Why citizens Should Protest

It started with a simple thing. The Turkish government wanted to destroy a city park to make way for a shopping mall. Just a handful of protestors felt that this was too much, and they stood in between the bulldozers and the trees at Gezi Park. It was the brutal state reaction that inflamed a simple defiance into a national uprising.

That is the nature of governments filled with uncivilized officials. People who believe themselves lords of impunity over weak and powerless people. It is the sort of government that Turkish Prime Minister Edrogan had cultivated, a regime that brutalized its people in more subtle ways for years before openly battering them while in protest. Such brutal regimes may live for some time, and only as long as the people don’t realize that they out number their oppressors.

Nearly 2 million protestors all over Turkey are actively taking to the streets each day; millions more on social media. In Istanbul, Taksim Square is fully occupied; I doubt it will belong to the government ever again. The number of dead and injured protestors keeps rising, as does the rate of brutality of the police. Alongside that, the number of people taking to the street increases exponentially. Edrogan is swamped, under siege and defeated and yet he does not know it. From pathetic laments about the horrors of social media to his most pitiful call to the mothers of the protestors, Edrogan is weak and failing. “Mothers, tell your children to stay home and not to protest!” The mothers’ response was to form a human chain between the protestors and the police. “Edrogan the Dragon’s” regime is dying; it is being slaughtered by each shout and each cheer.

This is the clear lesson to be gained from Turkey, and it is one the Kenya government seemed to have learned well. If you brutalize protestors, they only increase in number. If you try and crush a protest, you WILL create an uprising.

I want to thank the Kenya police for not using tear gas on the protestors of “Occupy Parliament Reloaded.” In fact, let the truth be told, the Police were not just restrained on Tuesday 11^th June, they were almost bored.

As we danced, threw blood and abused the MPs to our hearts content on the street, the police barely blinked at us. We were allowed to vent our fury until it dissipated to tiredness, and slowly, we left the protest stage worn out and happy, yes literally happy with our police. “Polisi wetu wazuri, Wabunge ndio wabaya.”

A photo captured it all. A young lady with a red colored afro gives a bright flower to a laughing police man. Just like that, in a few hours, a protest that should have been explosive, exhibited to Kenyans and the rest of the world how democracy works when citizens’ rights are respected.

All the protest wanted, was the MPs to quit their demands for similar pay as the previous parliament, and to respect the decisions of the Salaries and Remunerations Commission. We wanted them to return to the negotiating table and to acknowledge that they certainly do not decide their own pay nor can they disband the SRC. 

The result of a closed door negotiation meant that the MPs left with an agreement to a 40% cut on their original demand. The perennial pessimist would say we gained nothing from this, seeing as the SRC had pegged their salaries at much less. Only the morbidly short sighted would of course make such a claim, forgetting that the MPs were going to take home much more than that, and on top of that they were going to disband a constitutional body. Shortsighted because you do not see how much more you would have lost nor do you understand what was at stake!

There is no protest that has ever achieved more than a STOP to a demand or action. To pretend that “Occupy Parliament” movement should have resulted in the SRC automatically calculating the MPs salary to whatever miserable figure you think Mpigs deserve, is not only irrational it is unrealistic in entirety. 

The purpose of protest is to express oneself, to vent, to demonstrate dissatisfaction, to exert pressure through civil action and to make vocal and raise awareness on pertinent issues. To this end, protest should always be a part of a democratic society. The achievements of any singular protest movement cannot thus be quantified within the confines of negotiation. It is an achievement to attain the negotiation power in the first place.

It may surprise many, but this particular protest was a win for Kenyans. Of course it will surprise those who don’t understand that our constitution was at stake, that we had no negotiation power and that the SRC was going to be disbanded because the entire National Assembly had ganged up against the SRC, against the government and against the people’s will and directives and even ganged up in defiance of what the president was requesting them to do. It would only be a surprising win, to those who spent every step of the way being negative, pessimistic, those who willingly gave up and were contemptuous of our efforts – It will not be a win to MALCONTENTS.

But it is a victorious and joyous win for those who sacrificed their time and resources, and believed in themselves and their power as citizens, to force Parliament back to civility, to bring down expenditure, to curb the powers of unwilling and disobedient civil servants and instill the values of democracy to a nation of ethnic bigots who finally woke up to unite against a bunch of rogues. We may yet have hope for Kenya, if we can, through protest, awaken the giant that is in each of us.

My, oh my, one day, the people may even realize that we outnumber our oppressors. That will be a glorious day. That will be the day we slay our own “Edrogan the Dragon”.

IEBC Officials get exposed by Arithmetic

Mathematics is one of those subjects that you just have to master. You’ve got to be able to count, whether you went to school or not. Looks like our IEBC officials never got the hang of putting two and two together. When officials announced the difficulty they were having reconciling the discrepancy between the presidential election results and the other 5 elections it was clear that mathematics was the problem with IEBC. A difference of 1 million voters between the presidential results and the results of 5 (five) FIVE other elections should tell you the obvious. Maybe, just maybe IEBC people are living in utter denial, even when caught out.

I mean does it take a genius to figure out what happened? Really? Can a difference of 1 million voters even occur in a fairly conducted exercise? Issack Hassan did indeed have the last laugh. Now we are meant to believe that 1 million voters, decided to vote in the presidential elections alone, knowing very well that there were 5 other elections going on at the same time and having received enough voter education to cast 1 million valid votes. It’s a miracle!

Accept it and move on, people. That is the snide refrain we have had drummed into us ever since the mockery of a petition hearing and the joke of a ruling from the Supreme Court. Believe it, in Kenya we have 6 Supreme Court judges and all of them don’t know that all electoral petitions are civil in nature and their clear OBVIOUS mistake was to try and make the petitions against the IEBC results meet a criminal threshold. There in, lies the conspiracy.

When you add it all up, you realize that this was more than just bad math at play. This was something beyond mere electoral irregularities. This was an unfathomable scheme that relied on 1 million ghost voters who all cast valid votes, it counted on a bench of judicial novices who know nothing of the law, it hoped on a constitution that makes it impossible for petitions on presidential results to ever get a fair hearing and it counted on a crushed 50% of voters to actually “peacefully” give up.

Now when I look back at March, and how it was preached over and over, that we must remain peaceful and calm and we must accept the results and we must abide by the decision of the Supreme Court, it all makes sense. How else can you lull people into a coma, other than all media houses chanting peace all day and all night meanwhile 1 million voters sneakily cast their votes in the presidential elections and yet they did not cast their votes in the five other elections.

I don’t know when IEBC officials decided that democracy means decide for the people. What indeed was the point of spending all that money printing ballot papers for 33,000 polling stations and 12 million plus voters if in the end the IEBC can make 1 million voters appear and disappear like magic? 

With a constitutional body like this who needs parliament, seeing as parliament has decided to become the enemy of all constitutional bodies starting with the Salaries and Remunerations Commission. No wonder there is so much voter apathy; when the first social media page announcing “I will never vote in a Kenyan Election” went up, I thought, these sycophants are terrible losers. Now I understand their angst, and it cuts me to the heart.

We lie to ourselves that we are progressively moving forward as a nation, when the truth is, we are simply marking time, marching on the spot. I don’t know why the good lord decided to remove the veil from my own eyes so that I can see what a ridiculous mockery of values we have preached at us all the while the institutions we put up corruptly protect impunity. I don’t know why this veil that covers the eyes of every single citizen who believes in these institutions refuses to also cover my eyes but I wish I could enjoy the bliss of utter ignorance that the “winning” 50% percent enjoy.

I keep saying that the voters don’t win anything in an election, we simply put government into power or rather in the last elections we simply endorsed a farce. Now, I believe that in parliament we do indeed have some very evil characters perhaps so evil as to even consider instigating political violence in order to get their own way. I’d like to believe that of the presidential candidates the one least capable of evil was Mohammed Abduba Dida, even though some may say his initials are telling of his mental state.

But I have to concur, that when IEBC officials, who are sworn to uphold the laws of this country, sworn to remain impartial, and sworn to respect the decisions of the electorate turn around and tell us they cannot reconcile 1 million votes in one election verses five other elections and their results; that is what I consider real evil.  That is evil beyond measure; an evil so cruel as to seek to con 40 million people while engaging them in “democracy”. It’s no wonder that voter apathy is so rife, why line up in the hot sun to be tricked again. I agree with that mentality, I now don’t see the point of voting if 1 million votes can magically appear and disappear. It’s simple math.

FINE. Let’s Pay MPs – with Bangla-Pesa!

By the time someone pays a hefty amount like 100,000 kshs for political nominations, it’s assumed that they know exactly what they are doing and understand the civic seat, duties and responsibilities. Our 11^th parliament has not only shocked us with their ridiculous demands for more pay, they are now claiming that they can reduce the President’s pay by 57%.

Let’s laugh for a minute. Uhuru Kenyatta has been rated by Forbes as one of the richest men in Africa. Would a man thought to have a personal fortune of 50 billion US dollars REALLY notice a pay cut from his civil service job? Do it, see if he cares!

More telling, is the fact that this parliament seems to believe that they are in charge of the country and whatever they want they can do since they pass laws. They seem to believe that parliament is the most powerful arm of government, capable of bullying The Executive and The Judiciary alike.

It’s a perversion of democracy, and a perversion of the role of legislators. Mark you, they are not particularly wrong about their extensive powers as mandated by our constitution; we did indeed hand over the power to implement the tenets of the Supreme law to them. However, their purpose as intended in the constitution was to represent the will of the people as vested in them as our representatives, a fact that has eluded the likes of Mithika Linturi entirely.

It’s a wresting of our sovereign power from us as a people, such that parliament can make unconstitutional motions to disband the Salaries and Remunerations commission simply because they want more money. It tickled me to no end when the High Court ordered an injunction to stop MPs from receiving higher remunerations than that set out by the SRC, a decisive blow to 349 unworthy fellows who thus far have spent the past two months doing little more than talk about their pay.

The fact that MPs can even make declarations on the President’s pay simply because their own pay is “small” (according to them) is telling of how miniscule their understanding of their roles and LIMITED powers.

Some even bantered back claiming that they do indeed have great powers, “ask PLO Lumumba”. 

Here is the thing. This is a new dispensation, and the sooner they realize it the better for them to be capable of executing their mandate. The idea that simply because we voted for them we should accept whatever nonsense they cook up on the house floor is totally absurd. We already had a rogue parliament in the 10^th Assembly; we certainly shall not entertain these super-rogues.

Parliament is limited, by law, from creating whatever laws they desire – the notion is sheer barbarism in the first place! Nor can parliament constitutionally interfere with the constitutionally formed bodies of this country; we certainly cannot have a handful of people rewrite the fabric of our society just to suit them.

It seems the reality of Kenya being a poor, 3^rd world nation escapes these fellows. The fact that they are NOT lords over their people seems to elude them even further; this is a rather arrogant lot of delusional people who imagine that sovereignty means that they are each sovereigns!

But, let us assume we should indulge these faux lords; what indeed would we use to pay them, seeing as already, 50% of government revenue goes to serve a miserable 1% of the population? I think that if an economy is forced to fork over revenues to people simply because they draft and pass bills into laws, then that economy should use a currency befitting the work and output of those legislators.

Let’s give in to the MPs demands and pay them with Bangla-pesa. Bangla-pesa is a form of promissory notes used in the Bangaldesh Slum of Mombasa. The actual value of Bangla-pesa is in its trading potential within the slum and it can be liquidated later for real Kenyan currency.

Seeing as this is a poor nation, with over 50% living below the poverty line, and with 349 individuals who wish to trade their ability to talk endlessly and nonsensically on the floor of parliament with hard currency that we surely cannot afford to pay, I say that we should pay them the exact value of their hot air with promissory notes that later, much, MUCH later, maybe even in 2030 when the nation’s vision to be industrialized is hopeful matured, and their "promises" realized, they can then cash in.

I for one truly believe that every single statement that some of these MPs have made in the public forum and in parliament is not worth the paper Bangla-pesa is printed on, but I am willing to give them pseudo money for their pseudo legislation nonetheless. I try to be fair, fake money, for fake legislation, Quid pro quo. If they had passed a single bill in the interests of the people of Kenya, we would have even considered upgrading their payment to monopoly money, a currency known worldwide.

Till then, we need to use money that is only recognized in a slum economy. It would indeed be fit their stature to have to shop and live within a slum by the way, given what slumlords they purport to be.

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.