana Contingent to sober up and contemplate seriously how perilously close your reckless statements have brought Kenya to the precipice of an outright national conflagration.
It is possible that at least two of you are already familiar with my blunt plain speaking style that is guided by a sincere desire to communicate clearly and directly.
Before I address you NAK quintuplets, I would like to pose a broader question to your boss, His Excellency the President, Hon. Mwai Kibaki, MP (Othaya) who oversees a cabinet that is right now split down the middle because of the abject failure of the NARC regime to deliver a democratic constitution within the first one hundred days as the ruling coalition had pledged when they were seeking the votes from the Kenyan people in 2002.
My broad question is this:
Does the Kibaki government have a Code of Ethics governing the conduct of its leading officials in the cabinet, public administration and diplomatic service?
If so, when is this code of ethics applied?
Why do I ask?
Several reasons.
You have one of your colleagues- Dr. Chris Murungaru who has been tainted by scandal allegation after scandal allegation.
Some people have linked him to Anglo-Leasing; some have alleged that he is a notorious drug dealer.
The British government has banned him from traveling to or through their country for what they consider is questionable conduct.
In the court of Kenyan public opinion, the wananchi are near unanimous that he should step aside from the cabinet because he is clearly a liability to the Kenyan government.
Yet he not only continues to serve in the government, but engage in reckless and near racist political hooliganism in his own constituency and does this with impunity- going as far as threatening the arrest of his cabinet colleague who is exercising his democratic rights by campaigning against the Wako Draft.
Then you have the most prominent Kenyan diplomat in the most high profile diplomatic appointment abroad embroiled in a lurid sex scandal that started with accusations of rape and now includes a direct admission of adultery and inappropriate conduct between a superior and his diplomatic junior.
Yet this ambassador who was reportedly recalled two weeks ago is still defiantly swaggering at his Washington post claiming in an interview with a London based Kenyan gossip rag that he is the victim of a power struggle between Kikuyus, Luos and Luhyas- and especially the latter who are determined to “finish him” because he is a rising star tapped to become the next Permanent Secretary in the Foreign Affairs ministry and a possible replacement for Francis Muthaura as Head of the Civil Service. (see www.jambomagazine.com/?pageid=51875 and Standard, October 1, 2005).
According to all reports of the alleged incident, including the ambassador’s own version, a Kenyan woman fled from her own home to her neighbour's apartment where her jirani promptly called the police after an initial allegation of sexual assault.
Despite the later retraction of the rape claims by the woman in question (so we are told by a New York scandal sheet and its London Kenyan variant-some of us are waiting to hear from her directly) and the stonewalling by the ambassador himself, the fact remains that none of us would be discussing the truth or veracity of these allegations if the ambassador was not in this Kenyan woman’s house late at night in a position that can only be described as sexually compromising no matter which version you believe.
At the very minimum, questions of sexual impropriety cloud the conduct of the senior diplomat who is married with children and yet airily admitted that he has been having an ongoing extramarital affair with a subordinate for at least ten years!
Is the Kenyan government not aware that a leading cause of security breaches in the diplomatic service the world over is having an envoy who is at a risk of political and criminal blackmail because of even the mere imputation of alcoholism, adultery, gambling and other social habits that are not really compatible with the proper deportment and decorum of a senior diplomatic representative of a sovereign government in a foreign setting?
Some of us have been shocked to see official community representatives of Kenyans resident in the United States rush to the defence of the embattled and besieged envoy- and doing so after their own non-profit associations fired off letters of concern to none other than President Kibaki himself over this embarrassing incident that serves as a pointer to the rampant sexual exploitation of Kenyan women by accredited Kenyan diplomatic personnel in many overseas postings.
Two years ago Mr Aaron Ringera led a major sweep of the judiciary that resulted in the removal of many judges on corruption allegations- never mind that in this pogrom of the judiciary, there was never an attempt to apply the principles of presumption of innocence, due process, natural justice and subjudice.
The clean up of the judiciary was widely hailed at the time as an indicator of NARC’s determination to impose a transparent regime of moral probity through out its ranks.
Today we have a tainted minister hanging on to his cabinet position and a disgraced diplomat defiantly soldiering on despite the acute embarrassment their misconduct has directly caused none other than the President- who was actually in the same city where the sexual incident was supposed to have happened when it happened.
Are we then to assume that Dr Murungaru and Ambassador Ngaithe are above the law or that they have powerful protectors within the NAK reigning cabal who have reassured them that nothing is going to happen to them despite the national and international outcry over the scandals swirling around the duo?
If this is the case, are we then to assume further that the 2003 crackdown on the judiciary was a cynical propaganda exercise calculated to import hand picked and regime friendly magistrates and judges into strategic sections of the Kenyan judiciary in much the same way that George Bush is stacking the Supreme Court and the upper echelons of the American judiciary with Republican friendly judges?
Who is responsible?
As Kenyans abroad, and indeed at home, we have been deeply embarrassed by the public conduct of leading figures of the present Kenyan government- some of us have not forgotten how Wako refused to prosecute First Lady Lucy Kibaki for her wanton thuggery unleashed on national and international television in the wee hours of the morning against an innocent Kenyan journalist just doing his job.
Given the moral posturing of many people in the same Kibaki government, failure to take action against such egregious miscreant behaviour gives the impression of very deep hypocrisy within your government.
Can you believe that the above ten or eleven paragraphs constituted my first preliminary, by the way questions?
I just wanted to bring those looming and brimming concerns to the fore because my focus in this letter to the five of you resides elsewhere.
I just hope that you will have a chance to reflect on the continuing damage to the integrity and credibility of the Kenyan government that is being wrought by the utter failure to lift a finger and do something decisive about Chris Murungaru and Ambassador Leonard Ngaithe- both of whom should be FIRED, in my humble opinion.
A Jeremiad from Onyango Oloo in Canada
PART ONE
Dear Ministers Spearheading the Yes Onslaught:
I have chosen to write to the five of you because I figure that of all the members of the Yes team, you have been at the forefront of wielding state power in pursuance of your referendum objectives.
You are also the five most odious, the five most arrogant and five ministers who are most likely headed for a fall mightier than Humpty Dumpty within the next two years.
I also ID you as the five ministers most likely giving President Kibaki the most misleading advice.
In summary I want to plead with the five of you to immediately practice some humility and remember that you are mere human beings and not the chest-thumping demi-gods you have deluded yourself to be.
Of your number, I have sat down to lunch with one of you; spent hours at one hotel lobby in southern Ontario with another one of you, said habari in passing at Bomas of Kenya to a third one and narrowly missed meeting another of you when you were passing through my adopted home city of Montreal.
Through you I want to direct a message to your like-minded colleagues in the Banana Contingent to sober up and contemplate seriously how perilously close your reckless statements have brought Kenya to the precipice of an outright national conflagration.
It is possible that at least two of you are already familiar with my blunt plain speaking style that is guided by a sincere desire to communicate clearly and directly.
Before I address you NAK quintuplets, I would like to pose a broader question to your boss, His Excellency the President, Hon. Mwai Kibaki, MP (Othaya) who oversees a cabinet that is right now split down the middle because of the abject failure of the NARC regime to deliver a democratic constitution within the first one hundred days as the ruling coalition had pledged when they were seeking the votes from the Kenyan people in 2002.
My broad question is this:
Does the Kibaki government have a Code of Ethics governing the conduct of its leading officials in the cabinet, public administration and diplomatic service?
If so, when is this code of ethics applied?
Why do I ask?
Several reasons.
You have one of your colleagues- Dr. Chris Murungaru who has been tainted by scandal allegation after scandal allegation.
Some people have linked him to Anglo-Leasing; some have alleged that he is a notorious drug dealer.
The British government has banned him from traveling to or through their country for what they consider is questionable conduct.
In the court of Kenyan public opinion, the wananchi are near unanimous that he should step aside from the cabinet because he is clearly a liability to the Kenyan government.
Yet he not only continues to serve in the government, but engage in reckless and near racist political hooliganism in his own constituency and does this with impunity- going as far as threatening the arrest of his cabinet colleague who is exercising his democratic rights by campaigning against the Wako Draft.
Then you have the most prominent Kenyan diplomat in the most high profile diplomatic appointment abroad embroiled in a lurid sex scandal that started with accusations of rape and now includes a direct admission of adultery and inappropriate conduct between a superior and his diplomatic junior.
Yet this ambassador who was reportedly recalled two weeks ago is still defiantly swaggering at his Washington post claiming in an interview with a London based Kenyan gossip rag that he is the victim of a power struggle between Kikuyus, Luos and Luhyas- and especially the latter who are determined to “finish him” because he is a rising star tapped to become the next Permanent Secretary in the Foreign Affairs ministry and a possible replacement for Francis Muthaura as Head of the Civil Service. (see www.jambomagazine.com/?pageid=51875 and Standard, October 1, 2005).
According to all reports of the alleged incident, including the ambassador’s own version, a Kenyan woman fled from her own home to her neighbour's apartment where her jirani promptly called the police after an initial allegation of sexual assault.
Despite the later retraction of the rape claims by the woman in question (so we are told by a New York scandal sheet and its London Kenyan variant-some of us are waiting to hear from her directly) and the stonewalling by the ambassador himself, the fact remains that none of us would be discussing the truth or veracity of these allegations if the ambassador was not in this Kenyan woman’s house late at night in a position that can only be described as sexually compromising no matter which version you believe.
At the very minimum, questions of sexual impropriety cloud the conduct of the senior diplomat who is married with children and yet airily admitted that he has been having an ongoing extramarital affair with a subordinate for at least ten years!
Is the Kenyan government not aware that a leading cause of security breaches in the diplomatic service the world over is having an envoy who is at a risk of political and criminal blackmail because of even the mere imputation of alcoholism, adultery, gambling and other social habits that are not really compatible with the proper deportment and decorum of a senior diplomatic representative of a sovereign government in a foreign setting?
Some of us have been shocked to see official community representatives of Kenyans resident in the United States rush to the defence of the embattled and besieged envoy- and doing so after their own non-profit associations fired off letters of concern to none other than President Kibaki himself over this embarrassing incident that serves as a pointer to the rampant sexual exploitation of Kenyan women by accredited Kenyan diplomatic personnel in many overseas postings.
Two years ago Mr Aaron Ringera led a major sweep of the judiciary that resulted in the removal of many judges on corruption allegations- never mind that in this pogrom of the judiciary, there was never an attempt to apply the principles of presumption of innocence, due process, natural justice and subjudice.
The clean up of the judiciary was widely hailed at the time as an indicator of NARC’s determination to impose a transparent regime of moral probity through out its ranks.
Today we have a tainted minister hanging on to his cabinet position and a disgraced diplomat defiantly soldiering on despite the acute embarrassment their misconduct has directly caused none other than the President- who was actually in the same city where the sexual incident was supposed to have happened when it happened.
Are we then to assume that Dr Murungaru and Ambassador Ngaithe are above the law or that they have powerful protectors within the NAK reigning cabal who have reassured them that nothing is going to happen to them despite the national and international outcry over the scandals swirling around the duo?
If this is the case, are we then to assume further that the 2003 crackdown on the judiciary was a cynical propaganda exercise calculated to import hand picked and regime friendly magistrates and judges into strategic sections of the Kenyan judiciary in much the same way that George Bush is stacking the Supreme Court and the upper echelons of the American judiciary with Republican friendly judges?
Who is responsible?
As Kenyans abroad, and indeed at home, we have been deeply embarrassed by the public conduct of leading figures of the present Kenyan government- some of us have not forgotten how Wako refused to prosecute First Lady Lucy Kibaki for her wanton thuggery unleashed on national and international television in the wee hours of the morning against an innocent Kenyan journalist just doing his job.
Given the moral posturing of many people in the same Kibaki government, failure to take action against such egregious miscreant behaviour gives the impression of very deep hypocrisy within your government.
Can you believe that the above ten or eleven paragraphs constituted my first preliminary, by the way questions?
I just wanted to bring those looming and brimming concerns to the fore because my focus in this letter to the five of you resides elsewhere.
I just hope that you will have a chance to reflect on the continuing damage to the integrity and credibility of the Kenyan government that is being wrought by the utter failure to lift a finger and do something decisive about Chris Murungaru and Ambassador Leonard Ngaithe- both of whom should be FIRED, in my humble opinion.
