Things are not like a rosy garden in the East African State of Kenya and with national elections slated for December, it’s difficult to forecast exactly as to what’s next.
Adding to the uncertainty is the clanger dropped by the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) indicting four top Kenyans in the country’s political arena.
The surprise, if it can be called that, had sprung out of the box for sometime and some observers saw it as a delayed action as the ICC had been deliberating on a situation many see as ”to be or not to be” decision.
Now that it has happened what does it hold for the ”Uhuru”State?
The ICC announcement on the indictment of the four had shown that truth is stronger than fiction.
What started as clashes between supporters of two rival presidential candidates in the 2007 election swelled into bloody wars that took the lives of over a thousand people and scores of thousands nursing serious wounds.
Ironically, the ICC indictment did not rope in President Mwai Kibaki or Raila Odinga, the two people for whom supporters supposedly clashed for, but nailed leading presidential candidates in the upcoming December elections; Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and former Education Minister, William Ruto.
The two others are Cabinet Secretary, Francis Mutaura and journalist, Joshua arap Sang.
Though Kenyatta and Ruto maintained their innocence saying they will contest the charges, they have not abandoned their quest to run for the presidency.
So the waters continue to be murky as voters are in doldrums as to whether to go ahead to cast ballots for either of them which might turn out to be a futile exercise in case both men are ultimately convicted.
This will be the litmus test for voters and an action which should be topmost as they slip their vote into the ballot boxes.
In it all, Mr. Kibaki has little or nothing to fear as his presidential term of no return ends in December; but it would not be in his interest to shout himself hoarse.
His enemies may be tracking him down after this to examine his credentials when he was in power, what he has done and what he had left undone.
Besides, many Bwanas are caught off guard when you ask, ”what legacy will Kibaki leave?
The Wanachis (commoners) will spill out a tirany of having done worse when it comes to helping in terms of the availability of foodstuffs particularly ogali (the staple food).
Complained one Kenyan on a drinking spree, “the only things left untouched in terms of price hike is beer. So I get drunk every day to drown my sorrows.”
Joseph may not be wide range of Kibaki’s rule but others will remember him as a leader who ploughed through Kenya’s history when the country was nearly splitting itself.
How he held it altogether baffled even the most knowlegable Kenyan.
Some said he knitted the economy as his predecessor, Daniel arap Moi made an icecream of it.
In the current cul-de-sac, one man who stands to benefit from the quagmire of events would be Raila Odinga, son of former opposition firebrand, Odinga Odinga.
If the December election is held now, pollsters tipped him to win with a handsome majority as he has as yet no price on his head.
With all attributes that favour a winner and with the upcoming elections being held under the country’s new look constitution, Raila Odinga can walk into State House without looking back.
Rich Kenyans are now moving into the hinterland while poorer ones are taking sanctuary in the capital which makes once-beautiful Nairobi look shanty.
It is also having huge traces of corruption which the present and incoming governments need to examine quite urgently.
As one Kenyan related to me sometime back, at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, there is a huge billboard which stated: ‘We don’t condone corruption’. Underneath the billboard, some miscreant had written, ‘…but we can be persuaded’.
Is America setting the platform for domestic chaos?
Before 2012 ushers in, the terrifying legislation that allows for Americans at home and abroad to be arrested and detained indefinitely, tortured and interrogated -without charge or trial-passed through the Senate with an overwhelming support from 93 percent of lawmakers.
This legislation was followed by the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) which intends to stop online piracy as the name implies.
But, online geeks are not taking SOPA’s recent crackdown on Megaupload kindly. They have responded equally by attacking government websites.
My fear is, these hackers if caught might feel the grip of the terrifying and ambiguous legislation of terrorism that might not only detain them, but subject them to indefinite torture as well.
This begs the question “is America setting the platform for domestic chaos?”
The response to the Federal agents’ executed crackdown on the files sharing website Megaupload on Thursday, was not minor.
Authorities attest that Megaupload, at one point the fifteenth most popular site on the Web, was guilty of costing copyright holders upwards of $500 million in lost revenues because users of the service can easily and freely upload and distribute pirated materials. Four people were arrested in New Zealand on Thursday as part of the sting, which also yielded the site going offline.
Given that Megaupload boasts an audience of 500 million users daily, a reaction was expected. Only minutes after the Web began digesting the news, that response came by way of thousands of upset users, many aligned to the online collective Anonymous.
The attack started swift and strong and only grew. First to fall was the website of the US Department of Justice- justice.gov. Next was the site for Universal Music Group, a SOPA supporter and the largest record label in America.
Over the course of a few hours, hacktivists involved with the loose knit group Anonymous waged attacks on site after site; and before long, the web presence for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Broadcast Music, Inc., or BMI, and finally FBI were down.
Anonymous calls it the single largest Internet attack in its history, and it crippled the biggest sites for the US government and the entertainment industry.
To those close to Thursday’s campaign, it not only was a necessity, but was only the first step in a battle that’ll continue for a while to come.
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