The present Kenyan govt. comprises and is headed by the President and Prime Minister. This is the norm in every other country in the world that has a President and PM. These two principles, regardless of party affiliation, with the Cabinet of Ministers are charged with formulating and implementing govt. policy in all areas.
It follows that any failure cannot be attributed to an individual in the government but to the govt. as a whole. Failure to produce required results or in the protection of national interests is reason for any Minister to hand in their resignation or face dismissal. Any Minister with any moral fiber and inclination would choose the former. Therefore being in govt. because you were given “nusu mukate” is a dismal attempt at ducking responsibility and utter nonsense.
If the PM considers the govt. to be inept and cannot perform his sworn duties, then he has the option of resignation and being the head of the opposition. This would be the natural action of any political servant (mtu wa watu) focused on pursuing national interests ahead of personal ones.
However, the present govt. headed by the President and PM, together with their Cabinet of Ministers continue to fail miserably in all spheres of governance. Except of course excel in the mismanagement of the Exchequer. That is the bare and bitter truth. But since Kenya is blessed with an uncountable number of morons with extremely limited reasoning capacities, they only understand issues when presented as PNU or ODM, Kenyan acronyms for tribal affiliations.
It is equally foolish to heap blame on the President as if he alone is elected to Office. The PM is not the President’s messenger, nor is his portfolio about motorcades and speech making. He is not as helpless as he would have many believe and even managed to convince. If accountability is paramount and important to the Kenyan electorate, the President, PM and every Minister (the Government) should be held to account and demands for proper governance of Kenya propagated.
O. Hatari
Hatari: The article you are responding to was a response to President Mwai Kibaki’s disingenuous utterances where he called for ‘dialogue’ which was completed long time ago.
Your point of view ignores the weird configuration of Kenya’s Coalition government whose modus operandi is incongruent with what fits into the definition of a Coalition government. It is a nusu mukate deal that was cobbled by Kofi as a strategy for crisis management to necessitate a period of transition which was to annex the promulgation of a new constitution as a way of re-organizing new elections to usher a democratic Coalition government in Kenya.
While both the PM and the President ought to take responsibility for the failures of government as you rightfully posit, this level of responsibility is only possible if both the President and the PM assumed office without the element of a stolen Presidential election and the circus of a nusu mukate PM.
Although your view on collective responsibility is valid, it is partially disjointed because your thesis ignores the basic realities under which the President and PM wield power in the Kenyan case.
Your assumption is that the Coalition government ought to be at par with similar government arrangements across the world whose elections were free from controversy and whose election results were accepted by the electorate as a true reflection of the people’s will.
When you talk about “resignations”, you expose a typical lack of appreciation of the fact that in a non-ideologically driven political power-sharing under a defective “come we survive” Coalition government, politics is reduced to a business venture where the stakes rests firmly on the profit and loss matrix.
To expect the President, PM or members of Cabinet to resign under circumstances enumerated is close to expecting a snow-fall in the middle of the Kalahari. It is in this context that the article in question needs to be interrogated.
Okoth Osewe
About the Author
Thirty Years After the Coup, The Situation is Worse in Kenya
Today, August 1st, Kenyans at home and abroad solemnly observe the 30th anniversary of the 1982 coup attempt whose leaders were seeking to topple the dictatorship of former President Daniel arap Moi from power. After 3 decades which has produced a new generation of Kenyans, the fundamental political, social and economic crisis that catapulted the coup leaders into action has deepened.
Deep in the consciousness of millions of poor, unemployed and idle youths who have been paying the ultimate price of the crisis in Kenya, the most urgent question is what needs to be done to salvage their shattered lives and to exhume hope for the future in the face of endless social frustrations, economic hardships, human deprivation and political subterfuge that has been perfected by political vultures who have been masquerading as leaders in today’s Kenya.
When the late Hezekiah Ochuka masterminded the coup together with his Comrades in arms, the basic agenda was to end poverty, starvation, homelessness, mass unemployment especially of the youth, landlessness, corruption in government, spiralling inflation, tribalism, human rights violations, nepotism, lack of healthcare services, looting of the economy by the rich, collapsing infrastructure, starvation wages of workers, exploitation of the poor, widening gap between the rich and the poor, imperialist domination of Kenya’s politics, economy and culture, ruling by organized mafia cartels at State House and a host of vices that had created a millions of wrecked citizens who no longer appreciated the existence of an institution called government.
Thirty years after the coup, the very ingredients of political marginalization, economic inequalities and social frustrations that nourished the coup continue to tare the lives of millions of Kenyans. The illusion of change born out of democratic gains of the reform movement is slowly crystalizing into hard conclusions that something may have gone wrong somewhere thirty years after the coup. Why?
The defeat of single party dictatorship
Kenyans no longer suffer under a one Party dictatorship following the re-introduction of political pluralism but this democratic step forward has not created political parties that can address the myriad questions which have reduced millions of Kenyans to sub-human existence because these parties are ideologically bankrupt.
After a protracted struggle, political pluralism was re-introduced in Kenya twenty years ago, considerable time when the emergent political parties have failed to evolve from ethnic-based mobilization of the masses to ideological organization of the parties because the leaderships of these parties are hopelessly inclined towards old-style ethnic chieftainship, a backward and retrogressive concept that was more relevant during the pre-colonial period.
It is instructive that thirty years after the coup, and forty nine years after flag independence, millions of young and energetic Kenyans are not only being mobilized along ethnic lines but are also pledging allegiance to empty-headed political vultures bereft of ideas which can radically transform the lives of millions of citizens who are unable to afford a square meal per day. In summary, since the coup failed thirty years ago, there is still no real political alternative in Kenya that can put forward ideologically-based programs that can show the way out of the crisis the country is plunged in.
KANU was vanquished but a more vicious KANU B is in power
It is true that since the coup failed, the former dictatorship of Daniel arap Moi and his KANU party which miss-ruled Kenya has since been vanquished. But what do Kenyans have as a replacement? An typical replica of KANU, complete with a duplicitous and corrupt leadership drawn from a dirty and murderous ethnic Mafia cartel whose every political plot is structured to maintain the oldish Kanu status quo.
The long-awaited departure of Moi’s KANU, which was apparently greeted with glee and rhapsodic ululations, was superseded by a new and megalomaniac coterie of wealth grabbers that quickly assumed the distinction of a Mafia cartel whose ethnic roots could be traced back to the plains of the Kikuyu dominated region of Mount Kenya. The conclusion of millions of conscious minds in Kenya was that despite the defeat of Moi’s KANU, the nation may have been short-changed as fear swept across the country that a more lethal, dirty, arrogant and murderous conglomeration of political gangstas from Kikuyu land may have assumed the reins of power.
Nothing could have been far from the truth because after this cabal ran down the country under Kibaki’s dictatorship following the dethronement of KANU is 2002, it proceeded to steal elections in 2007, plunging the country into gory and atavistic blood-letting that nearly created a civil war in Kenya before Western imperialism intervened to safeguard their interests.
Today, this cabal is shamelessly trying to install a suspected war criminal called Uhuru Kenyatta as President to perpetuate the status quo and contrary to the widely held view by millions of Kenyans that another Kikuyu President is untenable under the current dispensation. The disheartening dilemma is that this cabal of latter day thieves and robbers never learnt a single lesson from the 1982 coup attempt – that the gallant coup leaders staged the coup because they were opposed to a monolithic, totalitarian, dictatorial, thieving and narrow-minded ethnic grouping of political vultures in control of the capitalist state machine. There is even more disappointment.
A new Constitution has failed to put food on the table
After forty seven years of struggle (1963-2010), and thirty years after the coup, a new constitution was promulgated by the octogenarian President Mwai Kibaki in August 2010. However, since this historic event was celebrated with pomp and funfair, prices of basic consumer commodities have continued to systematically sky-rocket, catapulting the cost of living to an even unaffordable level for millions of poor Kenyans who have been dehumanized by the crisis of capitalism.
More precisely, the new constitution was promulgated without a caveat that within the framework of a rotten capitalist system of government controlled by a mafia cartel and answerable to nobody but themselves, the Constitution would remain a worthless piece of paper that would not put food on the table to the 10 million Kenyans constantly facing the threat of death as a result of starvation.
Secondly, the document was promulgated without a warning that as long as its implementation remained firmly on the hands of the thieving capitalist ruling class and their appendages (going by many toothless and puppet Committees), the new Constitution would continue to serve the interests of this rich class of wealth grabbers regardless of the good intentions encapsulated in the elaborate syntactic strings that are weaved magnificently in this document.
What is to be done?
After thirty years following the botched coup attempt, and, from a communist perspective, we are where we are because capitalism has failed to deliver. The system is not only time-barred but also rotten to the core.
Unfortunately, there is no solution to the crisis as long as Kenyans are not yet ready to interrogate and examine communist ideas, strategies and solutions to national problems whose solutions exists but which cannot be examined because of organized brainwashing of generations after generations that communism is bad for Kenya.
The French has just elected a Socialist government while both Bolivians and Venezuelans have both cut the head of the capitalist snake and replaced it with socialism. Across Europe and the United States, huge anti-capitalist-pro-communist movements have pitched tent in the very backyard of capitalist regimes and here, the “Occupy Movement”, that is shaking capitalism to its very foundations in the United States, is a constant reminder that the working people and oppressed masses in the United States are beginning to tackle the problem from its root-cause – blood-sucking of poor people by vampires who control big business and who will do everything in their power to maintain a system that builds on wealth accumulation at the expense of the poor.
As Kenyans mark the 30th Anniversary of the 1982 coup attempt, it must not be forgotten that the country has experimented with capitalism for almost five decades and the system has failed Kenyans at each and every stage. Although the nation ought to be making progress with every democratic gain (political pluralism, dethronement of KANU, a new constitution, democratic elections etc), the country is actually moving backwards. The living conditions of Kenyans is worse now compared to the last 30 years; unemployment is at its highest compared to the last three decades; prices of basic consumer commodities have doubled ten-fold in the last three decades; millions of Kenyans cannot put a single meal on the table today; millions of University graduates cannot find jobs while the growth of slums in urban areas continues to shock even the most conservative thinkers.
Surely, when will Kenyans wake up to the reality that the more the situation changes, the more it gets worse? Which language must be spoken before the youth can understand that the main problem is the system and that the country needs a Socialist revolution to turn things around? It is great that the reforms brought back political pluralism, removed KANU from power and produced a new constitution. However, there is still no food on the table, no shelter for millions of Kenyans while health care, education, social services, jobs and other basic human necessities are the preserve of the rich class of thieves with the means to grab wealth produced by the working people of Kenya by exploiting their positions within the system. In the current political marketplace, there is no solution in sight.
Our message to Kenyans seeking a solution to the crisis is that the reform era is coming to an end, the reformists are becoming history and the country no longer needs further reforms. It needs a Socialist revolution to divide and share the national cake, sweep away the rotten capitalist class and build a new society where every Kenyan can live a decent life. KRA has the ideas and the challenge is to organize. The ambition of the 1982 coup leaders shall have been abandoned if the injustices that inspired them to organize the coup remain unaddressed, thirty years after the event. The system is rotten beyond reform.
Okoth Osewe
Secretary General
Kenya Red Alliance (KRA)
‘Pride should be reserved for something you achieve or obtain on your own, not something that happens by accident of birth. Being Irish isn’t a skill… it’s a fucking genetic accident. You wouldn’t say I’m proud to be 5’11”;or I’m proud to have a pre-disposition for colon cancer.’
George Carlin