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• Paying the Costly Price of Deception

  Posted: April 10, 2008, 6:28 pm by Taabu

  Proactive leadership amounts to suggesting options out of a deadlock but not in Kibaki’s books. He has out rightly rejected responding to ODM’s letter demanding structured negotiation without asking himself what prompted drafting the letter in the fast place to replace the hitherto face to face talks with Raila.
  
  Trust and goodwill are like virginity, you lose it once and they are gone never to be recovered. John Githongo must have learnt the deceptive ways of our leaders damn fast. No wonder his tapes proved so handy and needed to do very little to authenticate his case. Raila must be wishing he taped his talks with the THIEF-IN-CHIEF. Kibaki’s rants through poodle Mutua is devoid of any moral fabric. He brought the indignity of receiving communications through letter on himself. But expect the scoundrel to shift ground and be reactive at his best when caught deceiving.
  
  Marrionate president
  Serial deception is like political opium. It blinds you to reality and only makes you believe in your fraudulent ways oblivious of their unsustainability. Behind the demand for structural negotiation lies the fear and shameless trashing of any agreement reached with Kibaki. Nobody trusts the marionette for you never know what his subordinates will direct him to effect contrary to what he committed himself to. Patience is one virtue that can only be stretched so thin but not when dealing with a certified THIEF with no regard to the people he wants to lord over no matter the cost.
  
  The price of Kibaki’s determination to show political muscle is enormous. The mediation talks at Serena lie in limbo and the message to AU as the sponsoring body is a very depressing one indeed. Even the commission meant to investigate the STOLEN elections cannot take off in the din of the present political heat. But they are not fooling anybody.
  
  Mutula Kilonzo inadvertently let the cat out of the bag when he linked Kibaki’s succession to the present self-induced political stalemate. In Kibaki’s scheme of things the whole Kenya is collaterally just a pawn in the war at his backyard. But not for long, Kenyans will eventually and VERY SOON reclaim their country back from the bloodied claws of the JANJAWEED president ridding on the back of his apologists.

• Coming Soon: The Grand Regency Hotel IPO.

  Posted: April 10, 2008, 3:17 pm by kalamari

  As far as I'm concerned, yesterdays' newspapers should have carried headlines proclaiming Kenya's' victory against corruption. Yes folks, headlines such as; HAIL RINGERA, THE CORRUPTION KILLER!! or KACC BITES PASTOR PAUL. Fellas, the government of the duly elected president Mwai Kibaki has confiscated the luxurious, albeit unkempt, Grand Regency Hotel.
  
  So why is nobody praising Ringera with shouts of jubilation as he basks in the glory of impounding the corruptly acquired Grand Regency? I can think of three reasons; (1) Kenya is currently too polarized to recognize any good from this chap. We would have probably seen grand headlines were his name Ali or Abdullah. (2) Kenyans are genetically preprogrammed to be conspiracy theorists. We all know that Ringera's effort, including the decade long court battle, is part of a vicious secret plan that comes full circle when TranCentury buys the over 2.1 billion shilling hotel from the government for about 200 million shillings. Oh yes, the plan was conceived even before Goldenberg happened. (3) Too little, too late.
  
  Questions: Are we so determined to suppress anything marginally successful related to Kibaki and his PNU folk?

• Most Kenyans Want Fresh Elections

  Posted: April 10, 2008, 3:27 am by chris

  Poll shows that 94% want fresh presidential polls
  
  A reader here made a suggestion recently that amazed me. Before I tell you why it shocked me let me tell you what the suggestion was.
  
  That retired President Daniel arap Moi be brought back to run an interim government to prepare the country for fresh general elections.
  
  WOW!
  
  Okay the fact that fresh elections is the only way to solve Kenya's problems right now is no longer in doubt. Even a vast number of Kenyans are beginning to see that. The KTN news at 9 pm carried out a live SMS poll last night asking Kenyans if they favored a repeat of the presidential elections. An amazing 94% of the respondents said YES and only a paltry 6% said NO. I can authoritatively tell you that on the ground Kenyans are more than a little fed up at the circus that has been going on since the beginning of the year and want fresh presidential elections to sort out this crisis once and for all.
  
  Having said that, everybody knows that President Kibaki and PNU do NOT want a repeat of the presidential poll for obvious reasons. But it really is only a matter of time before Kenyans go to the polls. The reason is simple. Two provinces cannot hold out against the remaining SIX provinces for too long. Mark my words.
  
  Currently PNU strategists may look very clever but when history is written they will be viewed as fools for the simple reason that had they agreed to share power equally with ODM the President would have in all likelihood completed his 5 year term (which he is very determined to do even if it is at great cost to human life). However since that did not happen, they will lose even that 50% of the power and most analysts agree that there is no way the current government can survive beyond the next 12 months. Military and security might or no military and security might.
  
  Back to the Moi suggestion. The reason it amazed me so, is that it is now settled in the hearts of a vast majority of Kenyans that President Moi was a much better leader than President Kibaki. In other words the bitter truth (for some) but nevertheless the truth is that for the last 5 years or so, we have had NO leadership in the country. Mwai Kibaki is NOT a leader and time and again he has failed to show any leadership. All his rabid supporters have no genuine solid arguments to prove his leadership qualities except the fact that he comes from the same tribe as they do.
  
  I find the Moi suggestion absolutely fascinating for several reasons. To start with Mwai Kibaki's chief adviser at the moment is none other than retired President Moi. Secondly Moi has to go down in history as one of the most corrupt African leaders ever. I mean the guy used to accept cash taken to him in brief cases. The testimony of Paul Kamlesh Pattni and that of Ketan Somaia has proved this beyond any reasonable doubt. Amongst the many evils Moi did, one of the worst was to literally destroy the Coffee industry with the sole motive of neutralizing the economic might of the Kikuyu tribe whom he was always terrified of. So the entire country suffered massive losses of income and jobs so that Moi could deal with the Kikuyus. For the record it didn't quite work the way Moi wanted it to. Instead of rushing to kneel before Moi (Baba na Mama) the industrious house of Mumbi quickly shifted to the horticultural industry and ended up making even more cash directly exporting their products all over Europe and beyond.
  
  But despite all that, a sizable number of Kenyans obviously miss Moi badly at the moment. Politics is just amazing folks, is it not?
  
  Still in my view the reader who made the comment was thinking in the right direction. What Kenyans need to urgently do at the moment, as painful as it will be, is to get rid of all leaders that have a fanatical following on either side of the political divide. That means President Kibaki, who is fanatically supported by the Kikuyu and a few of their Mount Kenya cousins and sadly the winner of last year's presidential elections, Hon Raila Odinga. The you have to add William Ruto to that list. Most faithful readers of this blog are fanatical Raila and Ruto supporters. And I agree it will be a great injustice to deny Raila a chance to get back the residency he genuinely won last December. However my plea to them is that Kenya is bigger than all of us, including those politicians we love so much.
  
  I am well aware that fanatical supporters of these individuals I have just mentioned are already seeing red and will probably not get to read this paragraph which explains the solid reasons for my suggestion. The truth is that it would be suicidal to go back to the polls with both Kibaki and Raila running for president. It will NOT heal the country. Instead it will just open up old wounds. What we need are candidates who are able to garner support across the current political divide.
  
  But even before that there is the tricky question of an interim government to run things and prepare the country for elections. That government needs to be very neutral and acceptable to both sides. Actually there is no alternative but to seek help from outside. I want to suggest what may sound ridiculous and is certainly not in the beloved constitution, but is the quickest way that the country can prepare for fresh elections.
  
  A way must be found to constitute an interim government made up of eminent persons from Africa whose main task will be to police a free and fair election. This group should get the blessings of the African Union. Interestingly the AU at the moment is split right down the middle with some countries like Uganda fanatically supporting Kibaki, while others like Tanzania and Rwanda are with Raila Odinga and ODM.
  
  Thank you for reading my pipe dreams. But I hasten to add that plenty of pipe dreams I have written about in this blog have become reality. I have a funny feeling that this one too will join the list.
  
  
  News Just In: Transition
  Jeremiah Nyagah, father of ODM pentagon member and nominated MP Joseph Nyagah, is dead. He died this morning at Aga Khan Hospital. He was also the father of the immediate former Kamukunji MP Norman Nyagah.
  
  Jeremiah Nyagah was in the original Legco 8 of 1958 (actually the first Kenyan Africans to be elected to the National assembly). He will be remembered as a man whose main fault was that he was too decent for Kenya's dirty, selfish and cut-throat politics.
  
  Great mystery: Why did Kenyan husband disappear in Tanzania?
  
  Which line is more secure against eavesdroppers? Safaricom or Celtel?
  
  The cheapest 5 star beach hotel off the Indian Ocean

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Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes