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We encourage diverse views from all areas but please avoid raw and uncouth language. Such stories will not see the light of day. I shit you not.
bcc2502 said
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Story by DONALD KIPKORIR
Former UN chief Kofi Annan has the support of Kenyans in his quest for a way out of the national crisis. But he must know that we will not countenance Zimbabwe-like AU-sponsored mediation which has been dancing on the spot as Mr Robert Mugabe presides over the annihilation of his country.
Zimbabwe, once a jewel of Africa, now has 3 million refugees in South Africa and 1 million in England yet Mr Thabo Mbeki is still massaging the fraudulent ego of Comrade Bob! Annan must not take us the same road and ought to know that we will not allow him.
He must play his role of a mediator knowing that his fidelity and duty is to the people of Kenya who have genuine grievances arising from a disputed presidential election and historical injustices.
The time for euphemism is over. We leave it to court jesters like Eric Kiraithe and Alfred Mutua to tell the emperor that he is dressed in the finest clothes when the opposite is true.
Finest clothes
Unlike the sycophants of Emperor Nero who joined him in dancing as Rome burnt to the ground in 64 AD or those who applauded Empress Marie Antoinette in telling Parisians in 1789 to eat cake when they couldn’t afford bread, we will not lie to President Kibaki that all is well.
Mainstream American media is brutally honest and that is why America is the richest and most powerful empire ever. The current edition of Newsweek in its cover article, calls George W. Bush’s presidency the American tragedy and that he is an idiot comparable to an American president called Grover Cleveland who historians can’t even remember.
The media in Kenya must play their role of being harbinger of truth and not play a partisan role.
With the same honesty, we must tell President Kibaki that after Mr Samuel Kivuitu declared him winner in controversial circumstances on December 30, 2007, he has decided to retreat to State House and let the country burn.
He didn’t take the oath of office to be giving us taped messages aired through KBC or unsigned statements by the PPS. He seems to have forgotten that a president is demanded of him to offer national leadership, administration, management, and as George W. Bush correctly stated, he must be the decider. In 1960s America, the civil rights movement was being twin-pronged in its leadership by radical and militant Malcolm X on one part, and the other by evangelical Martin Luther King. Blacks wanted to correct historical injustices that had lasted centuries, and the privileged ruling white clans stood in the way.
President John F. Kennedy, who has since been sainted, never trusted these black movements. In 1963, King vowed to organise a million-man march to Washington for blacks to demand their rights to Kennedy’s protestations. When the march was on, no gun was fired and no tear gas was thrown and as they say, the rest is history. The lesson? Presidents must never stand in the way of history and people’s rights for correctional justice.
As we search for solutions, it is time we give names, faces and identity to people killing and being killed. It is a tragedy when people are killed because the police suspect they were going to burn property, and it is a catastrophe when we shy from identifying the names and tribes of all the protagonists and victims.
Part of Europe wanted to behave the same way on the killings of Jews until states legislated to make denial a crime. Do we want legislation to force us to do the same? We cannot move on till we face the brutal truth as it is.
The death of any Kenyan, whether Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luo or Luhya carries the same weight. No tribe is superior or has monopoly of political hegemony.
The police have abdicated their cardinal duties and have allowed our country to follow the footsteps of Cote d’Ivorie and Lebanon. The police think they are an armed wing of PNU and cannot allow people allied to ODM to enjoy their constitutional rights or even mourn their dead! In the fullness of time, they must face the law for dereliction and abdication of their statutory duty.
The police need always to remember that they are regulated by the Police Act, Cap 84 and no other law in respect of their use of arms. The law does not provide for use of lethal force to disperse demonstrations or protect property. In only three instances are they allowed to use force — to stop escapees from lawful custody, those aiding the escapees and those resisting arrest. However, in these instances, the police must give clear and unequivocal warning that they intend to use force.
In March, 2005 and November, 2007, Paris suburbs went up in flames, thousands of motor vehicles were burnt, shops and libraries were destroyed, and 77 policemen injured. The financial and political costs on France arising from the riots were monumental and crippling, yet the police did not shoot one demonstrator!
When police realise that their duty is to maintain law and order and not to kill, Kenya will stand proud.
In addition to France, deaths of civilians or police caused by civil strife have not been recorded in decades in Europe and America. In Italy, when one policeman was killed by football hooligans, the country mourned and a national shake-up in the police force was ordered. In Kenya, the rupture will happen first before any police commissioner takes moral responsibility for lapses in the conduct of the police.
In the meantime, the army should remain in the barracks. Their intervention ought to be the last line of defence. Over 40 years ago, crooked and corrupt civilian leaders facing popular revolt in Lebanon, Turkey, Thailand and Pakistan invited the army to protect them and since then, all successive governments in these countries are answerable to the army, not the people. We may applaud the intervention by the army now but we must not be blind to history. The army should not open the doors of their barracks till our borders are breached or our State House has locked its gates when the country is burning. Those flying over in Naivasha, Nakuru and Eldoret must return to the barracks.
Likewise the Church in Kenya has no moral integrity to guide us. Church leaders have taken sides and are demanding that we maintain peace and move on. In the Old Testament and from the time when Cain killed Abel, Jehovah rejects sacrifices offered to Him and demands instead truth and justice, and in the New Testament, Jesus says that He is the way, the truth and the life. Let the Church take a break and listen to the Holy Spirit and not political spirits!
Customs and traditions
As the country grapples with the current crisis, perhaps Kenyans should ponder over some of the customs and traditions of conflicts. Indeed, we cannot bury our heads in the sand, when more than 1,000 people have been killed and no one is taking responsibility.
Such acts as killing non-combatants, defenceless persons, or those who have surrendered are outlawed. If any force is used, it must be humane and proportionate. The killings and burning of non-threatening women and children in conflict zones or of innocent passengers in PSV vehicles are totally and wholly out of order and criminal under local and international law.
That is why the Government has the ultimate responsibility of maintaining law and order. Under international law, a government bears legal responsibility for armed gangs operating within its borders. When normalcy finally returns, some people may have to answer for all that went wrong and that is the law.
Kenya deserves peace, not mere peace, but peace based on the truth, justice and equity.
source:http://www.nationmedia.com/
bcc2502 said
Posted 29 January 2008 05:32 PM Hide Post
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Daily Nation Editor piece- Jan-30-2008
In the crisis, the buck stops with Kibaki
http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry…._id=24&newsid=115693
Whether the killing on Tuesday of Embakasi MP Melitus “Mugabe” Were was an assassination or — as the police put it — pure murder, it will certainly complicate the state of national insecurity, which threatens to turn Kenya into a failed state.
It comes as the country grapples with national unrest in which 350,000 people have been displaced, at least 800 have died and property worth billions of shillings has been destroyed.
Such is the cycle of violence that has poisoned ethnic relations that the fear of civil war is not far-fetched and the prospect of healing wounds and reconstruction is simply daunting.
Every image of a razed house, every shot of a drying patch of blood is a chilling reminder of the deep fissures which have turned Kenya’s fabled unity into a mirage. Eldoret, Kisumu, Nakuru, Naivasha — it’s all a tale of blood-letting and destruction on a scale never envisaged in our beloved country.
We have now reached a stage where we must wonder whether the Government has been absent or has been unable to function since President Kibaki was declared elected for a second term and sworn in under a cloud of controversy.
Yet we are nowhere near resolving the dispute: Opposition presidential candidate Raila Odinga claims that the election was rigged and has refused to accept President Kibaki’s victory; The President insists he was fairly elected and duly took up office. The standoff has precipitated the worst crisis Kenya has faced since Independence.
This is not about who won or who did not win the presidential election. It is not about who is responsible for organising or fuelling the violence. This is about the simple and indisputable fact that, whatever the circumstances of his victory, President Kibaki now occupies State House and owes this country a responsibility. Granted, the legitimacy of his presidency is in question, but nobody is better placed than he to deal with the daily slaughter of innocent Kenyans and the rancid climate of ethnic distrust.
For now, he controls the instruments of State.
If then there is a government in place, why has the situation been allowed to get out of hand? The killings and evictions in northern Rift Valley, the revenge attacks in Nakuru and Naivasha and the ethnic fighting in Nairobi slums all indicate an abysmal failure of government.
The diplomatic effort
Yes, the formal mediation by Mr Annan’s team has started, but the public’s confidence in the diplomatic effort is continually dampened by jarring remarks — bordering on the insensitive — from Cabinet Ministers and Opposition hard-liners harping on the legitimacy of their cause. How, for instance, does Mr Amos Kimunya propose to push ahead with the Safaricom flotation with internal refugee camps full and some mortuaries overflowing with strife victims? How callous can one be, Mr Otieno Kajwang’, to dismiss the fate of innocent women and children burnt to death in a church as a “wake-up call”?
Then there are the politicians and businessmen who are fuelling a frightening new conflagration. Impatient with what they see as President Kibaki’s inability to handle violent dissent, they are reported to be raising funds and mobilising militias to counter what they see as the targeting of their community. The attacks in Naivasha and Nakuru may be part of this strategy, which may also include leaflets by a shadowy group containing a hit list of alleged tribal “traitors.” The list includes politicians, civil society activists and journalists.
Much of what has befallen Kenyan indicates an absence of leadership. No one can dispute the fact that in many of the worst hit areas, particularly in the Rift Valley, the government’s security and administrative organs fell flat on their faces.
In Nakuru and Naivasha, the world watched in horror as police stood by while armed mobs set up illegal roadblocks and killed innocent people.
Whereas in Kisumu and Nairobi police were accused of using excessive force against rioters and demonstrators, in Nakuru and Naivasha the force appears to have done exactly the opposite: It was ineffective against murderous mobs who killed and maimed in full view of television cameras. Mr Kibaki has at his command awesome powers that can be called upon to restore sanity before things get out of control.
This should not be about using the full might of the security forces against the opposition; this is about applying lawful force to counter all troublemakers, whatever their political or ethnic affiliations. It’s about defending the Constitution and protecting life and limb; it’s about enforcing peace; it’s about statesmanship.
While all sides in the political divide bear responsibility for what has happened to Kenya, it ultimately falls on the President to exercise his authority and do what needs to be done. He has to restore law and order and drive the pursuit of a just political settlement.
That is what occupying the Top Office is all about, Mr Kibaki, and there can be no evading that responsibility.
If Kenya disintegrates, history books will record that the collapse of a once great, united and prosperous country happened on your watch.