THE KENYA COMMUNICATIONS (AMENDMENT) BILL, 2008: MEDIA IS TO BLAME TOO.

On 10th December, 2008, Parliament dealt a blow to the freedom of press and expression in Kenya by passing The Communications (Amendment) Bill, 2008. MPs were mainly driven by vengeance over the media’s sustained coverage of the taxation of their hefty salaries and allowances.

But is the media fraternity entirely blameless? The media celebrated in September 2007 when Hon. Mutahi Kagwe, then Minister for Information and Communications withdrew the same bill from Parliament citing the need for further consultations and introduction of clauses to deal with cyber crime and protect the optical fibre cable. My commentary on this Bill was published in the Business Daily on 4th September, 2007. (http://www.bdafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2831&Itemid=5821) Instead of using the window created by the withdrawal of the bill to highlight its weaknesses and lobby for the removal of the offending clauses, the media concentrated on political sideshows.

Over the years journalists in East Africa have failed or resisted attempts to establish an effective mechanism for self regulation. The results have been catastrophic. In Kenya wayward journalists have elevated politicians to the level of demigods through slanted coverage. In fact political content takes up most of the editorial space in the electronic and print media. My friends in the media openly admit that prominent politicians always have the press in tow because they generously tip (read bribe) reporters for favourable coverage. Any wonder that all media houses in East Africa often ignore professionals and businesses who sustain them through advertisement? I have been a victim of unethical conduct among journalists too. When invited to a purely professional event, reporters first inquire about the guest of honour. They display enthusiasm and ask for details when it is a politician depending on his or her perceived prominence. If it is a professional or a corporate leader, they display little enthusiasm even when a fortune has been spent on advertisement in their media houses. Coverage is also not guaranteed unless it has sensational political content. And even stranger, some ask for tips to facilitate publication of a good topical issue. I have been asked for bribes by journalists in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. In Tanzania, only ThisDay (http://www.thisday.co.tz/News/956.html) published a regional seminar on trans-national crime and money laundering attended by senior government officials in November 2006. In Kenya and Uganda, similar events attracted a paltry number of journalists and did not even get a mention in the local dailies because I refused to “tip”.

It is the prominence accorded to politics by the media in East Africa which has cultivated unparalleled arrogance in MPs giving them a sense of invincibility. MPs who often bribe reporters believe that they can ride roughshod on them and everybody else. I know that politicians bankroll journalists for favourable coverage and I have names of several reporters across all the media houses in Kenya. Some do not even hide, they brag about it.

In my capacity as an Advocate, Chairperson of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) - Kenya Chapter and Member of the Human Rights Committee - Law Society of Kenya I wish to warn the media fraternity in East Africa that what has happened in Kenya is likely to be replicated in the entire region. For now, reduce the level of political content and ignore MPs for one full month. This will put them in their right senses and plunge their arrogance. Accord more space to business, professional and societal matters and cite professionals rather than politicians as opinion leaders on topical issues. It is unconscionable to ask groups you have consistently ignored to come to your defence when the monster you have created turns against you. The Media Council should proactively deal with bribery and “tipping” of reporters within your ranks.

JAMHURI DAY CELEBRATIONS ARE MEANINGLESS: KENYANS ARE YET TO BE FREE!

In 1888 the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEA) was granted the royal charter to administer and commercially exploit the British territory in East Africa on behalf the British monarch. The company was responsible for managing the production and exportation of raw materials and the construction of the Kenya-Uganda Railway to facilitate international trade. The company’s sphere of influence was renamed the Kenya Protectorate in 1895 and finally Kenya Colony in 1920. The declaration of the protectorate over Kenya was followed by a systematic legal process of alienating large tracts of land and dispossessing the indigenous people of the same.
According to Prof. Yash Pal Ghai, et al, the Crown Lands Ordinance, 1915, the Kenya (Annexation) Order-in-Council, 1920 and the Kenya Colony Order-in-Council, 1921 vested all arable land in the British Crown and totally disinherited indigenous Kenyans of their land. The Hut Tax Regulations of 1901 and the Hut and Poll Tax Ordinance of 1910 were promulgated to force Africans who were confined to special Native Reserves to provide labour to the white settlers. The settlers lived in exclusive white highlands in plentiful lavishness sustained by taxes collected from African labourers. To entrench the class differences between the colonisers and the African populace, the colonial government created the Kenya Police (KP) and a regimented Provincial Administration supported by a ruthless Tribal Police force (the precursor of the current day Administration Police - AP). Colonial Chiefs collected taxes thereby forcing their own people to provide near-slave labour to the colonists. Present day Kenya was consequently founded on the politico-legal jurisprudence of international mercantilism which viewed land as a commodity for commercial exploitation and the people on it as a mere a factor of production; labour. Disfranchised of their land and confined to native reserves devoid of basic infrastructure, Africans reeled under the weight of myriad social and economic tribulations.
The struggle for independence was underpinned by the people’s desire to reclaim their land and free themselves from poverty, ignorance and disease. However the historical conspiracy of exploitation continues to thrive and inform our present political leadership. In 1963 the new African leadership inherited and embraced the colonial super structure because it served them well and ensured that they retained all the trappings of power, authority and economic privileges that were previously enjoyed by the colonial administrators.
Forty five years later the same situation persists and our elected “leaders “and “representatives” exhibit great readiness to deploy the Provincial Administration, Kenya Police and the Administration Police (AP) to brutalise their own people for their own selfish interests or at the behest of exploitative multinationals, the rich and politically connected individuals. Kenya is still ruled by the pre-independence generation which does not appear to be in a hurry to hand over political and economic power to a new generation. The political leadership watches passively as criminal cartels and heartless faceless multinationals exploit our people by charging exorbitant prices for food, water, oil and other basic commodities. The political elite enjoy urbane life with unsurpassed luxury protected by state security and continue to hoard and hold large swathes of land while the majority rural and urban poor continue to live in hovels, contend with insecurity and wallow in abject poverty with no place to call home. Today, wayward politicians thrive on engineering ignorance and orchestrating ethnic violence to the extent that even those with pending corruption related court cases serve in cabinet and fly our national flag on their limousines. Ours is a country where a wasteful state beauracracy backed by a complacent political class drive around tarred urban roads in paid-for fuel guzzling off-roads and SUVs while the populace in the marginal rangelands of Northern Kenya and the arid North Eastern Province (NEP) live in constant risk of sure death owing to drought, hunger, lack of food, water and basic sanitary facilities. Ministers still make key public appointments on the basis of an individual’s second or surname rather than on merit. And yes, it is the same country where the Speaker of the National Assembly, a Minister of Government and an elected Member of Parliament can publicly equate the payment of tax to philanthropy, folly and misery on the part of their constituents.
This unchecked primitive accumulation of wealth is now untenable. When the late Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, former MP for Nyandarua North quipped in 1974 that it would reduce Kenya to a country of 10 billionaires and 10 million beggars, he was aptly describing the current socio-economic situation in our country. The ordinary people are desperate and restless. The recent public outrage over soaring food and oil prices and the reluctance by MPs to pay tax are clear pointers that the country is at the brink of a socio-politico revolution. It is not whether, but when and how it will happen that should be bothering the political elite and the rising middle class. The 10th parliament has little choice; they must provide leadership or the country will burn. They must reform the present constitutional order and create a politico-legal framework that advances inter-generational equity and ensures equality and justice across the social strata. If they do not ordinary citizens country will continue to be restive and the 2012 general elections in will become the watershed for Kenya. The country will either sink or celebrate 50 of independence under a new politico-legal dispensation and socio-economic order. For now independence celebrations only make sense to the political elite, to the ordinary Kenyans the dream of independence from poverty, ignorance and diseases remains just that, a dream!

THE RAILA - RUTO CONFLICT: THE SPLIT OF ODM IS INEVITABLE

The lingering cold war between Prime Minister Raila Odinga and his erstwhile allay William Ruto has finally flared up into an open war of wits. Raila’s positions on the Waki Report and the planned eviction of squatters from the Mau Forest have given Ruto ample ammunition to publicly take on the Prime Minister. Ruto has threatened to lead Rift Valley’s ODM parliamentarians in a mass walkout from the party and trigger the eventual break-up of the country’s largest parliamentary party. The Prime Minister has consistently supported the full implementation of the Waki report while Ruto and a cabal of ODM MPs, mainly from the Rift valley have opposed its full implementation on the grounds that such a move would target ODM leaders and its rank and file who engaged in violent mass protests at the behest of the Prime Minister. They contend that without their call for mass action and the resultant massive violence witnessed in January this year, Raila would not be a Prime Minister. Some of Raila’s backers have urged him to be cautious arguing that his stated position on the two issues could split the party and threaten the lifeline of the Grand Coalition Government.

To a discerning observer the fallout between the two leaders was inevitable from the onset. They do not share a common political ideology or history. While Raila earned his stripes in the opposition trenches fighting for democracy and good governance, Ruto is a creation of the intransigent former KANU regime whose hallmark was political intolerance and impunity. Raila was a direct victim of this regime which detained him for a total 9 (nine) years. Prior to 1991, Ruto was a little known activist of no political note. KANU’s well-oiled campaign machinery of 1992 propelled him to the national limelight. Ruto is Moi’s political prince who cut his teeth when the highly centrist KANU reigned supreme. Party activists who displayed unfettered support for the then President Daniel Arap Moi were assured of his tacit support in politics and business deals and were generally immune from any form of prosecution. KANU’s political intolerance and failure to investigate or prosecute perpetrators of political violence entrenched impunity and precipitated the politically instigated ethnic clashes that rocked the Rift Valley and Coast Provinces between 1990 and 1992 and in 1997.

When KANU lost power in 2002, Ruto and other orphans of the Moi regime found themselves in the cold and isolated from the corridors of power. President Kibaki’s State House was closed to them and they lost the political and economic advantages they were used to. Rallying support for Raila in 2007 was only a convenient way of hitting back at Kibaki and his GEMA people. But now Ruto and his friends find themselves in unfamiliar territory where leaders are being called to account for their overt and covert actions. With the threat that the Waki report might take an international dimension, they find themselves in an awkward position and they naturally expect the Prime Minister to come to their rescue.

But can the Prime Minister really protect them? Raila cannot afford to dismiss the Waki report. This would be tantamount to supporting the roasting alive of innocent women and children in a church building in Eldoret and the brutal killings of entire families in Naivasha. It would be a betrayal of the thousands of widowed, orphaned and displaced women and children. It can splotch his illustrious career as a champion for democratic freedoms, equality and justice. The report is now beyond his authority. The Waki Commission is a creation of a negotiated politico-legal settlement, mid-wifed by the international community after the constitutional order that existed in December 2007 failed to guarantee or protect the lives, property and freedoms of Kenyans. Neither President Kibaki nor Prime Minister Raila Odinga can dismiss this report since the legitimacy of their constitutional and political authority over Kenya resulted from international mediation.

William Ruto is just playing the ethnic card to obviate investigations into gross violations of human rights which border on genocide and crimes against humanity. He has consistently used community based mass media to put the Prime Minister into a discomfited defensive position. It is inconceivable that Ruto could publicly take on Raila without clear knowledge of the popular sentiment on the ground. Raila was recently quoted as threatening to resign if his supporters in Rift Valley are arrested and detained over the Waki report. The threats, made while speaking on KASS FM, a popular vernacular radio in the expansive Rift Valley province were idle since Raila was merely playing to the gallery.

The Prime Minister should demonstrate national leadership and refuse to cave in to the whims of the reactionaries in his party. He took an oath of office to defend the negotiated constitutional dispensation in the Republic of Kenya and to protect the lives and rights of every citizen. Losing the support of the Rift Valley masses is not necessarily suicidal; it will in fact earn him new friends, support in other regions and greater national appeal. The split between him and Ruto is inevitable. The Waki report has only stoked the fires for the ultimate implosion of a political union that was strained from the very beginning.