By John Gerezani
I just love our cops. They can’t stand the heat in the kitchen and won’t ship out either. Watching one Wahong’o (yea, that’s his name) Owino justifying the police indifference in the Tana River mayhem galled me to the marrow. “We will not allow (Mathew) Iteere to be shipped to The Hague...blah blah blah...”, he could have as well added, “let the poor and primitive natives continue slaughtering each other for all we care!” What insolence! I sighed. Impunity reloaded as we head to elections?
There were credible reports that a couple of weeks to the September 7 expiry of their mandate, Mzalendo Kibunjia and team had taken off to some valueless foreign junkets whose raison d’état is hard to fathom, leaving Tana and Mombasa burning.
A hundred deaths later and still counting, the now former commissioners are as conspicuous in their absence as in their pressing the ‘mute’ button.
The same clique that has been fervently lobbying to get an extension of their term will hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil so help me God.
Parliament and anyone entertaining the thought of extending or renewing the tenure of Mzalendo’s team must be alive to the constitutional requirement of public participation and performance evaluation or else they face a tough legal rigmarole in our now robust Judiciary.
Recalling how some Kenyans were ruled unsuitable for office on account of lack of “passion”, I would like to know the “passionometer” readings of Mzalendos’ team now that they have gone away as Tana burns.
If ever there was a time when the team could have proved that their loyalty and pride is to country and not to per diem, then it was now. I hold that this team does not deserve and must not get an extension.
Let us evaluate performance. They have barked but have they bitten? I remember with nostalgia the late Mary Onyango days when NCIC worked as a tight ship and politicians were kept in check.
I wish l could be told what snapped that even an expensively conducted peace initiative in what some refer to as Kenya’s Gaza Strip (the volatile Rift Valley) failed to rope in the regions’ politicians, a core constituency for any peace venture. Many are the times garrulous politicians have been caught on tape and film making incendiary remarks knowing that they are untouchable. True, Chirau Mwakwere is facing an epic battle that could send him to political Siberia before he coos in another “Zipapaah... Kamata kamata adui” refrain but that is as far as it goes.
Forget about plea bargaining my friend. I think it is precluded by a guilty plea in exchange for a lighter sentence so it’s better to rough it out like Wilfred Machage and Fred Kapondi ... though at the expense of his envisioned Kwale Senate seat.
Excuse me, did I hear Director of Public Prosecution Keriako Tobiko suggesting that the NCIC is so dysfunctional that its commissioners and legal teams routinely send different sets of recommendations on the same subject, and being a smart lawyer, the DPP inevitably sides with his learned colleagues to the chagrin of the commissioners.
