Quandary of these coming Party Nominations

Political parties will have to nominate candidates by the 18th January 2012. Accordingly, nominations will depend on: 1. For political parties - signatures of people supporting the party from voters designated as valid for the March 4th elections. 2. For independent candidates for NA and Senate and all presidential candidates - on signatures as outlined in Article 99 (c) (i) & (ii) and Article 137 (1) (c) and (d) For this to happen, the voters register must be compiled, inspected and published. the period for doing this according to the Elections Act (which is the law in force) is 60 days from the designated last date of registration for voters wishing to participate in the 4th march elections, i.e. 60 days after 18th Dec 2012. This means that the official register, according to the law, will be ready by 18th February 2013. For a person to be nominated as a candidate or for the party lists (the nomination shall be presented to the IEBC at least 45 days before the elections, i.e 18th January 2013), they should be members of the political party by 4th January, and must have proof that they are registered voters. My question is: what voters roll do we use for the nomination of political parties? Or is there information that i do not have?

see what has kept me quiet and marvel

civic education and the death of reform

I have written before that any education is liberating, even when it is designed to disempower the beneficiaries. Something wears onto the educated that is a by product of the process of education and that radically transforms those that get the education. Indoctrination is perhaps the kind of education that creates the worst kind of rebellion. Civic education suffers the same fate. Father Dolan in his may 11th Article “ Civic Education an Obstacle to Real Change” is irked by the fact that Civic Education has become a “cash cow” and that it is no longer able to liberate the people. I agree with him totally when he argues that Kenyans do not need information, they need hope and education for liberation in the Paulo Friere participatory educational theatre model called “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” in his famous book by the same title. Something has happened to our national psyche as a people. We feign ignorance of such things as that the Constituency Development Fund is a total failure because it has become a campaign tool wielded by people whose work is legislation and oversight –not implementation of development projects. We have insisted on MPs ‘bringing” development to the areas they represent. We have created demi-gods out of the most hapless of characters – people who were elected because of their money or because they were pointed out to constituents by the kingmakers (called ethnic party big-wigs). We have faltered as a nation and lost the way. Yet the energy with which the government and civil society partnership programme – KNICE – is being implemented, we as a nation are keen on receiving information, we want to be told over and over again what the constitution says, what our rights are, what people we should elect, how we shall elect them, how much money we shall get to the counties, how we shall participate in the governance of our country etcetera. Getting information is good, it is empowering, but it is not liberating. The power of liberation is not external, it is internal. People have to make choices, and there are only two: to continue asking for information, or to use the little information that we have to carry out such acts as may move us to the next level. This next level is the one in which we take control of the destiny of our village road, our schools, our water sources, our food crops and our livestock. These individual actions have the greatest impact when done collectively. The decision to act is a decision against status quo, it is a decision to challenge those that seem and act as invincible. I had the fortune of sharing dinner with a District Commissioner last week, and invariably our discussion went to the aspect of devolution. The DC asked me what all this noise about governors in the county was all about and went further to give me civic education. He described a governor under the new constitution as a totemic idol, somebody who will be elected to be a ceremonial functionary. I am strong, so i did not choke on the morsel i had in my mouth. In other words, he confirmed my fears that the Central Government today would do everything in its power to ensure that the National Government that gets into place after the elections totally emasculates the County Governments. This explained to me the arrogance with which President Kibaki and his henchpeople went on to appoint County Commissioners and County Education Officers. I want to be told who is giving the President and the Prime Minister civic education on the constitution. I, on behalf of Kenyans, need an answer to this question because if there is such a person, they should be fired. Fired and thrown to jail. Not for giving the wrong information to the President and Prime Minister (because there is no way of establishing this) but for continuing to give them information when they are acting against the spirit of what they promulgated. The kind of education that the President and the PM get is stifling them, tying them to high handed practices of their predecessors in the Executive, making them look unwilling to change: this is bad education, it is education that is killing reforms. What information do we give Kenyans on Police reforms when a raft of laws have been enacted but have not been operationalised. What information do we give Kenyans when land laws have been enacted but not operationalised. What information do we give to Kenyans when Chapter six of the Constitution of Kenya is so clear yet it has blatantly been ignored by everyone of our leaders. What information do we give to our people when the Commission for Revenue allocation (CRA) is replicating the formula of sharing resources that was first proposed by the Session paper no 10 of 1965. Kenyans do not need information or education against such a rigid background where the people who have a duty to implement the new constitution are themselves either unaware of the task they have or have no sense of duty or are beneficiaries of endemic corruption and inefficiency and are forever going back to the comfort zones of the impunious constitution we had before. We need to sort the national mess first before we integrate people in governance and service delivery.

Telling Each other the Truth is Unnecessary

Did over 1300 Kenyans Kill Themselves in 2007/8? YES!

As Kenyans, we are faced with a serious crisis of the truth. Either we are unable to face it, or we actually can never know it. If it is true what they say about the truth, that it will set you free, then we are doomed as a nation. But again, what truth are we talking about? We have been living in the realm of lies upon lies since we were told that we have gotten independence. Independence was the first lie, we have been in shackles all through – either of language, leadership, education etcetera. Like the literati would say, we are joined to our colonial masters by the umbilical cord, if we cut it, we are dead before we are born. And that is why the Mau Mau clarion call of Uhuru na Mashamba was immediately changed to Uhuru na Kazi and all of us went to work for the people Franz Fanon describes as the “new” black bosses wearing white masks.

After independence, the lie broadened and got a new meaning: we wanted peace and prosperity. What this has meant over the years is that anybody who goes against what the government wants is an enemy of progress, and idler, a civil society type that is keen on destabilising the country. And from the political assassinations, through the Mwakenya crackdown to the turbulent years of 1989 -92, the creed has been the same: crush dissent!
But now we are faced with a new reality, the reality that singular governance has been caught up by increasingly popular action by citizens and citizen groups. The Constitution of Kenya 2010 saved us from guesswork and mind games. After the ICC indictments, one and all Kenyans rose in an unprecedented wave, in the social and mainstream media, in social places and at homes, to call for accountability from those holding public office. Many Kenyans were able to see through the lie that Githu Muingai was perpetrating by constituting a committee to advise government.

Then, as if nothing had happened, we held prayers tow weeks ago for people who were indicted by the ICC so that Hague, the “lions’ den” that they have been thrown in, becomes like the biblical one where, like Daniel, Abedinego, Meshack and Shedrack of old, the Lord would protect them from any hurt. We praised these people as the God’s chosen, the Messiahs, the Moses and Aaron’s of the current Kenya who will lead us to Canaan. Perhaps the good thing was that the actual prayers lasted for about eleven minutes each. The rest was unprayerful.

Some speakers in the meetings even threatened that if some people were not allowed to run as presidential candidates, there should be no elections. There could have been other diatribes and epithets concerning the work that Mzalendo Kibunjia and company deal with, but i spared myself the hurt.
I had to draw this conclusion: that after the December 2007 elections, more than 1300 Kenyans killed themselves, scores raped themselves, and over 650,000 people willingly left their homes and decided to beg, borrow and dramatise by the roadsides. This brings to mind the Dr Robert Ouko case – it is still the official government statement at least –that he shot himself in the head, then broke his leg on something, then poured petrol on himself and lit himself up.

Indeed, it is very easy to conclude that the civil society and the generally the people we call “victims” are just self appointed spoilers for our political class. The civil society has been vocal (of course after being funded by former colonialists to destabilise Kenya), in calling for the perpetrators to be brought to book and cleared or convicted of gross violation of human rights, murder, rape and forceful evictions. On the other hand, the “victims” did all those bad things to themselves with the sole intention of ensuring that our hallowed politicians and other peace loving leaders and citizens can be implicated. It is very easy to see these evil designs of civil society and pretentious “victims”.
I am therefore inviting you to join me in agreeing that the most important thing is forgetfulness; and that we shall immediately forget 2007/8. It did not happen. Never. Not in a country with people like us whose only love is peace and prosperity. Not in our beautiful country. It is something invented by some idiots from outer space who have been sent by the devil to come and destabilise our preparations for the coming elections.

In fact, i am inviting you to join me to develop and sign a petition outlawing the truth. It will read something like this: “Any person or persons, who by design or otherwise, will be found by any enquiry process, whether legal or otherwise, to have been seeking the truth, by whatever means, shall be deemed to have rescinded his or her citizenship and shall be barred from participating in public affairs ad infinitum”