I am writing to you this letter as a matter of serious concern. I am a Kenyan citizen by birth who has been holder of a legitimate Kenyan Passport which was submitted at the Kenyan Embassy in Stockholm for renewal in April this year. At the Embassy, I filled a Passport application form, submitted two Passport photographs, paid the mandatory fees and submitted the form which was counter checked by an Embassy official to ensure that it was filled in correctly and that all the necessary requirements had been met. I was informed that the processing of the document would take a maximum of six weeks, a period which I considered “reasonable” under the circumstances.
Six moths after submitting my application form, I am still awaiting for word from the Kenyan Embassy about the status of my application. I have spoken to Embassy officials on several occasions expressing concerns that the processing of my Passport has taken an unnecessarily long period of time. On two occasions and between a span of two moths, I was told that letters had been written to the Department of Immigration in Nairobi and that the matter was being handled “at the highest level”. Six months down the line, my application has not been processed and, naturally, I have been wondering what may have happened.
I need to add that so far, the Kenyan Embassy in Stockholm has not been able to come up with any explanation as to why I cannot be granted a Passport and it is also for this reason that I have decided to make a personal intervention over the matter because it is my position that the Embassy has failed in its duties to effectively follow up the matter. I am tired of waiting and I am demanding that your office give me explanations why the Kenyan government is sitting on my Passport application without any valid and legal reasons.
A Passport is a basic travel document that every Kenyan citizen is entitled to under the laws of the Republic Kenya. I am a previous Passport holder and this means that my Reference file containing all necessary documents are with the Kenyan government. What this means is that there is no logical justification whatsoever for the long period it has taken the Kenyan government to process my Passport.
For the last six months, I have been unable to travel outside Sweden where I reside. By refusing to issue me with a new Passport following the expiry of my previous one, the Kenyan government is arbitrarily violating my right to freedom of Movement and I wish to warn your fragile regime that I am in the process of suing it for the criminal offence of keeping me hostage in Sweden and taking away from me my democratic right to move freely across the world.
According to the Kenyan Embassy, the official waiting time for the processing of a new Kenyan Passport is six weeks. I am soon entering the seventh month, an extremely long period of time. I wish to bring to the attention of your government that I have no reason to believe that the continued violation by your regime of my right to a Kenyan Passport is a calculated move to frustrate me and to subject me to mental and psychological torture for reasons only known to your government.
YOUR CORRUPT AND TRIBALISTIC GOVERNMENT HAS NOTHING TO OFFER
At the individual level, I am not political and even if I were so, this could have been no reason for the Kenyan government to deny me a Kenyan Passport. It is tragic that a humble and religious person like myself has to move from a position of “waiting for a Passport” to that of “struggling for a Passport” at a time when millions of Kenyans believed that after the overthrow of former dictator Daniel arap Moi from power, denial of Passports to Kenyan citizens and the consequent illegal limitation of freedom of Movement of Kenyan citizens would become a relic of the past.
As an informed Kenyan citizen who knows her democratic right and who understands International politics, I am not going to beg or kneel down before a corrupt, tribalistic, vicious and dirty government headed by a zombie President for a Passport and I believe that no Kenyan who understands his or her rights should do this.
Likewise, I am not going to burn valuable energy making hopeless phone calls to the Kenyan Embassy asking powerless officials who are simply following orders for my Passport because my education informs me that the Institution to put to account is the government of the Republic of Kenya. Here in Sweden, it is already an open fact among Kenyans that your representative, the Ambassador Mrs Purity Muhindi, is a total failure and this popular view is exemplified by the fact that she might not have alerted your government about the seriousness of denying me a Passport especially in an election year.
Your weak and failing government should take notice that as I open the “Struggle for a Kenyan Passport”, I have also put in motion the process of suing the government because I believe that someone MUST take responsibility for curtailing my freedom of Movement after the first six weeks of waiting thereby subjecting me to unwarranted mental and psychological torture and disrupting my busy schedule by keeping me prisoner in Sweden for no reason whatsoever.
I believe that Kenyans abroad should not go through what I am going through at the moment and it is for this reason that I have decided to change strategy and begin a battle for my Passport if that is what it will take to get back my freedom of Movement which has now been stolen from me by an insensitive government that is unfit to be in Office.
Your unpopular government has failed in many areas. A new Constitution has not been delivered although you promised to do so after 100 days in power. Almost five years after occupying State House, your Office has not delivered the half a million jobs per year you promised to Kenyans. Your government has failed catastrophically in fighting corruption in Kenya and this failure is exemplified by the super corruption scandals that have rocked your government since you came to Office. Millions of Kenyans who believed that you could end tribalism have been disappointed because minutes after seizing power, you embarked on a mission to fill key government positions with members of your own Kikuyu ethnic group, an issue that has even been taken to Parliament for debate. Today, the “Mount Kenya Mafia” composed of members of your ethnic group are known to rule Kenya through the back door.
I am mentioning these gigantic failures because I view the failure by your government to issue me with a Kenyan Passport as part of a chronic failure by your corrupt regime to deliver to the Kenyan people.
Surely and honestly speaking, if a government which was popularly elected by the Kenyan people on a platform of change cannot deliver a simple document like a Passport to a Kenyan citizen abroad, what exactly can it deliver?
With the kind of experience I have gone through and with the kind of energy which I will have to waste in conducting my struggle for a Kenyan Passport, I am now convinced that your government should be voted out of Office in the coming December election because if it cannot deliver a Passport to a Kenyan citizen, there is nothing it can offer to the suffering millions of Kenyans starving or living in abject poverty across the country. Your government has been warned.
Mrs Anna Okoth
Stockholm
24th September 2007
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