By Abdi Hassan
Is it any wonder that the National Police Service Commission’s (NPSC) vetting of the Kenya Police Service seems to have hit a brick wall? After all, it was mostly rolled out as an ambush package, a ritual of selective, profiling and targeted entrapment and self-incrimination.
Its “findings”, “results” and “conclusions” cannot possibly stand or be held against anyone who has been put through this inquisitorial process.
To begin with, the relationship between Inspector General David Kimaiyo and NSPC Chair Johnstone Kavuludi is infamous for its mutual mistrust and loathing.
When they hold the fates of others in their hands, as they do now in their capacity as NPSC commissioners, the officers vetted, their families, friends and well-wishers can only shudder at what goes on far behind closed doors at Jogoo House (the IG’s offices) and Skypark Towers (the commission’s HQ).
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This team of mutually repellent haters does not constitute a safe pair of hands for mid-to-late career professionals in the Police Service, whichever way you look at it.
In any other sector but the security sector in Kenya, such a dysfunctional team would not be allowed to begin business.
Consider the other aberrations. Alone among those vetted, the General Service Unit Commandant William Saiya was heard entirely in camera. There was no preamble, with the exception of salutations and the media being disinvited from what had been billed as a live event. And then the NPSC vetting commissioners went to work on Mr Saiya.
No details were forthcoming from the Commandant’s debriefing by the NPSC panel. He was cleared entirely behind closed doors.
What’s more, Mr Kavuludi actually sought to intimidate the public when he cleared three other top officers at a live press conference. He did this in the form of a cleverly crafted caution intended to serve a number of non-procedural purposes.
Kavuludi snarled at the public, warning Kenyans not to submit any adverse information on a top cop to the NPSC vetting panel unless they had concrete evidence. On the surface, this would seem to be laudable, but the real message going out here is that the public has to do Kavuludi and his investigators’ legwork and present them with full evidence of wrongdoing on a readymade platter. The public is not trained and certified investigators.
This is a trick that Kenyans have seen constantly deployed at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, particularly in the now-crumbling case brought against President Uhuru Kenyatta.
A woefully ill-prepared prosecution has taken to the dodge of requiring the defence to practically deliver itself on a platter and exercise self-incrimination while they are at it.
The Kavuludi team has borrowed another leaf from the ICC case against the President. Disclosure of personal banking audit trails strikes at the very core of the rights to privacy and security.
Attorney-General Githu Muigai, argued a brilliant case before the ICC Chamber V(b) last week against Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s repeated demands for President Kenyatta’s personal banking details going back at least seven years.
It is a crying pity that such a worthy effort as the reform of the security sector in Kenya should suffer such derailing diversions and irregular procedures so early in its rollout. It was terribly important that the security sector in Kenya be reformed meaningfully and substantively. It is also crucial that the Police Service not be reformed selectively or in isolation. The philosophy, processes and procedures used in the review and reform of the Police Service ought to have been drawn from international best practice.
What Kenyans were handed instead was the proverbial pig in a poke amid the most cynical snake oil merchandising. Exposing selected top police officers to such a travesty of vetting and reform in a year that has begun with, among other danger signals, United States Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warning that Somali terror outfit Al Shabaab is planning new attacks in Kenya is pure folly.
Al Shabaab’s Westgate Mall attack is barely four and-a-half months old. This is not the time in Kenya for processes like the farce at The Hague or the mediaeval witch hunt at Skypark Towers.
The writer is Programme Officer North Eastern Pastoralist Forum — Garissa
