{UAH} Pojim/WBK: A perfect storm for Uhururuto's midterm | The Star
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A perfect storm for Uhururuto's midterm
The real midterm point of the UhuRuto Presidency has been marked by a perfect storm.
The dictionary definition of a perfect storm is both metaphorical and meteorological. In both cases, it includes the coming together of diverse factors in a chain of circumstances culminating in a storm.
The perfect storm now swirling around President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto has produced spectacular siege conditions.
The Kenyan Presidency is under siege on several fronts – political, anti-corruption insecurity, and diplomatic, and this is long before its internal contradictions are taken into account.
After the Mpeketoni Massacre in June 2014, the Presidency said "Never Again". And then the Kapedo, Wajir and Mandera killings followed, a horrific mix of terrorism and banditry, targeting both civilians and police/army officers.
And then 10 days ago, the Garissa University College outrage happened, literally the murder of a regional hub of higher learning.
Presidential dismissal of British advisory had worst timing ever
The Garissa Massacre happened barely a week after President Uhuru Kenyatta had pooh poohed a British Foreign and Commonwealth Office renewal of a travel advisory urging Britons to avoid travel to northeastern Kenya and the Coast unless it was essential that they travel there.
The Presidential waving aside of the Brit advisory was unusually robust – he practically called them liars and was clearly outraged that London could do this to Nairobi, just a jump ahead of the Easter holidays and following the killing of the 2014 tourism high season by a spiral of insecurity involving terrorism and banditry.
What's more, the travel advisory and the Presidential rebuff took place against the background of the unprecedentedly delayed renewal of the British Army's the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK) facility at Nanyuki, an arrangement that has been in place throughout the Independence era.
The British Army's own description of another one of its facilities in Kenya, the International Mine Action Training Centre (IMATC), a joint British-Kenyan venture, as comprising "bespoke facilities, access to local Kenyan training areas and unique position in a neutral and secure location in Africa", has also been true of BATUK for 52 years.
When the Garissa University College attack occurred, the President had plenty of egg on his face and the British were mightily vindicated.
What has followed has been a perfect storm surrounding President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto on several fronts. The disagreement with the British came hard on the heels of the President's tabling of the troubled Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission List of Shame of government officials entangled in graft and outright theft.
The Okoa Kenya and Buhari victory factors
One of the immediate aftermaths of the EACC List of Shame and Garissa Massacre appeared to be the Opposition Coalition for Reforms and Democracy's revival of its Okoa Kenya (Rescue Kenya) national referendum drive.
Okoa Kenya has had a chequered passage in its eight-month life, starting as the anti-climax and damp squib of the National Dialogue stand-off of April-July between Cord and the ruling Jubilee Alliance, fizzling out, being shouldered aside by the Council of Governors' Pesa Mashinani (Cash to the Grassroots) drive, which it had initially hoped to join forces in order to definitively corner UhuRuto.
This week Okoa Kenya was all set for launch when Cord again postponed the event. Nonetheless UhuRuto know they are in trouble when Okoa Kenya seems to gain any traction at all. After all, the Opposition is looking for a national referendum on the way to a general election, a dangerous proposition for any Presidential administration in Kenya, let alone the present besieged team.
Also adding to the perfect storm of the UhuRuto first term midterm was an event in faraway West Africa that had much bearing on events in Kenya all the way to the 2017 general election. On March 31 in Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari trounced Goodluck Jonathan in a Presidential poll lost purely out of a burgeoning perception of inadequate anti-corruption and maximum insecurity.
The Nigerian election had another two dimensions that provided invaluable lessons for Kenya in the forthcoming 2017 election. First, even though the BVR technology initially failed, the failure was not anywhere near as total as Kenya's own such embarrassment of the week of March 4, 2013. The Independent National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (INEC) only rebooted their BVRs, they also delivered an electorate process in which the electorate and all other Nigerians had total confidence, on all sides of the political divide.
Kenya's Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), some of whose top officials, both past and present, are now mired in suspicion of corruption, has yet to perform such feats to the satisfaction of an entire electorate.
Anti-graft drive that either works or sinks Jubilee
And then there is Jubilee's idea of anti-corruption in a sea of graft. The momentum the EACC List of Shame started with what seems to have been considerably dissipated by the Easter break. When he attached the List of Shame as an annex to the copy of his State to the Nation Address that he delivered in Parliament on March 26, President Kenyatta gave a 60-day deadline within which about 130 cases of corruption were to be investigated and the files handed over to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
He also urged all the Cabinet Secretaries, Principal Secretaries, governors and senators named on the list to step aside. When a flurry of complaints went up to the effect that those listed had been probed in secret and were being accused unheard and unaware of who their accusers were, the President appointed acting CSs and PSs.
A number of officials were picked up and, or summoned for interrogation by EACC detectives at the commission's Integrity Centre headquarters, a building whose ownership is disputed.
Other officials – for instance a number of Nairobi county government executives – were hauled into court on corruption charges featuring figures as low as Sh17 million.
After Easter, Lands Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu told the EACC that she was acting on the President's orders in two matters for which she is being investigated.
Jubilee can't continue like this . . .
Jubilee just cannot seem to get anything right just now.
If they carry on like this all the way to the expiry of the 60 days List of Shame deadline, serious issues of credibility, political will and, ultimately, competence will arise and play right into the hands of their detractors, both local and foreign – at the worst time possible.
When Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery and Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinett preceded the GSU Recce Unit in Garissa because of a shortage of helicopters caused by a number of factors, all of which an administration worth its weight in gold would not countenance even for a minute, many Kenyans wondered why Joseph ole Lenku and David Kimaiyo had to be let go.
And then it emerged that the members of the Recce Unit who wiped out the attackers within 14 minutes of storming their last hiding place, received only Sh500 per trooper as lunch money, and have to wait for a while for their Sh3,000 per man allowance for the deadly outing in which one of them lost his life.
Jubilee cannot face the prospect of either a national referendum or a second-term-attempt Presidential election in its present state and its track record so far.
It would need miracles, not strategies, to win either. And miracles are in far shorter supply at all times than strategies.
http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/perfect-storm-uhururutos-midterm#sthash.xb5LtzfH.dpbs
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