Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Ass-Covering Manoeuvers
The leaking of the Kroll report has just highlighted many of the reasons why we remain in the doldrums. First, the government which has long maintained that it is doing all it can to trace our looted wealth has been shown to be less than diligent. Having sat on the report for 3 years, ignored offers of help from the UK government and actually abetted in the theft of our Safaricom shares through its silence on the ownership of the shadowy Mobitelea Ventures Ltd, all the Kibaki administration could do was engage in elaborate ass-covering manoeuvres. The government's dismissal of a report it itself commissioned is proof that there is no appetite for punishing past wrongs.
The opposition fares no better in this regard. I am amazed by the silence of those who are tasked with the function of oversight. Where are the calls for impeachment, resignations and prosecutions? Where are the votes of no confidence? (And wasn't that Chrysanthus Okemo I spotted at the ODM delegates conference? He is named in the report as one of the shareholders in "a business in the name of the Government of Kenya" along with Moi, Saitoti and Biwott.)
Finally our press seems more interested in using their freedom (won at our expense) to indulge the political class. It is surely inconceivable that none of our investigative journalists was aware of the existence of this report. That we had to wait 3 years for an anonymous leak on the internet is an indictment of the laxity with which the Kenyan media approaches its function of keeping the citizenry informed. It is illustrative too that over the weekend, more space and resources were devoted to covering the ODM convention than on discussing the implications of a government abdicating its responsibility to its citizens and choosing to side with the enemy.
It is at times like this that I truly feel ashamed to be called a Kenyan.
The opposition fares no better in this regard. I am amazed by the silence of those who are tasked with the function of oversight. Where are the calls for impeachment, resignations and prosecutions? Where are the votes of no confidence? (And wasn't that Chrysanthus Okemo I spotted at the ODM delegates conference? He is named in the report as one of the shareholders in "a business in the name of the Government of Kenya" along with Moi, Saitoti and Biwott.)
Finally our press seems more interested in using their freedom (won at our expense) to indulge the political class. It is surely inconceivable that none of our investigative journalists was aware of the existence of this report. That we had to wait 3 years for an anonymous leak on the internet is an indictment of the laxity with which the Kenyan media approaches its function of keeping the citizenry informed. It is illustrative too that over the weekend, more space and resources were devoted to covering the ODM convention than on discussing the implications of a government abdicating its responsibility to its citizens and choosing to side with the enemy.
It is at times like this that I truly feel ashamed to be called a Kenyan.