{UAH} Edmund/Pojim/WBK: Assassinations in Kenya lead to unexpected consequences | The Star, Kenya
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Assassinations in Kenya lead to unexpected consequences
If indeed the murder of businessman Jacob Juma was an assassination sanctioned from somewhere within the corridors of power, as has been loudly alleged by leading opposition politicians, then there can be no telling where it will all end.
Previous high-profile assassinations in Kenya have invariably led the top leadership of the day into all kinds of difficulties, even though there may be no proof at all of their involvement, or even their knowledge of what was planned, even decades and changes of regime later.
The 1975 assassination of a leading critic of the Jomo Kenyatta government, JM Kariuki, led to so much dissatisfaction with that administration that an attempt at oathing ceremonies to be conducted all over Central Kenya, to bind all Kikuyus to supporting the government of the day, as had been the case after the Tom Mboya assassination of July 1969, was soon abandoned.
With hindsight, the Jomo Kenyatta government was never really under any threat, either in 1969 when it oathed hundreds of thousands of Mt Kenyans aged 12 and above, or in 1975. It was, after all, a supremely efficient authoritarian state. But – like all human institutions – it made mistakes, and when, a few years later, in 1978, Daniel Moi took over as president after Jomo Kenyatta died, there were sighs of relief in many corners of the country.
The signature political assassination of the Moi era was the killing of Dr Robert Ouko in 1990. Top officials of the Moi regime were to later to report that on visits to the capital cities of donor nations, they would be asked to explain – even before they got to the business at hand – just how it was possible for the Kenyan Foreign Minister to be murdered and the killers somehow got away with it. This tragedy marked the end of any moral capital that the Moi regime may have had, given that with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Cold War was officially over and Kenya soon joined other African nations in reluctantly returning to multiparty democracy.
The death of Jacob Juma in a hail of bullets may not – on the surface – seem the equal of the assassinations of these three towering political figures. Juma held no political office. But add to the mix a political opposition that is determined to use every opportunity it gets to stigmatise the Jubilee government - while also mobilizing its own supporters for the 2017 election – and there is no telling how far this matter may go.
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