Emergency Rescue Kibaki Style

The Fellowship of the Wringer

After declaring he had rather die than resign, then "stepping aside" to allow for independent investigations which reportedly found him culpable for misleading parliament andselling the Grand Regency hotel with undue haste and secrecy, Amos Kimunya is back in Mwai Kibaki's promised "Clean Cabinet". 

He joins a distinguished group of presidential cronies who have been, despite all evidence to the contrary, "cleared of wrongdoing" (at least in the President's fevered imagination). The Fellowship of the Wringer. It includes persons such as George Saitoti, Fred Gumo, David Mwiraria and Kiraitu Murungi, who after being caught with their hands in the public till, are forced to resign (OK, OK Amos, step aside), subjected to Commissions of Inquiry whose reports and recommendations are neither released nor implemented and after a short stint in the backbenches to allow for public tempers to cool down, are reappointed to the Cabinet. 

The oldest members of this fellowship are Saitoti and Gumo, who even prior to Kibaki taking power had been included in a "List of Shame" in a report into the Goldenberg scandal by the Parliamentary Select Committee on Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes (popularly known as the Kombo report).  That report recommended that they both "be investigated with a view to prosecution" and candidate Kibaki promised to implement in full the recommendations. However, one of the first acts of Kibaki's Presidency was to appoint the two to his Cabinet! A subsequent Commission of Inquiry into Goldenberg also recommended that Saitoti be prosecuted. However, he managed to convince a constitutional court that he had been "cleared" by his fellow MPs. Attorney-General Amos Wako vowed to appeal that particular constitutional court ruling though an appeal that is yet to materialise several years later. 

And when it comes to being cleared by Paliament, Mwiraria's name was expunged from the Parliamentary Accounts Committee report into the Anglo-Leasing scandal, largely at the instigation of that other anti-corruption crusader, Justice Minister Martha Karua (who in an interview with the BBC's Hardtalk two years ago said that she could offer no evidence that the war on corruption was being won and admitted that after more than 4 years in power,the Kibaki administration could not produce a single corruption conviction of note). During the vote, the August House was less than a quarter full, and the motion was passed by a majority of 3 with Mwiraria himself casting one of those votes in his own favour! A thunderous vindication indeed!

President Kibaki has shown a propensity for disregarding the recommendations of the people he appoints to investigate corruption when their reports threaten to disturb hios otherwise peaceful slumber. He was AWOL when his own anti-corruption czar, John Githongo, was asked to "ngo srowry" in his investigations into Anglo-Leasing and eventually hounded out of the country, his evidence dismissed on the spurious assertion that it did not matter because he was not an "investigator".  The Kroll report into the looting of Kenya under Moi was kept under wraps for over 3 years and has not been acted upon till today. Similarly, Kibaki has now ignored the recomendations of the Cockar Report which he himself commissioned. 

Thus we conduct the War on Corruption.

Iraqi Journalist Shows Kenyan Counterparts The Way

I hope Nyambane and Fredrick Odhiambo are watching. This is how it should be done! During a press conference on his final tour of Iraq, George W. Bush was ducking more than questions after an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at him shouting, "This is a farewell kiss, you dog!" 

Perhaps a new report which describes the US effort to rebuild Iraq as a $100 billion failure is what had the gentleman, identified as Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, so riled up. The report lays bare the general incompetence of those tasked with the effort and their attempts to cover up their failures by resorting to Saddamist tactics (The document has former secretary of state Colin Powell complaining that after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department "kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces -- the number would jump 20,000 a week! We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.'")

Whatever his grievance, the reporter was beaten up and arrested by security agents. If the Kenyan example of how we deal with those who disrespect our big men (as Internal Security Minister George Saitoti described the Jamhuri Day protests) is anything to go by, I think the Iraqi journalist deserves all our prayers.