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Awori and Kibaki Meeting Their Sudanese Counterparts
Onyango Oloo Reacts to Moody’s Snobbish Faux Pas
Toronto, Ontario
Saturday, July 24, 2004
11:54 am Eastern Standard Time
As I write these lines, the Katiba Watch rally is underway at Tononoka grounds in Mombasa. I hope to do a follow up essay later this evening or early Sunday morning.
For now, let me commence by commending the Mombasa organizers of the Katiba Watch rally for doing (going by the press reports) a superb job in mobilizing Mombasa residents to turn up for the Tononoka gathering, hoping and trusting that all goes well.
My task this morning is slightly different. I want to comment on statements attributed to senior members of the NARC government.
We have heard President Kibaki dismiss Katiba Watch. Sometimes statements like these from our head of state make me question his SANITY. He keeps QUIET when the country waits anxiously for a sign that he is still ALIVE when all these fires are burning; he opens his trap when it would be more SENSIBLE to keep his TRAP SHUT.
But it is not even President Kibaki who has left me stupefied with disbelief.
It is his deputy, the ever affable, avuncular multi-billionaire businessman, Moody Awori wa Funyula.
Here is what one of today's (Saturday, July 24, 2004) Kenyan papers is reporting:
Click Here
Can you believe this Mzee?
As my folks in Gem would say:
"Yawa, notim nadi yawa! Jaduong’ni ne piny odong’ kodo kose?”
ROUGH, non literal translation:
"Wow! Wonders will never cease! Is this old man clueless or what!”
CLUELESS would indeed be an appropriate caption if I took a picture of Moody and put it on the Kenya Democracy Project blog (which I will probably do once I am done writing this).
Moody Awori: Hunting for Political Clues?
Why does the Vice President of Kenya need to touch base with planet earth?
Here is a clue.
The Standard reports Vice President Awori as declaring:
“President Mwai Kibaki does not need any "unsolicited" advice from any public forum, Vice-President Moody Awori said yesterday.”Unsolicited advice from the public is not the way to run the country," the V-P said, adding that the institution of the Presidency should be respected.”
Mheshimiwa Makamu wa Raisi I respectfully DISAGREE:
President Mwai Kibaki NEEDS “unsolicited” advice from as many public forums as he can get since he is OBVIOUSLY not getting it from within his cabinet. More than that, “unsolicited advice from the public” IS THE WAY to run the country- that is if you are actually a DEMOCRATIC government which operates on a PUBLIC mandate and believes in TRANSPARENCY and PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY as important prerequisites for GOOD GOVERNANCE.
Perhaps, Mheshimiwa Moody Awori YOU would NOT have made such a BIG ASS of yourself if you had listened to Transparency International (Kenya) and other civil society groups giving you “unsolicited public advice” on how to deal with the NOW DISASTROUS Anglo Fleecing Scamgate.
Dear President Kibaki and Vice-President Awori:
Prior to today, I had naively thought that both of you transcended the haughty demeanor of younger more arrogant power maniacs like Kiraitu, Murungaru or even the totally asinine Githae who thinks Kenyans should supplement their meager diets with copious helpings of rodents slaughtered for supper.
Your recent outbursts serves as a sobering reminder that your present NARC regime headed by you Mr. President and you Mr. Vice President is so smug, so arrogant with your collective head so stuck high up your collective derriere that you can not see the explosions and implosions happening within and without.
Your government is almost completely ALIENATED from the wananchi because of its broken promises, mounting series of corruption scandals, escalating state brutality and pure inefficiency; Your regime is now viewed by its most significant Western BACKERS as being in the early stages of a PARIAH state; Your coalition is comatose, tattered and splintered by almost irreparable rifts because of chicanery and duplicity within; Your so called government of national unity is under severe legal scrutiny and attack from some of its fiercest loyalists and the mainstream opposition; Your administration is being openly challenged by a lobby group that threatens to mushroom into a countrywide mass movement;
Yet in the face of all that, here you are President Kibaki, and here you are Vice President Awori, lecturing and admonishing your allies and your friends- people who are honest and candid enough to tell you that you are going wrong...
A few days ago, I was sufficiently concerned about the prospect of a foreign driven regime change agenda hijacking our people’s democratic aspiration that I wrote about it.
The superficial among us may have mistakenly sensed a dramatic capitulation by Onyango Oloo to the NAK forces. What I was doing there was to affirm a long held belief of mine-it is only Kenyans who can and should lead the process of effecting fundamental political reform in Kenya. Friends of Kenya should remain just that- friends of Kenya who their provide support without trying to take over our movement.
Going by its most recent pronouncements, it would be clear that the Kibaki-NAK faction is on an irreversible path of self destruction that no former civil society defenders; frustrated ruling party coalition partners, militant constitutional reform advocates, determined opposition party adversaries or concerned (if somewhat sometimish) donors can apparently retrieve them from.
Such insufferable and blind arrogance evokes the comical quixotic figure of Saddam’s Disinformation Minister whose disconnect from reality was so profound that he persisted in churning out fake communiques and reports of triumphant Iraqi breakthoughs despite overwelming evidence to the contrary. He even spawned a whole web-based pop culture fifteen minutes of fame global adulation following.
Here is a government staring at financial ruin; a regime exposed as morally bankrupt; an administration that has retribalized and thoroughly alienated the Unbwogable Nation; a former darling of the West doing its best to invite Washington and London’s regime change special forces; a government that is openly denounced within the country and consistently derided by large pockets of the Kenyan communities abroad; here is a regime that has gone cup in hand begging for food aid-
This is also the SAME clique that is gleefully telling everybody to go and copulate with themselves.
If the Kibaki-Awori-Murungaru-Karume-Nyachae-Ntimama-Mwiraria-Kiraitu regime was a patient in a psychiatric hospital- it would be found SECURELY locked away in a PADDED CELL with a STRAIT JACKET on with hospital apparel marked DANGEROUS PSYCHOTIC PARANOID DELUSUIONAL SCHIZOPHRENIC SOCIO-POLITICOPATH.
NARC is on a 24 hour death watch. What is unclear is whether it will commit suicide or wait for any of the many mercy killers to put it out of its misery come the next elections.
I mean just read some more from Moody Awori:
"In the office we need secrecy. Leaking out information creates confusion among Kenyans. The habit of leaking information undermines smooth running of the government business."
Tell me if those are the words of an individual in full control of his mental faculties. I simply don’t think so!
So Uncle Moody, does your regime really “need secrecy"?
At a time when Kenyans and friends of Kenya are DEMANDING that the Anglo Fleecing SECRETS be made PUBLIC, you, Moody Awori who headed the ministry where all this started to unravel have the nerve to talk about the need for secrecy? Are you really that out of touch with the seething RAGE not only from Kenyans but from those donor countries who are quite capable of throttling your regime to political extinction?
Here is what two of Awori’s cabinet colleagues had to say yesterday:
Click Here
Me thinks that Minister Maitha is well advised to keep a low profile because of the many potential snakes in his Pandora’s Box.
And it is quite unsurprising to watch Simeon Nyachae drop his threadbare ham actor amateurish pretence of being a voice for democracy and a voice for critical intervention- he is already back where he has always belonged- among the most mawkish and hawkish defenders of the neo-colonial status quo. I will not be surprised if Njenga Karume and William Ntimama obliged us with something appropriately tribal and backward in the course of the next few days.
Where does this leave outfits like Katiba Watch, the Kenya Democracy Project and other civil society voices within and outside the country?
The one thing we can not afford to do is sit back and do nothing, paralyzed by our disgust and sense of collective helplessness.
On the contrary, we should redouble our efforts of creating a KENYAN led MASS based NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC movement that is anchored by EIGHT MAIN components:
1. Demand for a New Democratic Constitution;
2. Campaign against Grand Corruption;
3. Defence of Civil Liberties and Fundamental Freedoms
4. An Educational Blitz against Tribalism and Regionalism
5. Support for Gender, Racial, Religious and Ethnic equality
6. Support for Global Peace and Against the Militarization of International Conflict
7. Building Powerful International Solidarity Movement in Support of the Struggles at Home
8. Demand that Western Powers Should Respect the Right of Kenyans to Determine Their Own Destiny- oppose any attempts at hijacking our movement and imposing regime change via the back door…
Onyango Oloo
Toronto, Ontario
Saturday, July 24, 2004
11:54 am EST
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