When the waiter came in with our bill and passed it over to Patrick, I suddenly realised that Raila had left us with an Sh11,000 debt, without even caring that I hadn’t been paid since July 26, 2011. Nor did it seem fair that Patrick, who as a genuine friend was only trying to help us, should be saddled with such a huge bill. But that is how Raila is; it was not the first time he had walked from a restaurant, in my presence, without picking up the bill. He had once done that to me after asking that I arrange a small meeting with Prof. Oyugi, Oduor Ong’wen, Adhu Awiti and me at a restaurant Oduor Ong’wen and Prof. Oyugi owned in the Kilimani area of Nairobi.
After we had eaten a sumptuous meal of fish, beef, chicken, a variety of vegetables, and the drinks had flowed freely, amidst strategy and discussions, Raila had simply walked away, leaving us with a bill of more than Sh35,000. Even his drivers, bodyguards and a few hangers on that rushed to the place after learning of his presence, had eaten. We had pooled our resources and found most of the sum, but the owners must have had tight margins that month. A few months after that incident, I had accompanied Raila on a tour of Nyanza, with Orengo, Kajwang’, Oburu, Jakoyo and some of his usual office entourage.
We had flown on a Kenya Air force Force helicopter and landed in Kisumu around lunchtime. Upon arrival, Raila had asked us to join him for lunch at the Kisumu Yatch Club. Again, after a sumptuous meal with plenty of drinks on offer that the team, except yours truly, had partaken of the bill had been brought to me, and I had dutifully passed it over to Orengo. Seeing Orengo and I looking at the bill, Raila had asked us to pass it over to him. He had examine it closely and then asked for the manager. When the man had come, saying “yes sir, no sir,” Raila had reprimanded him harshly, stating that the bill wouldn’t be paid because we had been overcharged. The bill had been about Sh125,000.
It’s true the charges had seemed excessive. But then again, I didn’t know the price of the expensive looking bottles of champagne, wine and whisky that those around the table, except yours truly, had been drinking. I had also felt that we could and should simply have paid what we believed was a fair cost for the order. After all, the place was a going concern. The owners were there to make money, and they had offered us good hospitality in exchange for our money. In any event, I believe that it was callous, insensitive and an abuse of power for Raila to have taken advantage of his position and undermined another Kenyan’s business.
‘Come, baby Come’ turns to ‘Run, baby Run’
Updated Wednesday, July 18 2012 at 21:09 GMT+3
By Okech Kendo
Clueless’ is a word Miguna Miguna uses often in Peeling Back the Mask. Everyone he worked with in ODM and the Coalition Government was ‘clueless’.
Nyando MP Fred Outa who defeated him in the 2007 ODM parliamentary nomination is ‘clueless’. Voters who rejected him are ‘clueless’.
During the night George Saitoti’s brother was being accused of helping the late minister to manipulate the tally, Miguna called me at 1am. He was shouting that we journalists were ‘clueless’. Miguna could not understand how a senior editor could be sleeping when votes were being ‘stolen’ in Kajiado North.
The man was then trying to endear himself to Raila Odinga. He did not want Moses ole Sakuda’s votes to be ‘stolen’ the way PNU had ‘stolen’ Raila’s victory.
That was the second time I was speaking to him. I met Miguna in October 2007, with Akong’o Oyugi, a former political detainee. Now he insinuates Prof Oyugi had lost the ‘fire’, and is probably ‘clueless’.
The person who knows Miguna as a student in 1987 is Wafula Buke, chairman at the Students’ Organisation of Nairobi University, when Miguna was finance secretary.
Buke fled the country, returned home, and then went to jail, but remained an active reformer. Miguna fled at the first burst of teargas canisters to a safe haven.
Miguna landed in Toronto, Canada, where he stayed in economic exile for 20 years. Miguna knows Buke knows the tall man betrayed his comrades.
While Miguna enjoyed summer Sunday-outs in Ontario, Buke and other victims of comrade power were in Kenya ‘living’ the revolution.
When Miguna returned in September 2007, he believed a Raila presidency was assured.
The lawyer from Osgoode Law School of the York University was burning with ambition to be the Attorney General under ‘President’ Raila Amolo Odinga. If Miguna lost the way to AG Chambers, he would settle for solicitor-general. He often clashed with former AG Amos Wako, who he held was ‘clueless’. The AG had clung to the office Miguna desired.
It was not that Miguna was living the revolution because he loved Raila; he was seeing his fancy jobs – AG or solicitor-general – slipping away. When he lost bid for PS and even advisor, he was devastated, and felt betrayed. He blames Raila for it.
Miguna suggests a leader like Raila, who is a flexible “coward”, needed men of brawl like Miguna to understand symbols of power: Like sitting plan, red carpets, and protocol.
Miguna says he often ‘gave’ Raila a chance to take the bull by the horns, but the PM would soften. For that he describes Raila as a ‘flip-flopper’ who does not understand power concedes nothing – it is seized when the opportunity strikes.
Miguna recalls 2008 post-election violence, when the country was burning. Blood of innocent citizens was flowing. Darkness had fallen on a country once described as an island of peace in a turbulent ocean. Then, he accuses Raila of failing to stick to the script. The script was Raila should have stuck to a re-run of presidential race or declared himself president.
While Miguna credits the late John Michuki with causing a blackout to stop ODM from swearing-in ‘President’ Raila, he blames the PM for negotiating peace.
Rather than see the bigger picture of Raila’s concessions, Miguna claims Raila was ‘clueless’ about power dynamics. Yet Miguna does not see himself as the one who was ‘clueless’ about what would have happened had Raila rejected the Coalition Government on February 28, 2008, two months into the mayhem. Perhaps Miguna was too preoccupied with his own ambition to succeed Wako.
Long knives
He did not understand the country was more important.
Miguna claims he was a witness to PNU functionaries rigging votes at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre on December 28 and 29, 2008.
On the first night, Miguna claims he found MPs-elect Henry Kosgey, Charity Ngilu, and James Orengo at the Media Centre. They were relaxing in a way that showed they were ‘clueless’. They were watching TV during the night of the long knives. The night before Miguna had forgone sleep because men like him who had ‘clues’ could not sleep during a ‘revolution’.
Peeling Back the Mask exposes the author as a ‘clueless’ ideologue, without a sense of context. The PM and President Kibaki take credit for tolerating the braggart for 30 months as ‘collision’ advisor.
The question readers should ask is, if Miguna had gotten what he expected when he joined the Raila Campaign, or stayed on as advisor, would he have erupted?
Miguna did not become AG, Solicitor-General or PS. He was not among the first lot around Raila. ‘Ja-Nyando’ remained marooned in Pentagon House for months, as Mohamed Isahakia, Caroli Omondi, Idriss Mohammed, and Tony Gachoka boarded the first train to the Prime Minister’s office. He detested this.
His bitterness with Omondi and Isahakia is palpable. True, these two have been cited in some indiscretions, but one would expect Miguna to give prosecutable evidence so a court of law would prove their guilt or otherwise.
Miguna’s warcry, “Come, baby come”, is now run, baby run, when he fled on Monday. Which was the right decision because somebody could easily take the man out and then blame Raila for it.
He says he didn’t flee, and merely went to promote his book in Canada. But he left with his school-going children. He is probably ‘clueless’ this is the middle of a school term.
The writer is The Standard’s Managing Editor Quality and Production.
Bishop WANJIRU ready to ditch ODM
Friday July 20, 2012 – Starehe MP Margret Wanjiru is considering ditching the Orange Democratic Movement party over what she termed as being sidelined in the party’s activities in Nairobi.
Bishop Wanjiru was overheard complaining that she is being disillusioned with the party because some officials are frustrating her.
She said her efforts to popularise the party are not appreciated and that she will consider decamping if she continues to be ignored and frustrated.
Leaked reports from Orange house said the party wants to axe the Starehe MP from Nairobi politics and replace her with Nairobi Mayor George Aladwa.
The ODM officials argue that Wanjiru is not able to bring the Kikuyu votes to ODM whereas Aladwa is able to woo gullible Luhyas to the Orange party.
Friday July 20, 2012 – Former Subukia MP Koigi Wamwere has said that Prime Minister Raila Odinga is the most popular candindate to win the presidency in the upcoming polls.
Speaking on Capital Talk on K24 on Thursday, Koigi said Miguna Miguna’s book Peeling Back the Mask will not hurt the Premier’s presidential ambitions of becoming the fourth President of the Republic of Kenya.
Koigi, who was detained together with Raila in 1980’s by Moi’s crusaders, said Raila has a good reform record and urged Kenyans to read Miguna’s book with care since it might be a plan by his rivals to tarnish his name.
He urged Kenyans to elect reformers and people who have sacrificed their lives for the betterment of this country.
I like Raila, Ruto, Miguna and Moi. They are leaders who take advantage of people like you who know what to do yet we keep our tribes and stomachs ahead of all other important aspects of life
“In Peeling Back The Mask, I expose him as a selfish, confused, hypocritical and deceptive leader whose greed for power and money makes him unfit for the presidency of the republic of Kenya. The book contains details of Odinga’s transgressions: from serial illicit sexual exploits with various married women to involvements in corruption; from his befuddled and inconsistent positions on the constitutional review and the International Criminal Court (ICC) process to his failure to negotiate effectively with President Kibaki, his partner in Kenya’s grand coalition government; through to his disgraceful dozing through important meetings. The book depicts a cowardly and intellectually dishonest leader undeserving of all the praise and attention he has generated or received over the years.”
Esther Arunga’s message to LUOs – Politics of Raila
ESTHER TIMBERLAKE TO LUO COMMUNITY:
IT’S OUR TIME, LET’S GRAB IT!
SPEECH OF UNION ADDRESS DELIVERED AT MINATO MIRAI HALL, YOKOHAMA, JAPAN
My fellow Luos, I thank you very much for having paid my family’s tickets and accommodation to be here because you invited me to discuss some political issues. Most important we’re going to win because our cause is right. We make history this day not for ourselves but for the ages. The choice we make in 2013 will determine not only the future of Kenya but the future of peace and freedom in the world for the last third of the 21st century, and the question that we answer today: can Nyanza meet this great challenge?
Let us listen to Nyanza to find the answer to that question. Nyanza is suffering due to our blinded minds. We’ve been attending the political class for the past decades under the deanship of Rt Hon PM Raila Odinga. He’s taught us by his politiodrates. Atleast he expects that we quit the spirit of babyness and evolve in to political maturehood where we should begin to feed on solid food. Solid food here is the fact that we must accept genuinely opinion of other communities and accept that we’ve had our wrongs and are to unite with others and make a break through. We’ve had enough of big promises and little action. The time has come for an honest government at the State House to germinate from the Nyanza seedbed.
Look at our community that am proud of. It has produced gigantic movers of the well being of Kenya, Africa and the world.
They work in American factories, they run American businesses. They serve in government; they provide most of the soldiers who die to keep Kenya free. They give drive to the spirit of the World. They give lift to the Kenyan dream. They give steel of know how to the backbone of Kenya.
Like Rt Hon PM Raila Odinga, they know that this country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless it’s a good place for all the 42 communities to live in. He is about to quit politics in the next episode, the question lingers..who is ready to step in his gigantic shoes?? Not anyone around him can. The answer is the current youth fresh from the outside August house.
And so this day I do not promise the millennium in the morning. I don’t promise that we can eradicate poverty and end discrimination and eliminate all danger of political “wars” in the space of 5 years. But I do promise action. A new policy for peace locally with our neighbors from the Kalenjins in the Rift Valley, Kikuyus in Mt Kenya and to abroad where we’re mixed up in love and one flag, a new policy for peace and progress at home.
Look at our problems back in the lake region. Do you realize that we face the stark truth that we are worse off in every area of the country than we were 30 years ago? That’s the record. We lead with bad records in Kenya’s development arena. From HIV pandaemic, poor education results, bad treatment of girl child, being misused by established politicians, poor road network affecting our produce, over fishing due to lack of proper income, bottom ranking ICT, poor health facilities and bad relationship with our neighbors (other communities).
And there is only one answer to such a record of failure, and that is the complete house cleaning of those responsible for the failures and that record. The answer is the complete reappraisal of current parliament’s policy in every section of the country. We shall begin with complete constituency clean up in each and every part of the province so that we retain the working MPs and kick out the “domo domo” ones. Especially those ones who’ve been busy expelling and pushing away other communities from our region thus we lose inter communal trade, education, marriage to terminate tribalism, religion, business set ups and e.t.c.
We cannot go it alone, we need others to win, but first, we must insert the hard disk in their hearts and minds that we’re a changed society and ready to mingle and rumble together for the betterment of this nation. What other communities are still scared of is our “politics approach.” Let’s say NO to the MPs coming with bad motives in this era chanting slungs synonymous with other tribes. Let’s not forget they boosted us in 2007 general elections. The question is; why did they trust us? The issue that sent them to trust us, don’t you think it can be revived and set sparkling and sprinkling with euphoric chants to the ballot box again??
We all hope in this room that there’s a chance that current negotiations may bring an honorable end to this tribal war against Luos. And we will say nothing during this campaign that might destroy that chance. Let’s let go of other things that have for a long time angered other communities. Remember, letting go doesn’t mean we’re weak, it means we’re strong.
This period in which we’re entering – I think we will have the greatest opportunity for intercommunity peace, but also face the greatest challenge of being ridiculed at any time in our history. Just use me and my husband Quincy as an example, we endured and continues to endure all the hate speeches against us. Why? We show the deepest maturity inside of us. And my husband taught me a very unique quality that I couldn’t have in my TV days. Letting go, it means one is stronger that the hate lyrical twister.I believe we must have peace. I believe that we can have peace. But I do not underestimate the difficulty of this task.
Because, you see, the art of preserving peace is greater than that of waging community “war”, and much more demanding. Now there is no quarrel between progress and order because neither can exist without the other.
So let us have order in Nyanza, not the order that suppresses dissent and discourages change but the order which guarantees the right to dissent and provides the basis for peaceful change.
And today it’s time for some honest talk about the problem of order in the Nyanza. Let us always respect, as I do, our women and the youth, but let us also recognize that some of our leaders in their decisions have gone too far in weakening the peace forces as against the community forces in this country.
Let those who have the responsibility to enforce our inter community laws, and our traditional judges who have the responsibility to interpret them, be dedicated to the great principles of council of elders’ rights. But let them also recognize that the first civil right of every Nyanzian is to be free from freedom of expression violence. And that right must be guaranteed in this country.
Because, my friends, let this message come through clear from what I say today. Time is running out for the merchants of crime and corruption in the Nyanza society. The wave of crime is not going to be the wave of the future in the Republic of Kenya. Let’s reestablish freedom from fear in Nyanza so that our lovely Luoland can take the lead of reestablishing freedom from fear in the Kenya.
And to those who say that law and order is the code word for racism, here is a reply: Our goal is justice – justice for every Luo and other Kenyan communities. If we are to have respect for law in Nyanza, we must have laws that deserve respect. Just as we cannot have progress without order, we cannot have order without progress.
I pledge to you this day that we shall have new programs which will provide that equal chance. We make great history today. We do not fire a shot heard round the Kenya, but we shall light the lamp of hope in millions of homes across this Nyanza in which there is no hope today. Then the famous luo slogan of “GONYWA URU” shall be killed and buried Why? Because this is how our politicians trap us. They ensure that we remain poor for a 5 year term until they revisit us again. Then towards elections, they come back very sure that we’ll run towards them with desperate faces and two arms stretching forward crying..”YAWA GONYWA URU YAWA.” Its become a business you know!!
Let’s look around see other tribes thriving and swimming in wealth. CDF should be turned to benefit the Luos directly. By creating women and youth groups. Borrow money from CDF coffers, perform commerce returns and then refund the capital back to the public accounts with no interests after an agreed period. After all, its constituency’s money instead of a few committee officials pocketing millions and leaving constituents suffering.
We’re not goats to be used during campaigns only to send a bunch of crooks to parliaments with intentions of enriching themselves knowing in mind they won’t be voted back again..they spoil ruthlessly. Let’s transform stones to friendship with other communities via social media. Let’s stop this mentality that every time our PM Raila’s name is mentioned, we should all come out outrageous with poisonous words. For we’re not building him for the Hill but assisting with destroying his chances to presidency. Let’s put it this way, every insult hurled at anothe community member because of our PM, one vote is gone for him. We ruin his chances to the State house.
Let’s also stop being elected for leaders. No one should appoint leaders on our behalf as we know what we want and why want the appointees exclusively by us. When someone is appointed on our behalf, they don’t have any attachment with us because they know they got a backing from their “godfather” whether they fail to deliver or not. Let’s kick out anyone who uttered hate speech and other incitement crimes against other communities. Atop all, let’s avoid social network vulgar language that may only but provoke others to a long stored anger with scores only settled at the ballot box.
May God bless you, Luos, Nyanza, all other communities and Kenya.
The stink of corruption
Raymond Bonner applauds a hard-hitting and far-reaching study of bribery in Kenya
Raymond Bonner
The Guardian, Saturday 14 March 2009
When tribal mayhem erupted in Kenya following last year’s elections, most observers were stunned. Kenya was considered Africa’s brighter spot. It held multi-party elections, had a solid economy, had never experienced a dictator like Idi Amin in next-door Uganda or descended into chaos like Somalia to the north. What, then, explained the madness of men with machetes and broken bottles slashing and pummelling men, women and children from other tribes? In a word, corruption.
When John Githongo was named anti-corruption tsar in 2002, by Kenya’s new president Mwai Kibaki, the country was almost giddy with hope. Kibaki had promised to clean up corruption in a nation where the ordinary citizen paid around 16 bribes a month to the police or some government agency. Githongo was the perfect man for the job, and he attracted bright young idealists like himself to work with him. Government workers began inundating him with evidence of fraud and corruption.
There was enough low-hanging rotten fruit to keep his office busy for years. But Githongo knew he had to take on his own tribe, the Kikuyu, if the “it is our turn to eat” mentality was to change. The first president after independence was a Kikuyu, Jomo Kenyatta, and the Kikuyu grew rich. After Kenyatta’s death, anti-Kikuyu tribes joined forces and Daniel arap Moi became president. He was a Kalenjin. Kalenjin politicians bought Mercedes, their wives shopped abroad. The Kikuyu, desperate to get to the trough again, persuaded other anti-Kalenjin tribes to join with them, and the Kikuyu Kibaki was elected.
Githongo’s target was Anglo Leasing and Finance Company Ltd. Registered in Britain, it had 18 contracts with the Kenyan government for the supply of everything from a forensic laboratory to a navy frigate and jeeps: 16% of the government’s expenditure in 2003-04 went to Anglo Leasing. The company was no more than a street address in Liverpool. The American ambassador, William Bellamy, said that the amount of money siphoned off was enough to supply every HIV-positive Kenyan with antiretrovirals for 10 years.
Michela Wrong, author of the acclaimed book In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in the Congo, is an exceptionally talented writer. It is easy to imagine George Clooney turning her account of the risks Githongo took – the way he was tailed by Kenyan intelligence after he fled to Britain; the malicious smear campaign against him at home – into a tale of government malfeasance and a crusade along the lines of Michael Clayton. She compares Kenya’s corruption to a huge garbage dump that has grown higher and higher over the years. “Each stratum has a slightly different consistency – the garbage trucks brought mostly plastics and cardboard that week, perhaps, less household waste and more factory refuse – but it all smells identical, letting off vast methane sighs as it settles and shifts.”
This is one of those rare books that deliver more than the title suggests. It is more than a story about a whistleblower, and more than about Kenya. It could have been written anywhere where corruption is endemic, and Wrong disposes of some general myths. One is the refrain that the president is an honest, upstanding, god-fearing man; he’s not corrupt, it’s his undisciplined children. “In countries where presidents have done their best to centralise power,” Wrong writes, “altering constitutions, winning over the army and emasculating the judiciary, the notion that key decisions can be taken without their approval is laughable.”
She also drives home this usually overlooked reality: for every corruptee, there is a corruptor. Or: “For every minister trousering a bribe, there had to be a western company ready to pay it.” Not just western companies. Indeed, they are constrained by anti-bribery laws, however weakly enforced, while Chinese, Korean and Japanese companies pay huge bribes with impunity.
Further, Wrong makes depressingly clear that corruption in the developing world is aided and abetted by donor governments and the World Bank. Reflecting what she calls the bank’s “moral myopia”, the World Bank director in Kenya, Makhtar Diop, rented his spacious house from President Kibaki. Even when confronted with the full extent of the Anglo Leasing scandal, Diop in effect did nothing. His successor, Colin Bruce, continued to rent from the president and, despite evidence that the polls had been rigged in the 2008 election, assured his bosses in Washington that his landlord was the legitimate president of Kenya. Bruce was promoted to director for strategy and operations in the Africa region.
Wrong praises Britain’s high commissioner in Kenya, Edward Clay. When his quiet diplomacy with the Kenyan leaders failed, Clay delivered a speech to the British Business Association of Kenya: “We never expected corruption to be vanquished overnight,” he said about the transition from Moi to Kibaki. “We hoped it would not be rammed in our faces. But it has … They may expect we shall not see, or notice, or will forgive them a bit of gluttony, but they can hardly expect us not to care when their gluttony causes them to vomit all over our shoes.” The speech had a profound impact – not on the government, but on the Kenyan people. Matatu drivers cheered Clay, policemen waved him through traffic and shoeshine boys joked “Five shillings for shoeshine, 10 for vomit”.
In general, Githongo’s well-documented exposé of the Anglo Leasing corruption was treated with disdain by Kikuyus, who felt he had betrayed his own, and passively accepted by donors. Only the Netherlands froze aid. Clay believed that, by failing to act forcefully, Britain and other donors “had set the worst possible precedent, not only for Africa, but to the recipients of British aid across the globe”, Wrong writes. “If the donors were not going to make an example of Kenya over Anglo Leasing, it is hard to see when they would ever get tough.” And in that depressing conclusion lies the larger story.
• Raymond Bonner lived in Kenya from 1988 to 1993, reporting for the New Yorker and New York Times
‘Peeling back the mask: A quest for justice in Kenya’, a Kenyan political thriller starring sleaze, scandal and spin
23 July 2012 00:50 (South Africa)
Simon Allison
He says he’s a whistle-blower, exposing the corruption and cynicism at the heart of the Kenyan political establishment, all the way into the prime minister’s office. Others describe him as a disgruntled and bitter, a sacked employee with ambition and axes to grind. All SIMON ALLISON knows for sure is that Miguna Miguna has kicked up a whole lot of dirt – and that it probably won’t change anything.
Miguna Miguna, ‘the man with two names’ at the centre of the political controversy that has taken Kenya by storm, is a larger than life character. He’s loud, prone to exaggerated hand gestures and always dressed in flowing robes and some form of headgear – a sartorial habit that has attracted plenty of criticism of its own, with commentators gleefully pointing out a passing resemblance to Zairean dictator Mobuto Sese Seko. “I dress African. I am a pan-Africanist at heart,” he told one interviewer. “If was able, I would sleep in African pyjamas.”
African pyjamas or not, Miguna probably isn’t sleeping all that soundly at the moment. For the last couple of weeks, the only thing Kenyan politicians and journalists have been able to talk about is his new tell-all book, which claims to lay bare the inner workings of Kenya’s fragile coalition government and attacks the record of prime minister Raila Odinga. “Kenyans have never seen anything like it. The media feeding frenzy was like none other in their history up to this point in time,” wrote Joe Adama in the Nairobi Star.
Much of the talk has been vitriol – and most of it directed at Miguna himself. Things got so bad that one group of villagers burnt an effigy of Miguna in a mock-funeral, complete with mourning dirges and cleansing rituals. Miguna, meanwhile, has taken himself and his family to Canada, on what he says is a pre-planned holiday; critics suggest he’s fleeing into exile to escape the heat, and the anticipated slew of libel lawsuits.
Miguna’s book, Peeling back the mask: A quest for justice in Kenya, was the fulfilment of a threat. Miguna worked as an aide to Odinga from after the botched 2007 elections until late 2011, when he was sacked by the prime minister for not toeing the party line. Miguna, less than pleased by this decision, threatened to “undress” the prime minister. His book is an attempt to make good on that promise.
In it, Miguna paints a picture of a prime minister’s office stuffed with corrupt and thieving politicians. The politicians are portrayed as venal and self-serving, looking out for their own interests rather than their constituency’s, while the grand coalition government, which has been in charge Kenya since the post-election violence of 2008, is cast as lumbering and ineffective, and always at the mercy of the power struggle between Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki.
Odinga himself comes in for some withering criticism. “I know Raila very well,” writes Miguna. “I know that he is a very weak leader. I also know that he doesn’t believe in, is not committed to, and doesn’t represent the new dispensation…He isn’t dedicated to the fight against corruption. He has no loyalty but to himself and his immediate circle…Through the numerous preferential treatment of his family and relatives, it’s obvious that Raila is a nepotist.”
In addition to the juicy anecdotes, Miguna makes a few stunning allegations. He offers some specifics on local corruption cases, especially to do with a maize importation scam; he insinuates that the results of the 2007 elections were fixed, and that Odinga’s party – apparent victims of the fixing – may have knowingly turned a blind eye; and, most damagingly, he claims that Odinga’s party deliberately stoked up ethnic tensions in the run-up to those elections. It was these tensions that resulted in the post-election violence which killed hundreds, displaced thousands and destroyed Kenya’s hard-won reputation for peace and stability.
Miguna claims he’s got even more dirt that he left out of the book. “Every single leader here, I can take to The Hague [where the International Criminal Court is based]. I have it right here. And I am saying come baby come…” he told his audience, a clear threat to his critics. He says he went easy on Odinga and his party: “When I decide in a 500-page book not to say what the Orange Democratic Movement did in the PEV [post-election violence], they should take me, kneel before me and kiss my feet.”
Kissing his feet is the very last thing the prime minister, or any of the other names implicated in the book, is doing. Although Odinga himself is remaining relatively quiet, the fight back has begun – and it’s taking the form of a smear campaign against the Miguna the “bloviating ignoramus”, as one partisan commentator described him. Odinga’s main defender has been his communications consultant, journalist Sarah Elderkin, who wrote a lengthy three-part rebuttal of some of Miguna’s claims in the Daily Nation newspaper, focusing particularly on the claims of his own self-importance. She wrote that the book was typical of the Miguna she had come to know, describing him as “a person with deeply worrying issues and insufficient personal morality to restrain him from selling his friends down the road, let alone to prevent his embarking on a campaign of all-consuming personal vengeance filled with hatred.” Several lawsuits are also in the pipeline, from figures tarnished in the book, and the director of public prosecutions is looking into whether Miguna should be charged for withholding evidence relating to the post-election violence.
But Miguna himself is not the real issue, for Odinga and his team are working towards a rather grander prize. The real question is whether Miguna’s allegations – regardless of their basis in fact – are strong enough to jeopardise Odinga’s tilt at the presidency in 2013, for which he is favourite by some distance.
Chances are that he will weather the storm. The tone of the coverage of this drama has very much been coloured by political affiliation, with more time spent dwelling on the relative merits of the main players than on the substance of the allegations involved; this suggests that the controversy is merely hardening divisions rather than encouraging anyone to switch their support to someone else. And the reality may well be that Odinga, for all this flaws, is the best of a bad bunch; after all, two of his main competitors, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, are being tried for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
If there is a lesson for politicians in this somewhere, it’s that people like Miguna are better kept inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in. It’s a lesson the likes of Jacob Zuma know well, one suspects, explaining the lengths the presidency has taken to protect such controversial figures as Richard Mdlulu and Bheki Cele.
The lesson for the rest of us is that four years after the post-election violence, and in the run-up to another election, the ethnic and political fault-lines which exploded so disastrously last time round are still very near the surface. DM
2 questions from Miguna Miguna to Raila’s SUPPORTERS
Raila Odinga is running for president. I am not. As a person who has occupied an exalted public position in our society for decades; one who has enjoyed immense privileges; and one who is seeking even more power and privileges; Raila Odinga must be audited, vetted and weighed thoroughly for his record in public life before he can be found to have satisfied the requirements for election.
If he doesn’t like the audit, he must be prepared to cede ground and relinquish his political ambitions. There are no two ways around it. But he cannot intimidate, threaten or beat us into submission.
Two questions we need to ask Raila are these:
(a) If his supporters and groupies can burn my effigy and mock coffin and attack me viciously in the era of the new constitution that guarantees me the right to express myself fully including in book form merely on account that I have written a memoir they dislike because it is critical of him; what are they capable of inflicting if Raila were to become president?
(b) Are the rights Raila proudly claims he fought for only meant for his supporters and sycophants?”
Why It Is Difficult To Believe Miguna .
Monday, 23 July 2012 15:41 BY WAMBUGU NGUNJIRI
I would like to engage the accusation that those of us who do not believe Miguna Miguna’s books seem to be attacking the man, rather than responding to his accusations.
Let me start by saying that what is happening to Miguna is natural. To use an example that in no way suggests that Miguna Miguna is a mad man; imagine a mad-looking man accosts you and your friend in the street and accuses your friend of stealing food from him; would you believe the fellow? I do not think so. In fact I doubt you would even give the accusations second thought. The reason is that we have a natural tendency not to accept the word of someone who looks like they are mentally unstable.
However as is being argued, what if a by-stander confirms that your friend could have taken the mad man’s food. This third party’s intervention introduces credibility to the accusations and will make you look beyond the state of the mad-looking man to the accusations themselves. However what if you then learn that this third party supporting the allegations is actually a ‘certified enemy’ of your friend. You immediately go back to where you do not even consider the accusations.
A third scenario is where you are then advised that the mad-looking man is not actually mad. You are informed that despite the odd dressing, loud noises and disturbing facial expressions that he is making when putting across the accusations, the man is going through a traumatic experience in his life. Maybe he has lost of a key job that gave him prestige and public profile/power; or maybe he is going through a difficult social relationship and struggling through marital issues; or maybe he is reacting to having to re-locate back to a difficult location that he had left, vowing never to return to; a proverbial reverse trip from what looked like Canaan flowing with milk and honey, back to Egypt where he now has to slave in an environment where he is looked down on based on the color of his skin. This means the man is not mad but just going through an emotive point in his life that has psychologically destabilized him.
This means that maybe you should look at his accusations beyond the state of his mind. So let us look at Miguna Miguna’s book itself. Reading Miguna’s book one realizes that out of the approximately 500 pages, 300 pages concentrate on Miguna Miguna himself. This is where he speaks about his growing up and early education, as well as making disparaging remarks about nearly everyone he has encountered over the years. They end with his move to Canada, where against all odds and despite difficulties settling in as an African, he actually sets up a law firm.
It is not until Chapter 9, somewhere near page 285, that he starts speaking about ODM and the Prime Minister. However again he spends the next two chapters (close to 100 pages), explaining how powerful he was in the party, how close he was to the party leader, and/or how he literally shouldered the entire burden of making the candidate the President in 2007, and thereafter ensuring Raila did not make a fool of himself whilst negotiating against President Kibaki. This means that Miguna actually only dedicates a maximum of 200 pages of a 500-page book, to his allegations against the Prime Minister.
However even within these 200 pages Miguna not only attacks Raila Odinga himself, (who he incidentally does not tie directly to any allegation he makes); but the Prime Minister’s immediate family and close business and political associates as well. He especially goes after the PM’s Chief of Staff, Caroli Omondi and Permanent Secretary Isahakia; two people he clearly dislikes even more than Raila Odinga.
But let us assume 75% of the 200 pages (150 pages) is about Raila Odinga’s ills, for the sake of building a balanced argument. Let us then consider that a single page in a book like ‘Peeling of the Mask’ has an average of 400 words per page; which means he has written approximately 60,000 words against the Prime Minister. Compare this with the over 50 articles (which also translate to approximately 60,000 words incidentally) that Miguna wrote in ‘The Star’ over close to two years. Each of these articles were as venomous as those words in the book; but they were in support and towards protecting the Prime Minister, from the same accusations he now makes!
So here is a man who first writes a 60,000-word series of articles in a public newspaper over two years; not for profit and of his own accord (as he explains in the book), to be read by hundreds of thousands of Kenyans, saying one thing. Then writes another 60,000-words in 8 months, puts them in a Sh3,300/- book to make profit, and says something completely different!
In essence asking us to believe Miguna’s book is like saying we should believe in a book written by Moses Kuria saying Uhuru Kenyatta is a bad leader, were he ever to write one.
My response (for publication) to the story “Raila will not sue Miguna”
a) He has not condemned Outa and others who burnt my effigy and buried my coffin in Nyando, thereby openly encouraging people to hurt or kill me. A responsible leader who upholds the rule of law would have quickly condemned those barbaric acts and distanced himself from them. By not doing so, Raila has now fully associated himself with such acts;
b) He has not responded to the allegations in the book, which are serious and go to the heart of his ability or lack thereof, to lead. The country and the world is still waiting.
c) By authorising FORA, Gitobu Imanyara, Sarah Elderkin, Ngunjiri WAmbugu and Omar Hassan Omar to attempt to assassinate my character by hurling abuse and attempting pseudo and fake psychological analysis on me rather than dealing with the contents and substance of the book, Raila has demonstrated the numerous weaknesses and failures catalogued in my book.
c) If or when Caroli and others commence action against me, as far as I am concerned, that would be Raila doing it. Caroli is not just Raila’s Private Secretary (and money man and silent nominee in various ventures), he is also a self-styled ‘Chief of Staff’. Everything written about Caroli in the book revolves around what he did after Raila was appointed PM and Caroli started working at his office. Consequently, as far as I am concerned, in all intents and purposes, Raila is Caroli and Caroli is Raila as far as my book is concerned.
d) And finally, Paul Mwangi’s opinion comment published in the electronic version of your newspaper cannot be taken to be Raila’s. Paul Mwangi is NOT Raila’s spokesperson; he is supposed to be a ‘legal adviser’. Kenyans have not given Paul Mwangi any legal and constitutional authority to act as Prime Minister. The op-ed piece is Paul Mwangi’s opinion. Therefore, as far as I can see, Raila has not spoken on my book at all. Subterfuge will not do. This is not what is expected of a PM who wants us to compare him to modern leaders in the first world. He has failed in action and practice.
The day KIBAKI took a BARMAID home in Limuru – It all STARTED
Friday, July 27, 2012 – Who can remember the major controversy that arose in 2003 after Kibaki was sworn in as the 3rd President of Kenya, politicians and the public questioned his marriage with Lucy Kibaki because there was rumor that he had another wife – Mary Wambui.
Uncle Moody was heard questioning Lucy whether they should address her as first or second lady at an executives party in Mombasa. This raised eyebrows and Kibaki’s advisors advised him to call an emergency parliamentary meeting declaring that he has one wife and that is Lucy Kibaki.
Since Kibaki rose to power in 2003, Mary has prospered both as a political activist and a business woman for the recent acquisition of an IEBC tender for supply of Biometric Voters Registration kits which shows the level of nepotism in our country.
And so we ask who is Mary Wambui?
Apparently Mary Wambui was a bar maid at a bar in Limuru which was owned by the late Njenga Karume. Through their connection with the late Njenga and late Michuki who Kibaki went to school with the three used to meet at the bar.
That’s how Kibaki noticed the petite young lady who definitely gave him some attention unlike his wife Lucy. Their meeting turned into a blissful affair that yielded to the birth of their daughter – Winnie a.k.a Artur Margarian’s wife.
When you see Lucy firing Kibaki’s Aides for allowing Mary Wambui to meet up with her hubby she has all the reasons in the world to fight for her marriage.
‘FALLACIOUS AND INVENTED’: MORE ABOUT MIGUNA
Saturday, 28 July 2012 00:03 BY SARAH ELDERKIN
Conventional wisdom says you should never review a book written by a person you know. However, in the case of Miguna Miguna’s book Peeling Back the Mask, I would say the opposite. Everyone who knows Miguna and is mentioned in the book should read it and review it and correct anything they know to be wrong – because there is much in this book that is fallacious and invented.
I am neither a liar nor a sycophant, and since I am frequently accused, particularly of the latter, I want to make that clear before I move on. Miguna himself declares in the book that he finds me honest (for what that is worth). My so-called sycophancy is non-existent. I don’t wrap up my views in pretty ribbons and I’m known to be blunt. The fact that I support Raila Odinga for president doesn’t mean I have lost my critical faculties – as has inadvertently been demonstrated by a private and sharply worded memo from me to Raila that Miguna has chosen to make public.
(Miguna had given me an undertaking of confidentiality on this. “My word is my bond,” he says several times in his book. No, Miguna, your word and your bond are worthless – just so much dross to be abandoned when it suits you. You can claim no honour there.)
There will be a lot of “I” in this article, for which I shall no doubt be lambasted. But it is because I feel I have a duty to challenge Miguna’s account in just a few of the very many areas where I know he has presented a false picture. I want to speak of that which I know. Miguna’s book is full of lies and exaggeration. Worse, he has repeatedly used a device where he takes a nugget of information that is true and then wraps it round with distortions, to achieve the desired effect – disparagement of Raila Odinga. The whole thing is a travesty of the ‘Honest John’ face Miguna purports to present to the world.
A small example occurs right after Miguna quotes in full my memo to the Prime Minister. Miguna takes that nugget of truth and goes on to say that “Sarah had observed over the years Raila becoming envious of people around him with talent. Apparently, Sarah felt that Raila was jealous of intelligent, disciplined and hard-working people with integrity.”
Such words have never passed my mouth, nor has such a concept ever grazed my mind. It is a complete and utter invention on Miguna’s part, a deliberate untruth, presented as fact to support his own ignominious crusade. Miguna again delves into the realms of fiction when describing the KICC launch of Raila’s presidential campaign on Sunday, May 6, 2007. He says Raila read his speech from a laptop, and that this was a last-minute solution to time constraints because Miguna was working on the speech from Toronto, along with Sarah Elderkin in Nairobi.
Total fiction. First, the laptop idea was one the launch team had chosen deliberately so that Raila would not be reading from pieces of paper. Though outdated now, it looked rather cutting-edge at the time. But second, and much more disturbing, is the fact that Miguna did not contribute one word to Raila’s launch speech. I know that because I wrote it myself from Raila’s handwritten notes, which remain on my file to this day. I had never met Miguna Miguna then, nor had I ever spoken to him. In fact, I never once spoke to Miguna Miguna while he was in Canada.
As always, Raila knew exactly what he wanted to say, and the idea of presenting himself as an applicant for a post that would soon become vacant (the presidency) was entirely his own. The speech still sits on my computer, with the chronology of its development. Miguna sent a memo to Raila on May 2, four days before the launch. A copy of that memo is also in my file. The covering note says, “The whole world – not just Kenya – is waiting for the big day. I have attached herewith some thoughts on some of the issues that might be glossed over as you and everyone else works tirelessly for the Big Day. I hope that you will find time to read, reflect and hopefully incorporate whatever is appropriate for the Big Day.”
The accompanying notes offer some pretty standard thoughts on tribalism, the economy, CDF, security, working in consultation with others and so on. Miguna advises Raila to BE PRESIDENTIAL. (These were all things we were somewhat unlikely to have “glossed over”.) The tone of the note from Miguna to Raila (“I hope that you will find time to read …”) clearly demonstrates that this was not from a man who was indispensable and who was writing Raila’s speech. Raila’s speech was done. But in his book, Miguna says, “Only that morning, Sarah Elderkin, operating from Nairobi, and I, doing the heavy lifting from Toronto … had made the final touches on the “application” … The speech was a tour de force, skilfully crafted … we only included what we believed Raila should be capable of fulfilling …”.
Miguna had nothing whatsoever to do with the speech. His “anecdote” about it and about his working with me – a total flight of fantasy – is typical of the way Miguna lies his way through his book, trying to take credit for many things in which he played no part. The lies are so blatant that it’s hard to believe he thought he could get away with it. And anyone who swallows this stuff is simply buying into Miguna’s delusions.
Miguna also uses the launch – which was a glittering and ground-breaking event that others this very year have copied when launching their own presidential bids – to try and portray Raila and his team as disorganised. The launch had been planned for months by the team Miguna calls Raila’s strategy team. The team was not a political strategy team, as Miguna tries to portray them (while dismissing them as clueless) but a strategy team for the launch. I was there with Dick Ogolla, Caroli Omondi, Tony Cege, Francis Masinde, Tedd Josiah, Caesar Asiyo and Mike Njeru.
I have the final storyboard on file. It was produced by Caesar and covers the programme minute by minute. It lists all the personnel in charge of onstage events and their assistants, security co-ordinators, protocol, press and verification team, finance manager, ushers co-ordinator and master of ceremonies. It lists the broadcast arrangements, the sound and lights back-up, generator provision, the actors and musicians, photographers, projection screens, guest comforts, branding – flags, posters, bunting, T-shirts, balloons, plants, stage dressing, carpets, confetti and the way it would fall at the appropriate moment – press packs, TV crews liaison and runners, among many other details.
The event was supremely organised and a huge success. It was something that Miguna had absolutely nothing to do with – but into which he would now like to insert himself. The audacity of his lies is breathtaking. That is not the only lie about speeches Miguna is supposed to have written for the PM. Miguna also claims that Raila called him in Canada and asked him to write a speech that Raila was due to deliver at the University of Minnesota on February 22, 2007.
Miguna goes into much circumstantial detail about how his wife was annoyed that Raila was forcing him to do this at short notice and to travel at his own expense to Minnesota and so on. (Miguna appears to have total recall for conversations, to the extent that he can put them in direct quotes years later. Hmmm.) Miguna says he told his wife, “Sometimes we have to sacrifice for a higher cause.” Very noble. He calls it “Raila’s sudden act of madness” and portrays the whole episode as some kind of a burden he was forced to bear because of Raila’s cluelessness.
Perhaps that IS what he told his wife. Perhaps he needed an excuse to make the trip. Who knows? Whatever the case, it’s all untrue. Raila never asked him to go to Minnesota, nor asked him to write a speech. Miguna travelled to Minnesota because he wanted to. The speech, on the topic ‘The place of Africa in the 21st Century’, was provided by Adams Oloo, of the University of Nairobi.
In Nairobi, I received a copy of the speech by email from Raila’s secretary, Susan Kibathi, on February 16, 2007. I still have the original text. The speech was a massive 6,297 words long and was sent to me for editing and rewriting into Raila’s style. The accompanying note from Susan said: “I must apologise for the late submission of the draft but unfortunately Adams has not been well.”
Raila was about to leave, for Korea if I remember rightly, before going on to the US. I did a very hurried tidying-up of the speech, burnt the result on to a CD and sent it to Raila to take with him. He said he would get it printed out when he arrived. I told him the speech was far too long but time had not allowed proper rewriting, so I’d look at it again and be in touch. He went off.
When I looked at this unwieldy speech again, I realised to my horror that pages of it had been reproduced word for word from a speech given by the then South African president, Thabo Mbeki, in April the previous year. I was worried about what else might not be original and I didn’t know what brief Adams had been given by Raila.
I spent some frantic time trying to contact Adams, by phone and in every other way. Eventually, I got an email from him. I think he was in Indonesia. He said an assistant had provided material for the speech, which had been hurriedly put together. Adams was most apologetic and was relieved the error had been caught in time. It was now barely a day before this major speech was to be delivered.
By some miracle, I got hold of Raila on the phone in the US (it was not so easy in those days), where he had just arrived from Korea, and explained the problem. I remember Raila’s words, because they were such a relief to me at the time. He said, “Miguna Miguna is here. He can sort it out.” And that is how Miguna ended up “writing” the speech for Minnesota. I told Raila which parts must be omitted because they were plagiarised and Miguna reworked what remained. When Raila got back to Nairobi, he told me that what Miguna had produced was too long and convoluted, and although Raila had handed out hard copies of it, he hadn’t read it at the function and had ended up speaking off the cuff.
Once again, Miguna’s version of events comes from somewhere in a world the rest of us don’t inhabit. He has taken a nugget of truth and woven around it a massive and detailed lie in order to promote himself and belittle Raila Odinga. Later in the book, Miguna reworks another nugget of truth, that he met the Prime Minister late last year to discuss his suspension and that the PM at the end of the meeting left the hotel room without paying the bill. All true, but Miguna twists it to make the PM look arrogant and thoughtless. Miguna writes, “When the waiter came in with our bill and passed it over to Patrick [Quarcoo], I suddenly realised Raila had left us with an [sic] Sh11,000 debt.”
Quarcoo, the CEO of the Radio Africa Group (which publishes The Star), has since confirmed that he was the host of the meeting. The PM was simply an invited guest. The bill was never the PM’s to pay and the matter, Quarcoo says, was “none of Miguna’s business”. There is more. The meeting was the result of Quarcoo’s pleas to the PM on Miguna’s behalf. Miguna was desperate after his suspension and the PM “magnanimously” (as Quarcoo puts it) agreed to meet Miguna after Quarcoo had interceded, to try and resolve outstanding issues and find Miguna some kind of job. “The PM was being decent and loyal by listening,” Quarcoo said.
Miguna, however, makes out in his book that the PM was chasing him for a settlement. Miguna has since extended this lie, to declare publicly, shamelessly and completely falsely that the PM and his colleagues were actually desperately begging him to return to his job. Quarcoo has confirmed that the opposite was true. Salim Lone tells me he likewise has not escaped misrepresentation in the book. Concerning the occasion where Miguna describes the PM’s emotional response to the absolute intransigence he faced in every meeting with President Mwai Kibaki, Miguna has written, “Salim and I looked at each other and said … almost in unison, ‘Holy Moly! What the hell was that?’ We moved outside discreetly. ‘Can you believe that Miguna? He cried. Raila cried,’ said Salim, clearly agitated.”
Salim disputes the impression given here by Miguna. He tells me he was moved and touched by Raila’s humanity and by his willingness to let his colleagues see a softer side of him, a side that said they were all in this together and that he needed their help and support. Once again, Miguna has taken a nugget of truth and distorted it to present the picture he wants, while roping in someone else’s name to ‘endorse’ it.
And so it goes on, endlessly. I was not present at many of the situations Miguna describes in his book. I don’t need to have been. From the many occasions where I do have first-hand knowledge, I can see how Miguna has continually invoked other people’s names to ‘validate’ his stories, how he has engaged in writing up long, imaginary-looking conversations to bolster his case, and how he has employed these and other devices in a myriad different ways to cast Raila Odinga in a poor light.
These might seem like small matters but their sheer volume cumulatively establishes the book’s false tenor – which is designed to lend credence to other, larger claims. After his book-launch a couple of weeks ago, Miguna started shouting about post-2007-election meetings at Pentagon House, about which he claims to know everything and in which he claims to have played a central role. I was present and took verbatim notes of 32 meetings, interviews and telephone conversations during those early days of 2008. Miguna was present for four of those meetings, in two of which he said nothing and in the two others, two sentences in each.
It was hectic at Pentagon House. Raila was fielding continual telephone calls from foreign leaders and repeating to everyone who cared to hear it his mantra of peaceful protest. People were arriving, footsore and weary, from demonstrations on the ‘battlefront’ at Uhuru Park – Joe Nyagah, William Ruto, Charity Ngilu and many others. Joe burst in with a big smile and announced with some pride, “I’ve been tear-gassed!” Charity was advising everyone to wear trainers. Miguna was not among them. Maybe he was in another room. I don’t know.
There are a hundred stories I could tell. There is no space. I would have to write a book myself to refute all the distortions in Peeling Back the Mask. Miguna’s fictionalised vignettes are deliberately intended to paint a carefully designed picture. They are not ‘revelations’, as the media like to call them, but false allegations. He builds his case on a web of distortions, gradually fashioning a straw man he can then destroy. The lies are insidious, and it is unforgivable that Miguna has stooped to such deceit in his efforts to achieve what is surely an ignoble goal.
One curious thing I noticed was Miguna’s apparent lack of male friends. He esteems his male teachers who supported him, and he admires some of his erstwhile student colleagues (that is, those he is not busy sneering at) but most of the good friends he mentions are women. (An exception is Onyango Oloo, who runs the Jukwaa web blog, and who was Miguna’s main defence witness in his 2003 trial for alleged sexual assault against two of his clients – which, by the way, is mentioned nowhere in Miguna’s story of his glorious career, even in an exculpatory manner.)
Perhaps Miguna finds it difficult to get along with other men because of his history. He was raised with no father but he had five older sisters who no doubt fondly treated him like a little prince. Then his mother would kneel before him so that he could stand and breastfeed when he got home from school, as Miguna tells it in his book. Perhaps Miguna still wants to be treated like a prince, and perhaps that is why he can’t bear anyone else to be top dog. But let me not get into amateur psychology here (let alone mixing my metaphors).
Poignantly, Miguna’s book, even bearing in mind that it is self-evaluation written by a very conceited man, reveals a person of unrealised and unchannelled talent. It initially tells the story of someone who worked hard to improve his life and who was strongly committed to what he believed in. As the book unfolds however it also reveals that Miguna’s achievements from very early on in his life have all been diminished and spoiled by his explosive temper, his lack of diplomacy, his inability to co-operate with anyone to find mutually acceptable and workable compromises that allow a way forward, and his consequent failure to find a winning strategy to achieve his various life objectives. The result is that Miguna is a very bitter man.
In the end, though, it is his lies that condemn him – for if a person tells lies on one occasion, it is unquestionable that he will do so on others. Lies fracture trust and render everything else suspect. Miguna has not operated in a vacuum. There are many other people who know the truth. Miguna has chosen to publish and be damned. Unfortunately for him, he might be.
The writer is a freelance journalist and a supporter of Team Raila Odinga.
He spent two weeks in the torture chambers of Kenya’s Moi regime before coming to Canada as a refugee. He rallied against Eurocentrism while a law student at Osgoode Hall. A poet, he once clashed with Pierre Berton over racism. And he was, until a public spat last year, at the right hand of Kenya’s current Prime Minister.
Despite his epic life story, Miguna Miguna, 48, has no public profile in Canada, where he practised law for 13 years. But in his native Kenya, he is a household name, and a political storm is raging there over his controversial new memoir, which accuses his former boss, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, of dozing off in meetings and condoning corruption – allegations his office denies.
Mr. Miguna’s public feud with Mr. Odinga, who suspended him without pay last summer for alleged “gross misconduct,” has captivated Kenya’s boisterous media. The controversy hit a climax this month with the launch of Mr. Miguna’s 588-page book, Peeling Back the Mask: A Quest for Justice in Kenya, and the appearance of a mob of protesters who burned him in effigy not far from his rural home in Western Kenya.
“I don’t live my life in fear. I’ve refused to do that. That’s what they want,” Mr. Miguna says. “I have learned a long time ago that the vaccination to this is to speak about it. If you hide and cower, they will come for you for sure.”
The battle between one of Kenya’s leading politicians and an outspoken former Toronto lawyer is more than a sideshow. Mr. Odinga is widely seen as a front-runner in next year’s presidential elections in Kenya, the first since polls in 2007 were followed by catastrophic violence that left more than 1,000 dead and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.
Four prominent Kenyan political figures, including two of Mr. Odinga’s potential rivals for the presidency, face charges before the International Criminal Court in The Hague for allegedly organizing attacks that followed the 2007 vote.
With his name in Kenya’s headlines every day, the towering 6-foot-4, Mr. Miguna, in bright, flowing African robes, sits thousands of kilometres away, in a mostly empty cafeteria on the campus of Seneca College in suburban Toronto. He is staying in the college’s dormitory with his wife and five children on what he says was a preplanned summer vacation.
His voice booms and his eyes bulge behind the glasses that have slipped down his nose as he pronounces on his falling out with Mr. Odinga.
Mr. Miguna says there was “no legitimate reason” for his suspension last August. The government alleged that he had repeated clashes with other officials and staff. Mr. Miguna also links his suspension to a newspaper article he wrote about Kenyan election officials and a spat over a pay cut. He was later offered a reinstatement, but refused.
He denies that he was forced to flee Kenya, and vows to return, despite receiving death threats. (He has since sent a letter demanding state security protection when he does.)
Some named in his book in Kenya have threatened to sue him, although the Prime Minister’s legal adviser has hinted that Mr. Odinga would not do so.
In a fiery speech at his book launch in Nairobi on July 14, Mr. Miguna appeared to taunt his critics, threatening to take more allegations, not in his book, about post-election violence to the International Criminal Court.
“Every single leader here, I can take to The Hague. Mark my word. I have it right here!” he told the crowd, slapping his hands together loudly, with TV cameras rolling, in footage on YouTube. “And I am saying, ‘Come, baby come!’”
His “Come, baby come” line quickly became a catchphrase for Kenyans, who now share satirical images on social media that use it as a punchline. One spliced Mr. Miguna’s head-shot, for example, onto a photo of a man trying to seduce a young woman.
Just days after the book launch, Mr. Miguna left for Toronto.
His life story, as told in his book, is a full one. He first came to Canada in 1988, a refugee from the Kenyan regime of Daniel arap Moi. While a student activist at the University of Nairobi, he says government agents kidnapped him, beat him repeatedly and kept him alone in a small brightly lit cell for two weeks. He was released and then fled on foot across the border into Tanzania.
He settled eventually in Toronto and attended Osgoode Hall law school, where he would publish poetry and take up activism again, participating in protests against the lack of non-white tenured professors and police shootings. He graduated in 1993.
According to his book, his writing – his first collection of poems was called Songs of Fire – and involvement with the Writer’s Union would see him clash with none other than bow-tied historian Pierre Berton, who disagreed with holding a conference that was supposed to exclude white writers. After articling with well-known Toronto lawyer and activist Charles Roach, Mr. Miguna started his own law firm specializing in refugee and criminal cases.
He kept up with developments in Kenya, and by 2006, he came to believe that Mr. Odinga, the son of Kenya’s first post-independence vice-president, and his Orange Democratic Movement could be a force for change. Mr. Miguna says he spent $50,000 of his own savings hosting Mr. Odinga and his entourage on a North American trip in 2006. Mr. Miguna then left Canada for Kenya permanently, and signed on to Mr. Odinga’s team for the 2007 campaign.
Incumbent President Mwai Kibaki would emerge the winner of the election, which was widely condemned as rigged, sparking the violence. Under a power-sharing agreement brokered by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, Mr. Odinga became Prime Minister and Mr. Miguna became Mr. Odinga’s advisor on “coalition affairs.”
But Mr. Miguna would soon sour on his boss. Mr. Miguna alleges Mr. Odinga appointed a long list of relatives to plum posts. And he says Mr. Odinga brushed aside the concerns Mr. Miguna raised about alleged corruption, including a scandal over corn imports and the use of funds from a World Bank sponsored youth employment program. Mr. Miguna alleges that other aides to Mr. Odinga appeared wealthier than their government salaries would suggest, able to purchase luxury cars and expensive real estate.
The allegations sparked a counterprotest last week organized by members of Mr. Odinga’s party, in which a group of demonstrators burned Mr. Miguna in effigy and staged a mock funeral. According to local media, police blocked protesters from approaching Mr. Miguna’s walled rural home in the Nyando district of Western Kenya.
The Prime Minister’s press secretary, Dennis Onyango, reached by phone, said Mr. Miguna’s allegations are unfounded and unworthy of discussion.
“The Prime Minister’s position is that he does not want to talk about those things,” he said.
Mr. Onyango provided an e-mailed statement that neither the Prime Minister nor any of his aides have been implicated in any corruption. Two senior officials were suspended but later “exonerated,” the statement says.
Mr. Miguna insists he will not give up his fight, and may even write another book: “What I refuse to accept is that Kenya should operate on different standards from Canada. … I’m not saying this place is perfect. I’m not saying there is no racism. But I am saying, you cannot bribe a judge. You cannot bribe a police officer. If you do, you will be arrested. And that happens regardless of who you are. And that is a good thing.”
Mr Miguna is planning to sue Kibaki and Raila for “failing to adequately” address issues he raised in his latest book “Peeling back the mask”.
Miguna, through his Nairobi and Canadian based lawyers has characterised Kibaki as loudly silent in a very annoying and belittling manner. On Mr Odinga’s latest response to his book, Miguna decries the shallow and factually deficient statement by the Prime Minister.
Mr Miguna is seeking redress for the emotional turmoil the lack of response has caused him. He says he exposed Kenyan corruption in a manner never done before, and that the two respondents owe him at the very least a letter of “thank you” and summary dismissal of the parties mentioned. “Miguna does not take NO for an answer,” he quipped.
Enjoined as secondary respondents to the suit are Messrs Caroli Omondi, Isahaka, and Jared Kagwanja (for not adequately translating the book to Kibaki), and the NSIS chief.
Separately, Miguna is planning at a future date to sue the Nairobi Mayor for subjecting his family to substandard levels of oxygen while he was the PMs advisor. He noted that the same mayor had ensured Prof Kibwana was adequately supplied with oxygen and nitrogen as Kibaki’s advisor.
The plane carrying Miguna is expected to touch down at JKIA on August 16. It is widely expected that thousands of Kenyans will be at the airport to accord him and his family a hero’s welcome back home. Mr Miguna has been on an extended holiday in Canada where he is promoting his widely successful book to captive audiences that have flocked to Toronto in their thousands from all over the world. Some of them came from as far as Pap Onditi in Papua New Guinea and Kanyama-kango in Tonga.
This morning, Miguna had breakfast at the exclusive Manor Crest hotel in downtown Toronto in an air conditioned booth with a private kitchen, private bathroom and toilet. He was accompanied by celebrated columnist Fred Ngatia, Dr Wesley Onono (a prominent New York dentist), and Dr Mtume (a global affairs professor in Toronto).
When a mad man picks your clothes beside the river while you are swimming, do you chase him naked or buy new clothes? If you chase him people wont know the real mad man.
i read the book online and got a copy but didnt MR.MIGUNA write the book out of sheer anger as well as being guided by emotions coz he sounds like a hurt sheep
Kenya Stockholm Blog 
Osewe get the difference between july 17and 1st of april to fool us. I dont want cha bure but iam curious. Lol
KSB: Kajoe, that was a reader request who wanted readers to take a break. Say hi to all klan membaz.
sell it in central province…..
Here’s a free copy http://www.scribd.com/doc/100400629/Peeling-Back-the-Mask
RAILA left me with a bill to PAY after taking TEA
When the waiter came in with our bill and passed it over to Patrick, I suddenly realised that Raila had left us with an Sh11,000 debt, without even caring that I hadn’t been paid since July 26, 2011. Nor did it seem fair that Patrick, who as a genuine friend was only trying to help us, should be saddled with such a huge bill. But that is how Raila is; it was not the first time he had walked from a restaurant, in my presence, without picking up the bill. He had once done that to me after asking that I arrange a small meeting with Prof. Oyugi, Oduor Ong’wen, Adhu Awiti and me at a restaurant Oduor Ong’wen and Prof. Oyugi owned in the Kilimani area of Nairobi.
After we had eaten a sumptuous meal of fish, beef, chicken, a variety of vegetables, and the drinks had flowed freely, amidst strategy and discussions, Raila had simply walked away, leaving us with a bill of more than Sh35,000. Even his drivers, bodyguards and a few hangers on that rushed to the place after learning of his presence, had eaten. We had pooled our resources and found most of the sum, but the owners must have had tight margins that month. A few months after that incident, I had accompanied Raila on a tour of Nyanza, with Orengo, Kajwang’, Oburu, Jakoyo and some of his usual office entourage.
We had flown on a Kenya Air force Force helicopter and landed in Kisumu around lunchtime. Upon arrival, Raila had asked us to join him for lunch at the Kisumu Yatch Club. Again, after a sumptuous meal with plenty of drinks on offer that the team, except yours truly, had partaken of the bill had been brought to me, and I had dutifully passed it over to Orengo. Seeing Orengo and I looking at the bill, Raila had asked us to pass it over to him. He had examine it closely and then asked for the manager. When the man had come, saying “yes sir, no sir,” Raila had reprimanded him harshly, stating that the bill wouldn’t be paid because we had been overcharged. The bill had been about Sh125,000.
It’s true the charges had seemed excessive. But then again, I didn’t know the price of the expensive looking bottles of champagne, wine and whisky that those around the table, except yours truly, had been drinking. I had also felt that we could and should simply have paid what we believed was a fair cost for the order. After all, the place was a going concern. The owners were there to make money, and they had offered us good hospitality in exchange for our money. In any event, I believe that it was callous, insensitive and an abuse of power for Raila to have taken advantage of his position and undermined another Kenyan’s business.
………….Peeling back the mask (Miguna Miguna)
‘Come, baby Come’ turns to ‘Run, baby Run’
Updated Wednesday, July 18 2012 at 21:09 GMT+3
By Okech Kendo
Clueless’ is a word Miguna Miguna uses often in Peeling Back the Mask. Everyone he worked with in ODM and the Coalition Government was ‘clueless’.
Nyando MP Fred Outa who defeated him in the 2007 ODM parliamentary nomination is ‘clueless’. Voters who rejected him are ‘clueless’.
During the night George Saitoti’s brother was being accused of helping the late minister to manipulate the tally, Miguna called me at 1am. He was shouting that we journalists were ‘clueless’. Miguna could not understand how a senior editor could be sleeping when votes were being ‘stolen’ in Kajiado North.
The man was then trying to endear himself to Raila Odinga. He did not want Moses ole Sakuda’s votes to be ‘stolen’ the way PNU had ‘stolen’ Raila’s victory.
That was the second time I was speaking to him. I met Miguna in October 2007, with Akong’o Oyugi, a former political detainee. Now he insinuates Prof Oyugi had lost the ‘fire’, and is probably ‘clueless’.
The person who knows Miguna as a student in 1987 is Wafula Buke, chairman at the Students’ Organisation of Nairobi University, when Miguna was finance secretary.
Buke fled the country, returned home, and then went to jail, but remained an active reformer. Miguna fled at the first burst of teargas canisters to a safe haven.
Miguna landed in Toronto, Canada, where he stayed in economic exile for 20 years. Miguna knows Buke knows the tall man betrayed his comrades.
While Miguna enjoyed summer Sunday-outs in Ontario, Buke and other victims of comrade power were in Kenya ‘living’ the revolution.
When Miguna returned in September 2007, he believed a Raila presidency was assured.
The lawyer from Osgoode Law School of the York University was burning with ambition to be the Attorney General under ‘President’ Raila Amolo Odinga. If Miguna lost the way to AG Chambers, he would settle for solicitor-general. He often clashed with former AG Amos Wako, who he held was ‘clueless’. The AG had clung to the office Miguna desired.
It was not that Miguna was living the revolution because he loved Raila; he was seeing his fancy jobs – AG or solicitor-general – slipping away. When he lost bid for PS and even advisor, he was devastated, and felt betrayed. He blames Raila for it.
Miguna suggests a leader like Raila, who is a flexible “coward”, needed men of brawl like Miguna to understand symbols of power: Like sitting plan, red carpets, and protocol.
Miguna says he often ‘gave’ Raila a chance to take the bull by the horns, but the PM would soften. For that he describes Raila as a ‘flip-flopper’ who does not understand power concedes nothing – it is seized when the opportunity strikes.
Miguna recalls 2008 post-election violence, when the country was burning. Blood of innocent citizens was flowing. Darkness had fallen on a country once described as an island of peace in a turbulent ocean. Then, he accuses Raila of failing to stick to the script. The script was Raila should have stuck to a re-run of presidential race or declared himself president.
While Miguna credits the late John Michuki with causing a blackout to stop ODM from swearing-in ‘President’ Raila, he blames the PM for negotiating peace.
Rather than see the bigger picture of Raila’s concessions, Miguna claims Raila was ‘clueless’ about power dynamics. Yet Miguna does not see himself as the one who was ‘clueless’ about what would have happened had Raila rejected the Coalition Government on February 28, 2008, two months into the mayhem. Perhaps Miguna was too preoccupied with his own ambition to succeed Wako.
Long knives
He did not understand the country was more important.
Miguna claims he was a witness to PNU functionaries rigging votes at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre on December 28 and 29, 2008.
On the first night, Miguna claims he found MPs-elect Henry Kosgey, Charity Ngilu, and James Orengo at the Media Centre. They were relaxing in a way that showed they were ‘clueless’. They were watching TV during the night of the long knives. The night before Miguna had forgone sleep because men like him who had ‘clues’ could not sleep during a ‘revolution’.
Peeling Back the Mask exposes the author as a ‘clueless’ ideologue, without a sense of context. The PM and President Kibaki take credit for tolerating the braggart for 30 months as ‘collision’ advisor.
The question readers should ask is, if Miguna had gotten what he expected when he joined the Raila Campaign, or stayed on as advisor, would he have erupted?
Miguna did not become AG, Solicitor-General or PS. He was not among the first lot around Raila. ‘Ja-Nyando’ remained marooned in Pentagon House for months, as Mohamed Isahakia, Caroli Omondi, Idriss Mohammed, and Tony Gachoka boarded the first train to the Prime Minister’s office. He detested this.
His bitterness with Omondi and Isahakia is palpable. True, these two have been cited in some indiscretions, but one would expect Miguna to give prosecutable evidence so a court of law would prove their guilt or otherwise.
Miguna’s warcry, “Come, baby come”, is now run, baby run, when he fled on Monday. Which was the right decision because somebody could easily take the man out and then blame Raila for it.
He says he didn’t flee, and merely went to promote his book in Canada. But he left with his school-going children. He is probably ‘clueless’ this is the middle of a school term.
The writer is The Standard’s Managing Editor Quality and Production.
Bishop WANJIRU ready to ditch ODM
Friday July 20, 2012 – Starehe MP Margret Wanjiru is considering ditching the Orange Democratic Movement party over what she termed as being sidelined in the party’s activities in Nairobi.
Bishop Wanjiru was overheard complaining that she is being disillusioned with the party because some officials are frustrating her.
She said her efforts to popularise the party are not appreciated and that she will consider decamping if she continues to be ignored and frustrated.
Leaked reports from Orange house said the party wants to axe the Starehe MP from Nairobi politics and replace her with Nairobi Mayor George Aladwa.
The ODM officials argue that Wanjiru is not able to bring the Kikuyu votes to ODM whereas Aladwa is able to woo gullible Luhyas to the Orange party.
The Kenyan DAILY POST
RAILA is the next President despite MIGUNA’s book
Friday July 20, 2012 – Former Subukia MP Koigi Wamwere has said that Prime Minister Raila Odinga is the most popular candindate to win the presidency in the upcoming polls.
Speaking on Capital Talk on K24 on Thursday, Koigi said Miguna Miguna’s book Peeling Back the Mask will not hurt the Premier’s presidential ambitions of becoming the fourth President of the Republic of Kenya.
Koigi, who was detained together with Raila in 1980’s by Moi’s crusaders, said Raila has a good reform record and urged Kenyans to read Miguna’s book with care since it might be a plan by his rivals to tarnish his name.
He urged Kenyans to elect reformers and people who have sacrificed their lives for the betterment of this country.
The Kenyan DAILY POST
http://www.kenyan-post.com/2012/07/raila-is-next-president-despite-migunas_20.html
I like Raila, Ruto, Miguna and Moi. They are leaders who take advantage of people like you who know what to do yet we keep our tribes and stomachs ahead of all other important aspects of life
“In Peeling Back The Mask, I expose him as a selfish, confused, hypocritical and deceptive leader whose greed for power and money makes him unfit for the presidency of the republic of Kenya. The book contains details of Odinga’s transgressions: from serial illicit sexual exploits with various married women to involvements in corruption; from his befuddled and inconsistent positions on the constitutional review and the International Criminal Court (ICC) process to his failure to negotiate effectively with President Kibaki, his partner in Kenya’s grand coalition government; through to his disgraceful dozing through important meetings. The book depicts a cowardly and intellectually dishonest leader undeserving of all the praise and attention he has generated or received over the years.”
Esther Arunga’s message to LUOs – Politics of Raila
ESTHER TIMBERLAKE TO LUO COMMUNITY:
IT’S OUR TIME, LET’S GRAB IT!
SPEECH OF UNION ADDRESS DELIVERED AT MINATO MIRAI HALL, YOKOHAMA, JAPAN
My fellow Luos, I thank you very much for having paid my family’s tickets and accommodation to be here because you invited me to discuss some political issues. Most important we’re going to win because our cause is right. We make history this day not for ourselves but for the ages. The choice we make in 2013 will determine not only the future of Kenya but the future of peace and freedom in the world for the last third of the 21st century, and the question that we answer today: can Nyanza meet this great challenge?
Let us listen to Nyanza to find the answer to that question. Nyanza is suffering due to our blinded minds. We’ve been attending the political class for the past decades under the deanship of Rt Hon PM Raila Odinga. He’s taught us by his politiodrates. Atleast he expects that we quit the spirit of babyness and evolve in to political maturehood where we should begin to feed on solid food. Solid food here is the fact that we must accept genuinely opinion of other communities and accept that we’ve had our wrongs and are to unite with others and make a break through. We’ve had enough of big promises and little action. The time has come for an honest government at the State House to germinate from the Nyanza seedbed.
Look at our community that am proud of. It has produced gigantic movers of the well being of Kenya, Africa and the world.
They work in American factories, they run American businesses. They serve in government; they provide most of the soldiers who die to keep Kenya free. They give drive to the spirit of the World. They give lift to the Kenyan dream. They give steel of know how to the backbone of Kenya.
Like Rt Hon PM Raila Odinga, they know that this country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless it’s a good place for all the 42 communities to live in. He is about to quit politics in the next episode, the question lingers..who is ready to step in his gigantic shoes?? Not anyone around him can. The answer is the current youth fresh from the outside August house.
And so this day I do not promise the millennium in the morning. I don’t promise that we can eradicate poverty and end discrimination and eliminate all danger of political “wars” in the space of 5 years. But I do promise action. A new policy for peace locally with our neighbors from the Kalenjins in the Rift Valley, Kikuyus in Mt Kenya and to abroad where we’re mixed up in love and one flag, a new policy for peace and progress at home.
Look at our problems back in the lake region. Do you realize that we face the stark truth that we are worse off in every area of the country than we were 30 years ago? That’s the record. We lead with bad records in Kenya’s development arena. From HIV pandaemic, poor education results, bad treatment of girl child, being misused by established politicians, poor road network affecting our produce, over fishing due to lack of proper income, bottom ranking ICT, poor health facilities and bad relationship with our neighbors (other communities).
And there is only one answer to such a record of failure, and that is the complete house cleaning of those responsible for the failures and that record. The answer is the complete reappraisal of current parliament’s policy in every section of the country. We shall begin with complete constituency clean up in each and every part of the province so that we retain the working MPs and kick out the “domo domo” ones. Especially those ones who’ve been busy expelling and pushing away other communities from our region thus we lose inter communal trade, education, marriage to terminate tribalism, religion, business set ups and e.t.c.
We cannot go it alone, we need others to win, but first, we must insert the hard disk in their hearts and minds that we’re a changed society and ready to mingle and rumble together for the betterment of this nation. What other communities are still scared of is our “politics approach.” Let’s say NO to the MPs coming with bad motives in this era chanting slungs synonymous with other tribes. Let’s not forget they boosted us in 2007 general elections. The question is; why did they trust us? The issue that sent them to trust us, don’t you think it can be revived and set sparkling and sprinkling with euphoric chants to the ballot box again??
We all hope in this room that there’s a chance that current negotiations may bring an honorable end to this tribal war against Luos. And we will say nothing during this campaign that might destroy that chance. Let’s let go of other things that have for a long time angered other communities. Remember, letting go doesn’t mean we’re weak, it means we’re strong.
This period in which we’re entering – I think we will have the greatest opportunity for intercommunity peace, but also face the greatest challenge of being ridiculed at any time in our history. Just use me and my husband Quincy as an example, we endured and continues to endure all the hate speeches against us. Why? We show the deepest maturity inside of us. And my husband taught me a very unique quality that I couldn’t have in my TV days. Letting go, it means one is stronger that the hate lyrical twister.I believe we must have peace. I believe that we can have peace. But I do not underestimate the difficulty of this task.
Because, you see, the art of preserving peace is greater than that of waging community “war”, and much more demanding. Now there is no quarrel between progress and order because neither can exist without the other.
So let us have order in Nyanza, not the order that suppresses dissent and discourages change but the order which guarantees the right to dissent and provides the basis for peaceful change.
And today it’s time for some honest talk about the problem of order in the Nyanza. Let us always respect, as I do, our women and the youth, but let us also recognize that some of our leaders in their decisions have gone too far in weakening the peace forces as against the community forces in this country.
Let those who have the responsibility to enforce our inter community laws, and our traditional judges who have the responsibility to interpret them, be dedicated to the great principles of council of elders’ rights. But let them also recognize that the first civil right of every Nyanzian is to be free from freedom of expression violence. And that right must be guaranteed in this country.
Because, my friends, let this message come through clear from what I say today. Time is running out for the merchants of crime and corruption in the Nyanza society. The wave of crime is not going to be the wave of the future in the Republic of Kenya. Let’s reestablish freedom from fear in Nyanza so that our lovely Luoland can take the lead of reestablishing freedom from fear in the Kenya.
And to those who say that law and order is the code word for racism, here is a reply: Our goal is justice – justice for every Luo and other Kenyan communities. If we are to have respect for law in Nyanza, we must have laws that deserve respect. Just as we cannot have progress without order, we cannot have order without progress.
I pledge to you this day that we shall have new programs which will provide that equal chance. We make great history today. We do not fire a shot heard round the Kenya, but we shall light the lamp of hope in millions of homes across this Nyanza in which there is no hope today. Then the famous luo slogan of “GONYWA URU” shall be killed and buried Why? Because this is how our politicians trap us. They ensure that we remain poor for a 5 year term until they revisit us again. Then towards elections, they come back very sure that we’ll run towards them with desperate faces and two arms stretching forward crying..”YAWA GONYWA URU YAWA.” Its become a business you know!!
Let’s look around see other tribes thriving and swimming in wealth. CDF should be turned to benefit the Luos directly. By creating women and youth groups. Borrow money from CDF coffers, perform commerce returns and then refund the capital back to the public accounts with no interests after an agreed period. After all, its constituency’s money instead of a few committee officials pocketing millions and leaving constituents suffering.
We’re not goats to be used during campaigns only to send a bunch of crooks to parliaments with intentions of enriching themselves knowing in mind they won’t be voted back again..they spoil ruthlessly. Let’s transform stones to friendship with other communities via social media. Let’s stop this mentality that every time our PM Raila’s name is mentioned, we should all come out outrageous with poisonous words. For we’re not building him for the Hill but assisting with destroying his chances to presidency. Let’s put it this way, every insult hurled at anothe community member because of our PM, one vote is gone for him. We ruin his chances to the State house.
Let’s also stop being elected for leaders. No one should appoint leaders on our behalf as we know what we want and why want the appointees exclusively by us. When someone is appointed on our behalf, they don’t have any attachment with us because they know they got a backing from their “godfather” whether they fail to deliver or not. Let’s kick out anyone who uttered hate speech and other incitement crimes against other communities. Atop all, let’s avoid social network vulgar language that may only but provoke others to a long stored anger with scores only settled at the ballot box.
May God bless you, Luos, Nyanza, all other communities and Kenya.
Amen.
Esther Timberlake
Suppose the people of Kenya Elect MIGUNA MIGUNA as their President?
strange that KSB Raila haters are not shouting by supporting Miguna. No excitement!
The best of President Kibaki
Here are Kibaki’s most commonly used words:
1. Wewe pumbavu tu.. Mafi ya kuku!
2. Kwani unafikiri wewe ni nani….Nooo, hapana!
3. Hakuna hajaa!
4. Kubafu tu..
5. Na tutaendelea beele..
6. Asante san ..thank you very much..indeed
7. Fellow kenyanns.. wacha kula pobe stairo hio
8. Maneno megi wewe..usilete fitina
9. Baas!Stairo hio hio!
10. Bure Kabisa…bureee!
The stink of corruption
Raymond Bonner applauds a hard-hitting and far-reaching study of bribery in Kenya
Raymond Bonner
The Guardian, Saturday 14 March 2009
When tribal mayhem erupted in Kenya following last year’s elections, most observers were stunned. Kenya was considered Africa’s brighter spot. It held multi-party elections, had a solid economy, had never experienced a dictator like Idi Amin in next-door Uganda or descended into chaos like Somalia to the north. What, then, explained the madness of men with machetes and broken bottles slashing and pummelling men, women and children from other tribes? In a word, corruption.
When John Githongo was named anti-corruption tsar in 2002, by Kenya’s new president Mwai Kibaki, the country was almost giddy with hope. Kibaki had promised to clean up corruption in a nation where the ordinary citizen paid around 16 bribes a month to the police or some government agency. Githongo was the perfect man for the job, and he attracted bright young idealists like himself to work with him. Government workers began inundating him with evidence of fraud and corruption.
There was enough low-hanging rotten fruit to keep his office busy for years. But Githongo knew he had to take on his own tribe, the Kikuyu, if the “it is our turn to eat” mentality was to change. The first president after independence was a Kikuyu, Jomo Kenyatta, and the Kikuyu grew rich. After Kenyatta’s death, anti-Kikuyu tribes joined forces and Daniel arap Moi became president. He was a Kalenjin. Kalenjin politicians bought Mercedes, their wives shopped abroad. The Kikuyu, desperate to get to the trough again, persuaded other anti-Kalenjin tribes to join with them, and the Kikuyu Kibaki was elected.
Githongo’s target was Anglo Leasing and Finance Company Ltd. Registered in Britain, it had 18 contracts with the Kenyan government for the supply of everything from a forensic laboratory to a navy frigate and jeeps: 16% of the government’s expenditure in 2003-04 went to Anglo Leasing. The company was no more than a street address in Liverpool. The American ambassador, William Bellamy, said that the amount of money siphoned off was enough to supply every HIV-positive Kenyan with antiretrovirals for 10 years.
Michela Wrong, author of the acclaimed book In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in the Congo, is an exceptionally talented writer. It is easy to imagine George Clooney turning her account of the risks Githongo took – the way he was tailed by Kenyan intelligence after he fled to Britain; the malicious smear campaign against him at home – into a tale of government malfeasance and a crusade along the lines of Michael Clayton. She compares Kenya’s corruption to a huge garbage dump that has grown higher and higher over the years. “Each stratum has a slightly different consistency – the garbage trucks brought mostly plastics and cardboard that week, perhaps, less household waste and more factory refuse – but it all smells identical, letting off vast methane sighs as it settles and shifts.”
This is one of those rare books that deliver more than the title suggests. It is more than a story about a whistleblower, and more than about Kenya. It could have been written anywhere where corruption is endemic, and Wrong disposes of some general myths. One is the refrain that the president is an honest, upstanding, god-fearing man; he’s not corrupt, it’s his undisciplined children. “In countries where presidents have done their best to centralise power,” Wrong writes, “altering constitutions, winning over the army and emasculating the judiciary, the notion that key decisions can be taken without their approval is laughable.”
She also drives home this usually overlooked reality: for every corruptee, there is a corruptor. Or: “For every minister trousering a bribe, there had to be a western company ready to pay it.” Not just western companies. Indeed, they are constrained by anti-bribery laws, however weakly enforced, while Chinese, Korean and Japanese companies pay huge bribes with impunity.
Further, Wrong makes depressingly clear that corruption in the developing world is aided and abetted by donor governments and the World Bank. Reflecting what she calls the bank’s “moral myopia”, the World Bank director in Kenya, Makhtar Diop, rented his spacious house from President Kibaki. Even when confronted with the full extent of the Anglo Leasing scandal, Diop in effect did nothing. His successor, Colin Bruce, continued to rent from the president and, despite evidence that the polls had been rigged in the 2008 election, assured his bosses in Washington that his landlord was the legitimate president of Kenya. Bruce was promoted to director for strategy and operations in the Africa region.
Wrong praises Britain’s high commissioner in Kenya, Edward Clay. When his quiet diplomacy with the Kenyan leaders failed, Clay delivered a speech to the British Business Association of Kenya: “We never expected corruption to be vanquished overnight,” he said about the transition from Moi to Kibaki. “We hoped it would not be rammed in our faces. But it has … They may expect we shall not see, or notice, or will forgive them a bit of gluttony, but they can hardly expect us not to care when their gluttony causes them to vomit all over our shoes.” The speech had a profound impact – not on the government, but on the Kenyan people. Matatu drivers cheered Clay, policemen waved him through traffic and shoeshine boys joked “Five shillings for shoeshine, 10 for vomit”.
In general, Githongo’s well-documented exposé of the Anglo Leasing corruption was treated with disdain by Kikuyus, who felt he had betrayed his own, and passively accepted by donors. Only the Netherlands froze aid. Clay believed that, by failing to act forcefully, Britain and other donors “had set the worst possible precedent, not only for Africa, but to the recipients of British aid across the globe”, Wrong writes. “If the donors were not going to make an example of Kenya over Anglo Leasing, it is hard to see when they would ever get tough.” And in that depressing conclusion lies the larger story.
• Raymond Bonner lived in Kenya from 1988 to 1993, reporting for the New Yorker and New York Times
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/14/politics
‘Peeling back the mask: A quest for justice in Kenya’, a Kenyan political thriller starring sleaze, scandal and spin
23 July 2012 00:50 (South Africa)
Simon Allison
He says he’s a whistle-blower, exposing the corruption and cynicism at the heart of the Kenyan political establishment, all the way into the prime minister’s office. Others describe him as a disgruntled and bitter, a sacked employee with ambition and axes to grind. All SIMON ALLISON knows for sure is that Miguna Miguna has kicked up a whole lot of dirt – and that it probably won’t change anything.
Miguna Miguna, ‘the man with two names’ at the centre of the political controversy that has taken Kenya by storm, is a larger than life character. He’s loud, prone to exaggerated hand gestures and always dressed in flowing robes and some form of headgear – a sartorial habit that has attracted plenty of criticism of its own, with commentators gleefully pointing out a passing resemblance to Zairean dictator Mobuto Sese Seko. “I dress African. I am a pan-Africanist at heart,” he told one interviewer. “If was able, I would sleep in African pyjamas.”
African pyjamas or not, Miguna probably isn’t sleeping all that soundly at the moment. For the last couple of weeks, the only thing Kenyan politicians and journalists have been able to talk about is his new tell-all book, which claims to lay bare the inner workings of Kenya’s fragile coalition government and attacks the record of prime minister Raila Odinga. “Kenyans have never seen anything like it. The media feeding frenzy was like none other in their history up to this point in time,” wrote Joe Adama in the Nairobi Star.
Much of the talk has been vitriol – and most of it directed at Miguna himself. Things got so bad that one group of villagers burnt an effigy of Miguna in a mock-funeral, complete with mourning dirges and cleansing rituals. Miguna, meanwhile, has taken himself and his family to Canada, on what he says is a pre-planned holiday; critics suggest he’s fleeing into exile to escape the heat, and the anticipated slew of libel lawsuits.
Miguna’s book, Peeling back the mask: A quest for justice in Kenya, was the fulfilment of a threat. Miguna worked as an aide to Odinga from after the botched 2007 elections until late 2011, when he was sacked by the prime minister for not toeing the party line. Miguna, less than pleased by this decision, threatened to “undress” the prime minister. His book is an attempt to make good on that promise.
In it, Miguna paints a picture of a prime minister’s office stuffed with corrupt and thieving politicians. The politicians are portrayed as venal and self-serving, looking out for their own interests rather than their constituency’s, while the grand coalition government, which has been in charge Kenya since the post-election violence of 2008, is cast as lumbering and ineffective, and always at the mercy of the power struggle between Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki.
Odinga himself comes in for some withering criticism. “I know Raila very well,” writes Miguna. “I know that he is a very weak leader. I also know that he doesn’t believe in, is not committed to, and doesn’t represent the new dispensation…He isn’t dedicated to the fight against corruption. He has no loyalty but to himself and his immediate circle…Through the numerous preferential treatment of his family and relatives, it’s obvious that Raila is a nepotist.”
In addition to the juicy anecdotes, Miguna makes a few stunning allegations. He offers some specifics on local corruption cases, especially to do with a maize importation scam; he insinuates that the results of the 2007 elections were fixed, and that Odinga’s party – apparent victims of the fixing – may have knowingly turned a blind eye; and, most damagingly, he claims that Odinga’s party deliberately stoked up ethnic tensions in the run-up to those elections. It was these tensions that resulted in the post-election violence which killed hundreds, displaced thousands and destroyed Kenya’s hard-won reputation for peace and stability.
Miguna claims he’s got even more dirt that he left out of the book. “Every single leader here, I can take to The Hague [where the International Criminal Court is based]. I have it right here. And I am saying come baby come…” he told his audience, a clear threat to his critics. He says he went easy on Odinga and his party: “When I decide in a 500-page book not to say what the Orange Democratic Movement did in the PEV [post-election violence], they should take me, kneel before me and kiss my feet.”
Kissing his feet is the very last thing the prime minister, or any of the other names implicated in the book, is doing. Although Odinga himself is remaining relatively quiet, the fight back has begun – and it’s taking the form of a smear campaign against the Miguna the “bloviating ignoramus”, as one partisan commentator described him. Odinga’s main defender has been his communications consultant, journalist Sarah Elderkin, who wrote a lengthy three-part rebuttal of some of Miguna’s claims in the Daily Nation newspaper, focusing particularly on the claims of his own self-importance. She wrote that the book was typical of the Miguna she had come to know, describing him as “a person with deeply worrying issues and insufficient personal morality to restrain him from selling his friends down the road, let alone to prevent his embarking on a campaign of all-consuming personal vengeance filled with hatred.” Several lawsuits are also in the pipeline, from figures tarnished in the book, and the director of public prosecutions is looking into whether Miguna should be charged for withholding evidence relating to the post-election violence.
But Miguna himself is not the real issue, for Odinga and his team are working towards a rather grander prize. The real question is whether Miguna’s allegations – regardless of their basis in fact – are strong enough to jeopardise Odinga’s tilt at the presidency in 2013, for which he is favourite by some distance.
Chances are that he will weather the storm. The tone of the coverage of this drama has very much been coloured by political affiliation, with more time spent dwelling on the relative merits of the main players than on the substance of the allegations involved; this suggests that the controversy is merely hardening divisions rather than encouraging anyone to switch their support to someone else. And the reality may well be that Odinga, for all this flaws, is the best of a bad bunch; after all, two of his main competitors, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, are being tried for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
If there is a lesson for politicians in this somewhere, it’s that people like Miguna are better kept inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in. It’s a lesson the likes of Jacob Zuma know well, one suspects, explaining the lengths the presidency has taken to protect such controversial figures as Richard Mdlulu and Bheki Cele.
The lesson for the rest of us is that four years after the post-election violence, and in the run-up to another election, the ethnic and political fault-lines which exploded so disastrously last time round are still very near the surface. DM
http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-07-23-peeling-back-the-mask-a-quest-for-justice-in-kenya-a-kenyan-political-thriller-starring-sleaze-scandal-and-spin
2 questions from Miguna Miguna to Raila’s SUPPORTERS
Raila Odinga is running for president. I am not. As a person who has occupied an exalted public position in our society for decades; one who has enjoyed immense privileges; and one who is seeking even more power and privileges; Raila Odinga must be audited, vetted and weighed thoroughly for his record in public life before he can be found to have satisfied the requirements for election.
If he doesn’t like the audit, he must be prepared to cede ground and relinquish his political ambitions. There are no two ways around it. But he cannot intimidate, threaten or beat us into submission.
Two questions we need to ask Raila are these:
(a) If his supporters and groupies can burn my effigy and mock coffin and attack me viciously in the era of the new constitution that guarantees me the right to express myself fully including in book form merely on account that I have written a memoir they dislike because it is critical of him; what are they capable of inflicting if Raila were to become president?
(b) Are the rights Raila proudly claims he fought for only meant for his supporters and sycophants?”
MIGUNA MIGUNA.
Why It Is Difficult To Believe Miguna .
Monday, 23 July 2012 15:41 BY WAMBUGU NGUNJIRI
I would like to engage the accusation that those of us who do not believe Miguna Miguna’s books seem to be attacking the man, rather than responding to his accusations.
Let me start by saying that what is happening to Miguna is natural. To use an example that in no way suggests that Miguna Miguna is a mad man; imagine a mad-looking man accosts you and your friend in the street and accuses your friend of stealing food from him; would you believe the fellow? I do not think so. In fact I doubt you would even give the accusations second thought. The reason is that we have a natural tendency not to accept the word of someone who looks like they are mentally unstable.
However as is being argued, what if a by-stander confirms that your friend could have taken the mad man’s food. This third party’s intervention introduces credibility to the accusations and will make you look beyond the state of the mad-looking man to the accusations themselves. However what if you then learn that this third party supporting the allegations is actually a ‘certified enemy’ of your friend. You immediately go back to where you do not even consider the accusations.
A third scenario is where you are then advised that the mad-looking man is not actually mad. You are informed that despite the odd dressing, loud noises and disturbing facial expressions that he is making when putting across the accusations, the man is going through a traumatic experience in his life. Maybe he has lost of a key job that gave him prestige and public profile/power; or maybe he is going through a difficult social relationship and struggling through marital issues; or maybe he is reacting to having to re-locate back to a difficult location that he had left, vowing never to return to; a proverbial reverse trip from what looked like Canaan flowing with milk and honey, back to Egypt where he now has to slave in an environment where he is looked down on based on the color of his skin. This means the man is not mad but just going through an emotive point in his life that has psychologically destabilized him.
This means that maybe you should look at his accusations beyond the state of his mind. So let us look at Miguna Miguna’s book itself. Reading Miguna’s book one realizes that out of the approximately 500 pages, 300 pages concentrate on Miguna Miguna himself. This is where he speaks about his growing up and early education, as well as making disparaging remarks about nearly everyone he has encountered over the years. They end with his move to Canada, where against all odds and despite difficulties settling in as an African, he actually sets up a law firm.
It is not until Chapter 9, somewhere near page 285, that he starts speaking about ODM and the Prime Minister. However again he spends the next two chapters (close to 100 pages), explaining how powerful he was in the party, how close he was to the party leader, and/or how he literally shouldered the entire burden of making the candidate the President in 2007, and thereafter ensuring Raila did not make a fool of himself whilst negotiating against President Kibaki. This means that Miguna actually only dedicates a maximum of 200 pages of a 500-page book, to his allegations against the Prime Minister.
However even within these 200 pages Miguna not only attacks Raila Odinga himself, (who he incidentally does not tie directly to any allegation he makes); but the Prime Minister’s immediate family and close business and political associates as well. He especially goes after the PM’s Chief of Staff, Caroli Omondi and Permanent Secretary Isahakia; two people he clearly dislikes even more than Raila Odinga.
But let us assume 75% of the 200 pages (150 pages) is about Raila Odinga’s ills, for the sake of building a balanced argument. Let us then consider that a single page in a book like ‘Peeling of the Mask’ has an average of 400 words per page; which means he has written approximately 60,000 words against the Prime Minister. Compare this with the over 50 articles (which also translate to approximately 60,000 words incidentally) that Miguna wrote in ‘The Star’ over close to two years. Each of these articles were as venomous as those words in the book; but they were in support and towards protecting the Prime Minister, from the same accusations he now makes!
So here is a man who first writes a 60,000-word series of articles in a public newspaper over two years; not for profit and of his own accord (as he explains in the book), to be read by hundreds of thousands of Kenyans, saying one thing. Then writes another 60,000-words in 8 months, puts them in a Sh3,300/- book to make profit, and says something completely different!
In essence asking us to believe Miguna’s book is like saying we should believe in a book written by Moses Kuria saying Uhuru Kenyatta is a bad leader, were he ever to write one.
MIGUNA responds to RAILA’s Statement
My response (for publication) to the story “Raila will not sue Miguna”
a) He has not condemned Outa and others who burnt my effigy and buried my coffin in Nyando, thereby openly encouraging people to hurt or kill me. A responsible leader who upholds the rule of law would have quickly condemned those barbaric acts and distanced himself from them. By not doing so, Raila has now fully associated himself with such acts;
b) He has not responded to the allegations in the book, which are serious and go to the heart of his ability or lack thereof, to lead. The country and the world is still waiting.
c) By authorising FORA, Gitobu Imanyara, Sarah Elderkin, Ngunjiri WAmbugu and Omar Hassan Omar to attempt to assassinate my character by hurling abuse and attempting pseudo and fake psychological analysis on me rather than dealing with the contents and substance of the book, Raila has demonstrated the numerous weaknesses and failures catalogued in my book.
c) If or when Caroli and others commence action against me, as far as I am concerned, that would be Raila doing it. Caroli is not just Raila’s Private Secretary (and money man and silent nominee in various ventures), he is also a self-styled ‘Chief of Staff’. Everything written about Caroli in the book revolves around what he did after Raila was appointed PM and Caroli started working at his office. Consequently, as far as I am concerned, in all intents and purposes, Raila is Caroli and Caroli is Raila as far as my book is concerned.
d) And finally, Paul Mwangi’s opinion comment published in the electronic version of your newspaper cannot be taken to be Raila’s. Paul Mwangi is NOT Raila’s spokesperson; he is supposed to be a ‘legal adviser’. Kenyans have not given Paul Mwangi any legal and constitutional authority to act as Prime Minister. The op-ed piece is Paul Mwangi’s opinion. Therefore, as far as I can see, Raila has not spoken on my book at all. Subterfuge will not do. This is not what is expected of a PM who wants us to compare him to modern leaders in the first world. He has failed in action and practice.
Miguna [unedited] Toronto, Canada, July 26, 2012
The day KIBAKI took a BARMAID home in Limuru – It all STARTED
Friday, July 27, 2012 – Who can remember the major controversy that arose in 2003 after Kibaki was sworn in as the 3rd President of Kenya, politicians and the public questioned his marriage with Lucy Kibaki because there was rumor that he had another wife – Mary Wambui.
Uncle Moody was heard questioning Lucy whether they should address her as first or second lady at an executives party in Mombasa. This raised eyebrows and Kibaki’s advisors advised him to call an emergency parliamentary meeting declaring that he has one wife and that is Lucy Kibaki.
Since Kibaki rose to power in 2003, Mary has prospered both as a political activist and a business woman for the recent acquisition of an IEBC tender for supply of Biometric Voters Registration kits which shows the level of nepotism in our country.
And so we ask who is Mary Wambui?
Apparently Mary Wambui was a bar maid at a bar in Limuru which was owned by the late Njenga Karume. Through their connection with the late Njenga and late Michuki who Kibaki went to school with the three used to meet at the bar.
That’s how Kibaki noticed the petite young lady who definitely gave him some attention unlike his wife Lucy. Their meeting turned into a blissful affair that yielded to the birth of their daughter – Winnie a.k.a Artur Margarian’s wife.
When you see Lucy firing Kibaki’s Aides for allowing Mary Wambui to meet up with her hubby she has all the reasons in the world to fight for her marriage.
The Kenyan DAILY POST
‘FALLACIOUS AND INVENTED’: MORE ABOUT MIGUNA
Saturday, 28 July 2012 00:03 BY SARAH ELDERKIN
Conventional wisdom says you should never review a book written by a person you know. However, in the case of Miguna Miguna’s book Peeling Back the Mask, I would say the opposite. Everyone who knows Miguna and is mentioned in the book should read it and review it and correct anything they know to be wrong – because there is much in this book that is fallacious and invented.
I am neither a liar nor a sycophant, and since I am frequently accused, particularly of the latter, I want to make that clear before I move on. Miguna himself declares in the book that he finds me honest (for what that is worth). My so-called sycophancy is non-existent. I don’t wrap up my views in pretty ribbons and I’m known to be blunt. The fact that I support Raila Odinga for president doesn’t mean I have lost my critical faculties – as has inadvertently been demonstrated by a private and sharply worded memo from me to Raila that Miguna has chosen to make public.
(Miguna had given me an undertaking of confidentiality on this. “My word is my bond,” he says several times in his book. No, Miguna, your word and your bond are worthless – just so much dross to be abandoned when it suits you. You can claim no honour there.)
There will be a lot of “I” in this article, for which I shall no doubt be lambasted. But it is because I feel I have a duty to challenge Miguna’s account in just a few of the very many areas where I know he has presented a false picture. I want to speak of that which I know. Miguna’s book is full of lies and exaggeration. Worse, he has repeatedly used a device where he takes a nugget of information that is true and then wraps it round with distortions, to achieve the desired effect – disparagement of Raila Odinga. The whole thing is a travesty of the ‘Honest John’ face Miguna purports to present to the world.
A small example occurs right after Miguna quotes in full my memo to the Prime Minister. Miguna takes that nugget of truth and goes on to say that “Sarah had observed over the years Raila becoming envious of people around him with talent. Apparently, Sarah felt that Raila was jealous of intelligent, disciplined and hard-working people with integrity.”
Such words have never passed my mouth, nor has such a concept ever grazed my mind. It is a complete and utter invention on Miguna’s part, a deliberate untruth, presented as fact to support his own ignominious crusade. Miguna again delves into the realms of fiction when describing the KICC launch of Raila’s presidential campaign on Sunday, May 6, 2007. He says Raila read his speech from a laptop, and that this was a last-minute solution to time constraints because Miguna was working on the speech from Toronto, along with Sarah Elderkin in Nairobi.
Total fiction. First, the laptop idea was one the launch team had chosen deliberately so that Raila would not be reading from pieces of paper. Though outdated now, it looked rather cutting-edge at the time. But second, and much more disturbing, is the fact that Miguna did not contribute one word to Raila’s launch speech. I know that because I wrote it myself from Raila’s handwritten notes, which remain on my file to this day. I had never met Miguna Miguna then, nor had I ever spoken to him. In fact, I never once spoke to Miguna Miguna while he was in Canada.
As always, Raila knew exactly what he wanted to say, and the idea of presenting himself as an applicant for a post that would soon become vacant (the presidency) was entirely his own. The speech still sits on my computer, with the chronology of its development. Miguna sent a memo to Raila on May 2, four days before the launch. A copy of that memo is also in my file. The covering note says, “The whole world – not just Kenya – is waiting for the big day. I have attached herewith some thoughts on some of the issues that might be glossed over as you and everyone else works tirelessly for the Big Day. I hope that you will find time to read, reflect and hopefully incorporate whatever is appropriate for the Big Day.”
The accompanying notes offer some pretty standard thoughts on tribalism, the economy, CDF, security, working in consultation with others and so on. Miguna advises Raila to BE PRESIDENTIAL. (These were all things we were somewhat unlikely to have “glossed over”.) The tone of the note from Miguna to Raila (“I hope that you will find time to read …”) clearly demonstrates that this was not from a man who was indispensable and who was writing Raila’s speech. Raila’s speech was done. But in his book, Miguna says, “Only that morning, Sarah Elderkin, operating from Nairobi, and I, doing the heavy lifting from Toronto … had made the final touches on the “application” … The speech was a tour de force, skilfully crafted … we only included what we believed Raila should be capable of fulfilling …”.
Miguna had nothing whatsoever to do with the speech. His “anecdote” about it and about his working with me – a total flight of fantasy – is typical of the way Miguna lies his way through his book, trying to take credit for many things in which he played no part. The lies are so blatant that it’s hard to believe he thought he could get away with it. And anyone who swallows this stuff is simply buying into Miguna’s delusions.
Miguna also uses the launch – which was a glittering and ground-breaking event that others this very year have copied when launching their own presidential bids – to try and portray Raila and his team as disorganised. The launch had been planned for months by the team Miguna calls Raila’s strategy team. The team was not a political strategy team, as Miguna tries to portray them (while dismissing them as clueless) but a strategy team for the launch. I was there with Dick Ogolla, Caroli Omondi, Tony Cege, Francis Masinde, Tedd Josiah, Caesar Asiyo and Mike Njeru.
I have the final storyboard on file. It was produced by Caesar and covers the programme minute by minute. It lists all the personnel in charge of onstage events and their assistants, security co-ordinators, protocol, press and verification team, finance manager, ushers co-ordinator and master of ceremonies. It lists the broadcast arrangements, the sound and lights back-up, generator provision, the actors and musicians, photographers, projection screens, guest comforts, branding – flags, posters, bunting, T-shirts, balloons, plants, stage dressing, carpets, confetti and the way it would fall at the appropriate moment – press packs, TV crews liaison and runners, among many other details.
The event was supremely organised and a huge success. It was something that Miguna had absolutely nothing to do with – but into which he would now like to insert himself. The audacity of his lies is breathtaking. That is not the only lie about speeches Miguna is supposed to have written for the PM. Miguna also claims that Raila called him in Canada and asked him to write a speech that Raila was due to deliver at the University of Minnesota on February 22, 2007.
Miguna goes into much circumstantial detail about how his wife was annoyed that Raila was forcing him to do this at short notice and to travel at his own expense to Minnesota and so on. (Miguna appears to have total recall for conversations, to the extent that he can put them in direct quotes years later. Hmmm.) Miguna says he told his wife, “Sometimes we have to sacrifice for a higher cause.” Very noble. He calls it “Raila’s sudden act of madness” and portrays the whole episode as some kind of a burden he was forced to bear because of Raila’s cluelessness.
Perhaps that IS what he told his wife. Perhaps he needed an excuse to make the trip. Who knows? Whatever the case, it’s all untrue. Raila never asked him to go to Minnesota, nor asked him to write a speech. Miguna travelled to Minnesota because he wanted to. The speech, on the topic ‘The place of Africa in the 21st Century’, was provided by Adams Oloo, of the University of Nairobi.
In Nairobi, I received a copy of the speech by email from Raila’s secretary, Susan Kibathi, on February 16, 2007. I still have the original text. The speech was a massive 6,297 words long and was sent to me for editing and rewriting into Raila’s style. The accompanying note from Susan said: “I must apologise for the late submission of the draft but unfortunately Adams has not been well.”
Raila was about to leave, for Korea if I remember rightly, before going on to the US. I did a very hurried tidying-up of the speech, burnt the result on to a CD and sent it to Raila to take with him. He said he would get it printed out when he arrived. I told him the speech was far too long but time had not allowed proper rewriting, so I’d look at it again and be in touch. He went off.
When I looked at this unwieldy speech again, I realised to my horror that pages of it had been reproduced word for word from a speech given by the then South African president, Thabo Mbeki, in April the previous year. I was worried about what else might not be original and I didn’t know what brief Adams had been given by Raila.
I spent some frantic time trying to contact Adams, by phone and in every other way. Eventually, I got an email from him. I think he was in Indonesia. He said an assistant had provided material for the speech, which had been hurriedly put together. Adams was most apologetic and was relieved the error had been caught in time. It was now barely a day before this major speech was to be delivered.
By some miracle, I got hold of Raila on the phone in the US (it was not so easy in those days), where he had just arrived from Korea, and explained the problem. I remember Raila’s words, because they were such a relief to me at the time. He said, “Miguna Miguna is here. He can sort it out.” And that is how Miguna ended up “writing” the speech for Minnesota. I told Raila which parts must be omitted because they were plagiarised and Miguna reworked what remained. When Raila got back to Nairobi, he told me that what Miguna had produced was too long and convoluted, and although Raila had handed out hard copies of it, he hadn’t read it at the function and had ended up speaking off the cuff.
Once again, Miguna’s version of events comes from somewhere in a world the rest of us don’t inhabit. He has taken a nugget of truth and woven around it a massive and detailed lie in order to promote himself and belittle Raila Odinga. Later in the book, Miguna reworks another nugget of truth, that he met the Prime Minister late last year to discuss his suspension and that the PM at the end of the meeting left the hotel room without paying the bill. All true, but Miguna twists it to make the PM look arrogant and thoughtless. Miguna writes, “When the waiter came in with our bill and passed it over to Patrick [Quarcoo], I suddenly realised Raila had left us with an [sic] Sh11,000 debt.”
Quarcoo, the CEO of the Radio Africa Group (which publishes The Star), has since confirmed that he was the host of the meeting. The PM was simply an invited guest. The bill was never the PM’s to pay and the matter, Quarcoo says, was “none of Miguna’s business”. There is more. The meeting was the result of Quarcoo’s pleas to the PM on Miguna’s behalf. Miguna was desperate after his suspension and the PM “magnanimously” (as Quarcoo puts it) agreed to meet Miguna after Quarcoo had interceded, to try and resolve outstanding issues and find Miguna some kind of job. “The PM was being decent and loyal by listening,” Quarcoo said.
Miguna, however, makes out in his book that the PM was chasing him for a settlement. Miguna has since extended this lie, to declare publicly, shamelessly and completely falsely that the PM and his colleagues were actually desperately begging him to return to his job. Quarcoo has confirmed that the opposite was true. Salim Lone tells me he likewise has not escaped misrepresentation in the book. Concerning the occasion where Miguna describes the PM’s emotional response to the absolute intransigence he faced in every meeting with President Mwai Kibaki, Miguna has written, “Salim and I looked at each other and said … almost in unison, ‘Holy Moly! What the hell was that?’ We moved outside discreetly. ‘Can you believe that Miguna? He cried. Raila cried,’ said Salim, clearly agitated.”
Salim disputes the impression given here by Miguna. He tells me he was moved and touched by Raila’s humanity and by his willingness to let his colleagues see a softer side of him, a side that said they were all in this together and that he needed their help and support. Once again, Miguna has taken a nugget of truth and distorted it to present the picture he wants, while roping in someone else’s name to ‘endorse’ it.
And so it goes on, endlessly. I was not present at many of the situations Miguna describes in his book. I don’t need to have been. From the many occasions where I do have first-hand knowledge, I can see how Miguna has continually invoked other people’s names to ‘validate’ his stories, how he has engaged in writing up long, imaginary-looking conversations to bolster his case, and how he has employed these and other devices in a myriad different ways to cast Raila Odinga in a poor light.
These might seem like small matters but their sheer volume cumulatively establishes the book’s false tenor – which is designed to lend credence to other, larger claims. After his book-launch a couple of weeks ago, Miguna started shouting about post-2007-election meetings at Pentagon House, about which he claims to know everything and in which he claims to have played a central role. I was present and took verbatim notes of 32 meetings, interviews and telephone conversations during those early days of 2008. Miguna was present for four of those meetings, in two of which he said nothing and in the two others, two sentences in each.
It was hectic at Pentagon House. Raila was fielding continual telephone calls from foreign leaders and repeating to everyone who cared to hear it his mantra of peaceful protest. People were arriving, footsore and weary, from demonstrations on the ‘battlefront’ at Uhuru Park – Joe Nyagah, William Ruto, Charity Ngilu and many others. Joe burst in with a big smile and announced with some pride, “I’ve been tear-gassed!” Charity was advising everyone to wear trainers. Miguna was not among them. Maybe he was in another room. I don’t know.
There are a hundred stories I could tell. There is no space. I would have to write a book myself to refute all the distortions in Peeling Back the Mask. Miguna’s fictionalised vignettes are deliberately intended to paint a carefully designed picture. They are not ‘revelations’, as the media like to call them, but false allegations. He builds his case on a web of distortions, gradually fashioning a straw man he can then destroy. The lies are insidious, and it is unforgivable that Miguna has stooped to such deceit in his efforts to achieve what is surely an ignoble goal.
One curious thing I noticed was Miguna’s apparent lack of male friends. He esteems his male teachers who supported him, and he admires some of his erstwhile student colleagues (that is, those he is not busy sneering at) but most of the good friends he mentions are women. (An exception is Onyango Oloo, who runs the Jukwaa web blog, and who was Miguna’s main defence witness in his 2003 trial for alleged sexual assault against two of his clients – which, by the way, is mentioned nowhere in Miguna’s story of his glorious career, even in an exculpatory manner.)
Perhaps Miguna finds it difficult to get along with other men because of his history. He was raised with no father but he had five older sisters who no doubt fondly treated him like a little prince. Then his mother would kneel before him so that he could stand and breastfeed when he got home from school, as Miguna tells it in his book. Perhaps Miguna still wants to be treated like a prince, and perhaps that is why he can’t bear anyone else to be top dog. But let me not get into amateur psychology here (let alone mixing my metaphors).
Poignantly, Miguna’s book, even bearing in mind that it is self-evaluation written by a very conceited man, reveals a person of unrealised and unchannelled talent. It initially tells the story of someone who worked hard to improve his life and who was strongly committed to what he believed in. As the book unfolds however it also reveals that Miguna’s achievements from very early on in his life have all been diminished and spoiled by his explosive temper, his lack of diplomacy, his inability to co-operate with anyone to find mutually acceptable and workable compromises that allow a way forward, and his consequent failure to find a winning strategy to achieve his various life objectives. The result is that Miguna is a very bitter man.
In the end, though, it is his lies that condemn him – for if a person tells lies on one occasion, it is unquestionable that he will do so on others. Lies fracture trust and render everything else suspect. Miguna has not operated in a vacuum. There are many other people who know the truth. Miguna has chosen to publish and be damned. Unfortunately for him, he might be.
The writer is a freelance journalist and a supporter of Team Raila Odinga.
http://www.the-star.co.ke/weekend/siasa/87032-fallacious-and-invented-more-about-miguna
hw cn I get a copy of tht book
KSB: Do you want to buy or download?
Ex-Toronto lawyer takes on Kenya’s PM
JEFF GRAY
The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Jul. 27 2012, 8:00 PM EDT
He spent two weeks in the torture chambers of Kenya’s Moi regime before coming to Canada as a refugee. He rallied against Eurocentrism while a law student at Osgoode Hall. A poet, he once clashed with Pierre Berton over racism. And he was, until a public spat last year, at the right hand of Kenya’s current Prime Minister.
Despite his epic life story, Miguna Miguna, 48, has no public profile in Canada, where he practised law for 13 years. But in his native Kenya, he is a household name, and a political storm is raging there over his controversial new memoir, which accuses his former boss, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, of dozing off in meetings and condoning corruption – allegations his office denies.
Mr. Miguna’s public feud with Mr. Odinga, who suspended him without pay last summer for alleged “gross misconduct,” has captivated Kenya’s boisterous media. The controversy hit a climax this month with the launch of Mr. Miguna’s 588-page book, Peeling Back the Mask: A Quest for Justice in Kenya, and the appearance of a mob of protesters who burned him in effigy not far from his rural home in Western Kenya.
“I don’t live my life in fear. I’ve refused to do that. That’s what they want,” Mr. Miguna says. “I have learned a long time ago that the vaccination to this is to speak about it. If you hide and cower, they will come for you for sure.”
The battle between one of Kenya’s leading politicians and an outspoken former Toronto lawyer is more than a sideshow. Mr. Odinga is widely seen as a front-runner in next year’s presidential elections in Kenya, the first since polls in 2007 were followed by catastrophic violence that left more than 1,000 dead and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.
Four prominent Kenyan political figures, including two of Mr. Odinga’s potential rivals for the presidency, face charges before the International Criminal Court in The Hague for allegedly organizing attacks that followed the 2007 vote.
With his name in Kenya’s headlines every day, the towering 6-foot-4, Mr. Miguna, in bright, flowing African robes, sits thousands of kilometres away, in a mostly empty cafeteria on the campus of Seneca College in suburban Toronto. He is staying in the college’s dormitory with his wife and five children on what he says was a preplanned summer vacation.
His voice booms and his eyes bulge behind the glasses that have slipped down his nose as he pronounces on his falling out with Mr. Odinga.
Mr. Miguna says there was “no legitimate reason” for his suspension last August. The government alleged that he had repeated clashes with other officials and staff. Mr. Miguna also links his suspension to a newspaper article he wrote about Kenyan election officials and a spat over a pay cut. He was later offered a reinstatement, but refused.
He denies that he was forced to flee Kenya, and vows to return, despite receiving death threats. (He has since sent a letter demanding state security protection when he does.)
Some named in his book in Kenya have threatened to sue him, although the Prime Minister’s legal adviser has hinted that Mr. Odinga would not do so.
In a fiery speech at his book launch in Nairobi on July 14, Mr. Miguna appeared to taunt his critics, threatening to take more allegations, not in his book, about post-election violence to the International Criminal Court.
“Every single leader here, I can take to The Hague. Mark my word. I have it right here!” he told the crowd, slapping his hands together loudly, with TV cameras rolling, in footage on YouTube. “And I am saying, ‘Come, baby come!’”
His “Come, baby come” line quickly became a catchphrase for Kenyans, who now share satirical images on social media that use it as a punchline. One spliced Mr. Miguna’s head-shot, for example, onto a photo of a man trying to seduce a young woman.
Just days after the book launch, Mr. Miguna left for Toronto.
His life story, as told in his book, is a full one. He first came to Canada in 1988, a refugee from the Kenyan regime of Daniel arap Moi. While a student activist at the University of Nairobi, he says government agents kidnapped him, beat him repeatedly and kept him alone in a small brightly lit cell for two weeks. He was released and then fled on foot across the border into Tanzania.
He settled eventually in Toronto and attended Osgoode Hall law school, where he would publish poetry and take up activism again, participating in protests against the lack of non-white tenured professors and police shootings. He graduated in 1993.
According to his book, his writing – his first collection of poems was called Songs of Fire – and involvement with the Writer’s Union would see him clash with none other than bow-tied historian Pierre Berton, who disagreed with holding a conference that was supposed to exclude white writers. After articling with well-known Toronto lawyer and activist Charles Roach, Mr. Miguna started his own law firm specializing in refugee and criminal cases.
He kept up with developments in Kenya, and by 2006, he came to believe that Mr. Odinga, the son of Kenya’s first post-independence vice-president, and his Orange Democratic Movement could be a force for change. Mr. Miguna says he spent $50,000 of his own savings hosting Mr. Odinga and his entourage on a North American trip in 2006. Mr. Miguna then left Canada for Kenya permanently, and signed on to Mr. Odinga’s team for the 2007 campaign.
Incumbent President Mwai Kibaki would emerge the winner of the election, which was widely condemned as rigged, sparking the violence. Under a power-sharing agreement brokered by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, Mr. Odinga became Prime Minister and Mr. Miguna became Mr. Odinga’s advisor on “coalition affairs.”
But Mr. Miguna would soon sour on his boss. Mr. Miguna alleges Mr. Odinga appointed a long list of relatives to plum posts. And he says Mr. Odinga brushed aside the concerns Mr. Miguna raised about alleged corruption, including a scandal over corn imports and the use of funds from a World Bank sponsored youth employment program. Mr. Miguna alleges that other aides to Mr. Odinga appeared wealthier than their government salaries would suggest, able to purchase luxury cars and expensive real estate.
The allegations sparked a counterprotest last week organized by members of Mr. Odinga’s party, in which a group of demonstrators burned Mr. Miguna in effigy and staged a mock funeral. According to local media, police blocked protesters from approaching Mr. Miguna’s walled rural home in the Nyando district of Western Kenya.
The Prime Minister’s press secretary, Dennis Onyango, reached by phone, said Mr. Miguna’s allegations are unfounded and unworthy of discussion.
“The Prime Minister’s position is that he does not want to talk about those things,” he said.
Mr. Onyango provided an e-mailed statement that neither the Prime Minister nor any of his aides have been implicated in any corruption. Two senior officials were suspended but later “exonerated,” the statement says.
Mr. Miguna insists he will not give up his fight, and may even write another book: “What I refuse to accept is that Kenya should operate on different standards from Canada. … I’m not saying this place is perfect. I’m not saying there is no racism. But I am saying, you cannot bribe a judge. You cannot bribe a police officer. If you do, you will be arrested. And that happens regardless of who you are. And that is a good thing.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/ex-toronto-lawyer-takes-on-kenyas-pm/article4446166/
Mr Miguna is planning to sue Kibaki and Raila for “failing to adequately” address issues he raised in his latest book “Peeling back the mask”.
Miguna, through his Nairobi and Canadian based lawyers has characterised Kibaki as loudly silent in a very annoying and belittling manner. On Mr Odinga’s latest response to his book, Miguna decries the shallow and factually deficient statement by the Prime Minister.
Mr Miguna is seeking redress for the emotional turmoil the lack of response has caused him. He says he exposed Kenyan corruption in a manner never done before, and that the two respondents owe him at the very least a letter of “thank you” and summary dismissal of the parties mentioned. “Miguna does not take NO for an answer,” he quipped.
Enjoined as secondary respondents to the suit are Messrs Caroli Omondi, Isahaka, and Jared Kagwanja (for not adequately translating the book to Kibaki), and the NSIS chief.
Separately, Miguna is planning at a future date to sue the Nairobi Mayor for subjecting his family to substandard levels of oxygen while he was the PMs advisor. He noted that the same mayor had ensured Prof Kibwana was adequately supplied with oxygen and nitrogen as Kibaki’s advisor.
The plane carrying Miguna is expected to touch down at JKIA on August 16. It is widely expected that thousands of Kenyans will be at the airport to accord him and his family a hero’s welcome back home. Mr Miguna has been on an extended holiday in Canada where he is promoting his widely successful book to captive audiences that have flocked to Toronto in their thousands from all over the world. Some of them came from as far as Pap Onditi in Papua New Guinea and Kanyama-kango in Tonga.
This morning, Miguna had breakfast at the exclusive Manor Crest hotel in downtown Toronto in an air conditioned booth with a private kitchen, private bathroom and toilet. He was accompanied by celebrated columnist Fred Ngatia, Dr Wesley Onono (a prominent New York dentist), and Dr Mtume (a global affairs professor in Toronto).
Good book
Wants 2 read da bk
When a mad man picks your clothes beside the river while you are swimming, do you chase him naked or buy new clothes? If you chase him people wont know the real mad man.
i read the book online and got a copy but didnt MR.MIGUNA write the book out of sheer anger as well as being guided by emotions coz he sounds like a hurt sheep
A true patriotic Kenyan man
There is no idea communicated in the book.
2 expensive 2 buy
gud book kip up i need a copy of the book download