{UAH} Pojim/WBK: Duale's Huge Mistake Dims Political Future | The Star

http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/duales-huge-mistake-dims-political-future#sthash.t9oHK1Fc.dpbs

Duale's Huge Mistake Dims Political Future

Ever since he rose to be Leader of Majority in the National Assembly, Aden Duale, the MP for Garissa Township, has barely been out of the limelight.

Over the past two years, hardly a week passed without Duale issuing some statement or other, usually defending the government he serves, or attacking the opposition coalition.

His role is one with plenty of historical precedent: every Kenyan government has had people who arrive at national prominence, not through any overwhelming popularity of their own, but solely through a personal proximity to those in power.

Thus the Jomo Kenyatta government had Mbiyu Koinange; President Daniel Moi had his Nicholas Biwott; President Mwai Kibaki had, first, Chris Murungaru, and later Francis Muthaura; and now President Uhuru Kenyatta has Aden Duale.

Now if you look carefully at that list, you will find an odd pattern. And this is that apart from Mbiyu Koinange, who served a classic imperial presidency and only had to worry about being on good terms with his President, all the rest ended up very badly.

Nicholas Biwott was briefly placed behind bars on allegations of involvement, in some unspecified manner, in the assassination of the fabled Foreign minister Robert Ouko. And there has perhaps never been a man in Kenyan history who has been so widely vilified as Biwott, often over matters which he had played no part in.

Murungaru lost his place in the Kibaki Cabinet, and thereafter his political career took a terminal nosedive – reportedly as a direct consequence of the Anglo Leasing scandal, which is only now being finally unravelled.

And the famously soft-spoken Francis Muthaura has on his CV the rare distinction that he was once indicted by the ICC for crimes against humanity. It is a distinction Muthaura shares with various warlords from places such as DR Congo, Liberia, Uganda, etc. These warlords are men routinely referred to in global media as "monsters"; and the atrocities laid at their door will horrify humanity for generations to come.

This brings us to Duale.

I don't suppose it would have been possible to convince Duale that he was all this time on a fool's errand, as he went about his duties with such singular enthusiasm. But that is all it was. And one way or another, it was bound to end badly for him too.

For, in case none of his friends have told him this, maybe I should do Duale the favour of informing him that his usefulness to the presidency is now at an end, and thus his career in national politics is over.

He may retain his constituency seat for as long as the voters will have him. But he cannot hope to be taken seriously on any national issues.

Before I explain why it seems to me that Aden Duale is – as we Kenyans like to say – "finished", let me first point out that it is manifestly unjust and unfair for Patrick Makau, the MP for Mavoko, to have used the immunity of parliamentary privilege to declare that Duale is a "terrorist". At a time of grief like this, however angry they may feel, elected leaders have to watch their words. Above all, they must not appear to be condemning an entire region as well as its leadership, for the tragedy of the Garissa massacre.

Especially as with every day that passes, it becomes more and more clear where the blame lies: in the criminal incompetence and endemic corruption of our security services.

We have learned of unbelievable delays in getting the elite anti-terrorism GSU officers to Garissa; of timely reports of a pending attack being ignored by security officers who then complacently took the weekend off. We hear also of soldiers, actually based in Garissa, who could easily have ended the assault on Garissa University College within minutes of its commencement, instead standing by to establish a 'defensive perimeter' to no purpose at all. And so on.

But back to Duale, it is his response to this great tragedy that henceforth denies him any moral authority to lead.

A man who says that only now, after this bloody massacre, are he and his fellow leaders from the Northestern region going to embark on a serious campaign to flush out the al Shabaab financiers and recruits in their midst, is essentially admitting that if this seriousness had come earlier, those 147 lives would have been saved.

He undoubtedly is not a terrorist. But he cannot credibly continue to hold any position of national leadership.

Duale's Huge Mistake Dims Political Future | The Star
http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/duales-huge-mistake-dims-political-future#sthash.t9oHK1Fc.dpbs‎

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.