Post by Koigi on Dec 13, 2005 21:56:53 GMT 3
If Kibaki has failed, Raila shares blame
By Koigi Wa Wamwere
RAILA Odinga has bashed President Kibaki as a failed President that should call a snap election to save the country from what he calls a political crisis.
Few observations need to be made. If this government has failed Raila was part of the team that failed it and should be man enough to accept blame for shared failure, as he would claim credit for whatever good the government has done.
True, Raila has a right to criticize but those who will acknowledge no good done lose the right to criticize the bad done. Right now, if Raila is not in the cabinet, the government will not be legitimate.
And if Raila is not president, the presidency will not be legitimate. Raila seems to think only his presence can legitimize anything. Somebody must convince Raila that Kenya is bigger than him and therefore Raila is not Kenya and Kenya is not Raila. Nor is anyone else, including the President, bigger than Kenya.
Raila blames the President for the political crisis that seems to exist only because he is out of the cabinet. There is little doubt that the so-called current crisis is a product of bickering that bedeviled this country since the President failed to honor the much talked about Memorandum of Understanding that would have made Raila Prime Minister. In blaming the President, Raila must remember that he has been the primary mover of that bickering and a chief architect of a secret agreement between eight persons to share spoils of a general election and a hard struggle for second liberation behind the back of Kenyans that helped to oust the Kanu dictatorship.
After all, the memorandum of understanding that Raila will never stop talking about could not be implemented because it was about handing over your wife or husband to another outside marriage.
In the elections of 2002, the presidency was not given to two, but one Kibaki and could not be shared by two or more without asking the people. Raila also says the president is not in touch with the people. I find it difficult to believe that just because the people are freer to tear their President to shreds every morning or his side in a referendum lost, then the President is not in touch with the people.
Were the 2.5 million voters for the new constitution or the 5 million that did not vote, not people? Is it logical for Raila to equate 3.5 million that said no to the new constitution to the only people in a population of 32 million?
But even if it were that the President were losing touch with the people, the terms of his presidency are not that he should call a snap election. People will make their judgement of the President after five years in 2007. The fact that seven LDP ministers have been locked out of the cabinet and several assistant ministers have rejected offers to join the government does not mean the country should go through a snap general election.
When KPU was formed in 1966 by Mzee Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, who incidentally is my hero, and nearly 65 members of Parliament wanted to resign from KANU, the government of Kenyatta did not resign, parliament was not dissolved and nor was a snap general election called.
There were by-elections only in the constituencies whose members chose to resign from Kanu and seek fresh mandate under KPU. I believe same option is still open. Raila talks with his tongue in the cheek. He calls for a reconstitution of the cabinet but claims LDP have no interest in it. If indeed Raila has no interest in the new cabinet, why bother if it fails? Should he not be celebrating?
If Raila is truly concerned about such failure for the sake of Kenya, he should allow Kibaki new cabinet to work rather than seek to destabilize it from without as he destabilized the other from within. One should not make a career of destroying everything he sees, good or bad. Raila also criticizes the President for not giving Kenya a new constitution.
But was it Raila or the President that campaigned against the new constitution in the referendum and celebrated when the country reverted to the current constitution?
We should have honesty even in politics. By the way, we are not saying Raila can not criticize the President or the government but he should do so constructively as when he calls for the publication of reports of Kroll Associates, Goldenberg and Anglo-Leasing. But when Raila criticizes the government for corruption, he should remember to tell the nation what he did to dismantle the network of cowboy contractors in his old ministry of roads.
If Raila is a nationalist and not a tribal jingoist, he should separate President Kibaki from people of Central Kenya whom he said are not Kenya that they never claimed to be and called them “adui” or enemy. Raila may deny, but he has definitely made anti-Kikuyuism the ideology of ODM. No wonder he has the support of Germans.
Children of Hitler are experts in ideologies of ethnic and racial hate. Finally I am convinced Raila is working in cahoots with foreign enemies of this country like the German ambassador who called for a snap election and complained of exclusion of so-called professionals from the cabinet just one day before Raila made exactly the same complaints as if to pave the way for him. Would Germans allow Kenyans – even the ones they love – to suggest when they should have an election and what sort of people they should have in their cabinet?
Author is assistant minister for Information and Communication and MP for Subukia.
By Koigi Wa Wamwere
RAILA Odinga has bashed President Kibaki as a failed President that should call a snap election to save the country from what he calls a political crisis.
Few observations need to be made. If this government has failed Raila was part of the team that failed it and should be man enough to accept blame for shared failure, as he would claim credit for whatever good the government has done.
True, Raila has a right to criticize but those who will acknowledge no good done lose the right to criticize the bad done. Right now, if Raila is not in the cabinet, the government will not be legitimate.
And if Raila is not president, the presidency will not be legitimate. Raila seems to think only his presence can legitimize anything. Somebody must convince Raila that Kenya is bigger than him and therefore Raila is not Kenya and Kenya is not Raila. Nor is anyone else, including the President, bigger than Kenya.
Raila blames the President for the political crisis that seems to exist only because he is out of the cabinet. There is little doubt that the so-called current crisis is a product of bickering that bedeviled this country since the President failed to honor the much talked about Memorandum of Understanding that would have made Raila Prime Minister. In blaming the President, Raila must remember that he has been the primary mover of that bickering and a chief architect of a secret agreement between eight persons to share spoils of a general election and a hard struggle for second liberation behind the back of Kenyans that helped to oust the Kanu dictatorship.
After all, the memorandum of understanding that Raila will never stop talking about could not be implemented because it was about handing over your wife or husband to another outside marriage.
In the elections of 2002, the presidency was not given to two, but one Kibaki and could not be shared by two or more without asking the people. Raila also says the president is not in touch with the people. I find it difficult to believe that just because the people are freer to tear their President to shreds every morning or his side in a referendum lost, then the President is not in touch with the people.
Were the 2.5 million voters for the new constitution or the 5 million that did not vote, not people? Is it logical for Raila to equate 3.5 million that said no to the new constitution to the only people in a population of 32 million?
But even if it were that the President were losing touch with the people, the terms of his presidency are not that he should call a snap election. People will make their judgement of the President after five years in 2007. The fact that seven LDP ministers have been locked out of the cabinet and several assistant ministers have rejected offers to join the government does not mean the country should go through a snap general election.
When KPU was formed in 1966 by Mzee Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, who incidentally is my hero, and nearly 65 members of Parliament wanted to resign from KANU, the government of Kenyatta did not resign, parliament was not dissolved and nor was a snap general election called.
There were by-elections only in the constituencies whose members chose to resign from Kanu and seek fresh mandate under KPU. I believe same option is still open. Raila talks with his tongue in the cheek. He calls for a reconstitution of the cabinet but claims LDP have no interest in it. If indeed Raila has no interest in the new cabinet, why bother if it fails? Should he not be celebrating?
If Raila is truly concerned about such failure for the sake of Kenya, he should allow Kibaki new cabinet to work rather than seek to destabilize it from without as he destabilized the other from within. One should not make a career of destroying everything he sees, good or bad. Raila also criticizes the President for not giving Kenya a new constitution.
But was it Raila or the President that campaigned against the new constitution in the referendum and celebrated when the country reverted to the current constitution?
We should have honesty even in politics. By the way, we are not saying Raila can not criticize the President or the government but he should do so constructively as when he calls for the publication of reports of Kroll Associates, Goldenberg and Anglo-Leasing. But when Raila criticizes the government for corruption, he should remember to tell the nation what he did to dismantle the network of cowboy contractors in his old ministry of roads.
If Raila is a nationalist and not a tribal jingoist, he should separate President Kibaki from people of Central Kenya whom he said are not Kenya that they never claimed to be and called them “adui” or enemy. Raila may deny, but he has definitely made anti-Kikuyuism the ideology of ODM. No wonder he has the support of Germans.
Children of Hitler are experts in ideologies of ethnic and racial hate. Finally I am convinced Raila is working in cahoots with foreign enemies of this country like the German ambassador who called for a snap election and complained of exclusion of so-called professionals from the cabinet just one day before Raila made exactly the same complaints as if to pave the way for him. Would Germans allow Kenyans – even the ones they love – to suggest when they should have an election and what sort of people they should have in their cabinet?
Author is assistant minister for Information and Communication and MP for Subukia.