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Seasons and Reasons

Assassinations: Really?

Posted: February 1, 2008, 10:53 am by Seasons

When I heard that another MP had been shot dead, I drafted a post but unfortunately, the titles I came up with would have made people think that am mocking the death of a leader. Titles like “Too shot too’, ‘They shot Too too”, would have confused readers outside Kenya.

Anyhow, I decided not to put up the post and read through the KBW aggregator. I noticed that many bloggers reported the shooting of the MP as an assassination. It is interesting how quickly people decided that this was an assassination when all reports pointed to a crime of passion.

Wikipedia describes Assassination as the targeted killing of an individual who is in a high-profile position. An added distinction between assassination and other forms of killing is that the assassin has an ideological or political motivation, though many assassins (especially those not part of an organization) also demonstrate insanity; other motivations are money (contract killing), revenge, or a military operation.

How would bloggers know that this was an assassination barely minutes after the death was reported? Imagine the egg in your face when this is proven to have been a crime of passion and the end of a philanderer. How about reporting about the killing and wait for facts to be reported.

Many people are alluding that the government killed the MPs. I have been asking myself of what political value these two MP’s would deliver for the government to have them killed. I still cant fathom what they would gain.

There is another school of thought that their own party could have been involved in their demise. It is alleged that they were about to defect and thus had to be eliminated to send a message to other would-be defectors. Whilst this is plausible, I also don’t subscribe to the theory.

Conspiracy theories abound but I believe there is no political connection to the murders although politicians will use the killings to their gain.