We are not ALL on Trial!

There are hard moments when a man has to face the world alone; when he is facing jail happens to be the most public moment of isolation. Ever since the Nuremberg trials, the masterminds of horrors and crimes against humanity have had their moment of justice delivered to them in a public trial where they stood alone accused before millions. Even the toughest, and most hardened criminal would balk at the kind of isolation such trials involve.

Luckily for our own ICC suspects, they are cushioned from that reality by a complicit Attorney General, a genial government and millions of supporters who earnestly believe in their innocence. In fact, the presumption of innocence before proven guilty is nowadays an insistence of innocence in total, so much so that one William Ruto recently went so far as to claim to be an “innocent victim” in a case where he is the suspect!

Now the African Union is seeking to add its own collective voice to the calls for charges to be dropped based on alleged falsehoods.

Africans have the ability to take a common, false persecution mindset to a whole new level of absurdity. We are not ALL on trial. Just 3 people are on trial, not the whole of Kenya and certainly not the entire African continent!

It’s not a surprise that these dinosaur heads of state would claim that their continent is being targeted by the west via the ICC – never mind that they are quite possibly guilty of crimes against humanity. In fact, that argument against the ICC is quite an offensive one, given the nature of criminals thus far who have been charged and tried by the ICC; it is as if they stopped being criminals because they are African!

When it comes to being incapable of considering their countrymen our AU members are tops. This is a group of complacent, despotic and often very old men who treat their nation states as their own personal fiefdom, one that they are not obliged to relinquish ruler ship over, practice democracy in or even allow to develop – whatever suits them. Each country is a personal piggy bank.

They do things as a collective, believing in safety in numbers – so they will vote as a block, they will ratify treaties as a block and they will complain of being targeted as a block. 

What Kenya and these African states don’t realize is that the Rome Statute does not change its mandate simply because 3 people are facing charges at the ICC. It’s in fact rather comical for the AU to vote on petitioning the ICC to drop the charges when the reason the ICC exists and was set up is because of their kind of impunity. Just because the foreign Affairs Minister for Uganda says the charges are false doesn’t mean that the ICC will suspend the cases! 

The logical fallacy is hilarious – You claim the charge is false and so a trial should be stopped but if the charge is false then the suspects have nothing to worry about. What really is all the noise making about?

The noise, loud posturing and buffoonery is about showing solidarity with an ally while knowing very well that it will amount to nothing. Kenya’s pals in the African Union are not capable of changing the course of justice at the ICC and neither would they be willing to pull out of the Rome Statute en mass simply because of these cases. Noise making is what some do when they are scared.

Now, I don’t know if our own Foreign Affairs Ministry is aware, but the two principle suspects have openly and publicly pledged to co-operate with the ICC. While they may be clumsily following directives from some “higher up” to engage other countries for the sake of the suspects, the Foreign Affairs Ministry needs to understand that in doing so they do not represent the Kenya republic but the suspects and that their actions are the exact opposite of co-operating with the ICC.

The more posturing this government does towards the ICC, the more bandying the AU does in favor of the suspects, the higher the likelihood of being marked as uncooperative by the OTP and the court itself. This lack of cooperation, overt or covert through petitions, aggressive letter writing and thinly veiled threats to the ICC may very well result in the one thing the Attorney General should hope does not happen. 

Heaven forbid that an arrest warrant is issued against the suspects, as is the case with Sudan’s President Omar El-Bashir. If Kenya is still willing to arrest the president of a neighboring country in the name of upholding the law, I wonder what the AG would do were the same to happen to our own two principles. 

Common sense would dictate that the AG, Foreign Affairs Ministry and Members of the AU tread carefully then, in light of what disaster can visit should Kenya be seen as uncooperative through their needless machinations. We are not all on trial and dragging the entire country into these cases is unjust, selfish and unfair to millions. Kenyans are not human shields from justice.

The Pig Protest That Started A War

I would like to thank the Kenya Police for turning a peaceful, smallish protest that had symbolic pigs into a huge debacle of human rights abuses and state brutality. Without the police, the “Occupy Parliament” movement would not have taken off and evolved into a concern and a hope that each and every citizen can get involved in.

Firstly, an apology, to the large sow and little piglets that unwittingly were used to describe the greedy and wallowing nature of our disgusting members of parliament. We should not have compared the pigs to far more putrid creatures; it was an insult to the animal kingdom. I am glad that their pigs day out was however uneventful and that they took it into their merry stride and happily romped outside parliament until the KSPCA came and collected them after the protest. 

There is much to be said for the “Animal Rights” people who jumped onto an opportunity to gain publicity for themselves – someone else will say it, I am not going to give them any more undeserved attention. Let’s just let the blatant hypocrisy they displayed sink into the minds of the people that they exposed themselves to.

As for the media, I am very proud of the space and time you accorded us, despite your different takes on the events. However, it would be wise to stick to telling the truth when you are a writer for a paper and yet the event was broadcasted; this week 2 lowlife reporters sunk even lower and reported that the sow and some piglets were slaughtered when that clearly was not the case. None of the animals were harmed by anybody, a fact that the police themselves confirmed by stating that “There was NO animal cruelty”.

To our MPigs; you are meant to be our representatives and to represent our interests, our desires our will and our directives. When Aden Duale calls us thieves in order to justify his own thievery he was displaying the level to which his conscience is completely seared. 

The strangest moment was when an irate Duale claims that labeling a pig with his name was haram because he is a Muslim. It does not occur to this man that his constituents are also majority Muslims and that he called them thieves which is also haram! By the way, I understand people from his home county found out about the pig protest and what he had been up to which led to a sow being labeled Duale. That is possibly the source of his bizarre rage and for that I AM GLAD. 

That is the beauty of such an open, creative and symbolic protest – that people at home in the places where these MPigs come from can see for themselves what their leaders are doing in Nairobi. MPigs rely on the fact that the majority of their constituents are clueless as to the goings on of parliament that is why they can make such absurd and offensive demands.

This is where I blame Kenyans; why are you lot so ignorant? Why is it that everything your “Bunge” does passes mustard without so much as a neuron flickering on in your heads? 

Take the mockery of a vetting process that just completed. You mean to tell me that to your minds the ridiculous argument against Phyllis Kandie was even remotely reasonable? So, Phyllis Kandie is not qualified because she is shy but Charity Ngilu is qualified because she is not shy? Look here we don’t expect bashfulness from the madam of a brothel either!

Our MPigs have no depth to their insanity, it is one bottomless abyss in their hearts that can connive, collude and create offensive, illegal plots and schemes with the sole purpose of self enrichment.  Let’s face it, parliament is a RACKET.

Yes a racket, a mob filled with mobsters and racketeers. That’s why the mob will bail for more money – Jude Njomo, MP for Kiambu, going so far as to “THREATEN” to resign if he does not receive a pay hike. That’s how confident he is, that he can feel so useful (I don’t know to who) that he can threaten to resign if he does not have his 1.2 million pay check hiked upwards.

Parliament is a racket, one that is designed to milk the Kenyan government of as much money and resources as possible, and the worst thing about THIS parliament is that it is composed of populist coalitions that will gang together in this sole motherland rape.

Occupy Parliament is a movement that seeks to bring an end to that racket by empowering the people. It’s not just about protesting, but about civic education on the roles and power the people have. You know, it’s a serious day in this hellish Kenya when the man who led the COE is a protestor in Occupy Parliament. Thank you, Professor Yash Pal Ghai, for leading us into the battlefield.

We are at war, dear Kenyans, and the war is for your own hearts and minds. We are striving to wake you up to the hellish reality you are living in and the MPigs are striving to lull you back to sleep while they loot the National coffers. It’s up to you to wake up!

Members of Parliament – you are given honor by us, the people, and you will only become honorable when you honor OUR will, OUR directives, and OUR interests and not your own. Until then you will only be MPigs, a mutated, twisted, perversion of a sub human species.

When it’s time to gang up against THEM!

First it was the sniveling MPigs making absurd claims and undeserved hoo-hah about their salaries thus pushing for a disbandment of the Salaries and Remunerations Commission and then our newest electoral excrement; the County Representatives.

Never mind the hope, now blackened, for a new dispensation based on the constitution. This, my dear assaulted and brutally raped Wanjiku, is the reality of our constitution promulgated on 27^th August 2010.

I have every reason to be utterly desolate. I have every reason to not only believe in the hijacking of a new dispensation by an old ancient greed and power broking; I have every reason to HATE.

I hate our MPs for doing this. I do, as quite possibly and quietly in the recesses of their miniscule dented and demented minds every single Kenyan HATES them. You hate them too. You know you do.

What really is the point of having such extreme unexpressed emotion towards such deserving fellows if we NEVER do anything about it?

So, On the 14^th of May, 2013, A sole singular man has decided to express himself in the only way he understands how, in the only way to he knows to be effective, in a one man’s movement called “Occupy Parliament.”

Occupy parliament is just a drop in the ocean of dissent. When you look at the greater scheme of things, 14^th May means utterly nothing. But then we cannot look at the greater scheme without looking at the smaller microcosm.

In the little worlds that Kenyans live in, in the tiniest micro-sphere of existence that defines our societies, there is that knowledge that at some point, our lives MUST change.

This is the reason we voted. 

Or, if you are a lemming, and thus part of the 93% that voted ethnically, then all your hope for change was riddled in 6 piece voting; for that you are GUILTY.

Nevertheless, whomever you voted for, in 6 pieces, should be responsible. I hate the refrain “accept and move on” much more than I hate how Kenyans voted, based on ethnicity.

On that, possibly cold and rainy 14^th May Tuesday morning, at Freedom corner where Wangari Maathai and my mothers and grandmothers were shamelessly beaten by a brutal, greedy and oppressive regime, where the blood of our history lies, I will stand up with that one brave Kenyan, and express my innate hate. Hate for corruption, hate for disappointment, hate for the mockery of democracy that our voting has been turned into.

We stood for hours in the hot sun, and voted and all we got are people who want a pay rise before they do anything of value, before they even start working.

This is the biggest travesty of a democracy there ever was. With ABSURD promises from the Jubilee government of free maternal care when a miserable 2300 doctors cater for 40 million Kenyans, to the even more absurd county government dispensation to politicians who have absolutely no idea what the hell their roles are in governance; whether it be senate, parliament or county assembly.

I hate what we did on 27^th August 2010. We made it clear that our children and those yet to be born will forever be enslaved in a system that is designed to create “lords” and “serfs”. When you vote you endorse a “Lord” and your lord can demand any sort of payment from his “serfs”. 

Somehow in the last few weeks we tumbled back into 16^th century Europe.

We aren’t a republic or a democracy; we are serfdom, filled with willing serfs.

It may, and quite possibly, WILL serve no other purpose other than my own voice being allowed to scream against the tide of hypocrisy and blatant bad governance but you know what, it will FEEL good.

14^th May, 2013, will certainly serve a cathartic purpose for many of us who will take advantage of that opportunity to SCREAM at the Status Quo. If nothing else, I will go home, or to prison, empty of my hate.

Less than 1000 politicians have ganged up against the Salaries and Remunerations Commission and against the WILL, DESIRE and DIRECTIVES of the people of Kenya. It’s time we ganged up AGAINST them too. Our grandmothers did it, at Freedom Corner, and now we MUST do so too. See you there, standing shoulder to shoulder, with me, and Boniface Mwangi.

Let’s have a referendum and abolish the need for Members of Parliament.

They haven’t even gotten into office and already our erstwhile MPs are busy lobbying for a referendum so as to disband the salaries and remunerations commission.

I am all for the idea of getting rid of bodies that just don’t work, and as our MPs have proven they certainly aren’t working on anything other than a pay hike.

These are the self same politicians we sooner or later have to trust to vet nominees to cabinet secretary. If they are so myopic as to demand a pay rise before even doing the first month’s work can you imagine what sort of vetting they will be capable of doing?

It gets to me, especially considering that these undeserving MPs are also the self same people who argue that one does not need to be a medic in order to run the health sector. One of the most upsetting references in the past week was that Kenyatta National Hospital is not run by a medic CEO and it has improved in service delivery. Really?

Let’s see what the service providers at KNH actually say concerning the systems there. This excerpt is quite telling of conditions at KNH:

“Just performed a major operation at KNH without theatre gowns… 32y female, severe APH, at 30/40.  Lost 4.5 l of blood, sub-total hysterectomy inevitable. No gowns available from NSSU, main and trauma theatre or LW delivery packs. To save life we adorned sterile gloves and dove in. At KNH level 6, national referral, ISO certified. Then to add salt to injury BTU says there is no blood to release…have 2 pints whole blood and FFP. Did I say she lost 4.5 l?”

This is how a non-medic “runs” an ISO certified institution, Kenya’s main referral hospital. This is how a non-medic thinks. No gowns, no blood, no sterile instruments, none available in 5 major units in the biggest referral hospital in Kenya where all the damned doctors are trained.

When you imagine what those money hungry MPs will do during the vetting process, given their shallow mentality, do you imagine them capable of even asking a slightly relevant question? It’s not encouraging at all that majority of these MPs are from the nominating government!

Politicians are surely the most evil creatures mankind has ever created. Consider this – that with no gloves, no gowns, no blood even in the maternity unit at Kenyatta National Hospital how then did our populist Jubilee government decide that promising free maternity and delivery healthcare is remotely feasible?

Mark you, the circular authorizing this free maternity care is due to arrive in a few weeks, opening the floodgates of hell upon the poor doctors and nurses who have to deal with thousands of expectant mothers country wide and with almost no resources; meanwhile the MPs successfully get a pay hike!

I have to put these two events together so that you can actually see how insane the situation is in this country. MPs will argue for a referendum and a pay hike before they even start working, while at the same time denying doctors leadership position in the health sector, while at the same time the health sector is grossly mismanaged, while at the same time the government promises free maternal healthcare!

The lady who underwent the major operation was only 32 years, she now have no uterus, and no hope of ever bearing a child. Because there was no blood for her to be transfused, she is probably hanging on by a thread. Now multiply this situation by our national birthrate. Tell me how many women are going to end up barren or dead because of the way we insist on doing things in this country?

As I said earlier, let’s disband bodies that don’t work. Given how much collective output the MPs have (not) done in the first month of their tenure, it’s clear that we don’t need the likes of Linturi representing anyone in this country. So, as they agitate for a referendum, let us indeed have one, and disband the need for members of parliament and simply give the Senators a pay hike and forward the legislative duties of MPs to the Senate. Even if we gave the Senators a pay hike of 1 million shillings each it is still far cheaper than the 3.4 billion a year it would cost us to retain useless MPs who clearly don’t have any sort of work ethic.

That way, we can diminish the possibility of disservice to the nation during the vetting process and also, having sent a resolute message to politicians that they can be fired by the republic, perhaps more seriousness will be taken when selecting the heads of ministries.