Macharia Gaitho
29 November 2005
opinion
Nairobi — This Government has an infinite capacity to shoot itself in the foot without the slightest provocation. Take the ban on the Orange Movement victory rallies - disguised as prayer meetings - planned across the country.
All the ban achieves is to depict a panicked Government afraid of its own shadow after the referendum defeat.
It also indicates that a Government which has lost popular support might be inclined to dictatorial tendencies in order to hold on to the little scrap of authority it still retains.
The absurd thing is that after sacking the entire Cabinet, instead of just the rebels, President Kibaki was acknowledged to have pulled a clever political stunt. He stole the thunder from the Orange team and seemed set to regain the political initiative. Headlines shifted from Orange to State House and all eyes were on what President Kibaki would do next.
The mass sacking also held the promise that the President had been shocked out of complacency, finally realised that the enemy lay within in the corruption, incompetence and arrogance of his own men, and was set on a shake-up that would see plenty of heads roll within the inner circles.
All speculation over the weekend was not on whether the Orange Cabinet ministers would be sacked - that was a foregone conclusion - but on which of the President's most powerful men would face the chop.
The focus was on those who supposedly misled the president on the prospects of the referendum, and also mishandled the Banana campaign, mismanaged the entire review exercise, and generally made this Government unpopular.
The President did, indeed, buy himself a little valuable time. But clearly it was also only a temporary reprieve, for staying too long without a Cabinet, too long a period of inactivity, would soon signal a certain paralysis in Government.
The massive Orange rally at Uhuru Park on Saturday came with demands and conditions that indicate a dangerous arrogance setting in - these fellows are behaving as if they have won a General Election!
But that is not enough reason for the Government to start running scared and acting as if Kenya was under emergency decree.
The defeat of the proposed new Constitution does not mean that the prevailing Bill of Rights is suspended. We still retain the rights to free assembly, association and speech.
The excuse about Orange rallies being threats to national security is puerile nonsense. They are only threats to a Government reeling from a bloody nose at the referendum.
But instead of reacting politically, the Government resorts to misuse of executive authority. They are just placing themselves in a no-win situation. For they have presented the Orange team with the opportunity to flex its own muscle by ignoring the rally ban. And there is nothing they will welcome more than a foolish attempt by the police to stop any unauthorised rally.
If the trigger-happy tactics displayed in Kisumu and Mombasa are put on show again and a few lives are cut short by police bullets, Orange will be laughing all the way to the vote bank. For the Government will come out as a dictatorial, repressive regime.
The solution does not lie in banning opposition political rallies. It lies in the Government working to regain the initiative. The respite bought with the sacking of the Cabinet is about to expire. Now President Kibaki must fill the vacant slots without further delay. And it is in whom he names that we will see what he is made of.
We have the insular Kibaki best comfortable with his age-mates and village-mates from Muthaiga and Othaya reminiscing and trying to re-create the good old days.
And we have the urbane, visionary Kibaki looking into the future and willing to discard cronies who do not measure up to the demands of today.
Which Kibaki shall see with the new Cabinet? The one he chooses to put on display will determine whether he goes down as a blip in history, or whether he completes the present term with a fighting chance of creating a legacy.
It was interesting to see Mr Charles Njonjo coming out of the woodwork as he is wont to do occasionally. And this time he was not at some poodle or orchid show, but on the high table at the massive Orange Movement celebration rally on Saturday.
The man had quite some advice on how the movement should stay united, stand firm against overtures from President Kibaki, and so on.
In a conversation with the Sunday Nation a day earlier, Mr Njonjo was emphatic that were he still the Attorney-General, he would never have allowed the referendum in the first place, an exercise he dismissed as "a stupid thing to do."
In his view, the whole thing about a new Constitution was nonsense. The present document was good enough and any flaws could have been corrected through ordinary constitutional amendments.
Bah, but what about his role in bastardising the present Constitution and thus providing, inadvertently or otherwise, the clamour for a thorough review? Mr Njonjo was unapologetic. The slew of constitutional amendments in the early years of independence that abolished majimboism, the Senate and set up a strong executive presidency were very necessary.
Majimboism, he explained, had to go in the interests of cultivating national unity. And these new-fangled ideas about President and Prime Minister sharing power?
More nonsense as far as the Anglophile former AG is concerned. Two bulls in the same boma? Never! Not in Africa, he states with finality.
Plain spoken as always, Mr Njonjo still is. But then, one must wonder, what was he doing celebrating with the Orange crowd? It must have seemed strange that he was in revelry with the group agitating for the very same constitutional order he thinks is nonsensical.
But then, it was never about the details and fine print in the aborted new Constitution. It was politics, pure and simple. And Mr Njonjo could not resist the temptation to gloat in the humiliation suffered by the man who was his arch-rival in the corridors of power many years ago.
Mr Kibaki was a frustrated Vice-President when Mr Njonjo strutted around like a peacock in the Moi State House. Mr Kibaki had good reason to pull out a magnum of the finest champagne - well maybe a White Cap Lager - when Mr Njonjo's world came crashing down in 1983. Payback time!
Mr Gaitho is the managing editor, Sunday Nation
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2005 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
