JM Kariuki: Dissenting voice silenced by assassin’s bullet

By KENNETH KWAMA

Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, better known as JM Kariuki, began charting a political course that was at variance with that of the government in the early 1970s, leading to a confrontation that ended fatally.

 Kariuki believed in structures and was apparently not happy with President Jomo Kenyatta’s style of governance, in which Cabinet decisions were routinely ignored and power vested in the hands of a few influential individuals.

Kariuki would be assassinated on March 2, 1975.

In his book titled The Roots of Political Stability in Kenya, author M Tamarkin says that JM Kariuki, who was an assistant minister, once complained bitterly about the usurping of the powers of Cabinet ministers.

 “I tell you, the country is not being run by the Cabinet. It is no use having ministers who do not take decisions, who have no control over their ministries. In fact, the Cabinet meets very infrequently since the President spends so little time in Nairobi,” the book quotes the plain-speaking politician as having once remarked.

 Around that time, Kenyatta had disagreed with his deputy Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, and Kariuki was even more critical of the President. He also took issue with the government, which had formed a habit of ignoring Parliament and introducing ad hoc legislation to legalise actions taken contrary to the law.

 In 1974, Kariuki complained bitterly against the exclusion of Odinga and other ex-Kenya People’s Union leaders from the forthcoming General Election, claiming that “the statement remained illegal until such time as the government decides to bring it to Parliament in the form of a bill to be debated, approved or rejected.”

In 1966, the government introduced a retroactive bill that forced MPs who had joined the newly formed KPU to resign from Parliament and contest their seats on KPU tickets.

 A few months after protesting KPU’s exclusion from the General Election, Kariuki was murdered, an event that shook the country to its roots and left politicians scared to their bones.

 According to Tarmakin, during their first week of business after five weeks of recess, it was as if all parliamentarians had agreed to keep off any debate that may appear to be critical of the government.

Radical politician

 Achieng’ Oneko, a veteran nationalist who had spent seven years in detention, summed up the predicament of a radical politician in a very personal way: “It does not pay to be bitter.” It took the few politicians who had been cowed just a few days to rediscover themselves and resume their former ways of criticising the government.

 Speaking on a motion seeking to set up a select committee to investigate the circumstances of JM’s murder, a legislator claimed that the killing was part of a plot to eliminate all politicians who stood for truth and democracy.

 In his book, Tamarkin recollects that once the committee had been established, its chairman said with a distinct sense of rage and exaltation: “We want to establish the truth and publish it.”

 The committee’s report implicated people in the higher echelons of the government in the murder, and was the subject of a heated debate both inside and outside Parliament.

The government rejected parts of the report and did not take any action on it.