Kenya Socialist Democratic Alliance
October 2nd 2003
Deepening crisis within Narc has no immediate solution
By Okoth Osewe
The Kenya Socialist Democratic Alliance (KSDA) has no illusions about
the lack of a solution to the deepening crisis currently facing the 9 month
old government of the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) headed by President
Mwai Kibai. In our perspectives since the new government took over power in
January after the popular defeat of the dictatorship of former President Daniel
arap Moi, we have pointed out that Kenyans should not expect dramatic political
changes following the Narc take over because the character of the Kibaki regime
is the same as that of Moi in the sense that Kibaki took over power on the basis
of a rotten capitalist system of government that has failed Kenyans for 39
years. Just like KANU, Narc is headed by a capitalist ruling class whose principle
agenda in politics is doing business by looting the State as the public is
made to swallow one empty promise after another.
At a time when the new regime should have been involved in the creation
of half a million jobs, construction of residential houses, elimination of
corruption and implementation of other key promises Narc made to Kenyan voters,
wide cracks have emerged between the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the
National Alliance Party (NAK), two major partners within the Coalition. Although
the main cause of the split has been the purported failure of President Kibaki
to honour a secret Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that was allegedly based
on a 50-50 power sharing deal which LDP MPs say they signed with NAK before
election, the growing tension between LDP and NAK has polarized the Coalition
along distinct ethnic lines.
The Luo dominated LDP is accusing the Kikuyu dominated Democratic Party (DP) within NAK of
short changing them especially on the question of the creation of the Post
of Prime Minister which, according to the MoU, was supposed to be created
through the Constitution and handed over to Raila Odinga, LDP leader also
credited for helping Kibaki come to power. LDP is grumbling that top positions
within the government have been dished out to Kibaki’s buddies mainly from
his Kikuyu ethnic group, some of whom have been plucked from retirement to take
over top positions in the government.
The squabbles between the two parties are so serious that they are threatening
the writing of a new Constitution that Narc promised, would be in place within
100 days after seizing power. After more than 270 days in power, discussions on
the new Constitution by the money guzzling Constitutional conference have been
pushed forward to November as clear differences emerged between the delegates.
The hottest item at the Constitutional Conference that kicked off in May has
been the creation of the post of an Executive Prime Minister,
a proposal that Narc agreed upon during its inauguration but which is currently
being opposed by top NAK members especially those from Kibaki’s Democratic
Party.
The problem is that Kibaki fears that the creation of PM’s post will
undermine his authority by creating “two centers of power”. In a dramatic
turnaround, Kibaki has, on two occasions, publicly declared that there will be
no PM’s post, a declaration that boardered on dictatorship on how the
Constitution is to be written because its implication
is that Kibaki has already decided the outcome of the Constitutional conference
that was mandated to decide on the issue. In fact, cries of Moi style
authoritarianism
by the new regime is already in the air with some critics accusing Kibaki
of preparing the ground for new political dictatorship in Kenya. Delegates
at the Conference are being bribed "Moi style" by anti-Prime Minister advocates
within the Kibaki camp to influence their voting paterns. A tug of war is raging
between LDP members and DP adherents as to whether the new Constitution should be
subjected to a referendum, a process that was not initially part of the
Constitutional review process.
The animosity between the ruling Kikuyu elite around Kibaki and Luo MPs
around Odinga is so intense that Dr. Odhiambo Mbai, a lecturer at
Nairobi University and former Chairman of the “Devolution committee” that was exploring
possibilities of checking Presidential powers at the Constitutional Conference
being staged at Bomas of Kenya in Nairobi, was assassinated on September 14th at his house by
three gun men suspected to have been sponsored by the “Mount Kenya Mafia”
whispered to be running the Kibaki government behind the scenes. Mbai’s assassination immediately
threw the Kibaki regime into a state of uncertainty as University students
and members of the Luo community took to the streets to protest the assassination.
In a kind of deja vu, riot police which Moi used ruthlessly to attack innocent
demonstrators calling for political pluralism were sent by the new
government to attack and tear gas University students who were protesting Mbai’s assassination.
The East African Standard journalists who published a story about
confessions by Mbai's killers were arrested and interrogated by police, leading to huge
condemnation of the regime locally and Internationally. One of the journalists
has now been framed in court with the crime of "stealing a video tape"
containing the confessions by witnesses, the kind of action that was least
expected by millions of Kenyans who voted for change. In the confessions, the
Standard reported that one of the witnesses named a prominent politician linked
to Narc as having bankrolled what was widely seen by many Kenyans as a political
assassination. Although the journalist was charged together with a police
officer, the politician who was named in the by the suspect has not been
arrested for interrogation.
The conflict is being portrayed by the media as one between
Luos and Kikuyus
A leading member of the “Luo elders” was quoted in the KANU controlled Kenya
Times (18th Sept 2003) as saying that Luos are ready to “spill blood” if
Mbai's
killers are not found. In fact, members of the Kikuyu ethnic group were expelled from Homa Bay,
Mbai's home town.
During Mbai's burial on 27th September, riots by angry students demanding
explanations from the government became the order of the day. Months before his assassination,
the capitalist media repeatedly quoted prominent Narc politicians from LDP
accusing Kibaki of having surrounded himself with a clique of Kikuyu bigots
who have allegedly shielded the President and who have now become known in
Kenya as the “Mount Kenya Mafia”.
The name is reminiscent of the Moi era
when a group of sycophants around the former dictator earned themselves
the distinction of “KANU mafia”. Mbai’s assassination came soon after
Mr. Mirugi Kariuki, the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs who
is also Kibaki’s right hand man, had talked about “political assassinations”
as he warned Raila Odinga to tread carefully on the thorny question of Prime
Minister. After Mbai’s murder, Mirugi was summoned to record a statement
with police. In the story about Mbai's murder carried in the EA Standard, a "top
Narc politician" with very dark skin and red eyes" was mentioned as having been
behind the murder because Mr. Mbai was "bothering him".
The general arrogance of Kibaki’s closest lieutenants has moved LDP MPs to
warm up for fresh battles as they fight for the secrete MoU to be honoured.
The Democratic Party (DP), which is President Kibaki’s Party within NAK, has
publicly declared a national campaign against the post of Prime Minister,
a mission intended to remind Raila and NDP supporters that the battle line
has already been drawn. In turn, LDP has charged that NAK is financing a hate
campaign against it to portray the Party as the main protagonist in a fragile
coalition that is slowly convincing the public that KANU may have been replaced
by a new and terrible monster. As open confrontation between Kibaki faction
and LDP loyalists continue to play itself in the public domain, LDP has appealed
to the Church to intervene so that Kibaki can honour the MoU. The party has
declared publicly that it will oppose all government bills in Parliament unless
top government officials aligned to Kibaki stop attacking them in public.
Public statements by leading politicians from both sides of the conflict
have made the new battle in Narc look like a war between Luos and Kikuyus
with Kibaki as the Commander in Chief of the Kikuyu warriors and Raila Odinga
at the hilt as Commandante of the Luo battalion. Outside the ruling
class, and given the absence of ideology in current Kenyan politics, Kibaki
hopes for massive ethnic based support from the Kikuyu ethnic group who are
being tuned through the media by Kikuyu chauvinists to see the conflict as
the reincarnation of Kikuyu-Luo struggles for political power that dominated
Kenyan politics after the acquisition of flag independence in 1963.
On the other hand, Luos believe that they have been short-changed by the
Kikuyu on several political deals in the past and that as one of the major
ethnic groups in Kenya, it is time for one of their own to be at the top of
government. As the future of the Coalition looks bleak, the big question is
the character the impending confrontations will take in the coming days and
whether the looming LDP-NAK show-down will lead to demonstrations and running
battles with police in the streets especially in a situation where Kibaki is likely to use
the State machine to suppress pro-Odinga protestors calling for the MoU to
be honoured as a condition for lasting peace. In fact, the Luo are simply
waiting for Raila Odinga to tell them what to do while Raila is still playing
diplomacy with Kibaki, supporting the government on key sensitive issues while
at the same time desisting from making explosive statements through the media
especially on sensitive issues. Hawks within DP have called
on LDP MPs to quit the government if they are not satisfied with Kibaki's
leadership, the same approach the Moi dictatorship used in thrashing internal
dissent within the then ruling Party, KANU through open intimidation.
The situation is not made better by Mr. John Michuki, a Kibaki ally, who declared
through the Press that both the MoU and the on going review of the country’s
Constitution were irrelevant. According to Michuki’s theory which has been
roundly condemned by LDP MPs and media commentators, the purpose of composing
the contentious MoU and Narc's pledges about the review of the country’s Constitution
before the December elections was to facilitate the defeat of the Moi/KANU
dictatorship but not to bring about political changes. This irresponsible utterance prompted the East African Standard
daily to demand, in one of its Editorials, that Narc government apologize
for having lied to Kenyans that once Moi was gone, the Coalition would introduce
a new political dispensation that would transform the lives of Kenyans.
Newspapers are filled with stories and analysis to the effect that Narc has
betrayed Kenyans.
Corruption scandals in Kibaki's administration overturning public
opinion
Mbai's assassination aside, the Kibaki regime has been plagued by a series
of corruption scandals that are slowly overturning public opinion about the
government’s ability to fight corruption that was rooted during the Moi dictatorship.
Karisa Maitha, the Minister of Local government and close ally of Kibaki,
is in the middle of a corruption scandal involving irregular awarding of a
Ksh 45 million tender at the Nairobi City Council. In a deal that is still
not clearly understood, Maitha authorized the awarding of a tender to a bidder
that quoted Ksh 12 million higher than the second lowest in the list. The
scandal has led to a national call for Maitha’s resignation or his sacking
by the President, calls that have been ignored by the new head of State.
Another scandal that Kibaki is yet to address is the payment by the Treasury
of Ksh 2.4 billion to “Cowboy contractors” in pending bills that had been
questioned by critics last year. The payments were made days before the Public
Works Verification Committee finalised its report on the contractors whom
the Minister of Roads and Public Works Mr. Raila Odinga, had accused of trying to fleece the
government by inflating bills after doing shoddy work.
Since Kibaki took power, an irregular insurance tender of Ksh 100 million
at the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) is awaiting to be clarified while
at the embattled Nairobi City Council, Salim Onditi, a Councilor at Mathare
ward, wrote a letter to Nairobi Mayor Joe Aketch demanding to know why a five
man task force that had been formed to collect rent arrears is being paid
lavishly after being expanded illegally to 30. Mr. Onditi, who is the
Secretary of the five man Task force, questioned why NCC debt collectors had
not been paid their allowances despite having collected Ksh 30 million from
rent defaulters. Questions were also raised by Onditi as to why official debt
collectors were being paid Ksh 300 a day while members of the task force were
getting Ksh 2,000 a day.
In another instance at City Hall, a Clerical Officer was irregularly paid Ksh 300,000 for “emergency rehabilitation of toilets and round abouts” in
Nairobi and “relocation of Hawkers” while queries have also been raised regarding
unusual payment of Ksh 50,000 to employees attached to Mayor Aketch. Since
Kibaki took over power, the Nairobi City Council has been rocked by a series of
financial scandals that are tearing to pieces Narc’s pledge to fight corruption
with serious credibility problems of the Narc government being planted in the
minds of millions of Kenyans who thought that they had voted for change.
Interestingly, no action has so far been taken by the regime about the various
corruption charges facing its top officials. Instead, Libaki has made a public
statement that those involved in corruption are simply testing the new
government.
The corruption scandals are beginning to expose the reality that whatever
its outlook, a new capitalist regime cannot clean the rot left behind by former
looters because the whole system is decayed. In the case of Narc, the limitation
now is that few Kenyan voters understand that the solution does not lie in
voting in a new breed of Capitalists to continue with the status quo but in abolishing the system altogether. The extent
of corruption is such that the United States, which has Imperialist interest
in Kenya, has threatened to withdraw funding for a government computerisation
project because the government illegally authorised a local company - IMB
Symphony - to begin trials for the project after USaid, a US aid agency, had
started installing machines for the same project. Money that changed hands
was so colossal that the IBM/Symphony deal went on even after the Permanent
Secretary in charge of Governance and Ethics, Mr. John Githongo, questioned
it. In condemning the trials, Githongo described it as “inapropriate and potentially
embarrassing to the government”. To underline the seriousness of the situation,
Mr. Kiertisak Toh, USaid Mission Director, wrote to Mr. Francis Muthiora,
Head of the Civil Service, alluding that the government may have been miss-allocating
resources that had already been funded by grants.
But that is just the tip of the iceberg. At the Kenya Reinsurance (Kenya
Re), Ksh 15,733,633 that was drawn in favour of the National Bank of Kenya
between August 14th and 26th this year ended in the pockets of three senior
managers well known to the government. The money was stolen through the authorisation of payment for dormant
accounts then transferring the cash to the accounts of the senior managers
at the firm. When junior employees tipped police about the fraud, the Treasury
ordered police to stop pursuing the matter, a sign that the scandals may have
involved well connected individuals. The scandal came just as Dr. Margaret Gachara, the Director of the National Aids Control Council, came under pressure
to explain why she had forged documents to justify her salary of Ksh 2 million
a month, the same amount earned by the President in a country facing deep
economic crisis and which was supposed to be rescued by the new government. The
Gachara embarrassment was so extreme that it put the government under pressure
to force her to step down. No action has however been taken to force her to
account for corruption when she was in office.
In “another development”, Mr. Ephraim Maina, the owner of Kirinyaga Construction
Company Limited, was paid Ksh 50 million in pending bills after a taskforce
appointed by former Finance Minister un KANU, Mr Chris Okemo, recommended last year
that the contractor should not be paid any more money in form of pending bills
because of shoddy work. While the payment was highly irregular, the interesting
angle was that the “Cow Boy contractor” was paid his millions after a goat
eating party at his rural home in which the Chief guests were Cabinet Ministers
Mr Kiraitu Murungi (Justice and Constitutional Affairs), Amos Kimunya (Lands),
Dr Chris Murungaru (Office of President), Mr Joseph Munyao (Livestock), David
Mwiraria (Finance), State House Comptroller Matere Keriri and a host of other
corporate and private sector top brass.
In the last two years, Kirinyaga Construction has been paid Ksh 3 billion
in pending bills under mysterious circumstances. One of the projects which
the contractor was paid for was a sewerage contract in Garissa town in North
Eastern province, a project that
has been confirmed to have been a white elephant. The goat eating party was
exposed to the public by Mr. Wycliffe Osundwa, MP for Mumias who was
nevertheless, sacked by President Kibaki
as Assistant Minister soon after he exposed the scandal. Osundwa blamed his
sacking on his attempt to expose the corruption scandals within the new government.
Corruption is part of the capitalist system and
Kenya is no exception
We will repeat this point once again. Narc is not in a position to fight
corruption in Kenya because corruption itself is part of the capitalist system
of government that Narc inherited. The main difference is the extent of
corruption in different capitalist countries and the crudity or sophistication
involved in every corruption scandal. In the advanced capitalist countries,
corruption scandals abound because within the system, the ruling class live
in an environment which encourages them to loot wealth from the state at the
expense of the tax payer. Even in the United States, Britain, Japan and other
capitalist powers, corruption continues to be a way of stealing public wealth
and Kenya is no exception. A lasting solution to corruption does not lie
in the formation of Commissions of Inquiries or anti-corruption authorities but
in overthrowing the rotten system that breeds corruption to be replaced by a
system where workers who produce wealth can be in control of the activities
of State officials. Regardless of what they said before elections, Kibaki and the emerging corrupt Narc ruling class are
responsible to nobody but themselves.
From our view, the crisis within Narc will not be solved by members of the
Luo community blaming members of the Kikuyu community or vice versa because strictly speaking,
these communities have no control over what the ruling class is doing at the
top. Both the Luo and Kikuyu workers must unite together with other communities
around a revolutionary Socialist Program that can bring to an end the politics
of ethnicity. After 40 years of intensive ethnic politics that continues to
split Kenyans as the country's resources are looted by internal and external
agents of exploitation, it is high time elements of class politics were introduced
in the country. There is no better way of doing this than working towards
the formation of a Socialist workers' party that can give direction in a situation
where capitalism has failed to deliver after each and every election. Both LDP
and NAK MPs may reach a temporary compromise over their current differences to
avoid a collapse of the government and new elections. But on a long term, these
differences will come back to rock the Coalition because they cannot be solved
by tribalism or ethnic chauvinism that dorminates the political thinking of Narc
MPs and their supporters.
Published by Kenya Socialist Democratic Alliance (KSDA)
email: harakatips@hotmail.com