By Standard on Sunday Team

The call by the National Council of Churches of Kenya for fresh elections due to inefficiency and endless feuds in the Grand Coalition was sign Kenya has gone full circle.

There are developments, coming fast and furious, showing in the ratings of the international community and the citizenry Kenya is where it was in the dying years of the Kanu regime. Already, a Cabinet minister has been barred from entering the US because of corruption.

But like in those days, when Kanu’s belligerence was at its peak and it would see or hear no evil, President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga share optimism the rest of the country find hard to fathom.

This is despite the fact that the Cabinet appears to be a Tower of Babel – with, for example, Justice Minister Martha Karua and Attorney General Amos Wako throwing brick pats at each other. On the other hand the Justice Minister is taking on Chief Justice Evan Gicheru.

In a Cabinet meeting Kibaki chaired, there was an exchange between Karua and Agriculture Minister William Ruto.

Karua last week said the political challenges were due to the ‘stolen’ 2007 presidential election.

NCCK gave the verdict most Kenyans believe, "they have a moribund President and an ineffective Prime Minister".

Kibaki told the nation last week all was well and those in the Cabinet making noise should either shape up or ship out – failing which he would sack them.

Raila, who maintains even as the ministers a half of whom he nominated under the power sharing deal are pulling in different directions, wondered where the Church was when the country was burning.

Despite the rumbling in his party, the fires he was fighting as late as Saturday, through the dangling of an olive branch to the South Rift, Raila maintains he shares power with Kibaki on a 50-50 per cent basis.

But his Orange Democratic Movement party early this month called for the renegotiation of the power-sharing deal before chief mediator Kofi Annan.

Kibaki’s standpoint: "We are working together, and we will complete all the projects. As you can see, we are all here and are working together."

Raila’s point of view: "It is not like having a government where one party decides. Secondly, in an arrangement like this, parties are apprehensive about conceding too much and are suspicious of every action the Government takes…"

The Church and the State are at war, and like with the international community, the President is being accused of failing to tackle corruption, restore discipline in the Cabinet, and enforce prudent management of public affairs.

"The Coalition Government is burdensome rather than facilitative. Ministers spend time quarrelling about peripheral issues rather than undertaking their duties…We find it immoral that Members of Parliament, elected and paid by Kenyans to represent them, spend most of their time peacocking around the country while there are just a few legislators in the House to pass crucial laws," said NCCK, rekindling memories of Kanu as it fought off pressure from the Church to reform.

When politicians asked the Church to go slow, Anglican Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi declared the clergy would not relent.

Kenyans points out leaders are consumed by political ambitions as poverty and famine ravage the country.

Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka argued calls for fresh elections were misplaced because the country was still grappling with the adverse effects of post-election violence.

Earlier, he had described the coalition as a corruption factory in which some ministers were stealing with abandon to finance their presidential campaigns on 2012.

The Cabinet itself increasingly appears to be a house of confusion. The discordant voices and the hidden wars are aggravated by the fact that about ten members of the Cabinet are fighting to succeed President Kibaki. The political heat generated by the competition early in the last term of Kibaki’s presidency, has reinforced perception of a fractious coalition.