Prime Minister Raila Odinga has joined the debate about the dissolution of the parliament according to the advice that the Chief Justice has given the President over the gender imbalance in the parliament.
Here’s Raila’s stand on the issue.
H.E. RAILA ODINGA, EGH says…
The advisory by the Chief Justice to the President to dissolve the Houses of Parliament has placed the country and the people of Kenya in a precarious constitutional and political situation that will require careful deliberation before any action is taken.
There are numerous ramifications to the country and the people of Kenya in dissolving one of the arms of Government which if not mitigated sufficiently could have adverse consequences in the life of the nation and its people.
While we all have different opinions on the desirability or even wisdom of the action proposed, we have all been ushered into circumstances that require a consensus on the way forward failing which we may throw away the baby with the bath water.
The country has been thrown into this situation because of failure by Parliament to enact the two-third gender rule as provided for in the Constitution.
However, it remains unclear how the dissolution of Parliament would resolve the problem.
In circumstances where institutions have failed as is the case with Parliament currently, the Constitution gives power to citizens to act directly and not through their elected representatives to have their aspirations realized.
I appeal to the President to consult as widely as possible before taking any action on this matter and ensure that the overall interests of the people is served by any action he finally decides to take.
Anyone notice the eye-popping bail figures posted by governors who are charged in the Kenyan courts? Wonder where all that money comes from?
A call to investigative journalists: follow the money! See where the trail leads you.
Plenty of cases out there to work with:
Garissa Governor Ali Korane was the latest to be arraigned at the Milimani Law Courts in Nairobi over alleged embezzlement of Ksh.233 million World Bank grant. He was freed on a Sh3.2M cash bail, which he easily paid.
Tharaka Nithi Governor Muthomi Njuki was granted a Sh6 million cash bail September 9, after being charged with corruption in a Sh34.7 million scandal in his county, media reported.
A week before that, Migori Governor Obado, also facing corruption charges in a Sh73 million misappropriation case, was freed on a Sh8.75 million bail or Sh20 million bond, according to media reports.
Obado’s son Dan Acholla was reportedly freed on Sh2 million bail, daughter Scarlet Susan Sh3 million bail or Sh6 million bond, son Zachary Okoth Sh2 million or Sh4 million bond and daughter Evelyne Adhiambo Sh2 million or Sh4 million bond.
Are you counting? How many zeroes in the Obado family alone?
Last December, media reported that Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko, also facing corruption charges, posted a bond of Sh30 million with one surety of a similar amount and cash bail of Sh15 million.
Sources talking to Kenya Insights however indicate that Njomo Gecaga who’s a close friend and one of the proponents of Sonko’s governorship and Njee Muturi we’re told are amongst those who allegedly quickly contributed towards Sonko’s cash bail. Our source further allege the three have a lengthy business relationship which we will cover later on as we continue with our investigations more so on revenue collection deal after Sonko kicked out Jambopay.
And in Samburu, Governor Moses Lenolkulal was in April 2019 released on a cash bail of Sh100 million or Sh150 million bond after denying charges of corruption and abuse of office.
In the big picture, the Nation reported July 29, 2018 that 30 sitting and former governors face corruption charges. None is in prison or jail.
But let’s stick with these moneys that free governors from jail. Is this money on paper or real money that you can count and stash in a Canter truck? Would it be available to any public servant, say, a Mr Kantai who is toiling away behind a desk in Oloitokitok?
Here is the what doesn’t add up.
In 2017 the Kenya Salaries and Remuneration Commission gazetted that a governor’s gross salary is Sh924,000. (Never mind why a governor in a developing country should make more or the same as governors of the US states of Maine, Colorado, Arizona and Alaska!)
So, where do Kenyan governors get all those cash for bail? Just asking.
Lawyers have protested a Bill proposing to transform Kenya Airways into a public entity and merge it with the Kenya Airports Authority, alleging a scheme to make huge payouts from public funds.
The Law Society of Kenya (LSK) has demanded the immediate withdrawal of the National Aviation Management Bill (2020), which seeks to nationalise KQ, and rallied members of the National Assembly to reject it if it is not shelved.
Lawyers allege a sinister motive in the manner in which the proposed law is being rushed, citing a shorter five-day notice for the public to present submissions to the National Assembly and a less than 12-hour notice to LSK through an email delivered to a “personal account late in the evening”.
LSK has accused the National Assembly’s Transport committee, which is scrutinising the Bill, of denying it and other stakeholders with concerns reasonable opportunity to appear before it and present a memorandum.
It warns the Bill has offensive provisions, including empowering a Cabinet secretary to exempt a state organ or public entity from three laws intended to enforce governance, which lawyers claim is to lay ground for “corrupt practices”.
“It is notable that in the late 1990s, the country witnessed massive plunder of public assets vested in corporate bodies in which the state had and exercised controlling interest whose management enjoyed discretion to do as they willed without adherence to the laws compelling sound corporate governance and public procurement legal practices,” reads the statement in part.
Law Society of Kenya President Nelson Havi. Photo credit: Dennis Onsongo | Nation Media Group
Besides concerns the Bill has significant legal issues “detrimental to the aviation industry”, LSK cites failure to value assets given the proposed holding company would need to acquire the equity and the debts of Kenya Airways and KAA.
“The proposed nationalisation and merger and the consequential change of ownership will, in effect, obligate the immediate settlement of all existing debts and liabilities of KQ and KAA, leading to huge payouts from public funds,” LSK said yesterday through a public notice by its president, Nelson Havi.
Before the law is enacted, LSK wants a valuation of the assets and review of the liabilities of KQ and KAA before they are transferred to the new operating entities.
Lawyers protest the proposed law was introduced in Parliament before a feasibility study to examine the viability of the nationalisation of KQ and merger with KAA based on financial implications, existing contracts for employees and existing business contracts.
“The proposed merger is not only against best management practices based on global trends, but also denies KAA a chance to enter into similar concession agreements with better placed independent international companies, which would inject much needed capital to the authority without recourse to public funds,” reads the statement.
A ‘scheme’
The recent developments, LSK reckoned, are a continuation of a scheme for KQ’s takeover of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, which was scuttled last year following public uproar.
At the time, questions were raised as to the motive of handing the management of a loss-making airline steeped in debt, the mandate to manage KAA, a profitable entity.
Yesterday, LSK recalled KQ, with the support of the government had initiated a public private partnership process of privately initiated proposal, which changed course to the current path of nationalisation “upon meeting headwinds during a parliamentary inquiry”.
It was reference to the Transport committee inquiry into the proposed Kenya Airways privately initiated investment proposal (PIIP) to KAA.
In its report tabled in the House in June 2019, the committee chaired by David Pkosing concluded PIIP “does not present a viable option for restoring Nairobi as the civil aviation hub of choice in Africa and treating KQ and JKIA as strategic national assets.”
David Pkosing in 2019 with then Kenya Airways Group MD and CEO Sebastian Mikosz. Photo credit: Jeff Angote | Nation Media Group
Majority of those who made presentations before the committee opposed the takeover of JKIA by KQ arguing it was not motivated by public interest.
The PIIP had proposed the concession of JKIA to Kenya Airways for 30 years, with the airline, according to the report, stating “it has the potential to increase the efficiency of JKIA operations through introduction of world-class standards”.
One of those who appeared before the committee, JK Waweru, questioned whether it wasn’t a case of conflict of interest for KAA chairperson Isaac Awuonda to continue serving as group chief executive officer of Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA), one of the banks that had converted its loans to KQ into equity.
Mr Awuonda acknowledged that his dual roles of KAA chairperson and group general manager of CBA, one of the banks whose debt was converted into equity held by KQ lenders in 2017, could be perceived as a conflict of interest with regard to the consideration of the PIIP.
Mr Awuonda, however, explained that he was not engaged in the day-to-day operation of CBA and that he had at a very early stage declared the matter to the KAA board and received no objection to his presence during deliberations over the PIIP.
Not persuaded
The committee, however, was not persuaded by his explanation.
“There is a conflict of interest with regard to the consideration of the PIIP, since the chairperson of KAA is also the group CEO of CBA, one of the banks whose debts was converted into equity held by KQ lenders in the 2017 restructuring of KQ,” the committee stated in its report.
Mr Awuonda had accompanied KAA chief executive Jonny Andersen to the committee hearings.
The management of KAA, Kenya Airways and the Transport CS supported the PIIP, arguing it was in the interest of protecting JKIA as the region’s aviation hub in the face of growing competition, especially from Addis Ababa.
But the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) and the Kenya Aviation Workers Union (Kawu) opposed the plan.
Mr Andersen explained the rationale for the PIIP was to consolidate key aviation assets to restore the sector’s regional and international competitiveness and protect JKIA’s regional hub status.
He further noted that as a key partner for JKIA, Kenya Airways’ success was aligned to the success of KAA. The CEO said KQ accounts for more than 40 per cent of KAA’s business and revenues.
To demonstrate the symbiotic relationship, he said as at March 31, 2019, KQ owed KAA more than Sh5.5 billion in relation to unpaid air passenger service charge, landing fees, rent and other charges.
Kenya Airports Authority MD Jonny Andersen. Photo credit: Jeff Angote | Nation Media Group
KAA proposed a holding company structure under which the country’s main aviation assets will be brought under one roof with separate entities operating as subsidiaries to leverage on the balance sheet value of assets.
They proposed Kenya Aviation Holding Company Ltd would be fully owned by the government and initially have four separate subsidiaries, KQ, JKIA Company, KAA and Kenya Aviation Academy Ltd.
However, Alloys Siaya, ICT manager of KAA, contradicted his bosses and opposed the PIIP.
Mr Siaya, in a separate submission, noted that the KQ management had failed in terms of business strategy and innovation to turn around KQ’s fortunes and could not be entrusted with managing JKIA, a totally different kind of business.
He said management of KQ had not been held to account for its huge losses and should not be allowed to oversee JKIA operations.
Transport CS James Macharia said the Cabinet, on May 29, 2018, had resolved to grant policy approval for KQ and KAA to negotiate and agree on a framework to restore Nairobi as the civil aviation hub of choice in Africa.
Transport CS James Macharia with Kenya Airways board chairman Michael Joseph at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Photo credit: Jeff Angote | Nation Media Group
The CS noted over time KQ had been pushed out of the market by competitive airlines that are very strongly protected by their own governments.
“Within nine years, Ethiopia Airlines has grown from half the size of KQ to three times the size of KQ,” said the CS.
“It was his view that KQ and JKIA should be treated as national assets and the proposed restructuring be viewed in geopolitical rather than financial terms,” read the report.
Kenya Airways in making a case for the plan said JKIA was losing its status to competition and it would soon become a hub for East Africa only.
And if no significant changes are made, KQ warned, JKIA’s role might be taken over by Addis Ababa, given the new airport to be constructed in Ethiopia, which will mainly serve its national carrier, Ethiopian Airlines.
Then KQ chief executive Sebastian Mikosz, accompanied by chairman Michael Joseph, informed the committee the next few years will determine which airlines dominate the African skies and which ones will be regional carriers feeding passengers to the main hubs.
‘Alarming’ conditions
Mr Mikosz noted conditions surrounding KQ and JKIA were “alarming” and that Kenyan aviation had lost its market share over the last couple of years to its competitors, especially ET.
ET has gradually grown to 153 destinations and a fleet of 100 aircrafts and 59 on order compared to KQ which has 53 routes and a fleet of 40 aircraft with none on order.
As an alternative, KQ proposed the creation of an aviation holding company wholly owned by the government with KQ and an airport Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) as its fully-owned subsidiaries.
But KCAA Director General Gilbert Kibe submitted that the concession of JKIA to KQ would result in re-allocation of resources to strengthen airline business operations but compromise safety and security of the operations of the SPV with less resources allocated to the air navigation service provider and aerodrome operations.
“The loss of revenue by KAA would negatively impact the development of the other airports in Kenya and the slow growth of domestic aviation,” Mr Kibe cautioned.
He submitted that the PIIP is not clear with regard to the KCAA functions the SPV is to take over at JKIA. He noted other services are also offered at JKIA such as area control centre services, meteorological services and search and rescue, which all serve the entire airspace and not just JKIA.
Kenya Civil Aviation Authority Director General Gilbert Kibe. Photo credit: Salaton Njau | Nation Media Group
Creating an autonomous body reporting to CS Immigration in charge of security and border control would result in a conflict of interest, thus compromising security at JKIA.
KCAA recommended establishment of a government holding company to own several agencies including a national airline such as KQ, KAA, ground handling service providers and catering as is the case in Ethiopia, UAE and Qatar. Each agency under the holding company would operate independently.
Kawu secretary-general Moss Ndiema said the union was opposed to the PIIP because KQ is a private company operating as the nation’s flag carrier while KAA is wholly owned by the government.
Mr Ndiema submitted that JKIA generates over 90 per cent of KAA’s revenue and that by ceding the business unit that generates the largest share of their revenue to KQ, KAA would remain a shell.
KAA would be unable to expand and grow more aerodromes and airports in the country due to insufficient funding.
“Kawu noted that KPMG, an audit and consulting firm contracted by KAA as its transaction adviser on the PIIP, had observed that it had not received detailed financial information from KQ to ascertain whether it would be able to fund the PIIP.
Moss Ndiema, secretary-general of the Kenya Aviation Workers Union. Photo credit: Evans Habil | Nation Media Group
Kawu told the committee that KPMG noted that despite KQ having restructured their debt in 2017, it had continued to experience difficulties in restructuring its debts and that its non-equity participating lenders had not been informed about the PIIP, which would adversely affect KQ’s existing loan arrangements.
“Kawu further submitted that KPMG had concluded that KQ lacks the credentials and the competence to run an airport like JKIA and that without JKIA revenues, KAA would require funding for the other aerodromes and its liabilities such as environmental remediation and pension deficit funding,” the committee report stated.
Kawu argued the JKIA take-over was not the only option available to turn around KQ.
The union noted that in February 2017, KQ had contracted Seabury Group that recommended the conversion of debts owed to local banks and the government to equity, the negotiation of productivity based collective bargaining agreements, engaging the government to waive taxes on imported aircraft material for maintenance and jet fuel to save Sh7 billion annually. It also recommended the enactment of a law to ensure all government employees and contractors use KQ for their travel.
KQ only implemented the recommendation to convert debt to equity.
Sh50 billion
Kawu suggested that the sale-lease-back of the aircraft owned by KQ would allow it to raise Sh50 billion to Sh70 billion.
Kenya Association of Air Operators CEO Eutychus Karumba told the MPs they were yet to see the PIIP and that despite having been called for a public consultative forum over the document, the forum was indefinitely postponed.
The committee listed exorbitant aircraft leasing costs, a fuel hedging model that abets financial leaks, huge wage bill and expensive KQ ticket prices that force passengers to go to cheaper airlines such as Emirates and ET among the reasons the airline was going through financial turbulence.
Indeed, Mr Mikosz said salaries of the around 3,700 employees constituted 19 per cent of the airline’s total costs. He submitted that on average, airline captains and first officers earn Sh1.6 million and Sh900, 000 per month, respectively.
Flight hours
Mr Mikosz told the committee a KQ pilot’s pay was not commensurate with their productivity. He said KQ pilots flew an average of 533 hours per year, much lower than the 859 hours flown by ET pilots, who get half the pay.
The CEO himself said he earned Sh4 million in salary, allowances and benefits before tax.
“Kenya Airways and KAA neither informed nor engaged their employees on the PIIP, which is a sensitive issue with a great potential to affect their jobs,” the committee observed.
The committee recommended that Kenya Airways be nationalised. Upon nationalisation, the MPs directed the government undertakes a staff rationalisation programme with a view of retaining existing staff and harmonising the terms of service and remuneration.
They also asked the government to review aircraft leasing agreements to renegotiate better terms.
The committee also recommended that the government establishes an aviation holding company with four wholly-owned subsidiaries: JKIA Company incorporated to manage JKIA as an international hub, ground handling and catering services; KAA with revised mandate, KQ as the national carrier and a centralised aviation services college.
It has been made a heated debate about the line between freedom of expression and insults. Coming hot on the heals following the arrest of Johana Ngeno, MP for Emurua Dikirr who on Monday made utterances against Mama Ngina.
While the MP is spending cold nights in Eldoret police cell over hate speech, many believe his problems have everything to do with his attack on the former First Lady and the mother of the president.
Ng’eno and his counterpart Sudi have faced harsh criticism from many people across the board including the DP who said politics shouldn’t get personal to the level of insulting other people’s mothers. The two didn’t mince their words towards the first family.
Prof. William Maema, a senior partner at Kamau & Maema Advocates (DLA Piper Africa, IKM Advocates) is of the suggestion that the President and their families oils be cushioned from uncouth public utterances using a specific law. He tweeted.
A specific law to protect leaders- especially the President-and their families against uncouth public utterances may not be as outrageous as it sounds. Your right of expression ends where my right to personal dignity starts. Both rights are constitutional and apply to everyone.
If you are afraid of insults; stay away from politics and have your private life and dignity intact. It is not a must for fragile egos to lead a country; the last time we had that; everything crumbled, let us not go down the memory lane…. https://t.co/HZSqkwwPpr
Today in #Dumbfuckery… Reading his bio, you'd think he'd be a voice of reason in educating KOT by explaining using provisions of the law why Johanna Ngeno and Oscar Sudi committed no crime. See this foolishness he's suggesting @gatharahttps://t.co/xIu8seWmZP
This is a senior partner in a Law firm thinking like this incase you are looking for a practical illustration of 'no education just training' https://t.co/nqnnQOFV9q
(IPS) – The US residential polls are akin to a drama that is staged every four years in which the American are actors on stage and the rest of the world is the audience. With one major difference, however. While in a usual theatrical performance the viewers are there mostly for amusement, though some may be enlightened and enriched by the experience, in the case of the US elections, unlike in others, their fates are inextricably linked to the outcome of the play. This is not predetermined by any playwright, though it can often be predicted. It is not implausible therefore for some on-lookers to want to intervene in what’s happening onstage. It must be done discreetly, and with great circumspection. Take for instance, the Russians in the American elections in 2016. The Russians and President Donald Trump hotly dispute allegations of any such interference.
Unsurprisingly, there is a great deal of intellectual resources devoted to model-building in order to be able to predict election outcome. The purpose is to develop a methodology superior to mere crystal -ball gazing. So many caveats are often entered into the exercise that robs it of major value. In the US, elections are ultimately decided according to votes cast by the electoral college of 538, comprised of representatives from the States. So, the magic number for victory is 270. Each State chooses its own electors, and these members of the electoral college vote on a ‘winner take all basis’. In other words, if a majority of the voters from a State vote for one candidate, all electoral college votes from that State are meant to be cast in favour of that candidate. Electoral college vote results may not, therefore, as they have not in some cases in the past, reflect the winner in terms of national popular votes.
For the purposes of prediction, the prestigious British journal ‘The Economist’ has developed a somewhat complex model indicating Mr Joe Biden of the Democratic Party as the winner. At writing, it is giving 91.7% chance of electoral victory and 98% chance of popular majority to Mr Biden. The Financial Time’s tally for Biden stood at 298. Professor Allan Lichtman of the American University and author of “The keys to the White house”, who has accurately predicted every Presidential electoral outcome correctly since 1984 using “13 key factors”, has predicted Mr Biden will win. In the ancient times, Greek and Roman drama-writers used a concept called “deus ex machina’, literally god out of a machine, in their scripts. This is an unexpected power originating from the gods, is introduced which alters the course of the narration.
It seemed for a while that nothing short of a divine intervention, a remote likelihood for Mr Trump in the view of his detractors, could save him from certain defeat. But then the race began to tighten, partly caused by apprehensions in some quarters with regard to the social unrest currently sweeping America, and Mr Trump’s repeated reassertion of Jeremiads against violence .Given the dichotomized and divided nature of the American electoral , both sides have loyal bases who will vote in accordance with their a priori views, come what may. So, the contest is basically for the minds and hearts of 8 to 9 % who are still undecided. These are the potential Biblical ‘Sauls on the Road to Damascus’ of the electorate, the potential converts to the other side. That is also the percentage point of Mr Biden’s current lead. So even if Mr Trump should win over most of the undecided numbers, which in itself is a stretch, Mr Biden would still have an edge.
This has encouraged Mr Trump to fight back. Unlike in the UK where the system of governance usually follows a culture of “good- chap model”, whereby political actors conform to a code of conduct perceived to be virtuous, no such tradition appears to shape American political behaviour. The absence of European-style feudalism that helped inspire such norms in the ‘old world’ might have impeded the development of such values in the immigrant political milieu of the ‘new world’. Mr Trump has provided a supreme example of this phenomenon almost all through his entire first term in office. He capped it at the Republican National Convention by using the White House, always seen as an apolitical institution (a ‘Peoples’ House’) as the venue for his speech accepting Party nomination for his second term of the presidency. Past occupants of the official residence of the president of the United states have abstained, indeed recoiled from politicizing what is largely accepted as a national symbol of unity Because of these reasons, the framers of the US Constitution had thought it wise to put down in writing the details of how the polity should be governed. They were wary of putting their trust entirely trust entirely on intrinsic human morality. Their faith in God did not extend to the faith in their own ilk. They were uncertain if their fellow-Americans would be able to rule democratically within a framework of established tradition of good governance unless a written Constitution set-out the guidelines. They were wise, but apparently not comprehensive enough. They left sufficient gaps and loopholes for the system to be gamed by politicians of lesser virtuous pedigree.
The equivalent of the US President in Britain is, not the Queen, but the Prime minister. Across the Atlantic the Prime Minister is the ‘primus inter pares” or first among equals who governs with the aid and joint responsibility of a Cabinet of colleagues. In the US the Secretaries, often termed Cabinet-officers rather than Cabinet–members, are, though appointees of the President, are approved by the Senate. As heads departments they are loosely equated with British Ministers. But they are not colleagues of the President in a political sense and become a part of their department whose role is apolitical. For instance, the top diplomat in Washington the Secretary of State does not while performing duties at home and abroad, associate his office with domestic politics. Recently, the current incumbent, Mike Pompeo, blatantly broke that rule, by politically using a trip to Jerusalem to advance the President’s political aspiration publicly.
According to British public service culture, as also in many democracies, officials shun active politics. In the US such behaviour was written into law. The Hatch Act of 1939 prohibits employees of the federal government, except for the President and Vice President, in engaging in some form of political activities. But nowadays some allege that it is being honoured more in the breach than the observance. Many elements of democracy, such as voting rights for all, came later in the US than is often realized. The author and historian Michael Beschloss worries that unless these are protected they may also erode quickly. The incredibly sad consequence would be what the Fathers of the Republic wanted to avoid foremost, a descent into tyranny. Any law has content and spirit. The spirit is often equally important.
Take the question of leaving office. In Britain, should a Prime Minister lose the elections, or be defeated in a vote of no-confidence in the House of commons, he or she would proceed to the Palace, either kiss the Queen’s hands or offer her a curtsy and resign office. For this politician, it would not mean a withdrawal from politics, and thereby would be less painful. Office is seen as merely a privilege to serve the community. In America on the other hand for the President calling quits is forever, hence there is a burgeoning view that given Trump’s disinclination to conform to ‘good chap ‘ behaviour , he may drag his feet at leaving office , particularly if the results are close , alleging electoral fraudulence. The Biden crowd is suggesting if that be the case, the military would, or should, march Trump out of office. The US military has experience of marching several foreign Presidents out of office, but never one of its own. That would indeed be a unique experience!
While the component States of the American Union is largely governed by the Governors, foreign policy is the President’s domain. Given the military and economic clout of the US, their politics often become central to our concerns. Hence the need for the world beyond the US to understand, assess and evaluate them. For instance, a re-election of Mr Trump would mean a further retreat of the US into “Fortress America” and a greater disengagement from the world. On the other hand, a Biden Administration would mean a greater engagement, with other nations, multilateral institutions and issues such as Climate Change and Arms Control. That is why a US Presidential election generates a degree of interest in say India, Pakistan or Bangladesh as in Hawaii, Nebraska or North Carolina.
Text-books in Civics and Comparative politics, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world, often tend to differentiate the British and American systems, sometime a tad simplistically, as being ‘Parliamentary’ ‘and ‘Presidential’ forms of governance. The French, with their own mixed form, never quite played along with this idea. That was also before China came to salience with their model of government based on ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics”, which no one else follows till now, but is important because China is. The Indian example is too chaotic to be recognized as a norm.
Writing his classic work ‘The English Constitution’ in 1867, Walter Bagehot argued a Constitution needed two parts: a ‘dignified’ one, to ‘excite and preserve the reverence of the population’ and the other , an ‘efficient’ part , ‘to employ that homage in the work of the government’. In Britain the two parts were sought to be kept distinct and to date has operated more or less smoothly. In the US they became, somewhat of a mixed hodgepodge. Around the mid- nineteenth century, a French political observer visiting America, de Tocqueville, perceived a discernible difference between appearance and reality in America. So, while trying to rid the new world of the tyranny of a King, were the framers of the US Constitution inadvertently creating an Emperor? Some may ponder. Confronted with such a question, Mr Trump might nonchalantly respond, “it is what it is”!
Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies, National University of Singapore. He is a former Foreign Advisor (Foreign Minister) of Bangladesh and President of Cosmos Foundation Bangladesh. The views addressed in the article are his ow
Professor Kagwanja’s article in the Daily Nation dated, August 15, 2020, ‘Deep state is a conspiracy theory and scapegoat of election losers’ was out rightly biased. His analysis is eminently ignorable because many Kenyan readers understand his political proclivity. . Even so, the above piece touched on an emotive issue concerning our nascent democracy hence the need to set the record straight. It is important to demonstrate how his views are a potpourri of Ruto phobia writ-largeand makes Kagwanja the Milli- Vanilli of Kenya’s academia.
According to Prof Kagwanja; Dr Ruto “opened a can of worms when he alleged that the ‘deep state’ or ‘system’ might torpedo his 2022 presidential bid”. He was, however, quick to point out that Dr Ruto was responding to a public comment by Raila Odinga’s brother, Oburu Odinga, to the effect that the opposition chief was assured of winning the 2022 presidential contest because this time round, he has the support of ‘the system’.
Both Dr Ruto and Dr Oburu have discussed the power of the ‘deep state’ to dictate Kenya’s presidential electoral outcome albeit differently. . It is for the Kenyans to judge who between them may have made remarks that could endanger the country’s peace and stability.
I will avoid the cherry-picking of Prof Kagwanja’s by reproducing verbatim sections of Dr Ruto’s and Dr Oburu’s sentiments below:
Dr Oburu: “Why have we always failed to get to State House despite winning the election through votes? It is because there is something we have been missing…it is called the system. Some people say the system is not important, but the system is very important. And now we are with Uhuru Kenyatta, whose is holding the system, we can be sure of victory.”
Dr Ruto: “We are being told now, we are being threatened with the system or the deep state. That there are people who will steal votes from us even if we win. There are people sitting somewhere who will decide.”
While Dr Oburu blatantly tells of his brother Raila winning the 2022 using ‘the system’ and dangerously invokes the name of the country’s president, Dr Ruto was merely expressing a belief widely held by Kenyans.
Prof Kagwanja sees nothing wrong with Dr Oburu’s remarks, but elects to accuse the Deputy President of intending to cause electoral instability. Talk of selective amnesia!
Prof Kagwanja quoted Dr Karanja Kibicho, the Principal Secretary in the Office of the President that ‘deep states, only exist in totalitarian systems, not in democratic societies like Kenya’.
Both Prof Kagwanja’s and Dr Kibicho’s views are contrary to evidence available globally.
The deep state is neither a paradox nor a preserve of the totalitarian states.
Carne Ross, the UK’s Iraq expert at the UN from 1997 to 2002; writing in The
Observer in 2010, recounted his experience while giving testimony at the Sir John Chilcot Inquiry. He stated that “this is not so much a problem with Sir John Chilcot and his panel, but rather with the government bureaucracy – Britain’s own ‘deep state’ – that is covering up its mistakes and denying access to critical documents”.
Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has conducted an extensive study on the deep state. In his book, The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on US Democracy, he sees the deep state ”not as a structure, but a system, as difficult to define, but also as real and as powerful, as a weather system”.
Further evidence of the existence of the deep state is provided by Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the New York Times best-selling author and television host who equates it to; “those perverting constitutional American politics from the margin of the Washington Beltway-‘ the security and surveillance apparatus, the war machine’.
Last, but not least, Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Case Officer and Army Intelligence Officer, who spent 20 years in Europe and the Middle East, observed in The American Conservative, that ‘many of America’s leaders actually accept that ‘there is an unelected, un-appointed, and unaccountable presence within the system that actually manages what is taking place behind the scenes. That would be the American deep state”
Finally, it is note-worthy that the deep state or the system can only catapult one to victory when competitors are close. With the Mount Kenya region solidly behind the Deputy President, a shift of political inclination of the Western and Coastal regions towards Ruto and the Rift Valley and Northern Kenya as solid as 2017, Oburu’s Odinga’s brother, Raila Odinga will not only need multiple ‘systems’ but divine intervention to win the 2022 elections. I don’t envy Raila’s political predicament.
Abdi Noor Mohamed is an independent consultant based in Nairobi.
Pressure has been piling up on the Kenya government to accelerate the national roll-out of its proposed Universal Health Coverage (UHC) plan in the wake of the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Speedy implementation of the comprehensive medical coverage will enhance service delivery, health financing and governance, according to the Chairman of the Council of Governors Wycliffe Oparanya.
“This is a people-centred health system. Its ultimate execution in all the 47 counties in Kenya would have saved many lives, especially at such a time when we are faced with the COVID-19 crisis,” Oparanya, who is also governor of Kakamega County, noted in an interview with Africa In Fact.
President Uhuru Kenyatta declared UHC a national priority on 12 December 2018 as part of a grand development blueprint, known as the “Big Four Agenda”, that sought to sustainably transform the country. Besides healthcare, other pillars on the “Big Four” agenda are food security, manufacturing and affordable housing.
Pressure has been piling up on the Kenya government to accelerate the national roll-out of its proposed Universal Health Coverage (UHC) plan in the wake of the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
Under the UHC initiative, President Kenyatta committed to make strategic investments in health, with all Kenyans able to access essential medical care by 2022. But the plan appears to have stalled almost 10 months after one-year pilot programmes in Kisumu, Machakos, Isiolo and Nyeri counties ended in October 2019.
The Kenyan Government undertook to appraise the project when the test experiments in the four counties were concluded. The exercise would evaluate the UHC package and if necessary, make improvements to it before countrywide roll-out, Ministry of Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe told me.
The evaluation appears to have been carried out, but not published. One of the main challenges identified during the trials, Kagwe said in an earlier interview with me, was the monumental demand for care. Medical facilities that are barely developed have been labouring to respond to the huge pressure for care. But insiders say the evaluation has been ignored. (Kagwe did not respond to requests for comment on this.) No further effort appears to have been made to pursue the UHC initiative.
The evaluation of the Universal Health Care pilot projects appears to have been carried out, but not published. One of the main challenges identified was the monumental demand for care.
Meanwhile, hospitals are being ineffectively managed, with inadequate budgetary allocations, and demoralised personnel, putting the lives of many Kenyans at risk. Kenya National Union of Nurses Secretary General Seth Panyako says such challenges could force the union to withdraw its members from facilities until their grievances are addressed. “Frontline workers are neither getting responsibility allowances, [n]or insurance [cover]; this will have spiralling effects on the spread of the virus,” he said.
In a March 2020 peer-reviewed research paper Tessa Oraro-Lawrence and Kaspar Wyss used interviews with informants in the national and county levels of healthcare to establish points of agreement and divergence on the aims of the UHC. On the basis of these interviews they say that “the perceived lack of strategic leadership from Kenya’s national government has led to a lack of agreement on stakeholders’ interpretation of what is to be understood by UHC, its contextual values and priorities”.
The authors note that most interviewees supported the expansion of access to health services, but that conflicting priorities of key stakeholders are slowing progress towards this goal. The conversation around healthcare policy had become highly fragmented, they note. Kenya needs “a centralised, systematic and inclusive process” to drive the development and implementation of UHC. The authors recommend that the national government and particularly the Ministry of Health should “foster collaboration in Kenya’s health space”.
Meanwhile, hospitals are being ineffectively managed, with inadequate budgetary allocations, and demoralised personnel, putting the lives of many Kenyans at risk.
Endebess Member of Parliament Robert Pukose agrees. A trained surgeon and medical doctor, Pukose told me that there is a “clearly visible and long-standing strain between county governments and the national government in the running of the health docket”. “Why would the national government allocate more resources to the health ministry than those allocated cumulatively to the 47 counties’ health docket?” he asked.
Healthcare in Kenya is supposed to be a completely devolved function, but the national government appeared hell-bent on controlling it, he said.
In the last financial year, the national government allocated 5.1% (Sh 90 billion) of its budget to the health sector. Of the Sh 90 billion, recurrent expenditure consumed Sh 49.1 billion while grant transfers to seven semi-autonomous government agencies under the ministry took Sh26.9 billion. The remaining amount was spent on universal health coverage transfers and personnel emoluments. Counties spent 27.2% (Sh 121 billion) of their budgets on health, but experts say the number is still below the 35% commitment made before devolution.
There is a “clearly visible and long-standing strain between county governments and the national government in the running of the health docket”. – Endebess Member of Parliament Robert Pukose.
Council of Governors Health Committee Chairman Mohammed Kuti agrees that tension between county governments and national government on funds allocation to medical care has impacted negatively on their service delivery. “Clear policy action is needed in order to develop a logical and consistent approach towards UHC,” said Kuti, who is also governor of Isiolo County.
“If adequate funds were allocated to counties, we would certainly not be under strain in fighting coronavirus disease,” said Kuti. “[But] most of the resources have ended up being misused or stolen while counties struggle with meagre resources to serve the people,” he told me.
For the 2020/2021 financial year which started on 1 July, the Parliamentary Budget and Appropriations Committee approved Sh2.73 trillion ($27.3 billion) for the national and county governments, of which the Health Ministry was allocated Sh111.7 billion ($1.1 billion). Meanwhile, the 47 counties in the country were allocated a total of Sh316.5 billion ($2.9 billion) – but this amount is the same as last year’s allocation, meaning that funding for the counties has stagnated. Moreover, the allocation covers a range of portfolios, says Jackson Mandago, governor of Uasin Gishu county.
“If adequate funds were allocated to counties, we would certainly not be under strain in fighting coronavirus disease,” – Council of Governors Health Committee Chairman Mohammed Kuti
“How do you explain this dismal figure to all the county governments that handle almost all functions ranging from agriculture, infrastructure, health, education, among others?” the governor asked. Relative to the amounts likely to be available to counties for the health portfolio, the allocation to the Ministry of Health was large, he suggested. “It is time counties got the maximum stipulated amount of 35% of the total national budget as envisaged in the Constitution,” he added.
In early August, reports began to emerge that funds meant to mitigate against the deadly disease were being stolen by influential people. According to a series of stories published by the Daily Nation, a leading newspaper in the East African region, businessmen close to President Kenyatta and some of his relatives had profited from the inflated prices of various Covid-19-related tenders.
On 3 August, one of the articles reported that the country had secured Sh223 billion ($2.23 billion) from various donor sources – the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the European Union and the African Development Bank – to support its fight against Covid-19, much of which had ended up in the pockets of powerful individuals.
In early August, reports began to emerge that funds meant to mitigate against the deadly disease were being stolen by influential people.
So powerful are the figures behind the theft and corruption that they have even been able to waylay well-wishers’ donations at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) — a guarded facility — and divert them to private warehouses. As Paul Wafula, the author of the article mentioned above put it, they were “waiting for the procurement whistle to be blown” – with the likelihood that it never will.
“Kenya’s health ministry is headed by hyenas. The policymakers’ business is to endanger our lives with their mission to be limitlessly rich,” Kimilili Member of Parliament Didmus Barasa told me. He urged the “hyenas” to stop trying to eat as much as they can within the shortest time possible, and the Ministry of Health to channel funds “to gainful undertakings”. The pandemic had emphasised the need for “high quality research to inform action, not only to combat the coronavirus but also inspire solutions to future pandemics.”
Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) CEO Twalib Mbarak says that corruption must be fought ruthlessly, and made “a high-risk, low-return vice. If there [were] full disclosure, transparent and accountable use of resources, counties would be doing their own tests and also reporting their own COVID-19 statistics, which will go a long way in informing policy,” he told me.
They were “waiting for the procurement whistle to be blown” – with the likelihood that it never will.
Constitutional lawyer Wachira Maina says that the country has pursued a range of reforms and launched various commissions of inquiry into corruption without effect. Corruption cases are routinely reported in the media, in the Auditor General’s reports and to EACC, but they are rarely fully investigated or even resolved. “If any investigation is done, it is aimed at exonerating the powerful or to punish their enemies. Corruption is deeply embedded in politics, which it both funds and subverts,” he observes.
On social media, public opinion about the reported corruption has been vitriolic. Economist Professor David Ndii, in a tweet on 3 August, asked President Kenyatta to check on his “relathieves” from “plundering our taxes with your protection” as the country’s healthcare system suffered a paucity in resources.
Donald Kipkorir, a well-known lawyer, said that a government that had allowed “tenderpreneurs” to profit from pandemics had “surrendered its soul to the devil”.
Beryl Achieng’, a Nakuru town resident, told me she was a Covid-19 survivor. She had been in hospital for nearly three weeks with the disease, she said, but “it was a struggle to access proper care. Drugs were in insufficient supply, [and] doctors also appeared demoralised.” She suspected that donations and resources from well-wishers and development partners were being misused and stolen with the government showing little concern about it.
Corruption cases are routinely reported, but they are rarely fully investigated or even resolved.
Meanwhile, on 2 August it was reported that Marian Awuor Adumbo, a nurse working at the Rachuonyo sub-county Hospital in Homa Bay in Western Kenya, died of Covid-19 complications in a context of reported shortages of protective gear for medical care staff. She had been pregnant, and gave birth to a baby boy before succumbing to the disease.
UHC is an ambitious scheme to extend proper healthcare to the whole country. But under the present circumstances, even the more incremental improvements in healthcare aimed at battling the Covid-19 pandemic are proving difficult to implement.
Improving healthcare in Kenya will require national and county governments to work together. But this would require a willingness on the part of key stakeholders to put aside their differences in the interests of the greater good. Health funding should be properly distributed, or the structure of health funding as provided for in the constitution revised to ensure sufficient health funding to counties.
Marian Awuor Adumbo, a nurse working at the Rachuonyo sub-county Hospital in Homa Bay in Western Kenya, died of Covid-19 complications in a context of reported shortages of protective gear for medical care staff.
Given the political logjam that prevents adequate funding from reaching hospitals and treatment centres, there appears to be little chance of this being corrected, either in relation to the pandemic, or indeed, to the wider problem of endemic corruption.
As I pointed out in my previous blog, the ruling party has ensured a lack of critical evaluation of its policies and actions by striking a deal with the opposition. Meanwhile, key political stakeholders in healthcare have no interest in revising the structure of health funding, since that would deny them influence over budgets – and access to rents to be derived from them. Similarly, they will have little interest in ensuring proper healthcare funding within the present structures, for the same tawdry reasons.
So the country’s capacity to deal with other potential crises, such as climate change, has been further diminished. With other contributors to this blog series on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on countries around Africa, I have to agree that in Kenya, too, the pandemic – a global and national emergency – has simply been another opportunity for members of the entrenched elite to conduct business as usual. For them, that means entrenching their power bases and siphoning off public funds.
Political rift between the President and his deputy Ruto continue to widen by the day. Things haven’t been the same since the handshake when Uhuru decided to work with Raila whom Ruto views as his biggest rival.
The two jubilee partners have often differ in numerous issues including the push for referendum that the President and Raila have been championing. Ruto who has in the recent times self alienated, has not been active in day to day running of the government and has been left with a shell for an office.
Its ages since he was seen at a state function and has been reduced to hosting groups at his Karen as he consolidates his grounds and team ahead of 2022.
In subliminal attacks, the President has been castigating the DP for campaigning instead of concentrating on development as he prepares for his exit and determined to leave a legacy.
Wrangles within Jubilee party has seen the deputy’s faction exchange fire with Uhuru’s led by the chairman David Murathe.
Murathe has never minced his words and more than once has dared the DP to exit the party.
In what could be the first public confirmation that the DP is considering bolting out, Ruto told Joe Ageyo during an interview on Citizen TV that should talks hit a wall, he’s prepared to leave jubilee for another umbrella in his bid for presidency come 2022.
Reports now indicate that as a precaution and just getting ready for anything, the DP has already registered two political parties through his proxies who’re close allies.
The newly registered parties, United Green Party (UGP) and Grand Dream Development Party (GDDP), are associated with MPs Cornelly Serem (Aldai), Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei, Oscar Sudi (Kapsaret) and Caleb Kositany (Soi), who is also Jubilee deputy secretary general).
All are Mr Ruto’s allies. “We gather that he wants to bolt out. He is free to do so and form another party. This one has its owners. I heard him call us junior fellows in the party, how do junior people run one out of town surely?” Mr Murathe posed.
During the interview, Ruto had accused Murathe whom he referred to as conman of having invaded the party and running it as a private property. Murathe in response said that Ruto is mad because his plan to take over the party was thwarted.
The jubilee chairman has gone further to tell Ruto to leave the party if he feels shortchanged sending him a warning that things are just getting started and will get to the worst. “Mambo bado, hii ni kionjo tu. You wait, atajua hajui (The game has yet to start, what you have seen is only a test run. We’ll prove to him that he’s not as smart as he thinks),” Mr Murathe charged.
Former Vice President also in an interview with Joe Ageyo said the DP has self alienated and decided to play victim. Kalonzo challenged the DP to resign and leave jubilee if he feels it has been invaded by conmen.
Ruto is currently in the Coastal region on a tour holding meetings with different members of the public.
Rising rate and number of infections among health workers have been linked to several risk factors, including frequent contact with infected patients being that their job description makes them one of the crucial frontline workers.
From Outpatient Services to In-patient services in the isolation wards (even General wards) and Intensive Care Units (critically ill covid19 patients) 1st July, a total number of 186 healthcare workers were already infected.
A population which represented 8% of the then confirmed cases nationwide. By 15th July the number rose to 429 (which could’ve been more than that).
Now in August, the number has been projected to have doubled up . Tension has since hit the vital healthcare fraternity from when Dr. Doreen Lugaliki, first Kenyan Doctor succumed to novel Covid-19 in July.
Dr.Lugaliki served as an Obstetrician & Gynaecologist at The Nairobi South Hospital.
Two nurses have also succumbed to the disease.
The results of a study published in the BioMed Central to explore the perceived infection routes for healthcare workers revealed that most of them are infected when attending to patients.
The study reported that lack of personal protective equipment and exposure to infected patients mainly through work in high-risk departments and contaminated fluid and aerosols as some of the factors that have contributed to health workers getting infected with the coronavirus.
In Kisumu County
Earlier in July, nurses in Kisumu had raised concerns over the quality of the face mask supplied by the county government.
They noted that the masks were made of biodegradable textile, similar to what is used in the production of polypropylene bags. Kisumu National Nurses Association of Kenya Chairman Collins Ajwang told Kenya insights that they started receiving the face masks almost four weeks ago. “They came in big bunches from Hela Company EPZ Nairobi. We noticed they were not of [good] quality,” he said.
The union consequently filed a complaint at Kebs Kibos office seeking to establish the quality of the face masks.
“We found out Hella EPZ Company was accredited to produce facemasks. The first facemasks supplied were of good quality but the subsequent supplies were totally faulty,” said Mr Ajwang.
“When Kebs did their inspections they found out that the cartons were not labelled, lacked details of the products, address, Kebs mark and the supplier. The boxes were labelled ‘Made in India’,” he added A majority of these workers have not been trained on how to manage Covid-19 patients and do not have the N95 masks and protective equipment.
They are using the surgical masks so, if they interact with asymptomatic patients, they stand a high chance of getting infected,” said Mr George Gibore, secretary-general of the Kenya Union of Clinical Officers (Kuco).
Because of the shortage of N95 masks in the country, he said, health care workers are given only one mask for 24 hours, against the World Health Organisation recommended period of five hours.
“When they use it the whole day and sweat on it and touch it, this can be another form of transmission if they had touched a contaminated surface,” he said.
“When one works for about 14 hours just taking care of patients, more so the ones in intensive care unit, they risk getting infected,” he said.
According to Kebs, the masks were supplied by Hela Intimates EPZ Limited to Kisumu County.
It has since emerged that the masks were also supplied to the Council of Governors (CoG).
Kebs went ahead to delist three brands namely WAMNDAS manufactured by Wandas General Supplies, ARAX manufactured by Arax Mills and a mask manufactured by Hela Intimates EPZ which was not branded.
Currently, five health workers in Kisumu County have tested positive for Covid-19.
KAKAMEGA THEATRE CLOSED
In Kakamega, the county general hospital’s theatre was closed down after the lead surgeon tested positive for coronavirus.
KISII MEDICS INFECTED
In Kisii, two nurses and a biomedical engineer are among 27 people who have tested positive for Covid-19 in the region so far. The three contracted the virus while on duty and they are currently in isolation.
In Migori, 16 health staff have contacted the virus. By Wednesday, Migori County had recorded 286 positive cases with healthcare workers now fearing attending to patients over safety concerns.
At the sub-county hospitals, staff in the outpatient departments and those on night shifts are buying their own masks.
In Bomet, 15 of the 29 people in isolation after testing positive for Covid-19 are health workers in various cadres. Four of them tested positive on Thursday.
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The more the they get infected – the more the number of those being isolated for weeks of quarantine and probably isolation if found infected. During this tough time, almost nobody will be left to attend to patients and once the system halts – it will be a disaster. Hence there will be need to have more healthcare providers – which definitely need more manpower hence call for final year students and those that have experience in clinical practicals to chip inn to save the situation.
Therefore, the Government in its plans need to begin as early as possible recall these students and train them on the handling of Covid19 patients so as to be ready for worst case scenarios soon if it cannot afford to provide sufficient WHO certified PPEs to protect the lives the current healthcare workers.
Former Tanzania President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, whose tenure lasted from 2005 till 2015, made diplomacy his core business, and travelled abroad frequently to the extent that his record of foreign trips became a reputational liability.
As costs went up, the opposition seized the opportunity to criticise his administration for possible wastage. One of those who came forward to defend the trips was the current president, John Pombe Magufuli, who said, “There are those who say you are always travelling, but without those trips we wouldn’t have seen the progress we have made, so we ask you to keep travelling because we need to see more progress.”
Unlike his predecessor, the current president has distinguished himself for his aversion to travelling and mingling in circles of power at the international level.
When it comes to diplomacy, he leads from behind, and lets his deputies represent him and the state. This arrangement, as he has argued in the past, saves money.
While this approach is popular at home, the ensuing arms-length relationship with his peers in the region and across the globe has not been without its downside.
In 2018, the European Union (EU) Parliament issued a resolution on Tanzania, condemning it for what it described as a deterioration of human rights, as well as the continuous closure of civic space.
This was the first time ever that a foreign legislative body had issued a statement regarding the situation in the country. Since then, multiple other nations have expressed concerns, including the most recent June 2020 statement by the United States embassy in Dar es Salaam, which was critical of government actions to “stifle democratic norms.”
For President Magufuli, the economy is a priority, even in the face of COVID-19, and he believes that, if managed well, the country could attain superiority in this area (and in which recently during this pandemic- Tanzania was accorded Middle Income Economy class by World Bank after attaining the World Bank’s new minimum gross national income (GNI) per capita threshold of $1,036 this year which Kenya attained way back in 2014), and even become a donor nation in the near future.
As such, economic diplomacy has become a primary basis of interaction between the country and other nations.
At the end of March, Magufuli encouraged people to continue visiting places of worship — a move that bucked international public health recommendations — while comparing the virus to Satan and saying that it “cannot survive in the body of Jesus Christ.”
Then in May, the president cast doubt on the data around cases by suggesting that people who test positive might not actually be infected.
He said he secretly tested a papaya, a goat, and a quail for COVID-19 — all testing positive — to prove his point. He also questioned the safety of imported masks, stopped the disinfection of public places, and touted an herbal remedy as a cure for COVID-19, which research has not proved effective.
Then on June 9, Magufuli declared that “Corona in our country has been removed by the powers of God.” Celebrations followed.
He reiterated that COVID-19 was eliminated from Tanzania in a speech on Monday. “Our enemies will speak a lot, but the reality remains that Tanzania is safe and that is why none of us here is putting on a mask.
Does it mean we are not afraid of dying? No, it is because corona has been eliminated,” he said.
While the government stopped reporting cases to WHO at the end of April, the health agency and other partners continue to provide the Tanzanian government with technical support on its response, including on case management, infection prevention and control, surveillance and laboratory strengthening, risk communication and community engagement, and logistics, according to an email from WHO.
This is what I refer to as Rocket science. This rocket science made her believe that her neighbor Kenya would resume flights to and fro from the Tanzania once the scheduled reopening of international flights resume – a hope which turned out hopeless as Kenya didn’t buy Tanzania’s rocket to science when its President declared it Covid19 free.
In reopening of its sky, Kenya was so considerate of safety in that – would only access low risk countries and which included only 11 countries.
In a communiqué announced by Transport CS James Macharia, China, South Korea, Japan, Canada, Uganda, France, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Switzerland and Morocco who have mild and limited community transmission will be allowed.
This announcement came days after President Kenyatta spoke during his 10th Presidential Address on Covid-19 — President Kenyatta told Kenyans not to think countries that are not releasing their coronavirus data are doing any better in handling the pandemic.
“Let’s not compare ourselves and say some places don’t have the virus. Why do we have it, and they don’t? Let me remind Kenyans, we live in a democracy where there is media freedom. As a state, we don’t have the power to hide anything. Whatever happens, we tell you. There are others who have that power. But we are proud of the fact that we are a democracy and are able to tell each other the truth and face the reality instead of sweeping the truth under the carpet and have our citizens suffer quietly,” Uhuru said.
In retaliation to these President Uhuru’s comments, Tanzania turned back diplomatic plane carrying Kenyan envoy mid-air who included West Pokot Senator Samuel Poghisio, who is the Senate Majority leader, back to Nairobi as soon as it reached Monduli in Tanzania.
As the rift of tit-for-tat diplomatic game widens, Tanzania have retaliated again to Kenya’s decision to sideline it from the 11-member state which it will open airspace to and have banned KQ Planes from operating in its airspace until further notice.
Pombe Mug-Ful continues to hold public gatherings with no measures put in place, schools are opened, no mask is is worn and totally everything is back to normalcy with citizens silently succumbing to the disease but there is nobody allowed to talk about it fearing for their lives as human rights is a non core value to the rocket science neighborhood.
Fellow Counterparts who used to believe in Rocket Science but not anymore.
1. Brazil
Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro has been criticized for his management of the health crisis.
He fired two health ministers amid the pandemic and has openly opposed measures to curb the virus, including wearing facemasks and practicing social distancing since he believed that novel corona virus was fallacy until he got infected himself.
He still remains in self-isolation at his official residence in Brasilia after testing positive for the coronavirus for a third time in two weeks. Brazil has the most COVID-19 cases in Latin America, with more than 2.1 million infections and more than 80,100 deaths.
2. Madagascar.
Madagascar threw in the towel after Covid19 cases continued to surge despite distributing herbal medicine which President believed to be the cure. https://kenyainsights.com/madagascar-president-rajoelina-gives-up-on-his-cure-cvo-as-covid19-cases-in-the-country-surge-calls-for-international-community-support/
The rocket science current Tanzania Government believes in, will just ruin forever it’s diplomatic reputation.
The 2010 Constitution of Kenya was a turning point in country’s history as it reconfigured balance of power by devolving power and responsibilities from the national government to 47 elected county governments.
The moment devolution took shape in Kenya — resulted to formation of 47 County Governments led to Governors where Article 1 of the Constitution delegates the sovereign power of the people to the County Governments as state organs. The county governments can also exercise this power at the county level. In the County Governments — Senatorial position where Senators were:
Empowered to represent the interests of the counties and their governments
Participates in law-making by considering, debating and approving bills concerning counties
Determines allocation of national revenue among counties.
Has powers of impeachment over the president, deputy president, county governor, and deputy governors
And besides the National Assembly for Members of Parliament (MPs) representatives of the Constituencies there is the Senate Assembly representatives for County Government Senators and in County level is County Assembly for Members of County Assemblies(MCAs) representing the wards and whose roles are legislation, representation, and oversight in which they’re empowered to impeach the Governor by vote of no confidence.
But the final fate of the Governor’s impeachment lies on the hands of the Senate who have the final verdict.
At the National Assembly or the Senate uncountable times Kenyans have witnessed the level of brown envelope philia when it comes to bills or motions of or involving corrupt individuals whose cases suddenly disappear with or without evidence. Like they say, “Why hire a lawyer, if you can buy the Judge.”
From cafeteria lobbying, wash-room handouts — has been the game to silence the hungry majority since Parliament is a game of numbers. We’ve seen how Rai sugar investigation report vanished in thin air after MPs were literally bribed to bury alive the case. Members of Parliament received as little as Sh10,000 (100$) in the toilets to shoot down a controversial sugar report. Other legislators were handed bribes in Parliament’s new restaurant and car park ahead of the chaotic afternoon session that saw the report on the sugar scandal, which was prepared by members of a joint Agriculture and Trade committee, defeated on the floor of the House.
Rai the beard ‘gang’ being received ceremonially by those who’re suppose to grill him.
When (Jaswant) Rai appeared, they were lining up to shake his hands. Have you seen a judge leave his seat to go hug a suspect?
Literally no single substantive case before the Legislatures committee involving investigations of corrupt bigwigs has ever been found guilty. They also say, “ You’re either at the dinner table as the dinner or the waiter.”
And they have always preferred to be at the dinner table as the dinners. This is the same act and contagious notion that has spread roots to the county assembly where the MCAs wants to be at the dinner table with their Governors together as dinners and on failure of the Governor to accept their calls — they push on the Impeachment power button.
However much some of the calls for impeachment are justifiable — majority are pure witch-hunt over failure to secure a VIP space at the dinner table.
Apparently, cases of Governors impeachment in Kenya by MCAs has been on the rise and in cases where the BBI brothers —President Uhuru or Raila Odinga have intervened on one on one a-tête-à-tête with the MCAs, we’ve seen total calmness to normalcy and which authenticates that some of the MCAs press impeachment button for attention seeking.
In some cases, the MCAs have been bribed by the Governors and have settled the dust. It has been hooting hell out hunger and thirst for money and not genuine oversight.
Ever since its founding, the United States has presented itself as a shining city on a hill—a nation in which liberty and fundamental freedoms thrive and an example for the rest of the world.
It is a mythology refuted by American history. And today, killings of African Americans that continue with impunity, systemic racism across institutions of U.S. life, and official violence against Black Lives Matter protesters once again demonstrate the hollowness at the center of American exceptionalism.
Still, many embrace the image of an exemplary, exceptional America. Even those who see the fault in the metaphor of a shining city may argue that the United States has historically played a positive global role for human rights. After all, it helped build the postwar global human rights system, drawing in part on constitutional protections Americans enjoy. It led the negotiation of the United Nations Charter, which makes the pursuit of human rights a fundamental purpose of the global organization. Former U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the U.N. committee that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Human rights policy has been built into the structure of U.S. diplomacy since at least the administration of President Jimmy Carter, however inconsistently, if at all, some presidents have been committed to it.
Racism and white supremacy drove the American refusal to enforce human rights at home, and that legacy of hypocrisy shapes human rights policy today.
Yet even so, the phrase “human rights” in American policy has almost always referred to what others violate, and it rarely comes back to what the U.S. government is obligated to protect at home. The United States may use the language of human rights law to condemn official abuses against minorities worldwide, or violence against protesters in Venezuela, Hong Kong, Iran, and elsewhere, but it bristles when those same norms are deployed against it.
Despite its rhetoric and its occasional leadership, the United States has long had its foreign-policy foot inside the human rights system and its domestic one firmly outside. Treaties and other international obligations that it calls upon others to keep are not even enforceable within the United States itself.
If human rights are so important that the United States makes it an official feature of its diplomacy, why have Americans not applied it to their own government?
The answer is simple and well documented. Racism and white supremacy drove the American refusal to enforce human rights at home, and that legacy of hypocrisy shapes human rights policy today.
At the outset of the modern human rights movement, segregationist Southerners and their allies fought against U.S. engagement with the U.N. human rights system. They saw human rights as a threat to segregation, to its oppressive system of official racist violence, to the inequalities of Jim Crow. They worried, rightly, that the U.N. human rights bodies would, if they had the authority, put pressure on the United States to end its systemic racism.
As a result, when the United States ratified major human rights treaties on civil and political rights and racism, the Senate demanded that they not be applicable in U.S. courts absent further legislation, which senators knew would not be forthcoming. It’s true that the United States comes under periodic evaluation at the U.N. Human Rights Council and in the few treaties it has ratified, but such reviews hardly receive attention or have much impact domestically.
In the decades since, U.S. resistance to human rights has extended beyond its racist origins. Some argue that international human rights law has always been too ambiguous and too politicized to be implemented consistently by governments. The American right has taken to arguing that human rights treaties are an effort of global elites to undermine U.S. sovereignty. Indeed, this was the argument against the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a treaty negotiated by the administration of President George W. Bush that basically implemented U.S. law on a global scale.
‘While President Kenyatta may have campaigned for the constitution, it has never stopped him from trampling on it when it served his purposes’— Author
The Constitution of Kenya 2010 is revolutionary in character and transformative in intent. It is revolutionary because it proposes a radical shift from the old order where power centred on the Executive, and transformative in that it is not just a law to Kenyans but a means towards socio-economic emancipation.
The Constitution is also liberal democratic. Above all, it emphasizes individual autonomy which extends to freedom of enterprise — ours is a market-oriented economy which creates a level playing field for all and eliminates surprises. But the man at the bottom had to be taken care of, which is why it leaves a small window of government interference through social welfare schemes.
Implementing such a Constitution is not easy. Kenyans understood that while politicians were needed to stir the revolution and engage the masses in simple language, technocrats were necessary to implement the fine print and ensure that its transformative agenda did not fail. In their heart of hearts, they also knew that politicians are generally averse to reason, hence the reason Article 152 separates administrators from politics.
It was never going to be a popular choice with those in high places, the ones who thrive in chaos. At first, President Uhuru Kenyatta masked his disdain by appointing ex-politicians to cabinet dockets with a promise that they would not engage in politics. With time, the definition of politics became blurred and before long, CSs were spewing bile in rallies claiming that, like every Kenyan, they had freedom of expression including political expression.
It was not an isolated act. While Uhuru may have campaigned for the constitution, it has never stopped him from trampling on it when it served his purposes — from leading Mwai Kibaki into tearing apart the National Accord following the disputed elections of 2007 to the promise, to “revisit” the Judiciary, it has been a litany of orchestrated gaffes. The latest move to appoint an ill-equipped military man to public administration is part of a larger plot to take this country for himself.
To militarize institutions by, among other things, appointing military men to head them is to transform the country into a military dictatorship
A bad picture
Although military men swear their allegiance to the Republic first, in the practical sense their fidelity lies with the President as the commander in chief of the armed forces. It’s worrisome that people who owe their allegiance to an individual — one beholden to the deep state as we have come to understand it — are now tasked with running the affairs of the most important county in the Republic. It’s an absurdity, nay illegality that should concern us all.
In any case, it’s trite practice in liberal democracies like ours for military affairs to be oversighted by political civilian institutions. In Kenya, the military is supervised by Parliament and the Judiciary, which ensure that it aligns its operations with the Constitution. The practice echoes in the Police Service which is also oversighted by the Independent Police Oversight Authority. To militarize these institutions by, inter alia, appointing military men to head them is to transform the country into a military dictatorship.
If we must violate the Constitution, then it must be for men of mettle with a demonstrable ability to discharge the duties bestowed upon them. At the very least, they should be an improvement to their predecessors. Most of those who have heard Gen. Mohammed Abdallah Badi speak and seen him in action — including a top government official who spoke in confidence — will agree that he does not come across as someone intelligent, not even remotely. And besides that perception, he isn’t. His initial operational decisions even in engaging with the county government in general and Governor Mike Sonko in particular are anything but confidence-inspiring.
Gen. Badi has no academic qualifications to write home about. He is an airman, which does not even begin to qualify him for the job at hand. Does he have any unique qualifications? What primarily did he excel at in the Air Force besides mundane cargo and personnel transport assignments? What qualifies him to oversee a budget of some Sh26 Billion — which the National Treasury allocated the Nairobi Metropolitan Services last month?
While it’s not guaranteed that suited technocrats make better leaders, it is very unlikely that a man of limited qualifications and little managerial and political experience like Badi will push the transformative agenda of the Constitution. Nairobi is the most important county in the republic and its health is crucial to the overall wellbeing of the country. It needs a man who can balance between making it attractive to investors and the socio-economic needs of its diverse population in light of its unique problems.
Sonko was good at the latter. Gen. Badi is an expert in neither.
Military men are associated with the National Intelligence Service, which they also largely populate. The role of NIS is known — they are political spies first before they are servants of the Constitution. In a peaceful country such as ours, these are people who earn their living settling political scores on behalf of their commanders. This is the calibre of people now entrusted with running Nairobi County; it is also part of a growing trend where President Kenyatta appoints mediocre individuals to head sensitive dockets. It’s not only an insult to Kenyans, but it also shows how the country is held at ransom by a powerful cabal of selfish individuals and their lobbyists.
The truth of the matter is that Badi is just another pawn in the long game of socio-political and economic domination by the powerful oligarchs of the old. When President Uhuru Kenyatta took over from Kibaki, he promised to serve the Republic and defend the Constitution: he has turned out to be a great president alright, but only for his family and cronies. His nefarious intent is obvious from every policy decision he has taken since he assumed office.
Kenyatta has used state machinery to go after dissenters and business competitors: he has manufactured loopholes for his businesses to evade tax while parlaying as a crusader against wastage and tax evasion; the only obvious result of his diplomatic forays in the region has been the expansion of his dairy empire; he has seconded milk laws that have extinguished his largest competitor in the small scale producer; he has set about aggressively acquiring competition; and, as if that were not enough, he deploys State platforms to push his private business agenda — his unveiling of a beer plant in Kisumu for a company in which he owns stock is a classic example.
The President is increasingly authoritarian. Not only has he backed laws that intrude on privacy but he has also supported legislation that eats into the right to picket and demonstrate. He has made a habit of slighting the Judiciary and, under his watch, seen budgetary allocation to the critical institution fall to an all-time low in recent times. To crown his defiance, he has appointed malleable prefects to oversee the system while discarding all those he does not want like chaff to the wind — all whilst using public funds, and in the name of the presidency.
For those who can recall, the Standard Gauge Railway was never meant to proceed to Kisumu, but then Uhuru personally launched the Senator Keg Brewery in Kisumu and now, thanks to extra debt, the railway is headed west. That it was initially meant to halt at the mooted Industrial Park in Naivasha was bad enough. Coincidentally Naivasha is the home of Delamere, which now forms part of Kenyatta’s ever-expanding milk portfolio. All things considered, it makes sense that Kenyatta stubbornly defends the SGR.
If we must violate the Constitution, let it be for men of mettle who discharge the duties bestowed upon them. At the very least, they should be an improvement to their predecessors.
Back to Badi.
In May 2012 the World Bank released Sh33 Billion to fund the Nairobi metropolitan improvement project — which had been initiated when Uhuru was Finance Minister — specifically for the expansion of sanitation services in Nairobi City. Then-Governor Evans Kidero was opposed to the project. Like Kidero, Sonko was and is also opposed to the eviction of People in Kariobangi and Ruai, which had been earmarked for demolitions. The people now being evicted, through no fault of their own, are understood to have been conned into buying the land, which had been grabbed and sanitised by top-ranking public officials in the Kibaki and Uhuru governments.
After several extension of the said funding, the expiry date of project loan is nigh with little to show of it and the World Bank is stalling on an extra facility worth Sh400 Billion for Affordable Housing unless (the project) is completed. The total cost is Sh600 billion and the overhead will be covered by Kenyans through the controversial Housing Development Fund. On one hand, knowing how important affordable housing is to President Kenyatta — it nest in his Big Four Agenda — Sonko too had to “leave” on account of his opposition to the manner of execution of the project. This is how Badi has come to replace him, particularly on dockets necessary to its implementation. On the other, well-placed sources reveal that a high ranking Jubilee official has already lined up a company to do the project and rake in the kickbacks. It is the reason everyone opposed to the project even in the least, including Cabinet Secretaries, is leaving.
Coincidentally, as all this is happening, the Kenyatta’s are constructing a Sh500-billion private megacity in Ruiru. As reported by the Business Daily, the proposed Northlands City will accommodate an estimated 250,000 people living and working within its boundaries. The project has received massive support from the national government in making it attractive to prospective investors.
In terms of cash injections, tax cuts have been proposed as part of a policy to promote the President’s Big Four Agenda. Kenyans are also sceptical that money from the Housing Development Fund will also be used to fund the business. After all, it bears all the hallmarks of the controversial SGR which, in retrospect, seems to have been built for the Kenyattas.
The general may not be anything else but he is a yes man, and that is enough. At the very least, his presence leaves Uhuru to pursue his desire without all the noise that Sonko was creating.
And urban planners and the National Highways Agency have factored the city in their plans. It is estimated that Northlands will generate up to 30, 000 vehicles per day, spilling onto the Eastern Bypass, and another 27,000 vehicles per day onto the Thika Super Highway. The Northlands industrial Park is a major beneficiary of dualling, with the National Highways Agency also factoring in a key interchange that will connect the City to the Northern Bypass in the ongoing Sh40-billion upgrade of the road into a dual carriageway.
This project, primarily, is the reason Governor Sonko was arm-twisted into handing over the Transport, Health Planning and Development and Public Works and Utilities functions to Gen. Badi. It is also the reason revenue collection was transferred to the Kenya Revenue Authority from the County Government. The general may not be anything else but he is a yes man, and that is enough. At the very least, his presence leaves Uhuru to pursue his desire without all the noise that Sonko was creating.
For Northlands to see the light of day and for his family business to continue enjoying government goodwill, Uhuru has to ensure that he continues at the helm. The Building Bridges Initiative exists for that. But as a guarantee, he also has to maintain control of the Judiciary hence the obvious meddling in the affairs of the Judicial Service Commission.
Meanwhile, the conglomerate continues to grow, all at the expense of the taxpayer. Wittingly or unwittingly, and whether he likes it or not, Badi is just a minute, hired cog in it.
The coronavirus stopped reggae. For the first time in many decades, for a whole month from early March, nobody spoke about politics. It was not even featured on the local news where it has been a mainstay for as long as any of us can remember. Both the Kieleweke – which drives the BBI agenda — and Tangatanga brigades went on mute. Raila Odinga and William Ruto retreated to their cocoons in self-imposed quarantine.
Then, in response to questions about their whereabouts, DP William Ruto came out on April 9th to diffuse speculation that his boss had not only sidelined him but gone on full-throttle offensive. The following day Raila also came out through an interview with a local radio station. His biggest revelation was that the coronavirus was but a half-time break to the BBI show.
Although hushed, politics has returned to the limelight. Initially whispered loudly, it is now apparent that President Uhuru Kenyatta is kicking out DP Ruto’s allies from the government to bring in Raila’s team into a new coalition. Kirinyaga Governor Anne Waiguru came out to confirm that it was the plan from the beginning. Meanwhile, Jubilee Party Secretary-General Raphael Tuju set in motion a plan to kick out Ruto’s allies from the Jubilee Party. The deputy president tried to fight but former president Daniel Moi’s philosophy is emerging in the midst of the storm: every political party has its owners. Jubilee Party belongs to the TNA wing more than it does to Ruto’s URP partner.
It can be extremely difficult but manageable in the long run to govern Kenya without Luo support, but one cannot lead the country without Kikuyu support. The most one can take from the Kikuyu is indifference, not opposition.
So what?
The efforts to push Raila Odinga to the centre of Kenyan politics have been apparent since his March 2018 handshake with Uhuru Kenyatta. It is obvious that Raila is being positioned for the presidency or some other key role in the post-2022 government. A Raila presidency would cure two things. One is that his supporters from Luo Nyanza and the Coast who have always felt sidelined from the core of government since independence will, for once, belong, or at least get the sense they do. It will contain the perennial explosive response from these areas every time Raila loses a presidential election. There will be no more talk or dreams of secession. If it happens, it will heal the wound that has troubled Kenyan politics ever since Jaramogi Oginga Odinga resigned from the government in 1967.
Secondly, the preferred candidate to take over from Uhuru Kenyatta is Gideon Moi: everybody else is a pawn. Power brokers understand what happened to Uhuru Kenyatta in 2002. Uhuru, the preferred successor to the late Daniel Moi, was beaten by a Raila-backed Mwai Kibaki. They also know that Ruto would be the biggest impediment to such a plan if he is left to grow beyond his current reach. The implication here is that Uhuru cannot front the younger Moi against Raila or a candidate backed by Raila. The fact that Raila visited Moi immediately after the 2018 handshake with Uhuru brings this to light. His amenability to supporting Gideon is clear through his indication, during the former president’s burial, that he (Gideon) is free to vie for any seat.
Raila Odinga comes in as a stop-gap candidate, who will hand over the mantle to Moi. This will most likely be in 2027. Raila has been obsessed with cutting the image of an African statesman even if he never becomes president. He can easily leave the scene after one term to cement his place in the league of Nelson Mandela, who also stepped aside after one term. He is at the ‘right age’ — even if he wanted to stay on, he will likely not have the energy for it.
The fall-back plan for the powers that be is to install Musalia Mudavadi in the place of Raila. Musalia is the blue-eyed political boy of the Kenyan masters. He was scheduled to take over from Mwai Kibaki in 2013 on the premise that it would not have looked good for another Kikuyu to succeed Kibaki but the plan fell through on account of the post-election violence cases at the Hague. Mudavadi’s strength is that he has proven to be too loyal to rock the boat. Secondly, his family has a long-standing relationship with the Moi family. His colonial Education Officer father pushed Moi from the classroom into politics. For that, he was rewarded with ministerial appointments when Moi became president. Moi also picked his son to succeed him when he passed away. It would be a walk in the park to have Mudavadi hand over power to his ‘brother’ Gideon.
The handshake gave Uhuru Kenyatta a blank cheque; he can write what he wants because nobody knows what Raila was promised. As far as possible, no backlash is expected for this option from Raila’s side.
Roadblocks
The main challenge to the first option is the Kikuyu’s acceptance of a Raila presidency. It can be extremely difficult but manageable in the long run to govern Kenya without Luo support, but one cannot lead the country without Kikuyu support. The most one can take is indifference but not opposition from Kikuyus. The moment some Kikuyus got the idea that Raila could be the ‘chosen’ presidential candidate in 2022, some vocal politicians like Moses Kuria and Kimani Ichungwa began leading rebels to Ruto’s Tangatanga wing. Kikuyus have the entrenched belief that a Luo cannot lead this country, particularly if that Luo is the ‘vile’ Raila Odinga.
When we witness the common man embracing William Ruto in Central Kenya, it is not out of love for the Duke of Sugoi but their hatred — and fear — for Raila Odinga. Today, the Kikuyu elites have made peace with it and are ready for a Raila presidency for the sake of keeping the country united and peaceful; it is good for their business interests. Their biggest problem now is to uninstall the anti-Luo and anti-Raila operating system they installed amongst their folk, and on which the community has run on for ages. The would-be solution is that what the system wants the system gets
Nusu mkate
This could be the reason for floating a coalition government that has Raila at the top. If it won’t be possible for him to take the ultimate prize, then he can enjoy the trappings of power in a fading Uhuru reign. The BBI train can lead to a constitutional change where a Prime Minister post — a title he has maintained even amongst government officials to date — can be created for him under the more palatable Musalia Mudavadi.
This is the reason I believe that if Raila takes the coalition government option, then his supporters should bury any hopes of a Raila presidency. Raila adopted his father’s gima ichamo ema ikwano funeral dirge chant, which loosely translates to ‘what you have eaten (a bird in hand) is what you can count’. In other words, half a loaf is better than no loaf at all. The handshake gave Uhuru Kenyatta a blank cheque; he can write what he wants because nobody knows what Raila was promised. As far as possible, no backlash is expected for this option from Raila’s side.
The downside to this is that Ruto is being forced down the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga path. His best survival option is to take the Raila Odinga route of perpetual political survival. The end result could be, after many years we may end up in the 2007-2017 post-election valley. In politics, that is a problem to be solved when it arises. Meanwhile, the self-defeatism of ethnic-based political mobilization continues to play out in our faces.
In the county assembly, 23 MCAs out of 33 voted in favour of Waiguru’s ouster sponsored by Mutira ward representative Kinyua Wangui
Four abstained while six were absent.
During the motion, the MCAs resurrected the ghost of the infamous National Youth Services scandal that prompted Waiguru’s resignaton as Devolution CS in November 2015.
Some MCAs claimed the governor had moved the scandals to Kirinyaga.
The motion was anchored on violation of the Constitution, abuse of office and gross misconduct.
The MCAs claimed, for instance, that Waiguru had failed to improve roads, blocked the modernisation of Wanguru Stadium and sabotaged senior national officers from carrying out their work in the county.
She was also accused of gross misconduct by seeking over Sh10.6 million payments for nonexistent travels.
Kinyua claimed Waiguru conferred herself the benefit by irregularly receiving the cash for travels between June 2018 and February this year.
She was also accused of procuring a Sh5 million official vehicle using funds meant for Contractors Retention Account and thus misappropriating public fund despite the same having been done by her predecessor Joseph Ndathi.
MCAs also blamed Waiguru of failing to make the crucial annual State of the County’s address, thus undermining the County Assembly’s authority.
The worsening health services in the county was also blamed on the governor with MCAs accusing her of sacking medics.
The governor was also accused of undermining the authority of the assembly by not submitting county plans and policies for approval and also failing to table the annual report on their implementation status.
Kinyua also blamed Waiguru of establishing an irregular tender evaluation committee composed of a partisan staff who take direct instructions from her.
According to the MCA, the two — Pauline Kamau and Wayne Gichira — alternate as chairpersons of all major tender evaluation committees to act as conduits to award tenders to Waiguru’s preferred bidders.
He said this action compromises the integrity of the tendering process and harbours nepotism, favouritism and improper ulterior motive and amounts to corruption.
As evidence, the MCA said on December 20, 2018 the tendering committee awarded Sh19.1 million to Master Rock Construction Company.
The cash was for purported upgrading of Kagumo Market after being taken away from Joames Investment yet the contract had not been cancelled.
Another tender for construction of Kagio matatu parking was given to Jipsy Civil Buildings contractors despite having not been certified and being among the highest bidders.
The MCAs said Jipsy had quoted Sh30 million yet another certified company, Rowamy Holdings had quoted Sh29.6 million.
Waiguru was also accused of defying the County Public Service Board.
The board had allegedly recommended that a member of the newly formed Kirinyaga Investment Development Authority be paid after SRC’s approval.
However, the MCAs claimed Waiguru ensured they were paid outside the IFMIS and county government payroll.
She was also accused of causing disarray in the county health department by sacking medics and failing to pay others for six consecutive months.
County Assembly Contempt of Court order
Waiguru had earlier threatened to file contempt charges against the assembly speaker and MCAs who will proceed with her impeachment motion.
“If the assembly proceeds with the violation of the subsiding court orders, I shall see such orders for contempt against the speaker and all participating members as are available under the law,” Waiguru said.
“If an order was issued stopping the process and the order was served, the assembly acted in contempt of court,” Senate Minority Whip Mutula Kilonzo Junior told Kenya insights
Close ally to BBI
Governor Anne Waiguru meets Enigma Rt. Hon Raila Odinga at his Capital Hill
Literally Waiguru have an upper hand for impeachment survival being that she has been a staunch supporter of President Uhuru and Raila Odinga’s Building Bridges Initiative. Being that her final fate verdict depends on the final judgement of the Senate and where BBI enjoys almost 90% support and full allegiance and loyalty to the President and Raila Odinga.
Therefore, according to me, Waiguru ANNEmployed? Just Not Yet.
The major assignment of the Jubilee administration’s two Treasury chiefs has been to raise the debt ceiling.
In November 2014, President Kenyatta’s first pick to head the National Treasury, Mr Henry Rotich, asked Parliament to double the external debt ceiling to Sh2.5 trillion.
His request was simple. Kenya wanted to join the big table in the international debt market to finance ambitious infrastructure projects, among them a new railway, ports, roads and increase power supply. Parliament granted him his wishes.
SH9 TRILLION
Last year, a new man was on the driving seat. Mr Ukur Yatani, another economist, was plucked from the low-profile Labour docket to become the new moneyman. Mr Yatani went back to Parliament.
This time, Treasury was keen to revise its limits on both the external and domestic front. In October 2019, legislators, one more time, made changes to the law and increased the state borrowing limit to Sh9 trillion.
By this time, Treasury had already breached the previous limits. The decision once more offered the National Treasury a huge leeway to continue on its avaricious path of debt accumulation.
To convince Parliament, Mr Yatani, fresh in office, argued that there was no more scope left to raise taxes to plug the budget shortfalls without hurting the economy. And he also, like his predecessor, had his way. But the time of reckoning is finally here.
This is after it emerged that Kenya will spend a staggering Sh904.7 billion in the new financial year on public debt servicing expenses.
BORROWING SPREE
The debt bill has also shocked Parliament, which has, for the past eight years, acted as cheerleader for the National Treasury’s borrowing spree that has never been seen in any East African nation before.
An analysis of the Consolidated Fund Services (CFS), whose budget has crossed the Sh1 trillion mark for the first time in history, tells the short sad story of Kenya’s debt.
CFS expenses primarily relate to public debt, pensions and salaries of constitutional offices and are mandatory expenses that form a first charge to the government’s bank accounts.
This means that before the Treasury withdraws money to spend on anything else, it must first have dealt with the consolidated fund services expenses.
The Budget and Appropriations Committee (BAC) notes in its report that the CFS expenditures, projected at Sh1.04 trillion, will consume 55 per cent of all the revenues that the government hopes to collect in the new year.
“Public debt servicing expenses estimated at Sh904.7 billion in the coming financial year, constitute the largest portion of the CFS expenses,” the report notes, adding that interest payments will gobble up half of the total debt service payments.
DEBT FINANCING
“Interestingly, the committee has established that the cost of debt financing actually consumes more financial resources than development expenditure, for which the debt is obtained,” BAC says in its report.
By the end of this month, Kenya’s total public debt is expected to close the financial year at Sh6.4 trillion. Kenya’s public debt as a percentage of GDP has risen to 55 per cent from 42 per cent when the Jubilee administration took over.
The report notes that the IMF has already taken note of the debt distress developments in Kenya and has revised Kenya’s debt distress from moderate to high due to the impact of the Covid-19 crisis, which has worsened existing vulnerabilities.
The committee now wants a revision of the current debt sustainability assumptions that may not reflect the realities on the ground. It also wants the National Treasury to temporarily abandon contracting of new expensive commercial loans and start debt restructuring discussions with Kenya’s largest external creditors.
“Without any policy intervention, all threshold ratios — debt service to revenue and debt as well as debt service to exports — could be breached in the medium term, implying that the debt distress position could last longer,” the report notes.
EXTERNAL FUNDERS
But suspending borrowing, even temporarily, will be a tall order for the government, whose accounts are running on empty. In the new budget, the National Treasury is staring at a budget deficit nightmare of Sh835.9 billion, which can only be financed through additional debt, if the government does not take the more difficult route of living within its means.
As if the debt load is not big enough, Kenya plans to go back to external funders to borrow an additional Sh349.7 billion in the new financial year with the remaining Sh486.2 billion being borrowed from the domestic markets.
In the new fiscal year, Kenya’s debt obligations will swell by another 30 per cent compared to the ending financial year. In the current financial year, the total external debt bill stands at Sh253.3 billion.
This is set to swell by Sh80.9 billion in the new financial year to Sh334.3 billion. Growing debt obligations by a third in a year when the revenues have plateaued is set to put unprecedented pressure on the taxpayer.
So who are Kenya’s top creditors?
The Trade and Development Bank (TDB), which has become a favourite lender in arranging syndicated loans for Kenya, now ranks as the top creditor for the country.
Kenya will pay the lender Sh53.1 billion — a third of the Sh179.6 billion set aside for debt redemptions in the new financial year.
The second creditor is the Exim Bank of China (Sh43.2 billion), while China Development Bank will receive Sh18.7 billion. This makes China the single biggest recipient of Kenya’s debt repayment billions.
Other creditors include International Development Association, which will receive Sh17.5 billion, Italy (Sh11.3 billion), France (Sh7.2 billion) and Spain (Sh5.7 billion).
PAY INTEREST
Others are African Development Bank, which will receive Sh5.6 billion, Japan (Sh4.6 billion) and Germany (Sh3 billion).
Besides the Sh179.6 billion for repaying the principal on debt, Kenya has also set aside another Sh154.6 billion which will now be used to just pay interest on the loans.
The top recipient of interest is the Exim Bank of China, which will get Sh29.8 billion. This is about 20 per cent of all the debt billions. New loans will receive Sh29.3 billion in interest repayments, while the syndicated loan by Trade and Development Bank will attract an interest of Sh22.6 billion.
The bulk of the remaining billions will go into servicing the Eurobonds.
The 2018 $2 billion Eurobond will receive Sh17.1 billion in interest payments, while the debut $2.75 billion Eurobond will attract an interest of Sh15.1 billion. On its part, the 2019 $1.2billion Eurobond will receive Sh10.5 billion as interest. The 2019 $900 million bond will attract interest of Sh6.9 billion.
In total, Sh49.8 billion will be spent on Eurobond interest repayments. This translates to about 32 per cent of all the money that will be spent on interest in the new financial year.
Other lenders that will receive billions in interest repayments include IDA (Sh8.9 billion), ADB/ADF (Sh3.6 billion) and China Development Bank that will receive Sh3.1 billion.
STIMULUS PACKAGE
At the end of the year, China will have received Sh95 billion on its loans to Kenya, making it the biggest lender followed by Trade Bank, which will earn a total of Sh75.7 billion.
In total, external debt redemption and interest on external debt will receive Sh334.3 billion in the new year.
Kenya will spend upto Sh2.7 trillion in the new financial year, in one of the most ambitious expenditure plans yet. If the full amounts in rolling debt redemption are added to this, then the budget will swell to over Sh3.2 trillion.
Recurrent expenditure in total will add to Sh1.8 trillion while development expenditure, including foreign financed projects and conditional transfers to county governments, is estimated at Sh584.9 billion. The Covid-19 economic stimulus package has been allocated an additional Sh53.74 billion.
“The National Treasury has indicated that the 2020/21 budget is aimed at prioritising employment creation, youth empowerment, supporting manufacturing activities, enhancing health coverage, improving food security and enhancing living conditions through affordable housing,” the Budget and Appropriations Committee says in its report on the budget tabled last week.
To break down the budget, the National Executive will take the lion’s share of the billions at Sh1.82 trillion. The second biggest expenditure item will be the Consolidated Fund Services.
The counties are expected to receive Sh369.8 billion in the new budget, while Parliament and the Judiciary will get Sh37.7 billion and Sh18 billion, respectively.
SH505 BILLION
The Treasury is targeting to raise Sh1.6 trillion from taxes in the coming year. This is just a Sh22 billion decline from the current year target.
For an economy shutdown by the Covid -19 pandemic, it is highly unlikely that the tax collections will only reduce by Sh22 billion with projections showing that the economy will grow by only 1 per cent.
The fact that taxes have also been reduced on key products, VAT cut from 16 per cent to 14 per cent and income taxes revised downwards, means that tax collections will have to take a hit.
In the Covid Budget Wednesday: Kenya will spend a staggering Sh505 billion on the education sector in the 2020/21 financial year. Just where will these billions go?
Two related developments this week reinforce a growing feeling that the current administration is steadily pushing the country back to the imperial presidency jettisoned under the 2010 Constitution. Unless checked, the manoeuvres will erode all the democratic gains of years of painful and gallant struggles.
One, President Uhuru Kenyatta convened a Jubilee Party Parliamentary Group meeting whose outcome was to change the leadership of National Assembly committees. That came hot on the heels of a similar machination for the Senate. The net effect of that is that Parliament, which is constitutionally independent, is being controlled by the Executive. That is an affront to the principle of separation of powers and antithetical to democracy.
Two, the President issued an executive order to reorganise the government that touches on the other arms of government and independent institutions. The institutions include the Judiciary and the Judicial Service Commission (JSC). Chief Justice David Maraga quickly challenged the directive on the grounds that the Executive had no jurisdictional powers over the Judiciary and JSC. The Executive was simply encroaching on other territories.
Since Parliament and the other independent institutions are included in the order, it is incumbent on them to repudiate it. That is the surest way of protecting their independence.
Chapter One of the Constitution bestows sovereign powers on three institutions — Parliament, Executive and Judiciary. Article 160 declares the independence of the Judiciary and states, among others, that it is not subject to control by any other person or authority. Similarly, independent commissions draw their powers under Article 249; Subsection 2(a) particularly insulates them from external control. The President’s order was issued under Article 132, which deals with the Executive only.
The foundation of our democracy is built on the pillar of separation of powers and institutionalising checks and balances among the three arms of government. In exercising their powers, the institutions work cooperatively and collaboratively. But none has powers over the other. So, citizens have to be alarmed when the Executive encroaches on the others’ territory, seemingly with a view to eventually rendering them subservient to it.
Juxtaposed against the goings-on in national politics, where the ruling party is engulfed in a vicious war of atrophy and the Opposition is muzzled by the ‘Handshake’ between President Kenyatta and ODM leader Raila Odinga, the country is fast sliding into dictatorship. Citizens and leaders of the independent institutions and agencies must rise up against erosion of democracy.
Those who used to be foot soldiers for President Uhuru and hate his Handshake brother Raila Odinga – most likely have made a shift to the left handman of Uhuru who is Ruto to punish the relationship of the Raila and Uhuru. And believe me not, these are moves not taken on the ground of integrity or ethics or moral values because if it were so, then these footsoldiers would have chose a better figure from the Dynasties but because ‘we’re Africans in Africa and Africa is our business’.
DP Ruto have always been the epicenter of discussion in and out of the government by those who possibly view him as a barricade to their political gangster points or the other way round he is be the bad guy. But what draws attention is the fact that every political big wig from the Executive to the Legislature are all fighting him. From paid bloggers and influencers, mainstream media – majority under payroll to terrify him and his goodwill – bad will agendas.
Everything, every public move he makes, every personal or government project he launches must always be linked to corruption scheme – some proven, some allegations till it has become normalcy. His point men and insiders have been whipped out during his Party Jubilee purge exercise – a move made to silence him for his incorporation, gross misconduct and disrespect for the office of the Presidency. In the latest move the President making his Executive order restructuring his Government and squashing Office of the Deputy President under the Presidency to henceforth be under office of the President Executive implying that DP will no longer have power to hire staff, instead the powers has been designated to head of public service. A move made to weaken his influence and at the same time for Uhuru it will make him respect the powerful office and work strictly under him – under his directive towards his big 4 agenda. Last kicks of a dying horse.
Those fighting the Sugoi man, used to praise him hosanna in the highest and today they’re crucifying him maybe on moral and independent ground or on payroll to do so.
Politics being a dirty game and game of cards – makes nobody better than the other once they’re politicians always and forever they’ll be dirty.
This man is a one man army, potentially a threat to all Presidential aspirants and Deep state in the next 2022 General election and perhaps this is why Political dynasties in the country are ganging up to fight him left right and center.
Like I said before, there is a good number of Uhuru supporters who’ve camped in Ruto’s yard because of Raila and similarly there are a massive number of Raila supporters who hated Uhuru and have shifted to Ruto’s camp because of Raila’s realignment with President Uhuru. That’s the politics of the day. Political slavery.
In Kenya, there is a silent 36.1% that equals 18,551,790 majority group living in extreme poverty in which half of the population are eligible voters that contributes to the 18,000,000 total eligible voters in the country and which am convinced that at least three quarters of the eligible group have bought Ruto’s team hustler narrative and he enjoys massive support of them on the ground.
DP Ruto is being battled by the Cabal in corridors of power that he has ignored to swear allegiance to – and these are the same individuals in the dining table that controls the country indirectly. If you don’t understand the Deep state [a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy]. Deep state is a hidden Government that works within a legitimate Government. They finance the President, chooses a cooperative influential Person of their choice in public domain. A real conspiracy theory.
In a country full of women than men and considering the fact that women are the greatest sympathizers of all time and it is women who are always full of action in that men makes lots of chants, noise, circus, stampede and assailants in the campaign trail but it is only women who come out in large numbers to vote as men get drunk with bribe money and lose themselves – am convinced again Ruto might win their hearts out of sympathy.
Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province. A novel coronavirus was eventually identified.
1 January 2020
WHO had set up the IMST (Incident Management Support Team) across the three levels of the organization: headquarters, regional headquarters and country level, putting the organization on an emergency footing for dealing with the outbreak.
4 January 2020
WHO reported on social media that there was a cluster of pneumonia cases – with no deaths – in Wuhan, Hubei province.
5 January 2020
WHO published first Disease Outbreak News on the new virus. This is a flagship technical publication to the scientific and public health community as well as global media. It contained a risk assessment and advice, and reported on what China had told the organization about the status of patients and the public health response on the cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan.
10 January 2020
WHO issued a comprehensive package of technical guidance online with advice to all countries on how to detect, test and manage potential cases, based on what was known about the virus at the time. This guidance was shared with WHO’s regional emergency directors to share with WHO representatives in countries.
Based on experience with SARS and MERS and known modes of transmission of respiratory viruses, infection and prevention control guidance were published to protect health workers recommending droplet and contact precautions when caring for patients, and airborne precautions for aerosol generating procedures conducted by health workers.
12 January 2020
China publicly shared the genetic sequence of COVID-19.
13 January 2020
Officials confirm a case of COVID-19 in Thailand, the first recorded case outside of China.
14 January 2020
WHO’s technical lead for the response noted in a press briefing there may have been limited human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus (in the 41 confirmed cases), mainly through family members, and that there was a risk of a possible wider outbreak. The lead also said that human-to-human transmission would not be surprising given our experience with SARS, MERS and other respiratory pathogens.
20-21 January 2020
WHO experts from its China and Western Pacific regional offices conducted a brief field visit to Wuhan.
22 January 2020
WHO mission to China issued a statementsaying that there was evidence of human-to-human transmission in Wuhan but more investigation was needed to understand the full extent of transmission.
22- 23 January 2020
The WHO Director- General convened an Emergency Committee (EC) under the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005) to assess whether the outbreak constituted a public health emergency of international concern. The independent members from around the world could not reach a consensus based on the evidence available at the time. They asked to be reconvened within 10 days after receiving more information.
While in Beijing, Dr. Tedros agreed with Chinese government leaders that an international team of leading scientists would travel to China on a mission to better understand the context, the overall response, and exchange information and experience.
30 January 2020
The WHO Director-General reconvened the Emergency Committee (EC). This was earlier than the 10-day period and only two days after the first reports of limited human-to-human transmission were reported outside China. This time, the EC reached consensus and advised the Director-General that the outbreak constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). The Director-General accepted the recommendation and declared the novel coronavirus outbreak (2019-nCoV) a PHEIC. This is the 6th time WHO has declared a PHEIC since the International Health Regulations (IHR) came into force in 2005.
WHO’s situation report for 30 January reported 7818 total confirmed cases worldwide, with the majority of these in China, and 82 cases reported in 18 countries outside China. WHO gave a risk assessment of very high for China, and high at the global level.
Deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction, WHO made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.
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Every Country’s response to the novel Coronavirus was to be in conformity with World Health Organization (WHO’s) Strategy to contain the spread and flatten the curve of infection rate. WHO stressed on the need to isolate, test and trace new cases to effectively suppress and control the virus’ spread. This must be the “backbone of the response in every country”, said the Director-General.
In the early days when the invincible virus cases were still endemic in the sense that the reported cases weren’t overwhelming and was in a specific Geographical location – Wuhan, China – nobody knew that within a twinkle of an eye it would turn out to be a disastrous pandemic and so I can’t judge that the neighborhood countries were ignorant not to save the situation at the breeding level. But I can judge that African nations that are still doubting Thomases even after witnessing what happened in Italy, Spain and USA as a result of ignorance and negligence and which have made them duly pay the price of Cesar.
Tanzania
Tanzanian President Dr.John Pombe Magufuli have made both local and international headlines due to his defiance response to the Pandemic – encouraging his subjects to work normally that this a common flu and it shouldn’t derail anyone from working to build the economy.
Many people have questioned his logistics, allegiance and whether he is right or a clout. He has pointed guns and fired his top officials including his Deputy Health Minister plus others who’ve disagreed with him and have questioned his misleading actions (and which only time will tell).
Tanzania last reported Covid19 case publicly on May 13, when it reported 196 new positive cases within 24hours raising the number to 400+ confirmed cases. A number which triggered the attention of Magufuli and ordered probe into the National Laboratory over what he believed that they were using substandard testing kits that were donated to the country by Philanthropist Jack Ma – further stating that he is convinced that there was a conspiracy plan to sharp shoot fake positive cases when actually there wasn’t cause of an alarm. He even went further to enforcing a law that wearing of masks in public is an offense in the country, he ordered National Football league to resume, Churches and Pubs to reopen.
Ever since, there have been no public display of data regarding Covid19 cases in the country – a plan to seduce people to return to normalcy to build the economy.
Despite these actions by Magufuli, a larger population are still taking personal responsibility and still living in fear of the pandemic and have not responded to his directives or rather plea to get Tanzanians out of their quarantine homes to go and work. Seems they’re not buying his nonsense. And I’ll not be surprised if he orders enforcement of Citizens out of their houses and homes soon.
But the secret underlying motive of his decisions seems to be engineered for his political jackpot in October 2020 General Elections which he insists will go as planned- come rain come sunshine. Perhaps this might be the reason for his push to return people to normalcy, to start off his 2nd term Presidential ambitions campaign.
His acts might be selfish for political gain in October elections or genuine.
Burundi
Perhaps what catalysed Burundi’s defiant decision was more of a political barter trade with the pandemic. The outbreak came at a time when the country was preparing for General elections and which former longest serving President Pierre Nkurunziza insisted on the conduction despite red alert of the virus spread. The political class campaigned, held public rallies without social distancing and majority without masks and without forgetting that in the midst of the campaign – being a member of the WHO, they had to comply with the Organization’s safety measures but they instead defied the orders and went ahead to deport all the WHO representatives that were in the country. A terrible sign of ‘Genocide’.
Elections were conducted, no restrictions or safety measures was adhered to because of I believed was brainwashing and political slavery. No sooner did the dust of campaign period stop than did the country’s top officials began testing positive for the Covid19. This illuminates how the situation is on the ground amongst the common citizens if with all the protection, highest level of hygiene the country’s state have that its First Lady tested positive for the virus and flown to Kenya for treatment.
What amazes me, is the fact that these African nations whose top leadership are encouraging their citizens to live normally:
1. They don’t have the capacity to independently contain the virus without aids.
2. They don’t have a proper working healthcare system. Having guts out of negligence to rubbish threat posed by the pandemic when even Developed countries oversees with best healthcare systems were overwhelmed by numbers of infections and deaths.
3. They preach water but take wine. Over the past one week – Burundi’s own First Lady was flown into the neighboring Kenya by AMREF and admitted at Agha Khan hospital in Nairobi City to undergo Covid19 treatment. Reports also show, Burundi’s Health Minister was also flown into the Country for the same very reason. On 30th May, Eritrea’s high profile officials were also flown in by Amref for the same very reason.
These acts am convinced that they justify my decision to judge that these African countries are being misled by Hyenas.
They know undoubtably well, they don’t have the capacity and the system to manage these risks and instead of preventing the risks than curing it, they choose to endanger lives in exchange for their own political mileage. They know, when the going gets tough, they’ll leave their poor citizens to die mercilessly in their substandard and poor hospitals as they fly to seek treatment overseas with diplomatic privilege.
Protests roiling U.S. cities may do irreparable damage to America’s global standing. Its sway has been waning under President Donald Trump, but this civil unrest will make it harder to reclaim the moral high ground. Losing it comes at a high cost.
The fear of U.S. democracy decaying into the same tyranny against which the colonies originally revolted has been predicted at least since French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville visited in 1831. The Economist Intelligence Unit demoted the country to a “flawed democracy” in 2017. The accumulation of policy errors, which precede Trump, have created a litany of problems including income inequality and a flawed healthcare system.
After a botched federal response to the pandemic, which has already killed more than 100,000 people in the United States, the country is now tearing itself apart over police brutality and racial injustice. It reveals the deep-rooted nature of the country’s problems even as it pushes away its friends.
Trump just cut America’s ties with the World Health Organization, continuing an inward agenda that includes abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership that would have eliminated some 18,000 foreign taxes on U.S. exports. His tariffs have failed to erase a trade deficit with China and could ultimately cost American consumers as much as $1,000 a year according to some estimates.
Ideological hypocrisy compounds the corrosion. Even as U.S. politicians lambast China for censorship and suppressing human rights in Hong Kong, similar behaviour is flaring up at home. The latest demonstrations were set off by a white Minneapolis policeman choking an arrested African American man to death. Police have since detained and shot rubber bullets at journalists covering the ensuing demonstrations.
A return to normal, whatever that may be, looks difficult. Trump, who retreated to a White House bunker according to the New York Times, instead of addressing the nation, is claiming his opponents are trying to steal the upcoming election. That sets the stage for even more potential political instability.
Assigning an economic value to moral leadership is tricky. But trust cuts business and trade transaction costs and reduces the need for military expenditures; it is also a good that cannot be bought, as China is discovering. Its loss entails a cost that is growing by the day.
