when people like Ali open their mouth, it makes me realize if the sane ones have that mentality, then when will we expect politicians to stop acting like baboons. I dont even care anymore about ODM, PNU or GNU. Just someone first adress the ethnic cleansing in Rift Valley. coz that violence is not poll related. Those guys received warningss before elections to leave the area.

People forgive me for being at it again. Some people here are already seeing through the smoke and smog being emitted by EMK and RAO. Lets face it the real people who fought MO1 are gone, nay, irrelevant. The same KANU thieves are on both sides of the equation. EMK has become like MO1,and Kenya is going to the dogs. Fives years of -5% “growth (6% GDP growth – 11% inflation), leaves lots of Kenyans unemployed.Now this election sham. Pray we are stuck for years to come.
Look at it this way, Liberia after Taylor still has Taylor’s buddies in government. Ha, Ha, Ha…
Anyone who thinks RAO will be better than EMK, think again.
As for EMK, Alzheimer’s is setting in, he is a useless bum. Here is the mathematical proof
ODM = Raila, Ruto, Ngilu, Nyaga, Balala, Kosgey, Mudavadi, etc
PNU = Baks, Me-Chuki, Karua, Watengula, Uhush, etc
KANU (Mo1) = Raila, Ruto, Mudavadi, Baks, Me-Chuki,Watengula
Therefore: ODM=PNU=KANU
Kenyans need to lower their expectations for the next 50 yrs.

KENYA: It’s the economy, stupid not “tribalism”)

09 Jan 2008 16:16:49 GMT

Reuters/ AlertNet

The wave of violence that engulfed Kenya after the presidential election has been widely described as tribal or ethnic in nature. But analysts in the east African country point to basic economics as the true cause of the unrest.

Widespread violence and a humanitarian crisis were triggered by the 30 December announcement that incumbent Mwai Kibaki had won a hotly contested presidential poll amid opposition claims of rigging and international observers’ reports of serious irregularities in the vote-tallying process.

“In the urban areas, there was a lot of senseless burning and looting, which was people taking out their economic grievances during a leadership vacuum. They just let loose and attacked any targets, burning their neighbours’ houses, regardless of whether they are PNU [Party of National Unity, Kibaki's party] or ODM [Orange Democratic Movement, the opposition],” Macharia Gaitho, a political columnist, told IRIN.

While specific ethnic groups – there are more than 40 in Kenya – were targeted during the violence, the tensions that led to such clashes were not the result of ethnicity per se, but, according an editorial in the Sunday Nation newspaper, an almost inevitable consequence of the country’s economic system: “Kenya practises a brutal, inhuman brand of capitalism that encourages a fierce competition for survival, wealth and power. Those who can’t compete successfully are allowed to live like animals in slums.”

Inequality pervasive

In Nairobi, more than 60 percent of the population live in slums, some of which lie a stone’s throw away from the city’s most luxurious houses. According to a report (Pulling Apart: Facts and Figures on Inequality in Kenya) by the Nairobi-based Society for International Development (SID), Kenya is the 10th most unequal country in the world in terms of wealth disparities. Of Africa’s 54 states, it is the fifth most unequal. The 2004 report, using UN Development Programme figures, states that Kenya’s richest earn 56 times more than its poorest: the top 10 percent of the population controls 42 percent of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 10 percent own 0.76 percent.

Inequality pervades every aspect of Kenyans’ lives, according to the report, citing enormous disparities – both in the capital and at national level – in almost every sphere of life: income; access to education, water and health; life expectancy; and prevalence of HIV/AIDS. A person born in the western Nyanza province, the bedrock of ODM support, can expect to die 16 years younger than a fellow citizen in Central province, Kibaki’s home turf. Child immunisation rates in Nyanza are less than half those in Central.

Another impoverished region is North Eastern province. While almost every child in Central attends primary school, only one in three does in North Eastern. More than nine out of very 10 women in North Eastern have no education at all. In Central, the proportion is less than 3 percent. In these two provinces, there is one doctor for 120,000 and 20,000 respectively.

Kibaki’s role

Critics of Kibaki, who came to power in 2002, accuse his government of failing to address this inequality and of focusing instead on the economic growth seen over the past five years. Before he came to power on a wave of euphoria and hope after 24 years of rule under the autocratic Daniel arap Moi, Kenya’s growth stood at minus 1.6 percent. In 2007, it reached 5.5 percent and before the elections was predicted to hit 7 percent in 2008. This growth has been concentrated in the service sector, with banks, tourism and communications companies making big profits. Prices of shares and property have also soared. But rather than trickling down to the worst off, this boom appears to have been very selective in its beneficiaries while the poor have seen the purchasing power of their shilling shrink. Before Kibaki came to power, “we used to buy sugar for 45 shillings”, Agnes Naliaka, a long-term resident of Nairobi’s Kawangware slum, told IRIN. “Now it’s 65 shillings. A kilo of cooking fat was 50 shillings. Now it’s over 100 shillings,” she said, adding that rents in the slum had doubled over the past five years. For David Ndii, executive director of the Kenya Leadership Institute, “the Kibaki government has been very cavalier about the treatment of the poor. Hawkers’ stalls were demolished and they were not given any alternatives. Economic policies have not been pro-poor. This growth has been biased in favour of profits as opposed to translated into jobs.”

Fast growth “When a poor economy starts to grow very fast like Kenya did, levels of inequality rise,” MJ Gitau, a SID programme officer and contributor to the inequality report, told IRIN. “You need assets and property rights to participate in economic production and exchange. Only a few have assets, are educated, able to save and invest, to take advantage of the high growth rates of the last few years. Those who have, get more. Those who do not, lose the little they have,” Gitau explained. Ethnicity came into play during the election violence because of the widespread perception that those who fared best under Kibaki were his own Kikuyu group, the country’s largest, which dominated politics and the economy both under his administration and that of founding president Jomo Kenyatta.

However, Kibaki’s party says poverty levels have fallen from 56 to 46 percent, lifting some two million people out of abject poverty, and that more than 1.8 million jobs were created during his first five-year term.

“Our country is shining once again and I have ever bigger plans for the development of the country during my second term. We are changing people’s lives for the better,” Kibaki declared two weeks before polling day.

That is not how many Kenyans see it.

“People reacted like they did because they were hoping for change [after the 2002 election]. Kibaki came and promised many things which he didn’t do,” said Agnes of Kawangware slum.

Let down

Kenya’s youth in particular, who make up a majority of the population – and of those who rioted – feel the most let down. Improved education gave them hope of a better life than their parents’, hope that was dashed, according to Kwamchetsi Makokha of Nairobi-based communications consultancy Form and Content. “Under colonialism, it was almost a slave labour system which grew up in the early days of the coffee estates. After independence [in 1963], the white master was simply replaced by the black master. A lot of young people who got a bit of education could not see themselves working for pittances as farm labourers. They started drifting to the cities where the opportunities are not enough to accommodate all of them. You have this massive influx of people who just can’t find work,” he told IRIN.

Nor can they find a political voice, he added. “The common Kenyan citizen who does not have money or property does not have a say in how Kenya is organised. They never have. It’s always been about what car you drive, where you live, and then you have more rights than other people.”

Another ingredient in this combustible mix is corruption, which Kibaki pledged to eradicate but which under his rule, according to analyst and author Gerard Prunier, “reached new heights, matching some of the excesses of the Moi years”.

Observers hope that the explosion of anger and violence Kenya has witnessed over the past week will shake the country’s political leaders into resolving not only the row over who one the election and how power should be shared but also the country’s deep inequalities. “If anything positive is to come out of this electoral stalemate and the criminal destruction that has visited it, one hopes it will have served as a wake-up call to all Kenyans that the yawning gap between the middle class and the poor is a powder keg just waiting to explode with the most grave consequence,” warned columnist Washington Akumu in the Nation.

© IRIN. All rights reserved. More humanitarian news and analysis: http://www.IRINnews.org

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/0abaa83dacd4b1243d3fe0b6406a08b8.htm

KIVULU:
You have made some real points. I have always told people that this politicians ARE all the same KANU recycles.
However i am still mad at the daylight robbery event staged by Kibaki on the night of october 30th at KICC. I am not upset because i support Raila but i am upset because the people were taken for a ride . I am upset because Kibaki showed us that he thinks , we the common people are just fools, Thats why he had the balls to pull such a ridiculous move.
my argument is Kenyans as a people, regardless of tribal affiliation must and should stand up and defend truth-whenever its established, at all cost. I have been very disappointed by some Citizen of Kenya for their inability to defend truth. A thief is a thief and should not be tolerated at any level of our society. We cannot
stone and prosecute common thieves and defend big thieves.
How will Kibaki even begin to fight corruption when he has just committed the highest level of corruption possible in the country?

We all must work together and uphold true moral standards. We cannot conveniently choose which type of theft we find acceptable. Our society is already full of thieves aty every level because we tolerate this kind of non-sense by Kibaki.

Ati you guys are shocked!!!

Wait and see what happens to the 12 nominated MP slots that were part of IPPG.

yenyewe Kibaki must be demented or something, or maybe we are just looking at Mr Hyde… unbelievable.

We however must maintain peace at all costs

Dear arap sei.
Kibaki is a thief, therefore he is not the right guy to bring an end to the violencve in rift valley.

Arap Sei,

You have shown us that you know how Israel works. You have shown us that you have some facts. You have read all the books there are to read on the Mossad. Good on you. You are bright and number 1. in fact we give you a gold star for your knowledge!

But keep your divisive, inciting and spiteful drivel to yourself. Kill Ruto indeed! It’s this kind of talk and thought that has us in this pit that we are in, and instead of stoking tribal flames hiding behind some fake lame-ass Kalenjin alias, we should be using every forum to scream, plead and demand for peace and reconciliation in our motherland.

I can tell you are clearly outside the country, ensconced in some Western capital as you type your hate mail, and are not directly affected by the s**t we are going thru in the country.

I guess you have a green card or whatever it is called, so you have options. For the rest of us, Kenya is the only home we have, and we will be damned if idiots like yourself poison our home.

Same for Arap Kibinei. Nobody cares whether you and your ilk are real warriors or not. It is the so called real warriors that have the country on fire now, and a fat load of good it is doing us.

I guess there is freedom of speech as a fundamental right, but that does not give anyone the right to stoke ethnic flames or to call for the killing of a leader in the country. If only you idiots would look at what happened in Rwanda between 91 and 94, you would desist from your chest-thumping.

Kenya is on fire, and what our country needs is real men and real women to stand up and heal the wounds. Kenya does not need short-sighted ethno-centric perspectives. Keep those to yourselves!

Long live our multi-ethnic, multi-racial KENYA!

My take on the ethnicity angle, especially seeing as i am from a minority community, is that we need to embrace the diversity that is kenya. I do not advocate for Majimboism but I suppose some sort of devolution of power and economic growth is necesary.

I would love to see a kenya where each city is able to sustain the people the people who are born and bred around it so that all the young people do not have to troop to Nai to look for nonexistent jobs and live in the slums. Nyanza has lots of sugar plantations but our sugar industry is one of the most bedivilled in the agricultural sector. What happened to the rice paddies in Ahero? Why are the people who live around river Nyando flooded out of their homes year in year out? Has any of you driven from Kisumu to Nakuru? Its the most atrocious track in the country yet its one of two feeder routes into the great lakes region (Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, eastern DRC) and not just a road that passes through ‘opposition zones’. Why does Tanzania’s fishing industry and exports to the EU surpass ours yet they get their stock from the same Lake Vic as we do? Why are there no ‘beach’ hotels r tourism activites around Lake Vic? Having lived in Uganda for 6 years, I can tell you that there’s a lot that can be done in this regard.

When the Kalenjin runners win all the marathons across the world, we all hold our heads up high as Kenyans when our flag is raised and the anthem sang. In Dec it was reported in the media that brea prices have risen to 35 bob per loaf becasue the bakeries are now importing wheat… what happened to all those sheat farms in Kitale and other parts of the Rift Valley? What happened to all the cottonfarms and ginneries in the RiftValley that supplied Rivatex with some of the best cotton in Africa, second only to Egyptian cotton?

Arguably, in most busineses across the country and indeed in corporate Kenya, the central kenya face is very prominent. But we forget that the minority Asian community has also played a crucial role in our industrial and commercial growth. Companies like Panpaper based in Webuye are unfortunately now scaling down operations.

Nobody ever remembers to talk about all the Nyanza people represented in academic Kenya: in our research institutions (KEMRI, KEFRI, KETRI, ICIPE, ILRI, ETC). All those who are in the univerisities and schools training the young minds to go out and build a better Kenya. All those who teach in universities across Southern Africa becasue they could never get a hearing at home as they were considered to be from the ‘opposition’ zone of the country.

With the revival of KMC, goat hreders in some of the semi arid areas of the country now have an outlet for their animals and a means to earn an honest living. I read somewhere some time ago that while we have not yet hit black gold in kenya, we do have economically viable amounts of bitumen in the mandera region. As bitumen is one of the key components of raod construction, I imagine that we should be able to bring down the cost considerably and make it easier to have good roads across the countyr. Theres also talk of economically viable amounts of coal in some of the drier Kamba territories that could be use, for example, for electricity generation.

What happened to all the sisal and orange plantations around Voi?

My question is: WHY CANT WE LEARN TO EMBRACE THE DIVERSITY OF OUR NATION BOTH IN TERMS OF NATURAL AND HUMAN RESOURCES? Variety is the spice of life. We cannot all be doctors, lawyers, teachers, economists, engineers, etc. but irrespective of our god given talents, we are all a link in the chain. So if the kalenjin are good warriors, lets use that skill for the betterment of kenya in general rather than some ulterior objectives. Also, no man can live as an island. We need to harness our individual strengths so as to minimise our individual weaknesses.

Finally, the well educated kenyans who write in blogs like this one shy away from taking an active part in the day to day affairs of the country. We don’t all have to get ino politics but maybe we need more of the commentaries i read here appearing in our daily papers, in think tanks across kenya. The saying that the pen is mightier than the sword still holds true. I live in the hope that springs eternal that sooner rather than later we as kenyans will learn to live and love one another and use our individual strenghts for the betterment of all.

I am just passed, I feel betrayed by Kibaki, if this is left to stand it is the end for Democracy in the region, next he will change the constitution to be able to run for a third term …wait and see!!

Dear Kenyans,
Mwai Kibaki is just a middle man WORKING for big money cooperations overseas.He could careless about Kikuyus except for those he appoints to head military, police, ministries etc. He does that ,not because he likes his Kikuyu people rather because he can depend on tribal loyalty to consolidate power.Otherwise, if he cared for Kikuyus as much as they care about him, he would be trying to negotiate with others to restore all the 250,000 plus displaced Kikuyus country wide. Biggest losers thus far is Kikuyus.

Kenyans need to rise up against this type of theft and confront the Karao, and arme and gsu elements that keep Kibaki in power.Kikuyus are not the enemies of Kenya.Kikuyus, no matter how arrogant Kibaki’s presidency make them feel, are Africans just as the rest of us. We and Kikuyu people are one.The reaction of Kenyans against Kikuyus is foolish and senseless .

For one, Kibaki is just an employee of foreign investors. and his ministers, karua , michuki, etc are just scavengers eating foreign investors left overs.

It is stupid for us to fight each other because the middleman is not from our particular tribe. Kibaki won because he presented the least threat to thieves who have been raping Kenya since existence .The thieves, both local and abroad, could not afford a change of leadership,Odinga had just taken the government and Safaricom, the countries cellphone service provider, to court over their intention to give back the 20% shares that Kenya owned.Clearly Raila was not good for business.He also had promised to go after all of Kenyans stolen money.A lot of foreign investors were worried about him. Kenya needs to remain as it is or worse for the big money makers to continue making their money.Kibaki proved reliable.
Kibaki has been “trained’ at the job since 1963. He was a minister in the government of our first thief , Jomo Kenyatta. He was the vice thief of our second thief, Daniel arap Moi and now he finally graduated to be the chief thief himself.

I have been to Othaya recently, the place is absolute poverty.Chokoras are everywhere in Nyeri. The most he can do for Kikuyus is perharps build better roads in their area, just like the thief Moi did in Eldoret.Besides that , he has nothing to offer Kikuyus or Kenyans. Any Kikuyu defending Kibaki is only doing so for bragging rights. Just to be able to say that the president is a Kikuyu. This is not a reason to fight against a whole country for.Kikuyus struggle just as hard in the so called Kibaki’s “5% economic growth”.
This guy is not worth our blood. or our relationship with each other. The guy is not worth Kenya.
Lets not be fooled by decisions of a few into hating each other.Behind Kibaki their is the power of cooperate world and lobbyist