There is a group of 210 men and women who demand they should be referred to as honourable as they ply their trade in the Kenyan parliament. Well, I thought honour is something one earns depending on how they carry themselves. Our politicians fall short of the honourable title. Every time our politicians open their mouths to talk I expect to hear nothing but doublespeak from people who will never put their money where their mouths are.
Doublespeak is saying one thing and doing the exact opposite. That is what our politicians are well known for. Our politicians are still the same, since a good number of them have been there since time immemorial. The Grand Coalition, which to me is built on quicksand, has not ushered in a fresh breath in the august house. I know nothing new is going to happen, not where the MPs’ salary is concerned. Your guess is as good as mine that no MP will turn up, leave alone table a bill that seeks to reduce their salary. For their avarice is legendary and well documented.
At the time I was writing this, a friend came and made an observation that I feel compelled to share with you. My friend said there are only two legal ways of ensuring you evade tax in Kenya. You can either start a church ministry or become a member of parliament. Or, since it has been done, do the two at the same time. These are the only safe ways of ensuring your earnings go tax free. Wait a minute, that story is reserved for another day. Back to doublespeak.
Though a truth and reconciliation commission has been set up a section of the government is demanding that the perpetrators of the January post election violence be prosecuted. The other section is demanding that the suspects be released unconditionally since they were fighting for their democratic rights.
Prosecuting the suspects will merely be dealing with the symptoms rather than the causes of the violence that claimed the lives of over a thousand Kenyans and displaced more than three hundred thousand. Unconditional release on the other hand will send the wrong signal; that criminals can kill, rape, steal and burn property with impunity and get away with it.
It is no secret that the sitting president may not actually have been the winner of the disputed elections. The manner in which he was sworn in alone speaks volumes. The fact that only two out of eight provinces solidly voted in his favour and the fact that he didn’t get a parliamentary majority clearly gives an indication as to who have broken the law in the first place. The constitution is the highest organ in the nation. It safeguards justice and equity. The president and all his ministers vow to protect it every time they are sworn in. That the laws of the land were broken after the disputed election results is a fact.
Youths are under police custody awaiting prosecution. Yet their action was as a result of the disputed election which is the bone of contention. The justice minister is right when she says justice must be done; the youths must be charged in accordance with the laws of the land. But this is merely dealing with the effects and ignoring the root causes, what really caused the violence in the first place.
The presidency is a symbol of all that upholds the constitution and rule of law yet the president is part and parcel of election rigging. Most Kenyans refuse to accept Kenya has a legitimate president. The president epitomizes just how low our country has sunk as far as the respect for law is concerned. The president has shown, time and again, that he doesn’t care about the welfare of Kenyans.
When the justice and constitution minister talk of punishing offenders she appears to be championing for social justice. But she is at the same time trampling justice under their feet. This is doublespeak. She speaks of fighting for the welfare of the common Kenyan yet she doesn’t want to speak about the very situation she helped create. The ECK (Electoral Commission of Kenya) being the highest electoral body in the country is also an organ that deals in doublespeak. The chairman of ECK always spoke of holding free and fair elections yet what he did flaunted electoral rules which triggered the events following the ‘cooked’ election results.
Now I cringe in fear imagining what sort of duress the president must have gone through before he was ‘prevailed upon’ to accept a second term in office. I will always remember the day it happened. I was watching it from a black and white Greatwall TV. The president behaved as if he wanted to be somewhere else, as if he wasn’t in the least interested in a second term. His swearing in was done in secrecy via the KBC Channel One TV, the government controlled broadcaster. In attendance were a number of judges, party hardliners and none other than the justice minister.
As the suspected youth continue to languish in jail where they will probably spend the rest of their lives, the real culprits are free. They are against investigations that may unravel the real cause of the violence, which as everyone knows, is the disputed election result. The principal culprits are all the Electoral Commission of Kenya officials who according to their chairperson, helped ‘cook’ the results in favour of the incumbent, and the justice minister. The other players are the justice department, the police who were ordered to kill, party hardliners and bigwigs who were to gain from the incumbent’s second term. If the suspects are to be charged then all these people should also be brought to book. Lest our justice minister forgets, we won’t forget that there is blood in her hands.