Runaway insecurity, intense power games and court cases rock the top deck of Kenya’s leadership

President Uhuru Kenyatta shakes hands with Muslim religious leaders at the KICC on Tuesday when he arrived for the Interdenominational prayers. [PHOTO: COLLINS KWEYU/ STANDARD]

By KIPCHUMBA SOME

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NAIROBI, KENYA: A foreigner to Kenya will be forgiven for concluding that the government is about to fall soon given the crises that have engulfed its various organs.

Starting with the Executive, Kenya set a new, unenviable record of having its leaders sitting trials in a foreign country for crimes usually associated with notorious dictatorship regimes and failed states.

At the Judiciary, things seem to be falling apart at the court of Chief Justice Willy Mutunga as top officials clandestinely undermine one another in a vicious power struggle.

Deep political divisions that are occasionally bridged only when MPs and senators come together to force through fatter salaries and other benefits for themselves wrack the country’s Legislature.

 Speaker ‘who doesn’t speak’

Furthermore, the National Assembly is being led by a Speaker “who does not speak”, in the words of one critic who contends that the House Speaker Justin Muturi has failed to heal the political divisions that have kept the country in a perpetual campaign mood.

The new centres of power that were meant to bring services closer to Kenyans — the governors, the senators and the county ward representatives — are engaged in perpetual supremacy wars that generate more heat and less light. The security forces, an extension of the Executive, are hopelessly hobbled by turf wars that might have contributed to the death of more people in a terrorist attack at the Westgate Mall three weeks ago.

“I have never seen anything like this since I came here first in 1974,” said Dr Paul Goldsmith, a researcher and a political observer, of the situation in the country today.

  Working on autopilot

“Everything seems to be working on autopilot, especially the security services. This does not definitely inspire confidence in anyone, least of all those who seek to do business with us,” Dr Goldsmith adds.

Prof Maria Nzomo, a former ambassador and currently the director of the Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies at the University of Nairobi, said that although she does not think the state of affairs is that bad, “it is evident that the components of the state are not working in harmony as they should”.

Prof Peter Kagwanja said the apparent crises in the country were as a result of our “inability to operate within the multiple systems of power” created by the new Constitution.

“For 50 years of our independence we grew up on and have been weaned on a monolithic system of power. What we are experiencing is a crisis of inability to operate with multiple systems. This is the inability of the elite to transfer power to other centres,” he said.

While admitting that the state of affairs in the country were disheartening, Tharaka Nithi Senator Kithure Kindiki said it would be too harsh to conclude that the pillars of the nation are collapsing.

“Look at it the other way round. In less than a year we have brought about the most ambitious transformation in the history of the country and Africa since the end of apartheid in South Africa,” he said.

Executive limping

The executive is currently limping as a result of the scar of the ICC cases facing President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto, said political scientist Dr Mutahi Ngunyi.

“Uhuru (President) inherited a girly, pink state whose weakness was proven beyond doubt by the infighting within the security forces, the Judiciary and other state organs,” Ngunyi adds.

Kenya made world history when they elected Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto to power even with the millstones of the International Criminal Court hanging over their necks. Mr Ruto is currently in The Hague for the hearing of his trial while President Kenyatta is expected to appear at the court next month for the beginning of his trial.

Although they have assured the country that the affairs of the State will run normally even in their absence, political analysts have pointed out the challenges to running of the state posed by their absence.

“Government will function because their trials have been alternated for this purpose, but even then the absence of either the president or his deputy from the country at any given time robs the country of the ideas and the input of the other,” said Prof Kagwanja. He said President Kenyatta’s decision not to attend what would have been his inaugural UN General Assembly meeting which took place the same weekend of the terrorists attack was fortuitous since Mr Ruto was away at The Hague.

“I shudder to think of how things might have panned out. Without being melodramatic about it, it would have presented us with a constitutional nightmare we are yet to fully comprehend,” said Prof Kagwanja.

  Ruto’s a week off

The attacks prompted Mr Ruto to request the ICC for a week off his trial to help the President manage the crisis, a request he was granted against the wishes of the court’s prosecutor Fatou Bensouda

 Mrs Bensouda urged Mr Ruto resign his state duties in order to proceed with the case, a statement widely seen to be aimed at President Kenyatta. “ICC is a reflection of the fragmentation of our elite. The infighting amongst the elite is so vicious that they would simply wish one another dead,” said Prof Kagwanja.

The supremacy wars in the security forces came to haunt us in unexpected ways during the Westgate Mall attack, the single most important time when the synergy of all the security forces was most needed.

“We do not have coordination amongst our security organs and that attack proved it beyond any doubt,” said Captain (retired) Simiyu Werunga, now working as a security analyst.

 KDF, Police standoff

It has since emerged that the standoff between the Kenya Defence Forces and the police who were first to battle the terrorists not only led to the death of a police officer in friendly fire but it also unnecessarily prolonged the rescue mission.

What we are seeing is the Washington Syndrome or paralysis in the US where political parties fight one another to a halt while security forces actively undermine one another.

In scenes reminiscent of the paralysis that gripped Washington in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks where the different security forces actively undermined one another, our security forces are now leaking information against each other to the media.

Images of Chief of General Staff Gen Julius Karangi loudly whispering instructions to Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph ole Lenku did not inspire public confidence in the top hierarchy of the security forces neither did the images of security personnel looting cash and property they were meant to be protecting at the mall.

Public perception about the military and police seem to have switched in the wake of the attack. The former was always considered beyond reproach while the latter was always considered incorrigibly corrupt.

However, scenes of policemen battling the terrorists have earned them glowing tribute from the public while the images of military officers looting greatly lowered their esteem in the public eye.

“The President has moved rather too slowly in my view in sorting out the mess in the security forces. Gen Karangi should be given a medal for the Westgate effort and retired while Gichangi should just be fired,” said Dr Ngunyi.

“People must be held to account for the actions they take and we must divorce politics from security matters. It is not enough for us to talk and make promises every time we have a catastrophe,” said Mr Werunga.

Dr Goldsmith says government should rethink the caliber of people it puts at the helm of security organs.

 No security background

“For example the decision to appoint people with no security background to head the Interior ministry struck some of us who are cynical as a step in the wrong direction,” he said.

Within the Police Service, a lot of energy has also been wasted in turf wars between the Inspector General of Police David Kimaiyo and the National Police Service Commission headed by Johnstone Kavuludi. Instructively, Kavuludi has quietly disappeared from the public eye.

On the other hand, the Judiciary seems determined to self-destruct through bitter, and unnecessary internal rivalries that have further eroded public confidence in an institution Kenyans thought was finally on the right path to reform.

Long considered an ineptly corrupt institution at the mercy of the political class, the Judiciary was set on a path of renewal by the new Constitution. The new charter granted the Judiciary substantive autonomy from Parliament and the Executive. It was even granted powers to draw up its own budget thus freeing it from controls of the national Treasury.

Judges were re-interviewed for positions and reform-minded ones put to head key units, with Willy Mutunga, a long time civil rights crusader becoming the head of the Judiciary and president of the Supreme Court.

  Public confidence

The aim was to rebuild the long-gone public confidence in the institution. For a long time, the Judiciary has been constantly ranked high in opinion polls as the institution that was quickly embracing reforms.

However, a substantial amount of this goodwill disappeared following the Supreme Court’s ruling on the petition of the presidential result of the March 4 general elections.

The opposition CORD felt that the Supreme Court, had done a pedestrian job in ruling against it in favour of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee Coalition. CORD has made a point of denouncing the court in political rallies and with each denouncement; the perception among a section of Kenyans that the Judiciary is partisan is reinforced.

“The JSC is a house of hungry dogs but currently behaving responsibly. It has been created by and founded upon a mischievous, faulty constitutional experiment,” said Dr Ngunyi

What is happening in the Judiciary, said Senator Kindiki “is a very disheartening development which rolls back gains we had made in reinforcing our faith in public institutions”.

Although there seems to be no overt political hand to the current power struggle, it has everything to do with efforts to wrest more power for the JSC from the Office of the Chief Registrar as interested parties within the institution positioning themselves for relevance in a looming succession race.

Parliament not well

In Parliament, all is not well. Members have been accused of expending too much of their efforts and energies to either looking after personal welfare or on political sideshows that have little to do with service delivery.

Since they took office after the March 4 general elections, senators, MPs and governors have engaged in turf wars and a great deal of shadowboxing that has tried the patience of public.

Some political analysts and members of the opposition CORD as well as a few from Jubilee have raised issues with the leadership style of the Speaker of the National Assembly Justin Muturi. As one analyst put it, Mr Muturi is a Speaker, “who cannot speak”, in a tearing analysis of his perceived failure to unite and bridge the political divide in Parliament.

 No open speaking

Understandably, most MPs in the Jubilee we spoke to were not willing to speak openly and freely about the Speaker fearing that doing so would embolden CORD which wants Mr Muturi removed.

But, asking not to be named, one of the MPs in Jubilee said that while Mr Muturi is an intellectual, “he lacks the authority and the charisma to unite the House”.

However Mr Muturi defended himself saying “we are not in war to need healing. We are a democracy and in this system those with the majority numbers win. What exactly am I supposed to reconcile people over?” he asked. The Westgate Mall attack saw the country rise as one in blunt defiance against the terrorists. Political, racial, class, ethnic and religious differences were set aside.

There is a silver lining to every crisis and Prof Kindiki sees one in the current malaise in the country.

“Crises often present opportunities for new leaders to emerge and I hope one will emerge from what we are going through.”