Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Kenya: How Will This Soap Opera Ever End?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Kenya: How Will This Soap Opera Ever End?

    HOW WILL THIS SOAP OPERA EVER END?
    Story By Macharia Gaitho

    Daily Nation , Kenya
    March 13 2006

    We are seeing more twists and turns in the national soap opera than
    the hottest screenwriter in Hollywood can come up with.

    We have seen bumbling cops. Armed raids on media houses by armed men
    in uniform. Ministers revealing their serpentine ways. Politicians
    getting in on the act with dark tales of mercenaries and assassination
    plots. Power struggles in the Police Force. And, the latest instalment,
    the alleged mercenaries coming out with counter-accusations against
    their accusers. What's happening?

    It was Lang'ata MP Raila Odinga, a man who has a penchant for claiming
    that his life is in danger, who started the mercenary tale.

    To cap it all, he pinpointed the house where the alleged soldiers
    of fortune were staying, and even produced grainy photocopies of
    their passports.

    He claimed that the so-called mercenaries were here at the service
    of the Government, and had led the armed police raid on the Standard
    Group publishing and broadcast outfits. They were also in touch,
    he claimed, with a "Narc activist" known to be close to State House.

    Into the mix came the latest spat between police commissioner Hussein
    Ali and his CID director, Joseph Kamau.

    It was Mr Kamau who had organised the Standard raid behind the back
    of his boss, taking instructions directly from Internal Security
    minister John Michuki, he of serpentine infamy.

    When Mr Odinga came out with his tales of mercenaries, he was invited
    by Maj-Gen Ali to provide more details. He pointed a finger at
    Mr Kamau.

    The commissioner, whose attempt to sack Mr Kamau for operating
    behind his back had been foiled by Mr Michuki, immediately promised
    an investigation.

    But even before the investigation led by a subordinate of Mr
    Kamau's got off the ground, the CID boss dismissed all the mercenary
    allegations as lies.

    Then the so-called mercenaries, whose nationality Mr Odinga had in
    the meantime changed from Russian to Armenian, came out with their
    own set of counter-accusations against Mr Odinga, a man they claimed
    to have done some business with.

    It gets murkier and dirtier.

    As the mud flows in all directions, one is not sure whether what
    is being played out is some harmless slapstick comedy or a deadly
    thriller.

    But one can see in the middle of it all a government that has
    absolutely no idea how to tell its side of the story.

    Assuming that it is simply a propaganda war being played out, Mr
    Odinga, at least until yesterday when the alleged mercenaries spoke
    out for themselves, was well ahead of the game.

    It does not matter whether the mercenary allegations were pure products
    of a very fertile imagination. What matters is that as he provided
    more and more detail - directions to the vacant residence, details
    of where the alleged mercenaries had moved to once they were exposed,
    copies of passports - his tale started to take on an element of truth.

    Meanwhile, the Government remained mute. It simply had no answer to
    all the allegations flying around.

    Just as, we still recall, it could never and will never offer a
    plausible explanation for the Standard raid.

    The raid, we were told, was meant to stop publication or broadcast
    of material supposedly harmful to national security.

    Everyone saw that as a cheap lie. And the Government will never be
    able to prove otherwise, unless by making public the very material
    it deemed so dangerous in the first place.

    When the mercenary tale was introduced into an already incendiary mix,
    the Government obviously had absolutely no idea how to respond.

    The trouble is that a government which tries to suppress what might
    be merely embarrassing information by sending hooded and armed
    men to vandalise media offices, terrorise staff, steal computers,
    disable broadcast studios and printing presses and burn newspapers,
    loses all credibility.

    This will always be seen as a government desperate enough to block
    some information reaching the public.

    The very fact that the Standard raiders were hooded, as if on a very
    sensitive counter-terrorism operations, in fact serves to buttress
    the claim that some of the uniformed thugs might have been foreign
    terrorists.

    Will the Government disprove the claim by parading all those
    who participated in the raid so that we can see they are regular
    officers? I highly doubt it.

    Will it make public the deadly information it might get from the
    Standard computers to demonstrate that it, indeed, had a bearing on
    national security? Never.

    Will it trot out the operative who allegedly had links with the
    alleged terrorist so that she can tell her side of the story? No way.

    In any case, we have it on good authority that she is a private
    citizen and has absolutely no ties to the Government or any official
    in Government.

    When you rattle a snake (whatever that means), Mr Michuki told us,
    you must expect to be bitten. That remains the official explanation
    for the armed raid on the Standard Group facilities.

    But despite enjoying a monopoly on violence, as so memorably put
    by Mr Kiraitu Murungi when he was still enjoying the trappings of
    Cabinet office, it is the Government that is being bitten since the
    Standard raid.

    The mercenary tale may be pure propaganda and lies, as is very
    likely. On the other hand, seeing the capacity of this Government to
    resort to dirty, dangerous and illegal methods to silence critics,
    it is also a tale that is entirely plausible.

    Just a thought. In the past, it was Raila Odinga, and before that,
    his father, who the authorities always suspected of having dangerous
    links with the East.

    Jaramogi in the early years of independence was being accused of
    importing communist arms. Officials, now and also during the Moi
    era, never tire of reminding all and sundry about Raila's alleged
    revolutionary mien since his days as a student in Communist East
    Germany.

    The Soviet Union is dead. Today it is Raila who is accusing a
    conservative Kibaki government of importing mercenaries from the
    remnants of the Soviet bloc. How things change! And how they remain
    the same! Minister Maina Kamanda is accusing a company linked to
    Raila of manufacturing arms!

    Mr Gaitho is the managing editor, Sunday Nation.
Working...
X