Kenyan Diaspora Pro-democracy Movement

IEBC IN USA

2011-11-30T20:08:00.001-05:00

Members of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) will be in the United States to learn and share views on the issue of Diaspora registration and voting. They will meet with the International Foundation of Elections Systems (IFES), representatives of embassies of countries whose Diaspora in the US votes, Maryland State Board of Elections, Federal Elections Commission (FEC). In addition, they will meet with Kenyans in the Diaspora in the following areas: Washington DC, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, Raleigh and Boston.

When:Dec 4 – 15, 2011

Where: Washington DC, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, Raleigh and Boston. (map)

Description:(For further details: please visit: http://kenyaembassy.com/news11252011iebc.html

INDEPENDENT ELECTORAL AND BOUNDARIES COMMISSION (IEBC) U.S VISIT

2011-11-26T03:00:00.001-05:00

December 4 – 15, 2011: Members of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) will be in the United States to learn and share views on the issue of Diaspora registration and voting. They will meet with the International Foundation of Elections Systems (IFES), representatives of embassies of countries whose Diaspora in the U.S. votes, Maryland State Board of Elections, Federal Elections Commission (FEC). In addition, they will meet with Kenyans in the Diaspora in the following areas: Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, Raleigh and Boston.

Battle for Diaspora votes gathers pace

2011-11-21T06:17:00.002-05:00

By VITALIS KIMUTAI

The fight for Diaspora votes appears to be gaining pace as Kenyans head into an election year with a Constitution that guarantees citizens leaving abroad the right to cast their ballots.

Among those already seen strengthening links with Kenyans living in foreign lands are Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka.

The PM has retained strong networks in the Diaspora going back to the campaigns for the ill-fated 2007 elections, when his presidential bid was partly funded by contributions from supporters living and working in countries like the US, Canada and United Kingdom.

As the PM was on an official trip to Israel last week, where he sealed a security deal for the Government, the VP was also busy in nearby Cyprus a few days later. Sources close to Raila said he had managed to develop a close working relationship with key leaders around the world.

"He can today reach out to very influential leaders in almost all powerful western counties and that is a hallmark for a serious presidential contender," said a close ally.

Apart from developing their profiles, it is whispered that the four main contenders for the presidency are also developing strong networks outside Kenya.

Homeland

Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, Eldoret North MP William Ruto, Assistant Minister Peter Kenneth, Gichugu MP and Narc Kenya chairperson Martha Karua, Saboti MP Eugene Wamalwa and former Foreign Affairs Minister Raphael Tuju have also sought to cast their nets beyond Kenya’s borders.

Raila and Musyoka are the most widely travelled leaders in the Grand Coalition Government, which has seen them go to Europe, the Middle East, Asia and African countries.

Both have in their trips sought to cut deals on behalf of the country, with varying success.

Raila was in Israel, where he met both the president and the prime minister who agreed to support Kenya in beefing its homeland security through a memorandum of understanding signed at a resort on Mt Zion in Jerusalem.

The PM also won the consent of Israel to help build an irrigation scheme in Turkana and to have Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visit the country.

"Raila was in London months ago where he met Prince Charles. He was also the first African leader to meet Prime Minister David Cameron after his election," said a Cabinet minister allied to the PM’s party, the Orange Democratic Movement.

Prince Charles is helping restore Lake Naivasha through the Imarisha Naivasha programme, which is being coordinated by the PM’s office.

Raila has tried to use new tools of diplomacy including environmental conservation, climate change and trade, as he moves strategically to build his global profile and stand out as a statesman.

He has also been to the White House, where he met Vice President Joe Biden and secured US support for Kenya’s efforts to restore order in Somalia.

As a result of the PM’s strong push on climate change, France and Kenya last year hosted the Paris-Nairobi initiative on clean energy that brought together 40 African nations.

Raila was last year appointed by the African Union (AU) to mediate in the Ivory Coast, where he secured landing rights for Kenya Airways in Lagos, Luanda and Angola in the process.

Mr Ruto also travelled extensively when he was the Minister for Agriculture, and later Higher Education. More recently, he embarked on regional travels with Wamalwa.

Kalonzo has lately been to Malaysia, India, Namibia, and United Kingdom, where he met Kenyans and used the opportunity to push for donor support for the country.

While in the UK, the VP opened a Party of National Unit (PNU) coordinating office for Europe before heading to Cyprus on the invitation of President Dimistris Christofias.

Musyoka used the opportunity to impress upon Christofias to present Kenya’s case against Al Shabaab to the European Union, and secured scholarships for 60 university students, in addition to the 28 aided by the Kalonzo Musyoka Foundation, to study in Cyprus.

The prestigious Limkokwing University of Technology also agreed to set up a campus in Nairobi, which would be the second in Africa after another one in Botswana.

Musyoka was accompanied by Special Programmes Minister Esther Murugi, Assistant Minister Kabando wa Kabando, and Mathira MP Ephraim Maina.

Instructions

"The VP was in India recently where he convinced the 47 sea ports operating there to attend an investment forum in Kenya to enable investors to explore trade opportunities in the Lamu Sea Port," said his spokesperson, Mr Kaplich Barsito.

He said Kalonzo also met officials and members of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in India and Malaysia, and asked them to invest in Kenya.

"Some of the trips to meet presidents and heads of various states across the globe have been delegated by President Kibaki to the Vice President," Barsito said on telephone yesterday.

He was quick to emphasise that the VP’s trips abroad were public engagements.

Kangundo MP Johnstone Muthama said that rather than use such forums as fundraising events, the VP stuck to his itinerary in a bid to elevate Kenya’s diplomatic engagement at the international level.

On instructions from the President, Musyoka also led a futile diplomatic shuttle early this year to seek support for Kenya’s bid to get the International Criminal Court (ICC) to refer the crimes against humanity cases facing six Kenyans at The Hague, Netherlands to the local judicial system.

But Muthama said: "As a result of the diplomatic engagements by the VP, which were frowned upon by others, the UN Security Council now appreciates Kenya’s position because we are not a failed State."

Uhuru’s engagement with foreign governments, though both intensive and extensive, has been more within the country than abroad.

In fact, one of the longest periods he is remembered to have been out of the country was recently, when he travelled to The Hague for the confirmation of charges hearings in the ICC case.

Mr Munyori Buku, who is Uhuru’s Director of Communications, yesterday told The Standard the Finance Minister does not need to travel out of Kenya to seal development deals, as such matters are part of his daily routine at his Treasury office.

"Quite often, Uhuru by virtue of his position as the Finance Minister, holds meetings with delegations from the World Bank, European Union (EU) International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other development partners funding various programmes in the country," said Munyori.

"In fact at Treasury there is a desk that deals with international leaders and foreign relations. You will remember that the IMF mission left the country recently after a meeting with Uhuru," Munyori added to illustrate his point.

Recruitment

Reliable sources confided in The Standard that in the search for support from the 2.5 million Kenyans in the Diaspora, Uhuru’s friends and supporters have opened offices in Los Angeles, New York and the United Kingdom with fully operational secretariats.

"The volunteers have set up offices using their own resources and they are meeting once a month to deal with issues on recruitment and mobilisation, which they communicate to Uhuru," an MP close to the Gatundu South MP told The Standard on condition of anonymity, as he is not authorised to speak on behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Another secretariat is being set up in South Africa, Australia and the Middle East, according to the MP.

Why Diaspora vote could be game-changer

2011-11-18T16:11:00.000-05:00

Why Diaspora vote could be game-changer

Updated 22 min(s) ago
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By Alex Ndegwa

Presidential aspirants are competing to woo the Diaspora voting-bloc constituting a third of eight million unregistered voters the electoral commission is eyeing.

In its exit report, the defunct Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) recommends that its successor register more than eight million eligible voters.

These include people with special needs and the estimated three million Kenyans in the Diaspora; a voting-bloc analysts suggest could be a swing vote in the General Election.

Once the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) enroll the additional eight million voters, the total number is expected to hit 20 million. The exact number of eligible voters abroad is unclear, with the IIEC exit report variously citing two and three million.

However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is understood to have compiled a report profiling Kenyans living abroad and how they are distributed.

It has reportedly been turned over to the IEBC to help in preparation for voter registration outside Kenya.

Presidential aspirants are paying more attention to the new voting bloc, which would constitute 15 per cent of the total registered voters, enough to tilt the scales in a closely contested election.

Leaders jostling to succeed President Kibaki are increasingly turning to foreign capitals to market themselves.

In the past week, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka and Planning Assistant Minister Peter Kenneth were in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.

Abdikadir Mohammed, the chairman of the Constitutional Implementation Oversight Committee, says the size of the Diaspora vote is large enough that no serious presidential aspirant can ignore.

Massive vote

Mr Abdikadir suggests that most of the voters are concentrated in Western Europe and North America, adding that the various presidential camps are scrambling to map out the vote-rich regions.

Budalang’i MP, Ababu Namwamba, described the Diaspora vote as a "huge pool" that could prove decisive in the elections due next year.

"This is going to be the swing vote. It could be the turning point especially in a tight contest.

I expect the number of visits by presidential aspirants abroad to increase as we hit the homestretch," Mr Ababu said.

Political analyst Adams Oloo concurs that the Diaspora constitutes a "massive vote that can tilt the vote either way".

Office in London

"The importance of this untested voting bloc cannot be gainsaid for politicians, because they haven’t voted before, you can’t exactly tell their voting pattern," he adds.

The PNU Alliance took the battle for the Diaspora vote a notch higher when Kalonzo announced the opening of an office in London.

It became the first political party to set up shop in the United Kingdom, hoping to use the London office as recruiting centre for Kenyans in Europe.

Addressing Kenyans at the Crystal Hall, Ilford, East London, Kalonzo termed the move the first step towards co-ordinating the search for the crucial Diaspora vote.

The VP spoke on a stopover en-route to Nicosia, Cyprus, at the invitation of the Cyprian President Dimitris Christofias.

In Japan at the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kenneth held talks with Japanese officials and addressed Kenyans living in the world’s third largest economy.

Kenneth’s weeklong visit saw him address Kenyans at Nishitetsu Grand Hotel in Fukuoka city.

The previous day, he had spoken to a gathering of Kenyans at Rhiga Royal Hotel in Kyoto.

On a weeklong visit in Israel, the PM held talks with President Shimon Peres and Premier Benjamin Netanyahu.

Raila had an unscheduled meeting with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. The ODM leader and his wife Ida also paid a pilgrimage to biblical sites.

Raila, Kalonzo and Kenneth have in the past addressed Kenyans in the United States, as has Gichugu MP, Martha Karua, Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, and Eldoret North MP William Ruto.

There are 12.4 million registered voters. Based on the 2009 census, the IIEC report notes: "A lot needs to be done to ensure that the more than eight million eligible voters not registered are registered as provided for in the Constitution."

The Elections Act provides that there shall be a Principal Register of Voters, which shall include a register of voters abroad.

Those willing to participate are required to register at centres that the electoral body plans to establish in the Kenyan embassies and consulates.

More discerning

Ababu said voters abroad could inject freshness because they were "more discerning, critical and eagle-eyed to pick the best (leader) from the pack".

"Due to exposure to different democratic views, most are well aware of issues and might be different from the average Kenyan voter persuaded by ethnic and political affiliations," observed Ababu.

But Abdikadir differed arguing that comments posted on online media suggested that some were still captive to ethnic viewpoints.

"One would hope the Diaspora vote injects positive energy devoid of ethnic chauvinism to head towards issue-based discourse.

But judging from comments on blogs, one feels disappointed," he said.

Ababu, however, cautioned that the voting by Kenyans abroad presented enormous logistical challenges.

Droughts and Famines in East Africa: From man-made problems to man-made solutions

2011-09-24T01:05:00.001-04:00

Droughts and Famines in East Africa: From man-made problems to man-made solutions
Submitted by Wolfgang Fengler on Tue, 2011-09-20 10:32

How can droughts and famines be avoided? This is the big question many conferences and summits have grappled with in recent weeks. Unfortunately, it will be very difficult to avoid droughts in future because climate change will put more pressure on scarce land and extreme climate events, both rains and floods, will likely occur much more frequently — and even more unpredictably.

The first famine I remember was brought on by the horrible drought in Ethiopia in 1984. At that time, I was a boy in high school and one of Germany’s most famous actors, Karlheinz Boehm, visited our school to mobilize funds to help the suffering Ethiopians. He had previously established the charity, People for People. One of the silver linings of today’s suffering is the outpouring of financial support by ordinary Kenyans who have been moved by the intense suffering of their fellow citizens.

So how can we avoid this same crisis two years down the road? Or as my Kenyan friends say: How do we keep from begging again for money?

While droughts cannot be avoided, famine can. There are many countries in the world which face extraordinary climatic conditions and others that hardly produce any food. Countries in the Arab peninsula face continuous droughts. Yet, the people in these countries seem to be doing fine, as does Singapore, which hardly produces any food and has never faced a food crisis. This is why this current crisis, which started as a result of harsh weather, is really a man-made crisis, especially here in Kenya, where food prices are unnaturally high.

Kenyans pay much higher prices for basic food commodities when compared with prices in international markets because of limited trade within East Africa and Kenya’s agriculture policies. East Africa can easily feed itself. Tanzania and Uganda have surpluses of basic food commodities, and even within Kenya, there seems to be enough food in some regions. Kenya’s maize policy is particularly problematic. Significant parts of the country enjoy ideal conditions for growing maize. When developing countries have efficient agriculture sectors, local food prices are normally below international prices. In Kenya, maize prices are still more than 60 percent higher than world market prices.

Exceptionally high and volatile maize prices are the result of policies which make it unclear for the farmer to know what price he will receive, and thus, he keeps his grain off the market hoping to optimize his revenue.

* Erratic import arrangements add uncertainty into the market. Too much discretion is left in the hands of policy makers and few business men.

* In practice, this high price policy amounts to distributing resources from the poor to the rich.

* The poor pay higher prices than they would under a market-based system while a small number of well connected large-scale farmers benefit from artificially high prices.

While this crisis has been aggravated by man-made factors, the solutions will also be man-made. Three areas seem critical to reducing the risk of another such crisis:
First, Kenya’s agriculture sector can be globally competitive. The country is a world leader in tea and horticulture. Both sectors are managed by private entrepreneurs and, together with tourism, account for the lion’s share of Kenya’s foreign exchange. In Kenya there has never been a shortage of tea and flowers. As you would expect, tea and flowers cost less in Kenya than in England and Holland, the destination for many of these exports. But Kenya’s poor, who eat Ugali every day, pay more than an American would pay for a bag of maize (see figure).

Second, opening up trade within East Africa would make a significant difference. With the current export bans, especially of maize from Tanzania and Uganda, which are still in surplus, the poor are hit hard throughout the region: in Kenya and Southern Sudan, the poor pay higher prices than they would need to. In Uganda and Tanzania, the farmers get lower prices than they would if they could freely export maize to Kenya and other deficit countries.

Third, once a drought hits, the poor need to be protected effectively and efficiently. Learning from the painful experience in 1984 and subsequent droughts, Ethiopia developed a social safety program which is performing well. Kenya and other countries in the region can learn from Ethiopia’s success and build similar social protection programs that can be activated and scaled up quickly in times of need. Sometimes, a crisis is a turning point for a better future.

* This blog is also being published as part of a weekly column with Marcelo Giugale in Kenya’s Saturday Nation.

KENYAN DIASPORA REMITTANCES ARE KENYA'S TOP FOREIGN EXCHANGE EARNER! TOURISM IS SECOND!

2011-07-18T18:21:00.001-04:00

By MUNA WAHOME

Posted Tuesday, July 12 2011 at 00:00

The Central Bank of Kenya is for the first time targeting the diaspora with a Sh36 billion infrastructure bond with the twin aims of boosting currency reserves and plugging State budget deficit.

With what is expected to be double-digit returns, the product is likely to force banks to raise yields on hard currency accounts of Kenyans living abroad and attract larger inflows.

World Bank recently noted that countries, including Kenya, had overlooked the role remittances could play in dealing with financial shocks, eradicating poverty and improving access to finance. Countries like Ethiopia and Egypt have for years established formal systems for dealing with the diaspora inflows.

“World Bank estimate indicates that the diaspora holds up to $1.8 billion in chequing accounts earning zero interest and the proposed infrastructure bond will therefore provide an attractive alternative investment,” said CBK governor Njuguna Ndung’u.

But Bonds Traders Association yesterday said market leaders had held meetings with CBK but were not aware the instruments were to be issued soon. They noted the market players had requested that CBK keeps them updated early enough for effective marketing but that they welcomed the development.

“This would avoid conditions associated with a sovereign bond like in the case of Ghana where the state is fed up enough to the extent they would want out,” said Fred Mweni who is also the managing director of Tsavo Securities.

“The diaspora is holding hard currency of hundreds of millions in current accounts which are earning 0 to one per cent. A double-digit return will bring in even more hard currency.”

The government wants to raise Sh119.5 billion in 2011/12 from the domestic market, as it seeks to plug a Sh184.4 billion deficit, of which Sh36 billion or a third would come from infrastructure bond issues. The State has raised Sh88 billion through infrastructure bonds since early 2009.

In the current financial year, massive infrastructure projects including airport and road upgrades and a peri-urban railway system are in the works.

“Modalities to achieve this (diaspora participation) are being worked out but it is anticipated that the Foreign currency amounting to approximately $400 million will be retained by Central Bank and the shilling equivalent passed on to Government for implementing the infrastructure projects targeted,” said CBK.

The bank said after the pilot diaspora marketing, it would target the same Kenyans with long-term bonds including the 30-year Savings Development Bond.

In all, it hopes to raise $600 million from the bond issues by the end of this year, the CBK governor said. The bank industry regulator has been holding an average of $3.9 billion which is below the statutory four-month and has been fighting to increase this to four months. Commercial banks hold another $1.2 billion.

“The Central Bank has resumed its plan to build up international reserves over time with the view to reach coverage of four months of imports of goods and services within the programme period,” IMF said last week in its assessment of the country.

Targeting commercial bank current accounts comes weeks after the governor engaged in a bitter war with the commercial banks accusing them of arbitrage and speculation that has caused the Shilling to fall to record lows. Apart from asking banks to punish the culpable dealers, it has also opened bidding for its hard currency to all banks and forex bureaus.

The Kenya diaspora this year has averaged $66 million in monthly remittances and overall has overtaken tourism as the most important source of foreign currency, with substantial improvement expected over the $641 million total recorded last year.

“The increase in remittances in 2011 reflects economic recovery in source markets, and a favourable domestic economic environment,” says Charles Koori, the director of research at the CBK.

Apart from the diaspora, foreigners are expected to invest in the infrastructure bonds due to various incentives, boosting the flagging Shilling apart from contributing to de-bottlenecking Kenya infrastructure.

“Foreign investors usually participate because there is no withholding and capital gain taxes on the issues,” said Mr Mweni. Past issues have all been fully subscribed.

mwahome@ke.nationmedia.com

Invitation to Partner with Fellow Kenyans: Kenyan Embassy in Washington, DC

2011-07-15T19:18:00.000-04:00

On behalf of fellow Kenyans, you are hereby cordially invited to partner with fellow Kenyans in Washington DC at Kenyan Embassy, on Tuesday July 26th, 2011 at 1:00pm.

The main objective of the meeting is to register our protest to the continued refusal by Members of Kenyan Parliament to pay their taxes like all other Kenyan do. It is with great concern that Kenyans have noted the MPs unrelenting stubbornness, arrogance and total disregard of the welfare of fellow citizens. As they continue to allocate themselves from the coffers, it is only fair that they pay all their back taxes to enable the government to provide most needed services to citizens. Other key issues such as corruption and insecurity will be addressed.

We hope that you will encourage your membership to join fellow Kenyans so that together we can speak truth to power in one voice!
Please feel free to contact me for more information and let me know if you would like an opportunity to address fellow Kenyans during this event.

Best Regards,

Dan Mbuthia
Director, Congress of Africa
Email:dmbuthia@rocketmail.com

Kent County/Grand Rapids Grassroots Planning Session and Training (Grassroots Planning Session)

2011-07-12T19:38:00.002-04:00

Kent County/Grand Rapids Grassroots Planning Session and Training (Grassroots Planning Session)

Grassroots Planning Sessions are starting now—and we need you to join us for these critical strategy meetings. Your input will shape our roadmap to victory, since it’s going to take meetings all over our state to spread the word about this campaign and our movement. Now is the time to get involved to take real action for President Obama and democrats up and down the ticket, since your ideas and feedback will determine our organizing in your community. This session (recurs the 3rd Saturday of each month) will also hone our skills in knowledge of issues, reaching voters through effective communication, holding house parties, building Neighborhood Teams, canvassing door-to-door and small businesses, and registering voters. You will be energized and pleased that a small investment of your time can mean so much to our community !

Times:
Date:
Start: Saturday, June 18, 2011 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
End:Saturday, July 16, 2011
Host:
Host:
Gail Collins
Contact Phone:
Contact Phone:
616-901-9358
Location:
Location:
Kent/Ionia Labor Council Building (Grand Rapids, MI)
918 Benjamin NE
Grand Rapids, MI 49503

From Fuller NE (north of I-96 and south of Leonard NE) turn east on Mason NE by Burgett Floral. Go 1 block to the corner of Mason & Benjamin.

East Grand Rapids for Obama, Grand Rapids Community College for Barack!, West Michigan is In!

Signup for 'Kent County/Grand Rapids Grassroots Planning Session and Training'
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Saturday, June 18, 2011 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
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Saturday, July 16, 2011
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Saturday, July 16, 2011

The day capacity limit is 180 attendees
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THE JUDICIARY THAT KENYANS ARE DYING FOR.

2011-05-22T01:31:00.003-04:00

For any democracy to thrive there must be justice. For justice to thrive there must be impartiality within the justice system. For impartiality to thrive there must be men and women who understand the law and are capable of applying it while asserting their independence from executive control.

Kenya, like most developing countries, lacks an independent judiciary mainly because of the lack of judges who are incorruptible, firm and independent. Time and again atrocities have been seen to be perpetrated by the judiciary and government officials against the weaker members of the society. As a result the citizens of Kenya fail to accord the much-needed respect to this very important organ of the nation. They continue to display their disgust and anger at the judiciary because of the open injustice that is continually carried out by the judicial system and government officials against the innocent and mostly poor citizens. Many a time the judiciary has appeared to be doing the dirty work for the corrupt politicians, businessmen and wealthy who seem to be holding the whole country at ransom.

With the nomination of Dr. Willy Mutunga and Ms. Nancy Baraza to serve as Chief Justice and Deputy Chief Justice respectively, Kenyans are seeing an opportunity for them to be served with justice. They are seeing great judges, a man and a woman of courage, who are incorruptible and prepared to accept the consequences of their decisions. They are seeing judges who will consider the law and the feelings of all parties with sympathy and understanding. They are seeing a man and woman whose knowledge of the law and human affairs is so extensive that they will experience little difficulty in grasping the main issues of any dispute. Their past records display their impartiality, an attribute that is so rare in Kenya and it inspires the confidence of the citizens in their ability and sense of justice.

It is against this background that we implore our politicians to be more mature and to have more depth as they deliberate the nominations of these two judicial nominees. Kenyans are deeply disturbed that some of our politicians, regardless of their political parties, prefer to dwell on trivial issues. Pointing out the stud that a person wears as being a factor in his ability (or lack of it) to carry out his duties displays a dangerous lack of wisdom, knowledge, maturity and genuine leadership qualities. Such leaders are harping on issues that have no relevance to the judiciary and the country at large. With the national judicial crisis that we are facing, one would expect them to focus their energy and resources on how best they could help Kenyans and their judiciary face this dangerous uncertainty and weakness in the justice system. The issues that these politicians are bringing up are trivial, disappointing and retrogressive. They are calculated to play on the minds and emotions of the simple-minded people with the aim of exploiting religious and cultural divisions for their own selfish agenda. Kenya belongs to all Kenyans irrespective of their religious, cultural, sexual, racial, political or ethnic affiliations. Kenyans should reject all leaders who try to play the religious, cultural, gender or ethnic card. They should focus on the most important issue that confronts all of us and that is restoring the image and dignity of our judicial system by giving a chance to a man and woman who have earned the right to be at the helm of our judiciary.

GOP HAS SET ITS OWN TRAP

2011-05-15T12:51:00.002-04:00

"How many deaths will it take till they know that too many people have died?" sang Bob Dylan of the civil rights struggle and the war in Vietnam. But the same might be said of efforts to cut, curtail or curb the rate of growth in Medicare.

Count the corpses:
1. Hillary Clinton's healthcare proposals led to the Democrats' loss of Congress in 1994.

2. Newt Gingrich's proposed cuts in the rate of growth in Medicare led to Bill Clinton's reelection in 1996.

3. Obama's and Pelosi's cut of $500 billion in Medicare led to the Republican victory in the House in 2010.

Now, the GOP, unmindful of the odds, is falling into the very same trap. As George Santayana said, "Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it."

Having defeated Nancy Pelosi in 2010 over the Medicare cut, the Republicans marched right back into the House of Representatives -- now under their management -- and voted to affirm the cut in their budget. All $500 billion of it. The House Republicans took their signature issue and broke their pledge to stop the Medicare cut. They took the noose they had fashioned for Nancy Pelosi and put their own necks into it. They fell into a trap of their own making!

It will make no difference to the voters that the $500 billion will be kept in the Medicare trust fund to prolong the program's existence. Especially when one's life is at stake, funding for tomorrow's medical care is scant comfort today. Except for a tiny $10 billion restoration of funding for Medicare Advantage programs, the entire cut that got the Republicans elected in 2010 is still there. And now they have added to it a plan to replace Medicare with a voucher in 10 years.

The voucher plan might well work like the prescription drug benefit did -- companies might well bring down their costs to fit within the parameters of the voucher. But voters will have 10 years to worry about it and to vote Democratic to prevent it.

And the Medicare cut is totally unneeded and gratuitous. It is not Medicare that got us into this budget deficit. And, until the boomers start to retire in droves in the next decade, we do not need to reduce Medicare spending to get out of it.

Medicare has only gone up by 16 percent since Obama took office. Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment compensation, Section 8 housing, AFDC and other welfare entitlements have risen by 54 percent. And regular discretionary domestic spending has risen by 41 percent. By directing the nation's attention to Medicare -- as opposed to these other programs -- the House Republicans have totally played into Obama's hands.

The leadership has it backward. The Tea Party does not demand cuts in Medicare. It opposed them in 2010 and opposes them now. It wants welfare spending slashed. The watchword must be welfare, not Medicare. Medicaid, not other entitlements. Discretionary government spending, not aid to the elderly.

By making all but four of their members vote for the Medicare cuts in the Ryan budget, the House Republicans have set the stage for their own demise. The leadership, if it wishes to be known by that moniker in the future, must offer its members a chance to backtrack on that vote. Wisely, the budget negotiators have indicated that they will not put Medicare on the table in their talks with the White House and the Senate. But the House freshmen, if they wish to become sophomores, must demand that Speaker Boehner set a vote that permits them to undo their support for the Medicare portion of the Ryan budget.

Kenyans in the Diaspora will field a presidential candidate in the 2012

2011-05-15T03:31:00.004-04:00

Kenyans in the Diaspora will field a presidential candidate in the 2012 general election, a forum has announced. More than three million Kenyans who have attained the age of voting, but live outside the country, have never participated in elections.

The co-convener of New Vision Kenya Movement Shem Ochuodho said the Kenya Diaspora Alliance is supporting former MP Bonny Khalwale in the May 23 Ikolomani by-elections.

Speaking at a Nyeri Hotel during a sensitization workshop attended by youth, grassroots leaders, civil society groups and opinion leaders from the six constituencies of Nyeri County, Ochuodho said the movement encourages leaders to have integrity and openness. "We are supporting the chairman of Bull Fighting whom we believe is not corrupt and is non-violent. He is selfless and tolerant," said Ochuodho.

Ochuodho said the leadership in the country is unable to unite Kenyans.

The workshop which drew 60 participants was organised by the New Vision Kenya Movement, the Kenya Diaspora Alliance and the Nyeri Social Forum.

Nyeri Social Forum coordinator David Ngige said they will support vision-driven servant leaders who aim to economically empower their constituents to earn a sustainable livelihood.

Among the speakers were the former president of Kenya Community Abroad Gichane Muraguri, the president of Diaspora Movement of Kenya based in Salt Lake City Robinson Gichuhi, Kenya Dairy Board MD Machira Gichohi and Omieri Angima from the Centre for Multiparty Democracy.

UN resolution on weapons in the Somalia region.

2010-03-20T22:58:00.012-04:00

The United Nations Security Council working group monitoring the flow of Weapons into Somalia and sanctions against Eritrea has had its mandate extended for another 12 months. The Kenyan Diaspora Pro-Democracy Movement feels that an unstable Somalia is a direct threat to the National Security of Kenya and the entire East African region.

Hitherto, Kenya should undertake the obligations and recomendations that have been
made under Resolution 1916 (2010) to prevent the politicization and misappropriation of the Aid that has been donated by other parties. The KDPM also calls upon the Kenyan Government to cooperate with the UN investigations whenever its members are in Kenya or in the region. We also urge support in whatever form whenever it is needed.

Margaret C. Kimosop,
Vice President, KDPM

PARTIES: IS 2012 TOO CLOSE?

2010-03-01T02:33:00.002-05:00

Kenya: Parties Face Sh600,000 Bill to Register
Lucas Barasa 4 September 2008

Nairobi — Tough new rules for political parties include a registration fee of Sh600,000, it was announced on Thursday.

In addition, major political parties, whose names and symbols look alike, could be forced to change them or disband.

The rules, which affect all 300 political parties in Kenya, have been introduced by the Electoral Commission of Kenya.

From now on, parties such as Narc and Narc Kenya; Ford Asili, Asili Saba Saba, Ford Kenya, New Ford Kenya and Ford People; ODM and ODM Kenya and Kanu and New Kanu; might end up fighting to retain their identities when the rules come into force.

These are the parties that initially started as one strong entity but later split due to disagreement between leaders who still wanted to retain the brand name.

Object of hate

The Political Parties Bill, which became law in July, empowered the Electoral Commission, which has become a hate object for political parties since the presidential elections last year, to make rules and regulations for political parties.

Parties now have just about four months to comply with the rules, including opening branches in all 210 constituencies.

Attempts by President Kibaki to reorganise his Party of National Unity into one strong entity have been opposed by affiliate parties Narc-K, Ford Kenya and Democratic Party of Kenya.

The new registration fee, which was published in a special issue of the Kenya Gazette, Supplement Number 62, has elicited strong opposition from more than 100 political parties, which have described them as exorbitant and meant to stop them from operation.

The parties have called a meeting in Nairobi today to formally denounce the new requirements and chart a way forward.

According to the legal notice obtained by the Nation, political parties are supposed to pay Sh100,000 for application for provisional registration and Sh500,000 for full registration.

In case of official searches, the parties have to part with Sh500 while application for a copy of any certificate or filed document or for a certified extract from the register will cost Sh10 per page.

ECK chairman Samuel Kivuitu published the rules as per Section 43 of the Political Parties Act.

The section empowers the commission boss to prescribe the fees but does not specify the amount.

Winding up

The section also deals with the manner of registration of parties, use, change of names, income, expenditure, the rate and manner in which funding may be granted, and winding up of a party.

On Thursday, 78 non-parliamentary parties took issue with the new requirements and questioned criteria used by ECK to come up with the Sh600,000 fee.

"Why is the amount not say Sh600 or Sh6,000," Mr Gachuru Karenge of the Kenya People's Party asked at the Centre for Multi-Party Democracy offices in Nairobi. He was accompanied by Mr David Wakau of the National Patriotic Party and Amos Mugambi of Kenya Citizens Congress.

Mr Wakau chairs a committee that groups officials from 78 non-parliamentary parties on whose behalf he spoke.

Not practical

The officials said 155 parties, except Narc-K, had confirmed taking part in Friday's meeting to petition ECK to rescind the new requirements "as they are not practical. The parties include giants ODM, PNU and ODM-Kenya, Mr Wakau said.

"We want to deal with ECK. Although the law gives it powers to make regulations for purposes of carrying out or giving effect to the Political Parties Act, it does not specify the registration fee," Mr Karenge said.

The officials said many parties could not afford the fees and that if the rules will be implemented, only two or three parties will exist.

They questioned why ECK had rushed to set the registration fee, yet the funding of political parties had not been effected.

The officials were also unhappy with the requirement that for a new party to be registered, it has to have offices in all the districts. This, they said, would only leave big political parties to dominate the scene.

According to rules ECK published, dated August 29, an application for provisional registration of a party should be submitted in duplicate along with two copies of the constitution and rules of the party.

The applicant should further have a declaration in support of the application and the name, emblem, motto and any other marks or features of the proposed political party, which shall be distinct from, and bear no resemblance to that of any other political party which has already been registered.

After meeting the requirements, the registrar will issue a certificate of provisional registration within 30 days on payment by the applicant of Sh100,000 fees.

Application for full registration must be accompanied by a declaration of two office bearers of the proposed party and certificate issued after payment of Sh500,000.

If an office bearer of a party ceases to hold office, the registrar has to be informed within 30 days while a party that changes office or postal address has to notify the registrar within 14 days.

The new rules warn that the registrar may remove a political party's entry from the register in case of the party that has been registered provisionally and has not applied for full registration within six months.

Every party has to submit to registrar a copy of an audited statement of accounts and the auditor's report on those accounts not later than six months after the end of financial year.

The parties further have to submit to the registrar annually a return related to its constitution, objects, office-bearers, membership and finances.

Office-bearers of the party have also been warned that they will be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding Sh50,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to both if a party breaches any provision of the regulations.

In an advertisement in the Nation on Wednesday, ECK told political parties that were registered under Societies Act to ensure they complied with Political Parties Act in 90 days.

The parties, acting Registrar of Parties Lucy Ndung'u said, should amend their constitution or rules to comply with the Act, failure of which they will become "unlawful political parties and shall be de-registered." Following the coming into force of the new law, the registrar of political parties will operate under ECK at its Anniversary Towers headquarters in Nairobi.

The new law spells doom for "briefcase" parties that were registered just before last year's General Election, but failed to field candidates for presidential, parliamentary or civic seats.

The strict discipline which the political parties registrar will enforce include de-registering parties that fail to field candidates at the next election or in six years.

The Act, had been welcomed by some politicians who said it will go a long way "in nurturing democracy in this country."

Why the orange revolution succeeded!

2010-02-16T07:17:00.001-05:00

The success of the Ukrainian Orange Revolution, that led to a re-run of a fraudulent presidential election, is related to a unique coincidence of factors that prevented a violent oppression of the demonstrations. The popular revolt was the motive force behind the revolution, but also defections in the security forces and foreign interference were very important for its success. It was not political parties that constituted the core of the anti-regime forces. Decisive was the support of an important part of the business and political elite for the opposition. The fact that anti-regime forces united just before the presidential elections proved to be critical. The hardening of authoritarian rule under President Kuchma occurred after the opposition had already become too powerful to be dissipated by harassment. The Orange Revolution tried to enforce its demands in the framework of the law. The fact that the constitutional court and parliament still had some autonomy proved to be crucial. The Orange Revolution was mainly based in Western and Central Ukraine and revealed a deep cultural-political divide in Ukraine. The Orange Revolution gives a unique opportunity to create a culture of democracy and to establish the rule of law.

The fragile Coalition government of Kenya!

2010-02-16T02:00:00.000-05:00

From: Akech

My fellow country men/women;
(By the way, I do not have PhD, so be kind to my rumbling below)

While most of you are taking shots at each other over the squabble between Raila and Ruto, the fragile Coalition government of Kenya is being run by the international bullies behind the scenes using paid hit men like Kofi Annan and Moreno Ocampo.

Annan and Ocampo are paid consultants representing the interests of NATO (United States, Great Britain, and Europe) in their war against terrorism. The US has invested a lot of capital in Mwai Kibaki since that State Dinner hosted by George W. Bush at Whitehouse in his honor in 2003. Because of this relationship with Mwai Kibaki, PNU is the US, Great Britain and European Union favored ruling party in Kenya.

The Mau saga and The Hague stick were merely ploys introduced to dismantle and put ODM out of commission. It would be a miracle if the Pentagon members can manage to sort out their differences and realize that those poor Kenyans who flocked their rallies were counting on them to bring real changes in Kenya! Apparently, it does not look like the big egos will allow them to do that. I wonder whether these people are not just concerned about themselves, immediate families and their close fiends.

What is more worrisome is that there are parallels between the implosion within ODM right now and what was happening in Rwanda a few months before the 1994 genocide.

(1)US has been a staunch supporter of Paul Kagame and his Rwanda Patriotic Front since its creation by Tutsi exiles in Uganda. The leaders in the RPF army were trained and equipped by US and its European allies.

(2)A year or two prior to Rwanda genocide of 1994, there were a series of power sharing negotiations between the government of Rwanda, under President Juvenal Habyarimana and the then leader of Rwanda Patriotic Front, Paul Kagame, held in Arusha, Tanzania.

(3)During these negotiations, the Rwandan government was pressured and threatened with international sanctions by the US and his European allies to grant power sharing concessions to RPF. Habyarimana granted so many concessions to RPF that made it difficult for the president to justify to his hard line supporters that he was not handing over ruling powers to a minority ethnic group, the Tutsis, under leader Paul Kagame.

During the colonial rule and shortly after independence from the Belgians, the Tutsi minority had supreme powers over the Hutus (85%) and other tribes.

(4)The last straw came just a day before the beginning of the genocide. The hardliners in Habyarimana party were unable to standby and watch what they saw as a military coup by Paul Kagame and his Tutsis minority, through continuous pressure from US and it allies. That day, the plane carrying the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana (Hutu), and Burundi President Cyprien Nitanyamira (Hutu), who were retuning from reconciliation meetings in Arusha, Tanzania, was brought down by a surface-to-air missile just, before its landing at Kigali Airport. The Rwanda genocide began a couple of hours later that night , April (6-7) 1994

(5)To date, the person or people responsible for the downing of the plane have never been identified. Yet there are international investigators in Rift Valley trying to talk to the locals to unearth who exactly incited the 2007 elections riot that killed 1,000 Kenyans.

Yet, US, France, Great Britain and the European Union have never seen it fit to employ their superior investigative methods to unearth who assassinated the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi on the eve of Rwanda genocide. They have left that single episode to speculations:- Could it have been the Hutu hardliners who were afraid of impending takeover of government by advancing Tutsis RPF, or was it Paul Kagame and it RPF, who wanted to take the power from the Hutus? The environment created was such that either side could have been responsible

************************************************************
(1)ODM has been vilified by international press since the beginning of 2007 Kenyan election campaigns.

(2)To make the Coalition Government work, Raila and ODM have made many concessions to accommodate PNU and have been, deliberately, assigned tasks which put this political party members at odds with each other, as well as their supporting Kenyan voters, who are now left dangling in the air. Yet, through Kofi Annan, more pressure is being exerted by the international powers and directed primarily at the Prime Minister and his team. The pressure has definitely taken its toll!

(3)Raila has become the axe man in implementing policies which only help put him in conflicts with his base supporters in Kenya, particularly, Rift Valley.

(4)The current implosion within ODM has created an atmosphere in which anyone outside ODM party members can harm either Ruto or Raila or both. Should something like this happen, some ODM supporters will be blamed for a nightmare like that!

**************************************************************
While ODM attention is directed towards the squabbles within Kenya, a barrage of NEW laws and rules of engagement in the newly re-created East African Community (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi), with dire consequences to Kenya and Kenyans are taking shape. The continuous disagreements between PNU and ODM in Kenya make it difficult for anybody to determine who is representing ODM’s views or or the views of those who gave them support at these EAC negotiations!

One thing is clear; the well known proxy warriors in East Africa and Lake Victoria regions, Paul Kagame and Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, are now the alpha dogs in the EAC. These are the same well trained, battle hardened Ugandan and Rwandan proxies who have been wreaking havoc in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where over a million Congolese have been killed, and a million others rotting in refugee camps!

This is the resources looting war the world is not interested talking about. Things are just getting worse with resource lootings in the Congo. New East African Community members are getting into the mineral act:

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/-/2558/670830/-/qxs6gjz/-/index.html

The borders between these five EAC countries are becoming porous. One does not need a passport to go in and out of each territory! During the 2008 political turmoil in Kenya, it was rumored that Ugandan forces were seen in Western Kenya and Kisumu District, and there has been Migingo Island issue in Lake Victoria. Next time around, it will be the Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi army chaps who will be wreaking havoc in Western and Nyanza Provinces, and they will not need a permission to come in. This is already taking shape, while majority of Kenyans’ attention is focused elsewhere!

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/-/2558/817786/-/py73rlz/-/index.html

Kofi Annan and Moreno Ocampo have not yet seen it fit to pay one visit to Laurent Nkunda, Paul Kagame’s right hand man, who is responsible for killing and damaging millions Congolese on behalf of multinational corporations. Nkunda is now living in Rwanda, negotiating the terms for his unconditional release.

What exactly did William Ruto do that has made Annan and Ocampo be hot on his trail? Is he worse than Kagame and Nkunda? I am not trying to minimize the deaths of 1,000 and displacement of 35,000 Kenyans during the 2007-2008 election turmoil. I am merely directing your attentions to what some members of EAC are doing in DRC, and what they may be capable of doing in Kenya should things fall apart!

REPEAT, WHILE KENYANS’ ATTENTION IS FOCUSSED ON POLITICAL TURMOILS WITHIN, THE EAST AFRICAN COMMUNITY LAWS WITH DIRE MILITARY AND TRADE COSEQUENCES ARE BEING SHAPED BY THE RESOURCES WAR LORDS WHO ARE NOW MEMBERS OF EAST AFRICAN COMMUNITY!

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/opOrEd/comment/-/434750/817950/-/bpuxnr/-/index.html

CALLING ON THOSE MENTIONED ADVERSLY IN THE SCANDALS TO STEP ASIDE

2010-02-11T12:40:00.002-05:00

Today our country is facing a moral and leadership crisis. Kenyans are victims of corrupt governance; we ask those who have been mentioned adversely in the maize and education fund scandals to do the appropriate thing for Kenya. Step aside! This is the only thing that will restore confidence and trust in the Kenyan government. While this investigation is still ongoing, our country cannot afford to remain engulfed in endless unfolding bickering and shift-blaming. Our government’s ability to deal on a daily basis with the fiscal and economic crises we currently face demands leadership and integrity right from the State House.

We also ask the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission to act expeditiously and bring the corrupt officials to justice. Kenyans are tired of being taken for granted. They are tired of footing bills for people who show their gratitude by vomiting on the hands that feed them. They are tired of riding in rollercoasters of embarrassing scandals time and again.

The dire fiscal situation in Kenya demands that we have leaders who can devote their full attention to serving the people of Kenya. With this clouds now over their heads, those officials clearly are encumbered in the performance of their official duties and should step aside immediately!

Margaret Chepchumba Kimosop, Vice President
Kenyan Diaspora Pro-democracy Movement
USA

AFRICA: SAD BUT TRUE! CHANGE THE LEADERS!

2010-02-10T16:16:00.001-05:00

The total income of all 55 African countries is a little more than that of Belgium.
· Africa is the world's most indebted and aid-dependent region.
· 17% of the African GNP goes towards debt repayment
· The whole continent has fewer paved roads than Poland alone.
· Africa is poorer than it was 40 years ago.
· African economies must grow at 5% annually just to maintain the current level of poverty.
· Africa looses 20,000 skilled professionals a year due to economic hardship.
· Africa has less than 10% of the world's population but 70% of the world's total HIV infection.
· 1999 world financial reports indicate that 39% of all African GNP is taken and deposited in foreign banks by selfish and corrupt leaders.
· Nigeria has more than 110 trillion standard cubic feet of gas reserve and about 10 trillion cubic feet of oil reserve, but also has an external debt of $50 billion.
· Nigeria alone produces 50% of the United States' petroleum needs.
· The continent has one of the largest water and river systems in the world, yet it suffers from drought and insufficient hydro electricity.
· A recent computer analysis of the economy of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) concluded that no one could survive there.
· By 1958, the DRC was producing 50% of the world's uranium, 75% of the world's cobalt, 70% of he world's industrial diamonds, and it was the world's largest producer of rubber. But the average income per capita in the DRC is less than 1% of that in the United States.
· With good leadership, and good resource management the DRC could feed up to 2/3 of Africa all by itself.
.With all of this potential, Africa has the world's poorest of the poor.
What is Africa lacking?

PRESS RELEASE: A CALL ON THE US GOVERNMENT TO HOLD FUNDS.

2010-02-09T14:05:00.010-05:00

On February 6th The Current Vice-President of Kenya Hon. Kalonzo Musyoka was in Washington, D.C holding talks on issues ranging from Security Issues that affect both Kenya and the United States to the current Economic Climate in Kenya. The Vice-President also attended the National Prayer Breakfast as well.

While he was meeting with officials at the State Department the Vice-President sought to have the application for the Millennium Challenge Accounts (MCA) to be fast-tracked. Although we support the effort to have American Investments made in Kenya we feel that at this time such an effort should wait until there is improvement in the amount of Corruption in Kenya..

Gerald Baraza, President
Kenyan Diaspora Pro-democracy Movement

The principal problem facing African economies

2010-02-02T13:57:00.005-05:00

The principal problem facing African economies is political, not economic in nature. Thus key in examining how Africa should respond is the question: How can one assist African leaders to make the right decisions? Or as the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown once put it, “What can Africa, empowered, do for herself?” One does not need to be a college graduate to realize that money is of itself not the sole problem facing Africa. If that was the case the continent would now be wealthy given both the volume of aid squandered and the amount of mon¬ey moved and hoarded offshore in oversees banks and businesses. Hard as it may sound, the reality is that the solution to Africa’s myriad problems goes beyond simple accounting to a rather intricate and critical-to-apply formula of-GOVERNANCE, POLITICAL MATURATION, and STATEMANSHIP. One can write volumes of books on any of these subjects but that’s not my goal today.

A second major need in Africa is the need to create productive capacity within African countries. Many of you may understand that the collapse of Africa’s trade did not happen because of trade barriers. It was due to a collapse in productive output. No country or continent can thrive economically if its productivity in the vital sectors is lacking. The critical aspect to trade is less concerned with “how” countries might trade than “what” they might trade. African countries MUST invest time, energy and resources on the study of what they might actually be making and trading in the future that they are not now. Those of us who have had the privilege of living in developed countries know how hard it is to penetrate Western markets. Even those who were born and raised here work hard to understand the markets before they can venture into serious business.

Another crucial thing that we need to pay attention to is African institutions. An efficient economy requires a free society. The institutions of a free society, including property rights, the rule of law, and democracy are critical to the thriving of any economy. In essence, this translates into putting in place the global rules of operation that make for such competitiveness and investor attractiveness, which make economies more competitive. This involves deregulation and de-subsidization while lessening the burdensome bureaucracy, improving the workers’ skills, and formulating policies and laws without vested interests. Competition and competitiveness matter to long-term economic health.

Let me be quick to point out that improving or growing the economy of each African country is going to require a strategy that is tailor-made for that country. There is a presumption that improvements in governance in and of themselves will be sufficient in uplifting Africa. According to Lord Denis Healey, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, “Governance comes and goes, but the rules of arithmetic and geography remain the same. In other words, legislators should make laws bearing in mind what they want their country to achieve in 50-100 years to come not one year or one electio circle!

Indeed it is sad and regrettable that Kenya is still rightly lumped together with other poorly performing countries where growth rates are low (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Zambia) or where they face severe ecological problems (such as Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger). Kenya has had unequalled advantages in terms of academic intellectuals, political stability, great donor relations and unmatched entrepreneurial spirit among her people. It beats every logic to see how economic development could not be realized.

Kenyans have a chance to change their destiny in 2012 by electing a new breed of leaders who will not only live and perform above parochial and divisive politics but also help to nurture and promote the same on the whole continent. We in the diaspora are committed to working hand in hand with other Kenyans to ensure that only leaders with a vision for the country are elected.

Face to face with Shikuku!

2010-01-30T11:44:00.001-05:00

By Shad Bulimo, August 3, 2009
Where in the world do you start writing a story spanning 56 years? In the beginning there was Joseph Martin Olukhanya but his father Johana Oyondi called him simply Shikuku. He started life as a seminarian at St Peter’s Seminary in Mukumu, Kakamega. His teacher, the late Mwalimu Matayo Shiundu Mukenya from Mumias described him as ‘’a clever and naughty boy.” It was a trait that was to catapult Shikuku into national limelight when at the age of 20 he quit the calling of serving the Lord to embrace the urgent need to emancipate his people from the yoke of colonialism.
But not before he tried to find a career that would earn him a living. His first job was a laboratory assistant at Magadi Soda. Although he liked his job, Magadi Soda was located in a remote outpost it did not suit a gregarious individual like Shikuku who got a kick by being closer to crowds. Consequently, he quit the chemical firm and found work as a train guard in Nairobi, the first African to hold that post.

Work in the Railways was considered a posh job in those days and Shikuku used the position to poise himself strategically. Although he had become politically aware aged only six in 1939 and was active since 1952 when Mau Mau fronted struggle for uhuru, it was not until 1960 that Shikuku was elected by Kadu as the national youth leader. Now well positioned to put his debating skills to good use, his first most important task was to travel to London as part of a delegation that was to negotiate the constitution of independent Kenya at Lancaster House, London.
The rest as they say is history. Shikuku has for five decades been at the centre of politics in Kenya. He is one of the few politicians recognisable across the land. He never made allegations in Parliament which he could not substantiate; a feat few politicians can boast of. Similarly he could not be bought or corrupted. When the powers that be felt he had gone overboard and was snooping too closely on their vested interests, at best they threw him into detention.

Across the land, mothers named their children after him and while his singular campaign against the bourgeoisie earned him the epithet ‘’People’s Watchman,’’ the story of Shikuku is larger than the man himself. Although his physique took a thorough beating in detention, his spirit is unbroken and at 76, he is still eloquent and the fire in the man undiminished. It is therefore befitting that the story of this courageous individual from Butere, Western Province, is told by Joseph Martin Shikuku (son of Oyondi) himself.

Detention by Kenyatta in 1975:
I was making a contribution to a motion on the JM Kariuki Murder Inquiry in Parliament when Clement Lubembe (then MP for Shinyalu) challenged me and I said “You want to kill this motion the way Kanu was killed.” At which point, Lubembe rose on a point of order that I should substantiate. “There is no need to substantiate the obvious,” came the famous rebuttal from Jean Marie Seroney , who was in the Speaker’s seat. Kenyatta who was given to listening to parliamentary debates on his ‘’kameme’’ (radio link) at State House, immediately dispatched special branch officers who arrested me and Seroney inside the precincts of parliament.

I was detained at all of Kenya’s four maximum security prisons – Manyani, Kamiti, Shimo la Tewa and Naivasha. Detention is supposed to kill you. If you have never been to detention in Kenya, here is a glimpse. As a detainee, you live in a block of cells within the prison fortified with a 25 ft wall. The cells are 7 ft by 13 ft and a ventilation of 4 by 4 inches with two four inch steel bar. You have a bucket for a toilet. You do not see anyone or hear anything. Food is passed to you like a dog through a small opening. I was not allowed to read anything. I was given the Bible only after two years. For beddings, I slept on cold cement floor rolled up in only one blanket. My legs suffered.

I hear that Kenyatta died:
I am tempted to believe that Kenyatta was a son of Satan. He was a very harsh leader even Ian Smith gave better treatment to Zimbabwean detainees. Colonialists allowed Kenyatta his conjugal rights with Mama Ngina even as he was in detention. But when my mother died, I was not informed nor given the telegram sent by my brother informing me of her demise in August 1978. I only knew about my mother’s death four months after her death on 12 December 1978 when I was released by Moi. It was then that I also heard Kenyatta had died . I emerged from detention on crutches, physically weakened but spiritually unbroken. One of the serious blows I suffered in detention was the loss of my diaries. They confiscated all my diaries which contained personal memoirs and contacts. That is irreplaceable. They also took away my fire arm and up to today it has never been returned to me.

Luhya unity:
One of the problems facing Luhya unity is the fact that we did not come from the same father and mother unlike say, the Kikuyu or Luo. Each Luhya sub tribe was a nation by itself. One way forward is to forge unity in blocks starting with those tribes that are closely related geographically and linguistically. This may take the form of Marama, Tsotso, Wanga, Shisha (Kisa), Nyore, Idakho, Isukha, Manyala ( Ndombi), Kabras (Abalasi) Maragoli, Tiriki forming one block; and Bukusu, Tachoni forming another block with the third block consisting of Busia tribes of Manyala, Samia, Bakhayo and Marachi.

Organisations like Abeingo Community Network can play a crucial role in uniting the Luhya. But also the youth are more enlightened and cosmopolitan and therefore have a better chance of driving this initiative which is crucial for our economic empowerment and pride as a people.

Luhya heroes:
Musa Amalemba: Moses (Musa) Amalemba (immortalised by an estate bearing his name in Kakamega) pioneered initial steps at forging Luhya unity. Before independence Amalemba from Idakho formed Buluhya Political Union (BPU) as the voice of the Luhya in the political dispensation emerging in Kenya at the time. When he had a position in Kenya Airways, he was not ashamed to employ Luhyas.

Canon Jeremiah Musungu Awori: I am a great admirer of Canon Awori for his contribution to the intellectual stock in Luhyaland. He sired 18 children from one wife – a record – all of whom have gone on to achieve great things. Some are scientists while others are doctors, politicians and businessmen. Some of the notable Aworis include the former vice president, Moody Awori, former chairman of Nation Media, Hannington Awori, the late Prof Nelson Awori carried out the first kidney transplant in East Africa while in Uganda, Aggrey Awori once challenged Yoweri Museveni to Ugandan presidency.

Moses Mudavadi: Mudavadi had Luhyaism in him. When he was in a position to help, he would help Luhya people first. For instance, when he was minister for local government, City Hall was like a Luhya village. And when he was minister for education, it is open secret that the majority of untrained Luhya teachers got employed by his direct intervention. Politically we did not see eye to eye as he was part of an oppressive system of Moi dictatorship which I was fighting. He rigged me out during the 1989 by after the death of Jesse Eshikhati Opembe. He used the vast provincial administration machinery to declare John Okwara the winner in the mulolongo elections although Okwara had polled 2,000 voted and I had over 5,000. When Okwara refused he was told he was being given leadership because he was Kanu and Shikuku was in opposition. Okwara’s supporters swamped his home to celebrate but conscientious Okwara told them to go away as he was not the winner and therefore could not celebrate.

Cyrus Jirongo: Unlike his contemporaries, I find that Jirongo is not afraid to take the bull by the horns. At least he tries to reach out to the community or involve himself in things that matter to the community. He has been chairman of AFC Leopards and was instrumental in setting up the Luhya Council of Elders which he funded. Ibrahim Ambwere was chairman with Burudi Nabwera and me as the other committee members. However, he seems to be interested in these initiatives for short term gain and when we refused to endorse him for president, he abandoned us.

Youthful leaders from Luhyaland:
People like Dr Bonny Khalwale (MP for Shinyalu) and Ababu Namwamba (MP for Budalang’i) have the potential to bypass Mudavadi in national leadership. However politics is a long haul undertaking and already Namwamba is limping after blundering with the maize scandal in parliament. If you live in a glass house, you should be the last to thrown stones at anyone. And if the target is big like the First Family, make sure you use boulders. But the moment you come to the House breathing fire, drag the name of the first lady in the maize scandal only to apologise the following day, you are finished. I never made any statement in the House which I could not substantiate nor did I ever withdraw any statement. That is my legacy. And while Khalwale is gaining inroads into Luhyaland and challenging Mudavadi, he needs to begin spreading his wings beyond western to have any serious chance of bidding for the presidency.

Kenneth Marende:
As House Speaker, I feel he has done a great job so far. I was pleased with his historic ruling when he defied the executive’s appointment of Kalonzo Musyoka, the vice president as leader of government business. That ruling defused tension that was threatening to tear the country apart again. I am glad he is emphasising standing orders and bringing discipline to parliament.

Other Kenyan personalities:
Jaramogi Oginga Odinga:
My relationship with Odinga was never hostile. I warned him in 1960 against his faith in the Kikuyu. In 1962, the colonial government asked Odinga to form a government but true to his nationalist credentials, he declined to be part of any independent dispensation until Kenyatta was released from jail . It is a decision that came to haunt him. Soon after Kenyatta became prime minister then president, the two began falling apart on matters of political ideology. Their rift peaked in 1966 when Kenyatta diluted Odinga’s position by creating eight regional power blocks in Limuru. Angry Odinga resigned, quit Kanu and formed Kenya People’s Union which was proscribed three years later and with that began Odinga’s long journey in political wilderness. My warning came to pass.

History was to repeat itself between Odinga’s son, Raila and Mwai Kibaki when the former endorsed the latter for president and signed a memorandum of understanding that would give Odinga the premiership in a unity government but no sooner did Kibaki take the oath of office as president and commander in chief of the armed forces, than he consigned the memorandum to the dustbin; never to see light of day again.

Kikuyu language has no THANK YOU. My own experience with Kenneth Matiba in Ford was no different. In 1992 I campaigned hard for him in Western Province where he defeated Moi but when I stood for president in 1997, Matiba neither campaigned for me anywhere nor did I get any support from Central Province.

Josiah Mwangi Kariuki:
When JM Kariuki went missing in 1975, there was heightened tension in the country. I was friends with him. I introduced him to the Hilton Hotel sauna. I knew his body well. While Moi was busy misleading the House that JM safe, George Giithi, editor of Nation was misleading Kenyans that JM was on a business trip to Zambia. I smelt a rat because the Hilton workers told me they had seen JM leave Hilton in Ben Gethi’s white Mercedes Benz. It later transpired that he was taken to Ngong Forest where he was shot dead and left to be devoured by hyenas. Luckily some Masai herdsmen discovered an unidentified body which was subsequently removed to the mortuary.

JM’s wife called me to say she understands the body found in Ngong was JM’s. I quickly organised a party of individuals including his family to rush to City Mortuary. When we arrived, one body was lying on the table ready for collection by a group of “Luo” men. After failing to find JM’s body in the compartments, something told me to check the body on the table. And behold; I saw the marks that I had seen in our many sessions in the sauna and winked to JM’s wife. She verified them. At which point, we shouted this is JM. The “Luo” men sitting on the bench just disappeared. Following Tom Mboya’s assassination, I told JM to second a motion I was planning to table in Parliament to probe the death of Mboya. JM refused. I told him today it is Mboya, tomorrow it is you or me. It came to pass.

Charles Mugane Njonjo:
When the msaliti (traitor) issue cropped up, I called Njonjo in the presence of witnesses and told him that I had evidence he was the msaliti; courtesy of his financial dealings in Britain, America and South Africa. I told him that if he resigned from his job as minister for constitutional affairs, there the matter would end and I would not table the documents. Arrogant Njonjo just walked away. Few politicians dared cross his path. Just ask Peter Kibisu (Sabatia), Mark Mwithaga (Nakuru), and Waruru Kanja (Nyeri). He used to keep files on everyone and woe unto you if you had any skeletons in the cupboard. When it suited him or his masters, Njonjo would pass your file to the prosecutor marked urgent. Luckily for me, I never had any such fears. I tabled the documents during the morning session. In the afternoon, Njonjo rose and said he had had a good look at the documents and … (prolonged pose) ‘’they were correct.’’ He resigned with immediate effect.

Margaret Thatcher:
In 1986, I gave a speech at the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) conference in London and accused the British government of double standards. I pointed out that Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister of UK because her Conservative party had won majority seats at Westminster so why does a minority white regime in South Africa govern the majority blacks in South Africa and yet UK is mum about this glaring anomaly. Apparently that speech was so eloquent and factual word got to Thatcher who immediately sought a private audience with me. Among other things, I told her countries like Angola and Mozambique are not communist; they only turned East because they are neglected by the West. Shortly afterwards, Angola and Mozambique were invited to join the Commonwealth. When Thatcher came to Mumias, she sent me a private invitation to join her for lunch. Moi was shocked to see me seated on the second row at the luncheon.

Wisdom from my father, Johana Oyondi:
My father was a wise man. He taught me that I should not encourage borrowing or lending for this causes feuds and schisms. However if you must lend, he cautioned, do so only as a last resort; but you must immediately write off the loan in your mind. And should your debtor repay you, give thanks to God and take 10% to Church as an offering. If your debtor has reneged on repayment, do not go for him. Instead make a conscious effort to avoid him; for his quilt may drive him to kill you.

Second Liberation – Fight for multipartyism

From left Martin Shikuku, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Masinde Muliro. Second frame from right: Ngala Mwendwa and Shikuku – only two remaining attendees of the first Lancaster Conference in London that negotiated independent Kenya’s constitution.

We formed Ford in 1990 because Moi’s tyranny had reached epic proportions. Like a cat pushed to the wall, we felt we had nowhere to run to but fight back. When we sought a license to hold a rally at Kamukunji on November 16 1991 and it was refused, we announced that the rally will go on with or without a license. Thousands came but were beaten or killed by police among them, a 24-year old young man called Amakhumba from Kisa, kakamega. I remember playing hide and seek with police in the streets of Nairobi until we outmanoeuvred them. Riding on top of a pick up with Masinde Muliro (now deceased) and James Orengo (now minister for lands and MP for Ugenya), we dodged bullets as we drove to Kamukunji. And although the rally did not take place, the message was loud and clear. A year later, Moi yielded to local and international pressure and scrapped the notorious Section 2a of the constitution to allow multiparty politics.

Fighting for second liberation: Shikuku with a microphone, Masinde Muliro (2nd left) and James Orengo (right) on top of a pick up driving to Kamukunji on November 16 1991 to hold a rally which Moi’s government thwarted with fatal consequences.

2012 Presidential Candidates:
Consider the current line up of Raila Odinga, Musalia Mudavadi, Kalonzo Musyoka, William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta. Of the five, Uhuru has no vision other than to perpetuate the status quo which is the only thing he knows. Musyoka, on the other hand is stuck with the traitor label and will struggle to get votes outside his Kamba community. Ruto is ambitious but outside the North Rift, I doubt he commands a national following as yet. As for Mudavadi, he is struggling even within his own community, let alone other parts of Kenya. That leaves Raila as the only candidate with any serious chance of bagging the 2012 presidential elections as far as I can see.

Luhya presidency:
I am the only Luhya to have stood for president of the republic of Kenya. That was in 1997. A Luhya may yet become the president of Kenya but presidential elections require tonnes of money. However, majority of Luhya people are straight and don’t have money on a scale you see in central province. Am afraid, unless we unite and get rich, we will continue to play second fiddle. Nonetheless, the Luhya remain the most democratic tribe in Kenya with representation across the political divide.

Politicians should be celibate:
I strongly believe a good politician should be celibate. If you want to work in the service of people, do not get married. A married person must compromise for the sake of his family and must call white yellow to save his job because his family relies on it. I have always called a spade a spade; not a big spoon and paid for it. When my mother, Lucia Andeche heard a rumour that I had died in detention, she travelled to Nairobi to find out if it was true. At Kamiti, she was told I was alive and fine but when she demanded to see me, she was rebuffed and so she returned to Butere broken hearted believing I was dead. She lost her appetite and died shortly afterwards of hunger. All my wives and children have also suffered a great deal only because they are a Shikuku. To me politics is a calling and that’s why I am still politicking. If I had joined politics to make money or become powerful, I would have quit a long time ago. I shall die a Politian, the people’s Watchman.

People’s watchman:
I was called people’s watchman because throughout my career I have always fought the corner of poor people. I am not saying that am poor. A doctor does not have to have gonorrhoea to treat a patient with the disease. It is just that my faith and conscience cannot be compromised. That is why to this day, I can speak my mind without fear or favour. And because I have always been consistent and honest, I gained the trust of common mwananchi during my time in parliament. A lot of the documents I tabled in the House were passed to me by wananchi.

Ugali at State House:
I want to set the record straight with regards to the ugali issue. Moi and I come a long way. We both belonged to KADU and despite political differences we’re are still friends and talk often. When I was accused of betraying the cause of Ford by allegedly being bribed ugali, I want to state the following. True Moi invited me to his residence at Kabarnet Gardens in Nairobi. Accompanying me was Japheth Shamalla, the lawyer and former MP for Shinyalu. Over a meal of ugali and chicken, I took the opportunity to tell Moi to stop his police from killing innocent people. I told him Kanu will not win the 1992 elections. I told him, he won’t get a single MP from either Central or Nyanza provinces and in Western, he’ll be lucky to get 35%. All this came to pass. I campaigned for Kenneth Matiba and he got 62% of the total votes in Western province which I had predicted. Since when does eating with a friend become a bribe? How can I be bribed and still fight against my alleged corrupter and win?

Paper citizens:
The question of Asians has been at the centre of Kenya’s political and economic dispensation since independence. The Asians have never been my friends. When I want a shirt, I go to an Asian shop buy one and go. I don’t like them because they taught Moi corruption and I don’t like that. At independence, they had a choice of citizenship. Majority chose Kenyan citizenship yet they continued to siphon money out of Kenya. Citizens must demonstrate patriotism but if you live in Kenya yet your heart is elsewhere, then you are a ‘’paper citizen” that is to say a citizen in paper only.

I’ll give you two examples. There was an Asian MP in Kisumu who was also an assistant minister for tourism in Kenyatta’s government. While abroad on official duties, he wrote to Kenyatta resigning. He never returned to Kenya. Then there was Joginder Singh, the rally driver dubbed, “Simba wa Kenya”. He fled Kenya under circumstances known only to him after selling his prestigious office block in Nairobi to the Libyans and money paid overseas. Someone like Kamlesh Pattni is very clever. Look how he exploited greed among our people to bleed the country dry using an elaborate scam known as Goldenberg? Pattni made sure he ensnared all the big wigs in both the ruling Kanu and opposition. When he asked to meet me, I refused. No community can be 100% good or bad but I wish I could meet a good Asian.

Grave digger:
I got stick from Bukusu traditionalists and some Christians for digging my own grave in Kimilili Settlement Plot Number 259 in Bungoma where I live but I tell you preparing your final resting place is not unchristian as some people would have you believe. Jesus of Nazareth was buried in a grave that belonged to Joseph of Arimathea. It was a common practice to prepare your final resting place and that is the tradition that I am following. That is my answer to my Christian critics. As for Bukusu traditionalists, I told them that I am not a Bukusu and therefore not in breach of their traditions.

I have done all this so that I do not become a burden to anybody when I die. In fact at any one time, I keep four bags of maize and four bullocks to feed mourners. In my funeral, I do no want speeches from politicians or church service from priests. I do not want people shedding crocodile tears in my funeral. The only thing I want is eshiremba , a Luhya funeral rite where cattle are driven past the dead person while men sing war songs and engage in mock fight (equivalent of the 21-gun salute).

Regrets:
My biggest regret is fighting colonialism. It pains me to see children dying of hunger and disease and yet we fought colonial rule primarily so that we can provide basic needs of housing, health, education and food for all our people. But since Kenyatta took over, as a country Kenya has become a private club of a few billionaires while millions of poverty-stricken families roam the land in empty search of livelihood. Moi continued this trend through “fuata nyayo” philosophy and Kibaki for all his talk of zero tolerance has actually become the biggest apologist for looters and thieves. So I am quite disappointed and ashamed that for millions of Kenyans, the struggle for uhuru has not yielded fruits of independence and many recall the days of colonialism with nostalgia.

Foreign travel:
I have travelled widely in my capacity as member and African representative of CPA and Chairman of Kenya Arab Friendship Society, secretary general of Kadu and Ford. I have been to all countries of Africa except Chad and Gabon to all European countries. I have made several trips to the Middle East as the chairman of the Kenya Arab Friendship Society. I have also been to several states in the United States and Canada as well as South America and Asia. The only countries I have not been to are Australia, New Zealand and the south pacific islands. These travels have expanded my horizons and enriched my understanding of different politico-economic systems immensely. I only wish Kenya leaders seek positions to serve the country rather than themselves. There is plenty to learn out there.

Invitation by Angolan Parliament:
Being an expert in commonwealth parliamentary etiquette, the Angolan Parliament invited me to Luanda to give a speech. I educated Angolan MPs on how to make their contribution effective and keep government on its knees. When they started implementing these procedures, Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos wondered what had happened. He was told a certain man by the name of Shikuku from Kenya had been in town to talk to MPs. He demanded that I should be invited to talk to his ministers as well.

Future of Kenya:
If we do not address the question of historical injustices and resource distribution, what you saw happen during the post election violence of 2007-08 will come to pass as a rehearsal to a bloodier proletariat revolution. The symptoms are everywhere. Anyone who cares deeply about our country can see where we are going. We must act now to forestall bloodletting. There seems to be a deliberate attempt by the ruling class to wish away Agenda Four of National Accord . However history shows that you cannot oppress all the people all the time. I can see people saying enough is enough and what is their life worth anyway. I mean the world is dotted with examples of people-driven revolutions.

For 20 years we have been fighting to have a new constitution that will do away with imperial powers of the presidency. I am only one of two remaining individuals who attended the first Lancaster House Conference – the other one being Ngala Mwendwa. I was there in the beginning and will push to be there in the end so long as I shall live. That is why issues to do with the constitution touch my heart. That is why I have kept this issue alive through my ‘’Katiba Watch’’ campaigns when others are wont to maintaining the status quo. In the end it is not what Shikuku thinks that matters. It is what the will of the people desires that will ultimately prevail.

Family:
Children: Shikuku has eight sons and eight daughters. Sons – Michael Majimbo, Sylvano Madanji, Emmanuel, Timothy Oyondi (UK), Abraham Andayi, Jacob Andeche, Stephen Ashiembi and Joseph Martin Shikuku Junior (deceased). Girls – Omusirikwa (married), Serila (deceased), Lucia, Maende (married), Martha Olenyo (married), Julia, Ayuka and Amunga (married).

Wives: Shikuku married four wives. Joska Indeche (deceased), Dolly Achieng from Alego (former Kenya Broadcasting Corporation announcer – deceased), Beverley Ongecha from Ebusakami, Bunyore (sister to William Ngah, the former Fifa referee – deceased) and Frida Nafuna from Mwibale, Bungoma.

Siblings: Silvanos Madanji (deceased), Domtilla Aloyo Oyondi, Wilfrida Alwang’a Oyondi, Ambrose Oluchiri Oyondi, Dr Lwali Oyondi (former MP for Nakuru), Peter Leo Murunga (former head of Hansard) and Victoria Obanda.

Mother: Lucia Andeche daughter of Olukhanya from Abashirotsa clan in Kisa (deceased).
Father: Johanna Oyondi son of Madanji. Madanji married Maende from Ebusiekwe Ebukolo, Bunyore (daughter of Nganyi, the famous rainmaker). Oyondi had one sister, Otenyo and three brothers: Atita, Titus Olendo and Alfred Ombunga.

Clan ancestry: I am from the Aberecheya clan whose earliest known ancestor is Abuti. From Abuti is descendent Ashibambo who was one of the elders seating on Nabongo’s council. A famous trait of Aberecheya is that they will never attack you from the back.

Shikuku and Shad Bulimo, the editor of Abeingo Community Network

Interviewer: Shad Bulimo, editor of www.abeingo.org, an online portal of the Luhya community. Interview conducted in Cambridge, England where Shikuku is a fellow of the Wolfson College, University of Cambridge writing his memoirs

An Attempt to Delay Justice in Kenya!

2010-01-27T09:05:00.000-05:00

By Scott A Morgan

Although there has virtually no mention of this effort in the American Media there is currently an effort to delay justice in Kenya after the horrific aftermath following the Presidential Elections of January 2008.

Since the reaction that resulted in scores of Kenyans dead, millions more internally displaced and a Coalition Government comprised of the long ruling KANU (Kenyan African National Union) and the relatively new ODM (Orange Democratic Movement). At this time there are still concerns regarding Corruption with the Government in Nairobi.

But I digress back to the concern. One of the Actions taken by the Coalition Government was to address the causes of the violence in order to prevent such an occurrence from happening again. The Situation would also be investigated by the International Criminal Court as well. This is where the problem would begin earlier this month.

It starts on January 7 in Nairobi. At that time an Opposition Member of Parliament and some Human Rights Advocates held a Press Conference to raise some concerns. The reason that was given was that they had concerns that someone was trying to stop the ICC (International Criminal Court) from properly Investigating what happened in Kenya. And then events started moving quickly.

Within 48 hours two briefs were filed with the ICC at The Hague. One was by the IADL (International Association of Democratic Lawyers). The Motive behind this brief is unknown. This is their first ever involvement with Kenyan Politics ever. Those on the Conservative Persuasion will realize that in their view they take on what would be considered to be Left-Leaning Causes. The Other brief was filed by two American Professors. Their brief contends that the ICC overstepped their boundaries as Kenya does currently have an internal mechanism to investigate the violence. The Other Reason why they filed their brief is that they don’t think that Crimes Against Humanity occurred but that it was a matter of civil unrest.

When the US Undersecretary of State Jendayi Frazier went to Nairobi in an effort to stop the violence she believed that Crimes Against Humanity did actually take place there. At this time the ICC Prosecutor recently wrote Kenyan Authorities to express his concern about some witnesses to the violence being intimidated. It appears that someone has decided to cover their tracks as best as possible and delay justice to the People of Kenya.
The earliest action on these briefs can be taken on Feb. 11th or 12th. The week before the ICC Prosecutor will be in Washington. Hopefully the efforts to promote Justice in Kenya will be able to move forward. Because if this effort to stop the ICC investigation succeeds here then who knows what will happen in Uganda and the Congo.

The Author Publishes Confused Eagle on the Internet and Comments on US Policy Towards Africa. Confused Eagle can be found at confusedeagle.livejournal.com

Universities: When crisis management is not enough!

2010-01-25T02:57:00.002-05:00

Take a clever academic. Give him (it is usually a he) time and money for research. Watch his reputation grow. See how he takes charge of his department, gaining a taste for academic politics and networking. Look how he jumps into the university hierarchy and before long is working all the hours God gave him as a pro-vice-chancellor, doing the dirty jobs for the vice-chancellor, the university top dog.

Our successful don may be trying to continue with his own research as well, but you can be sure he has precious little time for his wife and family or for any training in how to be a university manager.

Universities in the UK are run by relatively untrained people who have landed the job through being good academics. They may be running outfits with budgets of £200m-£300m a year, but they are doing so without the preparation given to captains of industry. Some have ended up at the top almost by chance. There is very little training for vice-chancellors, except for a one-year-old programme at the Universities and Colleges Staff Development Agency, and there is no salary structure at all.

It's not surprising then that people - among them Treasury mandarins - believe that universities are poorly managed. Professor Maurice Kogan, of Brunel University, says: "Most have tried hard. For the most part, however, I think that the quality of academic leadership is poor. The senior managers find it difficult to combine the collegial aspect - understanding what the academics are doing and gaining their assent to change - with actually running the institution."

Which is why Professors Gareth Williams and Michael Shattock of London's Institute of Education are creating a new Master's degree to help higher education do the job better (see box). "There are clearly some disaster stories around," says Professor Williams. "It is generally thought that some of the universities at the top of the league table are among the least well-managed institutions. Their success comes from individual members of staff and research groups."

The disasters include Thames Valley University, the former polytechnic which ran into trouble in 1997 after an inquiry by the university watchdog, the Quality Assurance Agency. Vice-chancellor Mike Fitzgerald was forced to resign and troubleshooter Sir William Taylor was parachuted in to sort the place out. Student numbers plummeted and the university is only now beginning to pull itself up under the stewardship of Professor Ken Barker who built up De Montfort University in Leicester.

Stories abound about poor personnel management in all universities - staff not knowing what's going on, or the vice-chancellor being ignorant of what's happening in university departments. There is talk of faculties out of control, of a lack of staff development and of academics finding crafty ways not to co-operate with edicts from the centre.

Not surprisingly, the trade unions are particularly critical. "I think an awful lot of universities are very badly run," says Tom Wilson, head of the universities department of the lecturers' union, NATFHE (National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education). "Vice-chancellors are the chief executives, but we have found many don't know how many staff they employ, how much they're paid or what their payroll is. As a result, they're not doing a very good job. They resort to a series of fixes and fudges to balance the books."

If you can't gather reliable information about 60 per cent of your spending - the staff costs - you're in trouble, according to David Triesman, general secretary of the Association of University Teachers.

In general, very few university leaders are prepared for the strategic job of running a large enterprise and knitting together the different bits, he adds. "That's a pity because we have some very good strategic management training in the United Kingdom now. In private industry, senior managers are trained to look at the options they face, assign an order of priorities and plan their financial management accordingly. That doesn't happen in higher education."

Other professions run proper training programmes. Civil servants have the Civil Service Staff College, and private- sector managers take MBAs to hone their management skills. But universities have not, until recently, thought it necessary to do the same.

That is odd given that their managers are working under considerable stress. Research by Professor Rosemary Deem at Lancaster University shows that they are clocking up 60- to 70-hour weeks - more than that claimed by those in private industry working long hours.

It is in fact widely accepted that running a university is an almost impossible task. In the old days, a vice-chancellor's job was like that of a conductor controlling bright if awkward chaps in a stable environment.

Today, it has almost become crisis management - how to keep the institution afloat in a world of change, when your budget is being cut but you can't control the input, the number of students, or your funding, and where you're having to account constantly to government for the quality of teaching and research.

The financial squeeze on universities, beginning in the early 1980s, brought with it a command hierarchy superimposed on the old collegiate structures. That hasn't worked particularly well, according to Professor Alan Smithers, of Liverpool University, because academics have sometimes felt put upon and have reacted by not co-operating.

"Under the old system, universities couldn't respond rapidly enough to the changing environment," he says. "You need something that can do that but it mustn't be Stalinist. You need to involve people collectively. If you keep sending out orders, they will find imaginative ways of ignoring you."

In 1981, a report by top businessman Sir Alex Jarratt recommended vice-chancellors be seen as the chief executives of their institutions. Dons interpreted this as meaning that the authority of the vice-chancellor should be rooted in being a good manager rather than a towering intellect. But, according to a new book, University Leadership: The Role of the Chief Executive, the ability of a vice-chancellor to prevail by sheer managerial will is still constrained. The top dog can't lord it over his or her academic colleagues - at least not for long and not very effectively - because it doesn't work.

Professor Heather Eggins, director of the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) believes, however, that a university can be turned round by a good chief executive. Next week, the society is holding a seminar, sponsored by The Independent, in order to discuss the issue.

One place being transformed is Queen's Belfast, where Professor George Bain, formerly director of the London Business School, has got rid of professors weak in research. "What we're trying to do is to change an organisation that, for a whole set of reasons particular to Northern Ireland, had trouble changing rapidly," he says. The university has recruited 100 new people: it entered 74 per cent of academics in the 1996 research-assessment exercise; it will be entering more than 90 per cent next year.

Another man with vision and a strong desire to improve his university's reputation is Professor Bob Burgess of Leicester University. Formerly of Warwick, he has the experience of having helped to manage a stunningly successful institution which is now near the top of the research league table and has an enviable record for raising money from outside sources.

The new man at Thames Valley, Professor Barker, says one of the key qualities for a vice-chancellor is managing a budget creatively. "It's not just about housekeeping but a more comprehensive approach to financial management, including dealing with finance houses and taking financial risks."

Previously, Thames Valley saw its mission as teaching rather than research, and taking students who would not otherwise have got degrees. Unfortunately, that did not help its income stream. Now it is trying to build up research. Professor Barker has divided the university into three faculties and is hoping to blaze a trail in new vocational directions. He is trusting that growth will follow and the money will flow.

The first SRHE Millennium seminar, sponsored by 'The Independent', on institutional leadership is on 3 October at Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education. The speaker is Professor Keith Robbins, Vice-chancellor of the University of Wales, Lampeter. Further details:020-7637 2766

'University Leadership: The Role of the Chief Executive', by Catherine Bargh, Jean Bocock, David Smith and Peter Scott, OUP, £19.99

l.hodges@independent.co.uk

The Real Secrets of Success-The Asian Way!

2010-01-09T09:18:00.003-05:00

Two days ago I was driving my three daughters to school in the morning when the subject of the three things that the State of Michigan needs to do if it is to get out of the economic limbo that it finds itself in came up on NPR radio. A number of suggestions were given but one clear point opened my girls’ eyes. Competition! They came to understand that a few decades ago the children in Michigan were “competing” with their peers in Ohio and Indiana. Today they not only have to compete with peers all across the USA but also those in Asia! A lot of US jobs are being outsourced to Asia and Latin American countries so not only must my girls in Michigan study subjects and acquire skills that will give them an edge over their peers in the neighboring states but also in Asia! This then led me and my girls to start asking ourselves what it was that the Asians were doing that was giving them an advantage over the Americans.

This is what we agreed on. The real secret of the Asian’s success is not cheap labor. Its not apparent disregard of copyright laws and general rules that sometimes make it “hard” to get ahead in economics in US and other countries. Its not dictatorship or authoritarianism in the Asian countries. The real secret of their success is mind-numbing hard work, discipline and sacrifice in many sectors of their lives!

Anyone in Asia who wants to succeed in life today be it in academics, business or politics must be pragmatic. They understand that luck may only take you so far but it will take sheer practicality to keep you at the top and multiply your success. As much as many countries of the world would like to admire the United States of America and emulate her success strategies, scholars are pointing out that the real success stories that developing nations ought to look at and learn from are the Asian countries like Japan, Taiwan, and China. The pragmatic way of life in these countries has not only seen them climb to the top of the economic ladder but also has ensured that their culture is not polluted by practices that erode the very fabric of their success.

Studies are showing that generations in these Asian countries have been moving steadily from poverty to wealth through sheer hard work. They have been moving from being unskilled to highly-paid professionals in very lucrative fields. They have also managed to preserve the essential ingredients of their social life by preserving their cultural values and resisting temptations to ape the West. It is remarkable to observe that many Asian generations that have migrated to the US still hold on to their cultural beliefs. It is little wonder that many of them have avoided going to jail and instead made strides in the business and academic worlds. This has in turn resulted in them achieving a higher life expectancy than even the Americans. They have also taken a strong hold on the crucial sectors of science and technology that are pivotal to the economic growth of any country. The end result is that the Americans now need the Asians. They have no choice. Wish the same could be said about Africans and other races.

One other aspect of life that other people can learn from the Asians as far as their pragmatism is concerned is how they prioritize their “issues” and “headlines”. Unlike the American and other societies, Asians don’t waste their valued time and resources debating and fighting over issues of little or no significance like what the first lady wore on that occasion or whose turn it is to “eat” or who should have more powers that who.

Asians laugh at Americans and other nations when they see what we are wasting our time on. The Asian media does not spend weeks and months scrutinizing ones personal life. That is none of their business. It doesn’t help their economy and politics to mature. No! It does not. That is not to say that those matters are not there in their countries. They are there but they are no one’s priority and they are not of any value to the general economic growth of their society given the fact that they have daunting economic and scientific challenges.

Instead of channeling their energy, time and resources on non-issues they focus on science, technology, the economy and other more valuable issues. The Asians are also not polarized along tribal or political lines. They subscribe to various political beliefs but they do not let their politics to get in the way of economic advancement. Wish the “red” and “blue” states of the US could borrow a leaf from them.

Another thing that the Asians have done very well is choosing to build economic empires around the world as opposed to the military empire that the US is trying to build. The Asians understand that when you build factories, businesses and research institutions around the world you not only create jobs and practical income for the people in those countries but you also build lasting friendships and relationships. The US is spending billions of dollars on military might around the world.

Unfortunately this effort is not only draining the US economy but it is also resulting in unwarranted destruction of lives and property and the loss of goodwill in those countries where this is happening. One wonders how long its going to take the US to realize that their approach and strategy is not only expensive but also bound to fail since they cannot sustain it.

2010 Michigan State Senate Race: Commissioner David LaGrand!

2010-01-05T12:13:00.004-05:00

On January 6th 2010— Grand Rapids City Commissioner David LaGrand is expected to stand before an enthusiastic crowd of supporters in one of the most populated estates in Grand Rapids,MI to formally announce his candidacy for the Grand Rapids and Kentwood-based 29th Michigan Senate District seat that is currently held by Republican Rep. Dave Hildenbrand.It is the most Democratic district currently held by a Republican, going by Barack Obama's winning margin. It is basically all of the city of Grand Rapids plus a few suburbs. Both Republicans and Democrats have decent benches here, but Democrats have been making gains lately.

Unlike others who have opposed fully funding education, revenue sharing for Grand Rapids, Kentwood and other cities, and have been unwilling to look for constructive bi-partisan solutions to economic problems, Commissioner LaGrand, an attorney by profession with a solid Christian background, is expected to present himself as an agent of generational change who given an opportunity will transform a State government hobbled by cynicism, petty corruption and a smallness of politics. He is also expected to present his plan on how to transform the state’s educational system and harness various local and international resources to boost Michigan’s economy. It is expected that LaGrand will have a vibrant grassroots network that will harness support and votes among the people. Like in Kenya and many other parts of the world, winning an election in Michigan involves funds, connections, and a well-oiled political machine. Whoever combines these three effectively takes the day.

Reliable sources indicate that Commissioner LaGrand has what it takes to win the State Senate race. Most democrats and a sizable number of Republics that we have talked to say they will be inclined to support Commissioner LaGrand since he has a more balanced worldview and tends to be more rational when he discusses issues that are close to their hearts.Bill Ballenger, editor of Inside Michigan Politics, says "Democrats look poised to pick up at least 3 seats" next year. If they take the Senate and hold the Governorship, they will have complete control over the redistricting process.Democrats have not controlled the State Senate since 1982. We will keep you updated on the developments.

OUR DEEPEST FEAR!

2010-01-04T10:10:00.002-05:00

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Nelson Mandela in his 1994 inaugural speech

A WAR FOR YOUR SOUL!

2009-09-15T00:31:00.001-04:00

A War For Your Soul-Birmingham version from Erisai Films on Vimeo.

Impunity or Sacrificial Lambs?

2009-08-08T18:07:00.003-04:00

One narrow question is defining the reform agenda in Kenya. "What's in this for our tribe?" or "How does our tribe stand to benefit from the political reform?" Honestly, these type of questions are hardly reflective of that critical agenda. Instead, Kibaki, Raila & all foreigners interested in the development of Kenya must explain to Kenyans not what's in it for their tribes but what's in it for all Kenyans. In short, these principals must demand of the Kenyan people that they be willing participants in realizing the change they believe the country needs. Any heads that role MUST ONLY do so if expediency, professionalism, efficiency, and, above all, national-interest will be realized. Otherwise we can sacrifice as many innocent and "weak" professionals as we want but as long as our political leaders continue calling the shots on how and when and where justice should be dispensed but that will not bring about the democratic and structural change that we all crave for in Kenya!
Osudi Mukhone Wa Nakhayo

We Endorse Cyprian Nyamwamu for Bomachoge!

2009-08-07T13:43:00.001-04:00

Cyprian Orina Nyamwamu is a comrade, friend and my immediate predecessor as the Secretary General of the Social Democratic Party of Kenya.

He has thrown his hat in the ring to be the next Member of Parliament for the Bomachoge constituency in Nyanza Province. The by-election is taking place on August 27, 2009.

Even though he is running on a different party ticket, I am convinced that he is the best candidate in the field and if I had not registered in Makadara constituency in Nairobi, I would have certainly traveled to Ogembo to vote for him.
- Onyango Oloo

Below is his announcement making it official:

Communiqué from Mtumishi Cyprian Orina Nyamwamu to all our people in Bomachoge Constituency

This by election is for us to form a strong Bomachoge partnership for change!

We need a change from the way we have been doing things in the past.

We shall stop electing passengers to Parliament and elect a wise, humble, courageous and visionary leader for change.

We shall elect a leader who restates our Bill of Rights as guaranteed by the Constitution of the great Republic of Kenya.

We shall elect a Patriotic Kenyan who believes that all Kenyans are born equal and that all Kenyans deserve a chance.

This is why I, Mtumishi Cyprian Orina Nyamwamu

Seek your vote to represent and serve the people of Bomachoge in Parliament.

Today, 4th August 2009, I have presented my nomination papers to vie for the Bomachoge by elections on a Safina ticket.

I now humbly, tender this application to all the men, women, children and Voters of Bomachoge constituency to elect Me, Mtumishi Cyprian Orina Nyamwamu for as Member of Parliament for Bomachoge.

1. This is my application to all the voters of Bomachoge constituency:

I shall be running to become your Member of Parliament for Bomachoge on August 27, 2009. Your vote is not only for you but also for your children, your family and the whole constituency. It is a vote to end poverty in Bomachoge; Family after Family, Village after Village.

My Campaign has established committees in all the 130 polling stations. Each Polling station Committee has 20 leaders. Each polling Station Committee leader is responsible for coordinating the door to door campaigns being carried out by volunteers for my campaign. My Campaign is working to deliver for change at every polling station. This will be the opportunity for all of us Bomachoge citizens to elect wisely.

2. Kenyans, Kofi Annan, Barrack Obama and the world shall be watching.

I have a right to lead this constituency. I am a serious candidate. I am a true, courageous, proud, visionary and competent. I am a son of this constituency. I am Leader not a follower.

This by- election is at the right time, when history is on the move and Africans are taking charge of their destiny.

The whole of Kenya shall be in Bomachoge.

This is the time to put Bomachoge in the Kenyan Map by electing a tested and tried visionary leader.

3. Elect a leader with an Agenda.

We shall not allow our people to get lost again. We do not want people to regret once again after casting their ballot on August 27; we must become clear that the time for electing PASSENGERS is over. This is the time to elect a leader:

Who shall unite our people! We want the end of the DIVIDE and RULE.

Who shall wisely and courageously fight for our youth to get employment and skills.

Who shall fight for our farmers to get better incomes for their tea.

Who shall fight for our business people to access credit and markets

Who shall be trusted with our CDF and resources such as LATF

Who understands how government works.

Who understands how parliament works.

Who understands how the judiciary works.

Who understands how the provincial administration works

Who understands how Kenya works as a members of EAC, IGADD, the AU, the UN.

Who understands the National Accord and Agenda Number 4 so that we can work to end poverty, inequalities, devolve resources, strength our institutions and end the 800,000 cases piling in the courts; so that we shall punish those who sponsor killings of others like we saw in 2007/8.

We want to elect a leader not a passenger in Parliament.

We want a leader who shall Market Bomachoge in Kenya and Africa and increase investments through forming and strengthening new cooperatives, new Companies, new Business Associations, new NGOs, new Trusts and New Foundations.

We want a leader who shall fight for the Bomachoge and the Kenya we Want by fighting corruption and holding government to be account and ensuring that Goldenberg, Anglo leasing and other corruption cases are resolved and never repeated again. There are many cases of corruption in the budget such as the Kenren fertilizer company that we keep paying hundreds of millions for every year yet the fertilizer factory is NON EXISTENT! We want this corruption to stop so that people can get medicines in hospitals and roads can be built..

We want a leader who shall deliver better hospitals, better education, better roads, and better services in offices, electricity and a better environment; water and security for all of us.

We want a leader who shall fight crime.

These are the issues of this election. I know that I can deliver on this Agenda.

4. No violence no Voter bribery and vote buying.

We shall ensure that there is NO VIOLENCE and there is ZERO TOLERACE to voter buying and voter bribery. This by-election is not for people to be given money.

We must vote with our brains. This By election is for us to write the exam properly NOT to be given money. All of us must wake up on August 27 and vote wisely. We want this election to be peaceful, free and fair. We want EVERY registered voter to turn up and vote wisely.

5. My first 100 Days in office as Bomachoge MP:

5.1 Bomachoge Foundation
1) Samwel Onuko
2) Dismas Oyieko
3) Dr. Naftali Oirere
4) Eucabeth Obara
5) Joram Makori
6) Gideon Achwoga
7) Onyancha Ombongi
8) Morris Mbegera
9) Lumumba Onderi

5.2 Bomachoge Constituency Convention Assembly

3 represntatives from each polling station Shall meet every six months and its Steering committee shall meet every three months. It shall have the following working committees that shall be serving every two years:-

A. Public Administration and Security public administration chiefs, Dos, DC, DDC, Provincial administration.
• the police and police service
• Policy and legislation
• Land boards
• County, Town and municipal council administration
• security strategy
• performance monitoring and evaluation
• population policy
• family and social issues
• Culture and cultural policies
• council of elders
• arbitration and traditional conflict resolution system

B Infrastructure, And Urbanization Committee
• Communications and IT
• Transport
• Electricity and energy sources
• Special Programmes and disaster management
• Roads and bridges
• Sports stadia
• Social halls
• Markets and trading centers

C. Education, Training and Placement Committee
• Performance of public and private primary and secondary Schools
• Village polytechnics and artisan skills
• Career advice and counseling
• Colleges and university education Programme
• Human resource, personnel and career development
• Link with university students
• Job placements
• Entrepreneurship training

D. Health And Human Services Committee
• Sanitation and preventive health
• Medical services, staffing, facilities and financing
• Alcohol and drugs control and treatment services
• Maternal health
• First aid services
• Public health education
• Planned parenthood/ family planning services
• HIV AIDS control and treatment
• Social protection for the poor and vulnerable
• Persons with disabilities

E. Environmental Conservation And Renewal Committee
• Community conservation committees (CCC)in each of the sub locations
• Rivers
• Wetlands – ebirubo
• Water catchments areas
• Soil conservation
• Agro-forestry
• Environmental assessments

F. Agriculture, Livestock And Food Security Committee
• Tea sector reforms and capacity building
• Banana sector income building strategy
• Cash crops development Programme
• Nutrition farming and food security strategy
• Land use policy and incentives framework
• Livestock expansion and modernization Programme
• Agro processing

G. Investments, Commerce And Resource Mobilization Committee
• Banking services and insurance
• Cooperative sector development ( the Partnership Cooperative Development
SACCO – PACODES)
• The Bomachoge Business Council
• Markets administration and development
• Trade insurance
• Investment support and services

H. CDF and Projects Committee
• We want this committee to be elected by the people’s delegates. If we had each polling station electing 5 delegates to the meet at each location, then each location can elect 20 delegates to the Constituency Electoral College for purposes of electing the 15 members of the CDF committees
• The Committee’s functions and roles are clearly outlined under the Act but what we now must do is to make this process more consultative, open and transparent.

I. Liaison, Policy And Dialogue Committee
• Serve as the Development Policy Think Tank or coordinate policy think
tanks
• Liaison with the KNUT , workers,
• Civil society
• Liaison with the National debates and policy processes
• Liaison with the Gusii Development forums

I will be recommending for your approval Jesse Onsando to head this committee since he has already taken up the responsibilities of representing Bomachoge constituency in the Gusii Professionals Development Forum.

J. The Bomachoge Constituency Convention Assembly Steering Committee
• Shall constitute each of the conveners and secretaries of the 9 committees, the convener of the women Convention, convener of the youth convention and convener of the Teachers and workers' representative.
• Shall meet every six months
• Shall receive reports from the MP on his performance
• Shall receive reports from each town council and county council on the
application of funds and the performance of each elected civic leader.
• Shall convene ward convention assemblies which shall receive reports of
performance of each elected and nominated councilor every four months as
outlined here in.

5.3 Elect CDF committee

Each of the 7 locations shall nominate 30 leaders making it a total of 210 leaders meeting to elect the 15 members of CDF

5.4 The Gucha Community Progress Complex
Bomachoge should urgent build a complex that shall be the engine of transformation in Bomachoge. The Complex shall house
1) The Gucha Cultural and Multi-Purpose Hall
2) School for special needs children
3) Offer High quality Civic and Conference centre and hostels
4) Diploma and certificates courses in liaison with KIM and Kenyatta
University
5) Farmers Training college
6) Offer Banking Halls for several banks to take advantage of the business
potential in Gucha
7) House the Bomachoge SACCO

5.5 Within 200 Days,
Institute the Adopt-a-school-Programme in all the primary and secondary schools in Bomachoge Constituency.

5.6 Hold a walk
To raise the first 5 Million shillings for a Widows and orphans programme

6. United we stand, divided we shall fall!

This by election is a blessing. It is our time to unite and stop the divide and rule tactic that has been used to fragment us and keep us poor. The way forward is for each and every one of us; kera omosweta; to be a Partner for Change.

Join the Partnership for Change and together we shall form a strong movement for change in Bomachoge and work with the rest of the nation to change our lives. When united we shall work for a better future. We shall end poverty family by family, village by village! This election is therefore about you and not about Mtumishi Nyamwamu or this politician or that. This election is the by-election of HOPE in Bomachoge.

HOPE for employment for our youth
HOPE for unity
HOPE for visionary, selfless and Courageous Leadership
HOPE for better use of CDF
HOPE for the protection and promotion of the rights of each and everyone in
Bomachoge
HOPE for a better education for every child
HOPE for farmers to earn better incomes for their tea and other produce
HOPE for better medication
HOPE for better roads and infrastructure
HOPE for security in our homes and business premises
HOPE for electricity and water for our constituency
HOPE for a united, peaceful and prosperous Kenyan nation

So vote wisely. Make sure you vote for your life and the life of your children.

God bless you.

Your friend

Cyprian Orina Nyamwamu, Mtumishi

Partnership for Change.

To Support the Cyprian Nyamwamu Campaign:

M-PESA - 0710 412 236

To read profile and issues of the Bomachoge campaign:
http://blog.marsgroupkenya.org/?p=1096

KENYA SAYS NO TO OLD AND OBSOLETE RIVER NILE WATER PACT WITH EGYPT AND SUDAN

2009-08-03T01:02:00.000-04:00

KENYA HAS TAKEN A FIRM STAND IN REJECTING OLD AND ABSOLETE COLONIAL AGREEMENTS SIGNED BETWEEN BRITAIN, EGYPT AND SUDAN ON THE LAKE VICTORIA AND RIVER NILE WATERS.

Writes Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu City

KENYA has taken a bold and firm stance in rejecting as” old and obsolete” all colonial agreements signed many years ago between her former colonial power, the Great Britain, Egypt and Sudan on the use of shared waters of both Lake Victoria and River Nile.

This was one of the ten points resolution contained in the draft statement issued to the press at the end of a one day workshop held at the lakeside City of Kisumu.

The workshop dubbed, ”awareness and creation of sensitivities on the proposed Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement [CFA}”, was held at the posh Imperial Hotel, and was attended by five cabinet Ministers of the Kenya government and more than 20 members of Parliament and senior government officials and experts from the East African Community.

The attending ministers were, Water Development Minister Mrs Charity K. Ngilu, the Minister for Public Services Dalmas Otieno, the Minister for Lands James Aggrey Orengo, the Minister for Fisheries Dr. Paul Nyongesa Otuoma and the Minister for East African Affairs Jefferson Amason Kingi.

MPs present were Hon Peter Njuguna Gitau,Hon Ababu Namwamba,Hon John Olago Aluoch, Hon Fred Outa, Hon Prof Patrick Ayirecho Olueny,Hon David Koech,Hon,Silas Washiali,Hon.Shakeel Ahmed Shabir,Hon Elijah Lagat,Hon Oyugi Magwanga, and Hon. Yusuf Chanzu.

The draft resolution was read to newsmen by the chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Lands and Natural Resources, Hon. Rev Mutava Musyimi. It said in part, “The importance of the Lake Victoria Basin water resources and the on-going negotiations on the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework {CFA} were some of the major issues discussed”.

It went on to state that during the consultations on the above issues, the Kenyan Mps noted with great concern that Lake Victoria is a national and natural asset that is very key to the survival and development of Kenya within the lake basin and the nation as a whole.’.

The more details of facts and figures regarding Lake Victoria water resources is required as different riparian countries appeared to hold unreconciled data. In other words the riparian countries appear not to be reading from the same script.

The Ministers and MPs resolved that the downstream riparian countries, specifically, the Sudan and Egypt, which contributes very little water into the basin and yet are the largest users of the waters do not contribute to investments and management of the water catchments in the upper riparian countries which sustain the Lake Victoria and the River Nile.

They resolved that all the previous legal instruments on which they {Sudan and Egypt] seem to rely on are now moribund and therefore have no current validity.

The Ministers and MPs further noted with great concern that the water level in Lake Victor attributed to the unregulated release of water from Lake Victoria through the Owen Falls and Bujagali hydro power stations in Jinja, Uganda. “This has seriously undetermined development projects in Kenya and must be brought under control”, the statement said, adding that Kenya must assess the net benefits of being party to the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework agreements before the same is adopted and endorsed by the National Assembly.

The participants defiantly declared that meanwhile, and before the conclusion and ratification of the cooperative framework, Kenya will continue to invest in projects within its side of the basin that will impact positively and advance its interests without regard to the old and obsolete agreements.

The workshop further resolved that the article of the framework confer obligations to riparian member countries who otherwise do not benefit equally from implementation of the agreement. A fund will be established to be applied in the management of water catchment areas and the same be entrenched in the agreement.

It was further noted that the two downstream riparian states namely Sudan and Egypt have an obligation to make substantial contributions towards environmental conservation and sustainable development of the water catchment areas, specifically in the Kenya’s highlands.

The Ministers and the legislators resolved that more consultations should be undertaken to create consensus and awareness amongst stakeholders before ratification.

At the workshop, speaker after speaker severely criticized Ugandan of being dishonest with its partner states in the EAC and for recklessness in releasing Lake Victoria waters to the downstream riparian.

It was also disclosed during the deliberations at the workshop that Tanzania has unilaterally taken the bold steps of using Lake Victoria waters for irrigating its rice fields with remarkable success and in total disregard to the existing agreements signed many years ago, while that country was still known as Tanganyika under the British Colonies. The speakers urged Kenya to follow suit.

In her opening remarks, the Kenyan Water Development Minister Mrs Charity K. Ngilu said the workshop’s main objective was meant to create awareness among Members of Parliament on the Nile Basin Initiative. It was deliberately organized by her Ministry to enhance awareness to MPs and seek their support in discussing and rallying the Cooperative Framework Agreement once it is brought before Parliament.

The Minister told the participants that Lake Victoria is a very important water resource to the people of Kenya and hence indispensable to the nation.

The Lake Victoria Basin alone harbors 54 percent of the Kenya’s surface water resources and about 50 per cent of the country’s population entirely rely on the waters of the Lake Victoria Basin on the Kenyan side.

She went on, ”The efficient and effective utilization of the waters of Lake Vitoria and the rivers feeding into the lake is crucial to our country, and plays a great role in the development of various sectors, especially in the field of agricultural activities, hydro power, domestic use and environmental balance. “In order to effectively develop and use the shared water resources of the Nile River Basin, there is need to have a level playing field that allows mobilization of the required resources for such development”, she added.

Ngilu said that it is regrettable that today there is no Nile River Agreement that is in force and which is acceptable to the ten Nile Basin States. This, she said, is because the existing agreements were not negotiated by the independent Nile Basin riparian states, and were based on rights and not equitable and reasonable utilization of the shared water resources as they ought to have benefits.

It is indeed on this understanding, she said, that Kenya as a riparian state of the Nile Basin had agreed to go to the negotiation table with other states.

The Minister said that it is against this background that Kenya’s position, with regards to these existing colonial agreements has been very clear and equivocal, that such colonial agreements, that were never negotiated by the independent Kenya are not binding her.

It is on the same note that the Draft Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement that has been negotiated for more than ten years be signed and ratified.

The Minister said that in order to achieve a peaceful and sustainable utilization of any shared resources, the states must cooperate, which requires an agreement that provides clearly the rights and obligation of each state that are regulated by an established River Nile Basin Commission, as the proposed Nile River Basin Commission..

Since its inception in 1997, Kenya has benefited from some tangible projects initiated through the Nile Basin Initiative. “The contribution of these projects to socio-economic development, poverty alleviation, and enhancement of food security among the basin communities cannot be overemphasized”, said added.

She also talked about part of article 14 [b] on water security that is provided to replace the article on existing agreements on water security. The Council of Ministers met in DRC Congo during the month of May this year, where the negotiated Cooperative Framework Agreement was adopted, and further agreed to annex article 14[b] that will be resolved through consultation within six months.

Again, she explained, from 2006-2007, the Nile Council of Ministers held discussions on the Draft Cooperative Framework Agreement and concluded by agreeing on all articles except 14[b]

Ends

The Difference Between Living in Kenya and the USA!

2009-07-14T01:26:00.000-04:00

All,
I have been thinking of Kenya with great nostalgia even though I do make frequent trips to that place (Kenya). Previously I was even thinking, seriously, of relocating to Kenya within the next 12 months (for good) as I have investments that would "ordinarily" allow me to live there without ever working for anybody...

Investments aside, I have done some serious thinking and since I live in the United States of America I have concluded that, and in comparison to Kenya:

a) There may be "wealthy" people in Kenya but they still cannot compare to the middle-class in the USA. Being wealthy in Kenya means driving a Range Rover, living in Runda, taking your kids to good (expensive schools), et cetera. It does not mean that you are not a target for carjacking and your kids being targets of kidnapping...

Being middle-class in the United States means that you own your home and you live in a neighborhood with security and peace. It means that your children have a realistic chance at either becoming "middle class" or achieving the "highest level of excellence" they can given equal opportunities (in most cases).

b) Being "upper middle class" in Kenya means that "you can fly from Nairobi to Kisumu regularly" while in the US flying from point A to point B is the cheapest and most convenient way of traveling within the United States.

c) Being wealthy in Kenya means that occasionally, you can go on vacation abroad (mostly Dubai or sometimes Europe) while most of Americans going to Kenya as tourists are not even considered middle-class in the US. The wealthy Americans buy homes in their desired exotic destinations (using legally generated money.. not stolen money).

d) Living in Kenya as an ordinary Kenyan means that you are doomed for life as there is no realistic chance of upward mobility (save for the lucky 0.1% who manage to move upwards due to their professions e.g doctors, lawyers, etc). Living in America, whether you are starting from the ghetto, means that there is still hope for a better life. You just have to dream big, work hard, and "go get yours". MAJORITY of Kenyans doing well in the United States would probably be tarmacking in Kenya even with their university degrees...

e) Living in Kenya means that mediocre but well-connected people e.g sons and daughters of political class will be your "bosses for life" while in the United States most of the time, corporate titans and political bigwigs are ordinary people with ordinary family backgrounds. Also, in the US, your boss (employer) could easily be your college friend who started his/her company e.g google, facebook, twitter, etc. If you get a job in Kenya you will most likely be working for either a dinosaur boss (over 60 yrs of age) who knows nothing about social-networking technologies.. ***They still have secretaries type their emails..*

f) Tribalism vs Racism: Kenya is becoming a MORE tribalist society where your tribe MATTERS in almost all aspects of productive life while the United States is becoming "less and less" racist-- meaning that the trend towards equal opportunity for all is becoming practical in the United States...

g) The Average Life Expectancy in Kenya is about 55-yrs while in the United States is about 79 yrs.

h) The US Passport is the mother of all Passports you can go anywhere without problems. In fact, you can rent and drive a car in most countries in the world with just your US Passport. The Kenyan passport can get you killed in some places e.g Migingo Island.. smile Kidding here.. but you get the point, ama?

i) When Kenyan parents force their kids to study sciences/medicine/engineering because those are the only fields that offer "a promising future", Americans generally have a lot of options in life-- everything pays in the US provided that one is good at what they are doing.... even writing "self-help books" can net you millions of dollars. Art (artists) and athletes are very appreciated in the US so if you have those talents, you will be ok.

j) Entrepreneurship: America is the best place in the entire world to start a business and succeed.. this is because of a combination of large qualified consumer market, business networks & incubators, and fabulous business schools and engineering schools.. Americans CAN DO attitude is also awesome.

In other words my dear friends, in this interconnected world of internet, VoIP phone service, Video-conferencing, etc communications, I do think that America offers the best of both worlds... whenever you miss home/Kenya, you can easily connect via video technology and communicate with the people you miss in real time....airfare to Kenya from the US is also very affordable (compared to back in the day when people had to budget and save for years before they can fly)...

Kind regards,

Respectfully,

Last edited by Doctor Masinde (Yesterday 20:47:00)
Dr. Fred Shamalla Masinde, MB; ChB, DDS
Brooklyn, NY

THEY ARE STILL OUR SLAVES!!!!

2009-07-01T12:03:00.003-04:00

Dee Lee, CFP
Harvard Financial Educators

For those of you who heard it, this is the article Dee Lee was reading this morning on a New York radio station. For those of you who didn't hear it, this is very deep. This is a heavy piece and a Caucasian wrote it.

Dee Lee

THEY ARE STILL OUR SLAVES
We can continue to reap profits from the Blacks without the effort of physical slavery. Look at the current methods of containment that they use on themselves: IGNORANCE, GREED, and SELFISHNESS..

Their IGNORANCE is the primary weapon of containment. A great man once said, 'The best way to hide something from Black people is to put it in a book.' We now live in the Information Age. They have gained the opportunity to read any book on any subject through the efforts of their fight for freedom, yet they refuse to read. There are numerous books readily available at Borders, Barnes &Noble, and Amazon.com, not to mention their own Black Bookstores that prov ide solid blueprints to reach economic equality (which should have been their fight all along), but few read consistently, if at all..

GREED is another powerful weapon of containment. Blacks, since the abolition of slavery, have had large amounts of money at their disposal. Last year they spent 10 billion dollars during Christmas, out of their 450 billion dollars in total yearly income (2.22%).

Any of us can use them as our target market, for any business venture we care to dream up, no matter how outlandish, they will buy into it.. Being primarily a consumer people, they function totally by greed. They continually want more, with little thought for saving or investing.

They would rather buy some new sneaker than invest in starting a business. Some even neglect their children to have the latest Tommy or FUBU, And they still think that having a Mercedes, and a big house gives them 'Status' or that they have achieved their Dream.

They are fools! The vast majority of their people are still in poverty because their greed holds them back from collectively making better communities.

With the help of BET, and the rest of their black media that often broadcasts destructive images into their own homes, we will continue to see huge profits like those of Tommy and Nike. (Tommy Hilfiger has even jeered them, saying he doesn't want their money, and look at how the fools spend more with him than ever before!). They'll continue to show off to each other while we build solid communities with the profits from our businesses that we market to them.

SELFISHNESS, ingrained in their minds through slavery, is one of the major ways we can continue to contain them. One of their own, Dubois said that there was an innate division in their culture. A 'Talented Tenth' he called it. He was correct in his deduction that there are segments of their culture that has achieved some 'form' of success.

However, that segment missed the fullness of his work. They didn't read that the 'Talented Tenth' was then responsible to aid The Non-Talented Ninety Percent in achieving a better life.. Instead, that segment has created another class, a Buppie class that looks down on their people or aids them in a condescending manner. They will never achieve what we have.. Their selfishness does not allow them to be able to work together on any project or endeavor of substance. When they do get together, their selfishness lets their egos get in the way of their goal Their so-called help organizations seem to only want to promote their name without making any real change in their community.

They are content to sit in conferences and conventions in our hotels, and talk about what they will do, while they award plaques to the best speakers, not to the best doers. Is there no end to their selfishness? They steadfastly refuse to see that Together Each Achieves More (TEAM)..

They do not understand that they are no better than each other because of what they own, as a matter of fact, most of those Buppies are but one or two pay checks away from poverty. All of which is under the control of our pens in our offices and our rooms.

Yes, we will continue to contain them as long as they refuse to read, continue to buy anything they want, and keep thinking they are 'helping' their communities by paying dues to organizations which do little other than hold lavish conventions in our hotels. By the way, don't worry about any of them reading this letter, remember, 'THEY DON'T READ!!!!

What is Africa International University?

2009-06-16T11:51:00.003-04:00

Dear friends of NEGST,

Many of you have heard about Africa International University (AIU). You are aware that we are vigorously pursuing a university charter, and that we want the impact of NEGST to widen and deepen through AIU. But you’ve been asking for more details.

We propose to form Africa International University as a private Christian university composed of several constituent schools, of which NEGST is the first. The Vision of AIU is Christ centered leaders in Africa educated to transform God’s people and world.

We believe students will come to AIU for several features that set AIU apart. Because AIU is committed to partnering in God’s mission in all of life, we will appeal to prospective students in a variety of fields who want an education that takes biblical perspectives seriously. AIU places students at the centre of the learning experience and provides educational opportunities and experiences that facilitate self-discovery, spiritual, emotional, social, intellectual, and professional development. With our passionate commitment to scholarship as mission, we will focus on academic excellence, innovative and relevant research, and life-long learning.

The Three Schools
The university will initially comprise three schools. The first is NEGST, which shall continue to function with its purpose, mission and values as the school of theology, but integrated into those of the university. Some consolidating of departments and shifting of other departments may be useful in light of the initiation of new schools.

The second is the Institute for the Study of African Realities (ISAR) with its focus on the interface between church and society. Originally an entity within NEGST, ISAR will now exist as a sister school beside NEGST. We envision a focus on peace and reconciliation studies, possibly up to the doctoral level; law, ethics and governance; research; and continuing education.

The third is the School of Professional Studies (SPS). The focus of this school will be on professions for the market-place and civic arena in the context of formal learning experiences. This will be the home of programmes in psychology, education, leadership and business, among others. Its curriculum will be integrative, interdisciplinary, and holistic, with a pedagogy that provides for adult interactive learning.

The university will have a vice chancellor and a deputy vice chancellor of academic affairs over all the schools. Each entity will have its own dean (SPS, NEGST) or director (ISAR) who will carry responsibility for the development, implementation, administration, and management of the programmes and academic life of the school or institute.

Interaction and Cooperation
The three schools of the university will cooperate with each other on several levels. NEGST offers core courses foundational to all degree programmes offered in the three schools. ISAR’s research should help sensitize and shape the programmes offered in the other schools. Faculty from each school will be used in the other schools as needed. For example, the education department, though located in the SPS, will continue to offer church-based education programmes for NEGST.

All students will take a common core of integrative courses that include foundations of Christian life and mission, hermeneutics, Bible & moral issues, leadership, and research. Such a core is vital for engaging all branches of knowledge in a way that is biblical and missional. Critical to this pursuit then is a core of University teaching staff that strives to integrate the evangelical faith with their disciplines.

Thank you for your interest in the future of NEGST and AIU. Please pray with us that God will bring the university to fruition.

Blessings,

M. Douglas Carew, Ph.D

President Obama's Speech in Cairo!

2009-06-05T02:27:00.001-04:00

The fault finders of this speech, are either not good English students or deliberately deaf. The speech sets a bench mark for reassessment of the relationship West and Islamic states and argues for the necessity of genuine dialogue.
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 06:33 PM on 06/04/2009
- + Haitiana4Obama I'm a Fan of Haitiana4Obama I'm a fan of this user permalink
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It isn't that they don't hear, they are simply tone deaf...all they can respond to is fear and hate mongering. To them the voice of reason is akin to nails scraping a chalkboard, it simply isn't tolerable in their world.
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 07:59 PM on 06/04/2009
- + ZenCrusader I'm a Fan of ZenCrusader I'm a fan of this user permalink

I am proud of my President !
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 06:23 PM on 06/04/2009
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i'm proud of your president too! lol
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 06:41 PM on 06/04/2009
- + lost souls rembrd I'm a Fan of lost souls rembrd I'm a fan of this user permalink

My heart soars for the 'heartsong' our President had the courage and the compassion he so beautifully expressed. After so many years of self serving Presidents from Reagan on.........to the stupidest bully of the last 8 years that almost brought this Country down. The principals of self examination, contempt prior to investigation and to be true to thy self brought me to tears. To learn to accept differences of other Countries and other peoples is behavior of a secure, God fearing human being and truly a spiritual path that will heal our World.

I am so proud of this man. He listens. He demonstrates he can be trusted. I will stay informed and I write to him often my opinion. Why? Because one person matters....when we join together, not because we are alike but because we have a common goal: World peace, acceptance of all peoples and to practice principals over personalities.

I am so very proud and it is the first time since I was 16 and protested the
Vietnam War. Peoples of America? Let's follow this great man's suggestions; embrace differences, learn about those who are different, learn to walk in acceptance instead of fear. Our Creator represents all peoples. All races.

Lost_souls_rembered? It's whomever comes to you mind and fills your heart. Reach out to someone different today. Take just one baby step. "You will come to know a new freedom and happiness. Fear of economic insecurity will leave us." ~BB
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 06:10 PM on 06/04/2009
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When's the last time you remember citizens of a Muslim country giving an American president a standing ovation and cheering USA! USA! USA! following a speech?

Blessed are the peacemakers, God bless you President Obama!

This can be a historic moment for all three great religions to come together in hopes of peace.

God Bless the United States of America for having the courage in electing Barack Obama!
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 06:08 PM on 06/04/2009
- + Haitiana4Obama I'm a Fan of Haitiana4Obama I'm a fan of this user permalink
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I can't ever recall such a time, what does come to mind is a shoe being thrown when the previous "ruler" had control of the U.S.A and went to a predominant Muslim country. This is truly change the world can believe in, and it couldn't have come sooner.
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 08:02 PM on 06/04/2009
- + Paramendra Bhagat I'm a Fan of Paramendra Bhagat I'm a fan of this user permalink
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Greaaaaat speech. Obama brings people together, in America and around the world.
http://technbiz.blogspot.com
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 06:03 PM on 06/04/2009
- + DALevit I'm a Fan of DALevit I'm a fan of this user permalink
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A wonderous blend. Always a happy surprise.
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 06:00 PM on 06/04/2009
- + lost souls rembrd I'm a Fan of lost souls rembrd I'm a fan of this user permalink

For the first time in a very long time, more than the shameful 8 years of Bush; Clintons too, have I felt pride, encouraged and safe with our President Obama. We were truly blessed to have collectively as a Nation elected this man. Throughout his message, you could feel the compassion, the all including of all peoples, the admonishment to stop holding others w/o inward reflection. I wept .........I truly wept for this moment I feel hope. I felt the Creator of mankind in my spirit move....God bless this planet, it's people and I pray we truly start practicing accepting differences in others, learning about those differences and respecting peoples of all races, religions and countries. God bless us all. I forgive you President Bush. You are just ignorant and stupid but I forgive you for the destruction you have brought upon this world. lost_souls_rembered? It's whomever comes to your mind and lives in your heart. peace
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 05:56 PM on 06/04/2009
- + Michele Himmel I'm a Fan of Michele Himmel I'm a fan of this user permalink
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Polished butt kissin`
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 05:46 PM on 06/04/2009
- + lost souls rembrd I'm a Fan of lost souls rembrd I'm a fan of this user permalink

and could you find just ONE positive thing to say Michele? Just one or are you in need of the compassion that our President expressed? I accept you and our differences. Be safe and blessed. I pray for your enlightenment.
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 06:13 PM on 06/04/2009
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We Love 'em too :)
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 05:36 PM on 06/04/2009
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Wow!
One of the best speeches I've ever heard from a president.
The beauty of Obama is that he doesn't tell us we should be good people, he reminds us that we already are inherently good.
With a little bit of effort, we can make the world what we want it to be.
I appreciate the fact that he honestly lays blame for our ills where it should be.
On all of us.
Because it will take all of us to fix it.
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 05:34 PM on 06/04/2009
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Not the most earth-shattering speech, but that's a GOOD thing in my book. It was assertive yet humble, and exactly the tone I'd like to hear from a diplomatic world leader. Let us make sure that our deeds reflect our words.
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 05:32 PM on 06/04/2009
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Not earth shattering!?!
Think for a minute where he was and who he was addressing.
This man has a very large pair to get up there like that.
I can't name another person on this planet that could get up there under the circumstances and deliver that kind of speech.
Sorry, I just really disagree.
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 05:41 PM on 06/04/2009
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I agree that it was a beautiful and important speech. Perhaps I didn't express myself well -- what I meant was that this address *alone* isn't a panacea. The words must be backed with complimentary actions in order for it to make any lasting impact. I also meant to convey that it wasn't "earth-shattering" in the hyperbolic sense; in other words, I thought that it was humble and not inflammatory in any way.
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 06:12 PM on 06/04/2009
- + FreedomN0w I'm a Fan of FreedomN0w I'm a fan of this user permalink

There is another person in this planet's history who could make such a speech. His name was...

NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 07:44 PM on 06/04/2009
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- + retrorio I'm a Fan of retrorio I'm a fan of this user permalink

I'm so proud that we finally have an intelligent, articulate President of the United States after enduring that last trainwreck.
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 05:14 PM on 06/04/2009
- + RadGash I'm a Fan of RadGash I'm a fan of this user permalink

President Obama did 200 times more to promote world peace in that 55 minutes than Bush/Cheney did in 8 years.
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 04:59 PM on 06/04/2009
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200 is a bit low.
How do measure it starting in negative numbers?
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 05:43 PM on 06/04/2009
- + whoknew--- I'm a Fan of whoknew--- I'm a fan of this user permalink

We are indeed fortunate to have elected an extremely intelligent, eloquent, and brave person to be our leader.

I believe President Obama's words will echo in history if his ideas are allowed to blossom in the minds and hearts of the international community.
Reply Favorite Flag as abusive Posted 04:59 PM on 06/04/2009
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proud to be an American...thank you Mr. President.

REQUEST FROM UGANDA!

2009-05-06T10:58:00.001-04:00

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy towards African Dictators is not succeeding, and that the natives may soon face a threat in Africa more serious than any we have known since the Mugabe war. We are requesting you to chart a clear and determined course for meeting the threat of undemocratic leaders in Africa like His Excellency Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, the Dictator of the Republic of Uganda. We urge you to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and your friends and allies around the world in Africa. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Dictatorship regimes from power in Africa namely in Libya, Zimbabwe, Congo, Sudan and Uganda. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

The strategy of “suppression” of African Dictators like Robert Mugabe has been steadily eroding over the past several regimes. As recent events have demonstrated, your country can no longer depend on her partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to espouse the sanctions or to punish African Dictators when they evade U.S.A and its policies in Africa. Your ability to ensure that African famous dictators are not producing the various terrorist organizations like the East African Terrorist group groomed by Museveni to disturb the neighboring countries namely Rwanda and Congo, therefore, has substantially shrieked. Even if full follow-up was eventually to start as you promised in your inauguration speech, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to deal with such bad regimes since they are supported financially by the People’s Republic of China. As a result, in the not-too-distant future U.S.A will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether in Africa such leaders can be dealt with for their terrorist movements and crimes committed against humanity.
Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Africa. It hardly needs to be added that if Africa dictators are left alone and oppress their people when powerful countries that can help are standing indifferent to the crimes committed, then the safety of American foreign policy in the region, of U.S.A friends and allies like Liberia and the moderate African states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of mineral products will all be put at peril. As we have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the second part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how U.S.A handles this threat.

Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the cooperation of the Africa Dictators, is dangerously laughable. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Africa will with the help of China eliminate the policies of U.S.A and therefore continues with the crimes against humanity like in Northern Uganda, Southern Sudan, and Eastern Congo et al. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake strong action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing these Dictators especially President Museveni of the Republic of Uganda and President Bashir of Islamic Republic of Sudan and their regimes from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy in Africa.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing these regimes from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the opposition and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater.

We push for you to act decisively. If you act now to end this threat against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If you accept a course of weakness and gist, you put your interests and the lives of the people who are helpless at risk.
Sincerely,
Katto Amons R. James
Mafigiri Davids T. Ireen
Eric Turyamureeba N. Phionah
Jerry Hastings Turwomwe Betty
Paul Frank Kiiza Francis
Nabwire Francis Abubaker Hussain
Abraham Nkasheeka Kamuntu Michael

RENOWNED LAW DON, PROF.OKOTH-OGENDO DIES!

2009-04-28T15:26:00.002-04:00

NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 28 - Constitutional expert Professor Hastings Winston Opinya Okoth-Ogendo went to Addis Ababa last week on invitation from the United Nations to deliver a paper on Land Policy and evidently hoped to return home. But this was not to be.

He left the country on April 18, on assignment of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa but fell ill soon after delivering the paper at the Ethiopian Capital. His condition got worse on Thursday and he eventually died on Friday 24 April, while undergoing treatment at an Intensive Care Unit.

His body was flown back to Kenya on Tuesday with all flight expenses and mortuary transportation costs met by the UN, according to the Funeral Committee Chairman Sam Ogutha.

“The UN has met all the expenses from Addis Ababa to the Lee Funeral Home. We have now embarked on burial arrangements,” said Mr Ogutha of PPD Consultants Limited.

“We are awaiting the results of the post-mortem,” he added.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga who was among those who received the body said it is unfortunate that Prof Ogendo “died even before his work could be acknowledged in Kenya.”

Mr Odinga said: “Prof Ogendo has played a great role in constitution-making. It is unfortunate that he died before his work could be appreciated,” he told reporters at the Lee Funeral Home soon after viewing the late Prof Ogendo’s body.

The late Prof Ogendo is well remembered for his contribution to the country’s law review process as vice chairman of the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission (CKRC).

Mr Odinga described him as “the best legal expert in land law and constitution in the country” having helped write one for Kenya and other African countries.

“He has written land policies for many countries in Africa like Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, in fact that is what he went to do in Addis Ababa where he handed in a new land policy for the Ethiopian government,” the PM said.

Medical Services Minister Prof Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o recalled his hey days with the late Professor, saying has been in constant touch with him even when he was in Ethiopia.

“We have had a lifetime relationship as friends and colleagues. In fact, about three weeks ago he called me and told me that there was a brother of his who had done lab technology that he wanted to get a job for. I still have an SMS from him to that effect,” he said.

Prof Ogendo’s wife Ruth was overcome by emotion and could not speak to journalists.

Two of his sons and a daughter were also present at the mortuary but were equally unable to speak. Another of his son and a daughter are out of the country but were expected for the funeral.

The late Prof Ogendo was born in 1944, and attended Maseno and Alliance High schools before proceeding to the University of East Africa in Dar-es Salaam.

He later went to the Oxford University for a Bachelors Degree in Civil Law before joining the University of Yale for a Doctorate of Science in Law between 1973 and 1978.

He has taught at the University of Nairobi, Boston University and New York University Law Schools.

LEADER OF THE MONTH!

2009-04-21T23:31:00.003-04:00

The Kenyan Diaspora Pro-democracy Movement honors the Hon. Mrs. Lydiah A. Achode for her exemplary work at the Judiciary this month.Mrs. Lydia Awino Achode is the Registrar of the High Court of Kenya and an Advocate. She was confirmed as the Registrar after having competently acted in that capacity for three months. Prior to this she had been the Chief Court Administrator having been appointed to that position in the year 2004.

She is experienced in the areas of Civil and Criminal Law and Procedure, Commercial Litigation, Taxation Law, as well as Gender and Family Law having routinely adjudicated on these areas of law as magistrate for a period spanning over twenty years. Her key competencies include; integrity, ethics, leadership, teamwork, training, recognition, communication and continuous improvement.

She begun her career on the bench as a District Magistrate II (Prof.) at the Kericho Law Courts in 1986 and was promoted two years later to the post of Resident Magistrate. She was posted at Makadara Law Courts in Nairobi where she served in this capacity from 1988 to 1994.

In 1994 she was transferred to Mombasa Law Court as a Senior Resident Magistrate having been promoted. While there, her hard work and due diligence were again recognized when she was promoted to Principle Magistrate in the year 2000 and to Senior Principle Magistrate 2004.

Her impeccable record also got her appointed as the Anti-Corruption Magistrate in respect of the Coast Region and North-Eastern Province in the year 2004, a position she held until she got appointed as the Chief Court Administrator.
Ms. Achode was born on the 25th of June 1962 and is married with four children.

Kenyans Received Well in Boston!

2009-04-19T01:39:00.000-04:00

13th ANNUAL WEGE FOUNDATION LECTURE AT AQUINAS COLLEGE!

2009-04-07T16:09:00.003-04:00

The Wege Foundation and Aquinas College are pleased to announce the 13th Annual Wege Foundation Speaker, Dr. Thomas J. Lovejoy, biodiversity chair and past president (2002-2008) of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. Lovejoy's lecture, Climate Change: Prospects for Nature, will be in the Aquinas Performing Arts Center, 1703 Robinson Road SE on Friday, April 24 from 4-5:30 p.m. with a reception immediately to follow.

Thomas Lovejoy is an innovative and accomplished conservation biologist who coined the term “biological diversity”. He currently holds the Biodiversity Chair at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment based in Washington, DC. He served as President of the Heinz Center from 2002-2008. Before assuming this position, Lovejoy was the World Bank’s Chief Biodiversity Advisor and Lead Specialist for Environment for Latin America and the Caribbean as well as Senior Advisor to the President of the United Nations Foundation. Spanning the political spectrum, Lovejoy has served on science and environmental councils under the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations. At the core of this many influential positions are Lovejoy’s seminal ideas, which have formed and strengthened the field of conservation biology. In the 1980s, he brought international attention to the world’s tropical rainforests, and in particular, the Brazilian Amazon, where he has worked since 1965. Lovejoy also developed the now ubiquitous “debt-for-nature” swap programs and led the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems project. He also founded the series Nature, the popular long-term series on public television. In 2001, Lovejoy was awarded the prestigious Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. Lovejoy holds B.S. and Ph.D. (biology) degrees from Yale University.

The lecture and the reception are free and open to the public. Seating is limited.
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Studying Psychology? Interested in Graduate School? Clubs and Organizations
Posted by fairball on April 7, 2009 - 9:25am

The Aquinas College Psychology Club will be hosting a speaker Tuesday April 7th at 5:15 PM in the Wege Ballroom. Prof.Lois Owens from GVSU will be speaking about the MSW program that the school offers. This is a great opportunity to learn about graduate schools and will be a good first step in one's search! You can even bring your dinner up if you need to!

KENYA: SEVEN NEW JUDGES SWORN-IN!

2009-04-02T16:01:00.002-04:00

Seven new judges sworn-in
Written By:PPS , Posted: Thu, Apr 02, 2009

President Mwai Kibaki has asked Court of Appeal and High Court judges to strictly adhere to the rule of law when discharging their duties.

Speaking after witnessing the swearing-in of two appellate and five puisne judges at State House Nairobi Thursday, President Kibaki expressed confidence that they will uphold the rule of law and serve Kenyans without fear or favour, affection or ill will.

The newly sworn-in judges were Hon. Mr. Justice Alnashir Ramazanali Magan Visram and Hon. Mr. Justice Joseph Gregory Nyamu of the Court of Appeal.

Others were High Court judges Justice Mr. Aggrey Otsyula Muchelule, Lady Justice Florence Nyaguthi Muchemi, Lady Justice Maureen Akinyi Odero, Lady Justice Abida Ali-Aroni and Justice Mr. Said Chitembwe.

"I am sure you are capable and will perform your duties well and set a good example for the rest," the Head of State told the judges.

The swearing-in ceremony, which was also witnessed by Chief Justice Evan Gicheru and Head of Public Service and Secretary to the Cabinet Amb. Francis Muthaura was conducted by High Court Registrar Mrs. Lydiah Achode.

Elsewhere, the high court broke for its first vacation this year; however the lower courts-chief magistrate's court will continue with its normal business.

There will be a duty judge who will be conducting the matters that have been certified as urgent.

The vacation is expected to end on the 21st of this month.

MICHIGAN'S MATH MEAP SCORES RISE FOR THE 4TH YEAR IN A ROW!

2009-04-02T15:52:00.002-04:00

Jennifer Granholm: So glad to report some good news for Michigan's future: just released - Michigan's math MEAP scores rose for the 4th YEAR IN A ROW! Great news for those kids; many, many thanks to Michigan teachers. Let's keep up the terrific progress --

Free Methodist Church of Kenya Elects Its First Bishop!

2009-03-31T10:45:00.001-04:00

On March 30-31, Kenyan Free Methodist pastors and delegates met to establish the Kenya Jurisdictional General Conference and two Annual Conferences. Rev. Nixon Azere Dingili was elected first Bishop of the Free Methodist Church in Kenya.Rev. Dingili did his undergraduate studies at Kenya Highlands Bible College and graduate studies at Hope Africa University. He is married to Rev. Neddy Dingili, an alumni of the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology and the Lord has blessed them with two beautiful children- Leslie and Keslie. Last year Rev. Nixon Dingili represented the Free Methodist Church of Kenya at the meetings of the Free Methodist World Conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The Kenyan Diaspora Pro-Democracy Movement joins Christians all over the world in congratulating Bishop Nixon Azere Dingili on this new spiritual responsibility as the 1st Bishop of Kenya. The FMCK has chosen a gifted, hardworking and faithful minister for this shepherding role to the Free Methodists and all people in Kenya. May the Lord bless you all.

(File picture- Rev. Nixon Dingili, center- in glasses, after he was ordained elder in the Free Methodist Church of Kenya)

http://www.fmwm.org/cms_media/files/Reynen.Nov08.pdf

I Am thinking of Quitting the USA.--By Unbwogable

2009-03-30T23:29:00.000-04:00

This has nothing to do with my pending court case. I can wait until that is over and still make this move. I am getting disillusioned with the USA. I miss home daily. Nothing seems to be able to give me joy here. I have tried sex, liqor, nice cars, nice homes, etc but I still feel like only being in Kisumu can make me happy. I guess I was not wired to exist in the first world.

I miss waking up in the village to heavenly sounds of chirping birds, not ambulance sirens as is here in the USA. I miss the fresh smell of cow dung. I miss the social life that exists in Africa, the suffering not withstanding. I miss the crowded Matatus and the rude manambas as opposed to my air-conditioned car here. I miss ugali and Tilapia from Lake Victoria, not from some pool in the midwest or from China.

I miss riding on the Boda Boda. I miss the night spots of Kondele and the live Benga hits. I miss being arrested by cops and bribing my way out. I miss the sweet sex from LUO women. I open air market of KIBUYE on Sundays.

WILL I MAKE A STUPID MISTAKE BY DECIDING TO TOUCH BASE WITH MY PAST? I HAVE NOT INVESTED ANYTHING BACK THERE, SO I AM READY FOR THE GLARING POVERTY. I GREW UP IN IT SO IT SCARES ME NOT.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK543f0_UKc

Last edited by unbwogable (Today 21:24:23)
http://kenya.rcbowen.com/talk/viewtopic.php?id=108372

These Kenyan University Students Are Good!

2009-03-30T21:11:00.000-04:00

ANTI-CORRUPTION CASE HALTED PENDING APPEAL

2009-03-29T00:26:00.000-04:00

ANTI-CORRUPTION CASE HALTED PENDING APPEAL

Reported By Monica Achode - Advocate
February 2009

Republic v The Kenya Anti Corruption Commission (KACC) and 2 Others [2009] ] eKLR (www.kenyalaw.org)
Court of Appeal at Nairobi
P. K. Tunoi E. M. Githinji P. N. Waki (JJA)
February 27th 2009

The Court of Appeal has allowed an order stopping criminal proceedings instituted by the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission against a Civil Servant charged with the office of abuse of office. The Kibera Senior Principal Magistrate’s court and The Attorney General were ordered to halt the proceedings pending the hearing and determination of an appeal in which the accused is challenging an order of the High Court refusing to stop the proceedings.

The order was made in an application filed under rule 5(2) of the Court of Appeal Rules seeking an order for a stay of proceedings in a criminal prosecution against the applicant, one George Wambua, in the Senior Magistrate’s Court at Kibera, Nairobi pending the hearing and determination of the appeal from the judgment of the High Court. The High Court had dismissed a judicial review application by Mr. Wambua for orders of certiorari, seeking to remove into the court and quash the decision of the respondents purporting to charge him with the offence of abuse of office contrary to section 46 of the Anti Corruption and Economic Crimes Act. Mr. Wambua also sought an order prohibiting the Resident Magistrate’s court at Kibera from hearing the criminal case against him and from taking evidence or in any other manner conducting proceedings on the matters of that criminal case.

Prior to the proceedings, Mr. Wambua had been an employee of the Public Service Commission but had been posted to serve as City Treasurer, Nairobi in 2003. Towards the end of that year, a group of Councilors and Officers of the Council intended to travel to Italy on a fact finding tour in relation to a proposed waste management project. Apparently, Mr. Wambua authorized payment of per diem allowances to them without first seeking and obtaining the approval of the Permanente Secretary, Minister of Local Government. It was alleged that as a result of this, Mr. Wambua was sent on compulsory leave and in late 2004 he was summoned by the KACC to record a statement over the said payments.

In August 2006, Mr. Wambua was arraigned before the Chief Magistrate in Kibera on a charge of abuse of office. In the charges it was alleged that, while in his capacity as the City Treasurer, together with the Deputy Town Clerk of the Council of Nairobi, being persons employed in the Public Service respectively, jointly used their said offices to improperly confer benefit to officers and councilors of the City Council of Nairobi by irregularly authorizing payment of full per diem instead of quarter per diem to cover expenses of the aforementioned officers while traveling to Italy and Egypt on official duties. It was apparent that the charges were framed on the basis that the allowances paid contravened the Local Government Act and the applicable Government financial regulations.

Mr. Wambua filed an application for judicial review seeking for orders of prohibition and certiorari for which he had sough leave and been had been allowed to apply. However, on 7th March 2008, Justice Nyamu dismissed that application stating in part that the offence Mr. Wambua had been charged with was an offence defined by law. The judge further stated that whether the applicant was immune from criminal proceedings in the light of the provisions of Section 87 of the Local Government Act was a matter for determination by the trial Court and not the superior Court. It was his opinion that there was no public policy or interest being contravened or threatened in the prosecution of Mr. Wambua, and that there had been no evidence of oppression or malice in the undertaking of the prosecution of the applicant. Finally, he stated that threatened or actual contravention of the applicant’s guaranteed constitutional right had not been shown. It was that decision that prompted the appeal.

Mr. Wambua’s advocate, in his submission before the Appellate Court argued that the appeal was arguable, mainly, first, on the ground that the decision to charge the applicant with the offence of abuse of office under the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act violated the personal immunity guaranteed to him under the Local Government Act. He claimed that the decision to prosecute his client had been actuated by malice and that it had been oppressive and unreasonable in the circumstances. He submitted further that the learned Judge had failed to pronounce a decision on these issues and on others that were canvassed before him. The advocate further stressed that if the Appellate Court failed to intervene before the appeal was heard and determined the trial in the magistrate’s court would commence and that the applicant might be convicted in which case he would start serving a jail term and thereby be deprived of his liberty. Thus, the success of his appeal would be rendered nugatory. The respondents through their advocates, opposed the application stating that the applicant had not demonstrated that his appeal was arguable.

The Appellate Court in weighing its decision looked to the settled principles in applications brought pursuant to rule 5(2) (b) of the Rules. They stated that the Court had unfettered discretion which was to be exercised judicially. The applicant had to satisfy the Court, first, that his appeal, or intended appeal was not frivolous. Second, the Court was also to be persuaded that were it to dismiss the application for stay and later the appeal or intended appeal succeeded, the results or the success would be rendered nugatory. In order that the applicant may succeed, he further had to demonstrate both limbs and demonstrating only one limb would not avail him the order sought if he failed to demonstrate the other limb. In supporting this decision it cited the cases of Reliance Bank Ltd vs Norlake Investments Ltd. (2002) IEA 227 and Githunguri vs Jimba Credit Corporation Ltd. & Others (No.2) [1988] KLR 838.

Bearing the above in mind Justice Tunoi and Justice Waki assented to the application stating that the intended appeal was indeed arguable and further that if the order for stay was not granted and the appeal were to succeed the applicant would have undergone an expensive trial which could result in his being sent to prison and thus denying him his liberty. Justice Githinji, on the other hand, did not think that there was merit in the application and he dissented from the decisions of his fellow judges.. In his view, the nugatory test was not appropriate in the circumstances of this case where the applicant in effect sought a stay of prosecution. He noted that it would be against public policy or public interest to halt or paralyze the prosecution of a person suspected to have committed a crime unless there were good reasons for doing so.

He further observed that the Attorney General had a duty to prosecute people suspected of having committed crimes speedily in the public interest. Further the suspect had the protection of law in the event of such a prosecution as enshrined in section 77 of the Constitution to ensure that he got a fair trial.

Justice Githinji felt that the appropriate consideration was whether the applicant would suffer injustice unless an order of stay of prosecution or proceedings was granted. It was his view that were the trial to proceed the applicant would be afforded an opportunity of advancing the matters he intended to raise in the appeal. Lastly, he found that there was no certainty that if the criminal trial proceeded the applicant would be convicted. If however, he was ultimately convicted he could resort to appeal mechanism to ensure that justice was done.
In those circumstances Justice Githinji felt that it would be a blot in criminal justice system to stay the criminal proceedings in the Magistrate’s court. Ultimately, however, the final decision was that of the majority of the court comprising of Justice Tunoi and Justice Waki who were of the opinion that the application had merit and that it should be allowed.
http://www.kenyalaw.org/newsletter/feb_2409.html

MEETING OF THE OFFICIALS OF THE MINISTRY OF NAIROBI METROPOLITAN DEVELOPMENT AND KENYAN DIASPORA IN WASHINGTON DC

2009-03-08T21:56:00.000-04:00

The officials of the Ministry of Nairobi Metropolitan Development led by the Honourable Assistant Minister, Elizabeth Ongoro Masha and the Permanent Secretary, Mr. Philip O. Sika are in town and would like to meet with the Kenyan Diaspora community resident in Metropolitan Washington as follows:

Date: March 10th 2009

Time: 6.00 P.M.

Venue: Embassy of Kenya

2249 R Street, NW

Washington D.C. 20008

Purpose:To create a better understanding of the potential role of the Diaspora in the implementation of Nairobi Metro 2030

All are welcome!!!

URGE THE GOVERNMENT OF SUDAN TO RECONSIDER DECISION!

2009-03-05T16:27:00.000-05:00

The Government of Sudan yesterday ordered the closure of humanitarian
aid programs in Darfur as well as North and East Sudan.

This decision puts the lives of millions of men, women, and
children who depend on humanitarian aid for survival at risk.

Join me and call on the international community to urge the
Government of Sudan to reconsider this deplorable decision and
ensure the delivery of lifesaving aid to vulnerable Sudanese
people. Visit www.theIRC.org/aidsudan and make your voice heard
now.

After you take action, please help spread the word.

Thank you.

WHY ARE AMERICANS BUYING GUNS IN BIG NUMBERS?

2009-03-02T01:46:00.000-05:00

Why Are Americans Buying Guns?

I recently read a thread where one American says "I bought a new gun because the economy was tanking. With the economy goes security. Cops are having to make drastic cuts right now. If people are out of jobs and get hungry, what's to stop crime from going up? I bought a gun to protect my home and my things in this scary economy we're heading into."

Are these the only reasons why Americans are buying guns in droves? Isnt there a hidden reason that only one section of Americans know and they are not willing to share with the "other" people?

Word is rife in some communities that a certain community fears that a "Martin Luther King Jr" may happen again and if it does there will be HUGE repercussions so they are arming themselves and getting ready for any eventuality!

Many questions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Fundamental Rights Of All Kenyans As Guaranteed By The Constitution Of Kenya And The National Accord Must Be Respected By The Grand Coalition Govt

2009-02-16T00:39:00.000-05:00

The Fundamental Rights Of All Kenyans As Guaranteed By The Constitution Of Kenya And The National Accord Must Be Respected By The Grand Coalition Government!
Monica Achode..attorney at law.

Feb 14th, 2009 by Mars Group

Partner for Change Rosemary Otieno arrested by the City Council police, held at Central Police Station for sharing information on Grand Corruption with fellow Kenyans.

Barely a week after the Grand Coalition Government held a tax payers funded “Kenya We Want” conference where Government Ministers admitted failure to deliver on promises to Kenyans, and where the Government requested all Kenyans to do their bit to fight Corruption in Kenya, the Grand Coalition Government is arresting Kenyans who innocently are responding to this call against Impunity.

On Friday 13th 2009, the Partnership for Change distributed anti-corruption flyers to members of the public in Nairobi. Under section 79 of the Constitution of Kenya Kenyans’ freedom of expression is protected, so Partnership for Change volunteers assembled around Nairobi went to work to inform Kenyans of an ongoing fraud. Incredibly, Nairobi City Council askari officers, claiming that Kenyans require permission from City Hall to express themselves in writing, arrested Rosemary and two other Partners for Change for distributing flyers to draw public attention to an ongoing corruption scandal by which Kenyan taxpayers funds are to be paid to a company called Midland Finance & Securities for one of the Anglo Leasing type projects. On February 28th 2009, the anniversary of the signing of the political settlement between Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, over Ksh 275 million will be payable to a Swiss bank account in the name of Midland Finance & Securities Limited.

Kenyans do not owe this company any money at all according to the Controller and Auditor General, and there is no law Rosemary or her colleagues have broken in saying so to merit harassment, arrest or detention. This scandal is the epitome of the “Kenya We Don’t Want” and it is sad that public servants can muzzle patriots who point out crime rather than pursuing Midland Finance and its corrupt counterparts in the Government of Kenya. Kenyans want to know who Midland Finance & Securities Limited is so that they can recover the billions of shillings this company has been paid on the strength of a legal opinion by the Attorney General and a credit contract signed in May 2003. Kenyans want to know why on February 28th 2009 over a quarter of a billion shillings (Ksh 275 million) will be paid to this company. Kenyans want to know why the Attorney General is refusing to cooperate with the Serious Fraud Office of the United Kingdom.

At the end of the day, the Partnership for Change has had to spend dear resources in paying Ksh 15,000 cash bail to the Nairobi Central Police Station and Rosemary has to waste her time, and that of her volunteer lawyers Harun Ndubi and Mugure Gituto, in attending court on Monday February 16th 2009 to answer bogus and unconstitutional charges. Agenda One of the National Accord demanded the immediate restoration of the civil and political liberties of Kenyans, and Rosemary’s arrest shows how the Government has failed to communicate to its officers the fact that Kenyans rights are sacred.

It doesn’t appear that the Grand Coalition will ever respect the rights of citizens to protest the misappropriation of the precious resources of Kenya. As we approach the first anniversary of the signing of the National Accord, isn’t it time that Kenyans had the opportunity to elect a Government that will respect their rights and implement the National Accord? And a Government that won’t steal taxpayers money or condone theft. There is a case for prioritizing the implementation of the Kriegler Commission Report so that the infrastructure for a democratic election is immediately put in place. The country cannot wait indefinitely. The truth is that Kenyans have had ENOUGH of the Grand Coalition Government.

Inspire People!

2009-02-11T19:48:00.000-05:00

Plans for grand opposition on course, says Namwamba!

2009-02-06T14:12:00.000-05:00

Plans to form a Grand Opposition in Parliament are still on course, Budalang’i MP Ababu Namwamba has said.

Mr Namwamba said that the adoption of new standing orders by Parliament allows legislators in the backbench to form a caucus that plays the role of the official opposition.

Speaking at the Great Rift Valley Lodge in Naivasha on Friday, he said the two-day retreat sponsored by the National Assembly was geared at starting preparations to constitute an official opposition in the 10th Parliament. He said that the retreat had the blessings of the Speaker.

Work out

“We are here to work out on the structures and logistical details of how this caucus will be formalised and will rise to play the role of parliament’s official opposition,” he said.

The lawmaker said the MPs were also strategising on how the Official Opposition Bill will be passed in Parliament when the issue comes up for debate. He said the absence of an official opposition has affected the fight against corruption.

“The lack of an official opposition has made it very difficult for legislators to take the government head on,” he said.

Cherangany MP Joshua Kutuny said corruption in the Grand Coalition had now become “grand corruption”, and urged the two principals to take charge.
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/politics/-/1064/525814/-/ygtqcxz/-/

Is Kibaki’s succession plan viable?

2009-01-26T17:06:00.000-05:00

By Mutahi Ngunyi
Today I will beg leave from reason and push a conspiracy theory. I call it a conspiracy because I read a pattern in President Kibaki’s actions. A pattern that suggests a possible manipulation of the 2012 election.

But before I make my argument, allow me to mention Mr Raila Odinga in passing. To repeat myself, I believe Mr Odinga has been set up for failure by the President.

I say so because the Prime Minister can organise people ‘‘against’’ an idea. However, he is weak at organising people in ‘‘support’’ of an idea. This imbalance makes him look like a ‘‘deconstructionist’’.

With the cameras on him consistently, he is bound to reveal his true nature. He actually did so this week. He told reporters to focus on the ‘‘goodies’’ he brought from India instead of asking ‘‘useless’’ questions about the maize and oil scandals.

This comment was ill-conceived and in bad taste. And this is why whenever Mr Odinga gets an opportunity to shut up, he must grab it with dear life. This way, he will have enough time to study President Kibaki’s silent schemes.

Now I must plead temporary insanity and advance my conspiracy theory. For starters, the 2012 election will be rigged. And I say so because nothing has changed.

The players are the same and their motives are intact. In other words, an orange tree cannot bear oranges one year, and bananas the following year.

If nothing has changed, we should not expect them to rig in 2007 and be of good behaviour in 2012. And although both principals are guilty of manipulation in 2007, the man to rig the election in 2012 is the President. Consider my hypotheses.

One, President Kibaki has motive. In fact, his motive is two-fold. During the Moi era, he led the GEMA community for 27 years. They languished in the cold, and their businesses had to fold. Now that they are back, they will protect their turf.

The Kibaki motive, therefore, is to craft a succession that will protect GEMA – at least at face value. And this brings me to his second and real motive. His interest is not GEMA; it is the protection of property.

In fact when Mr Uhuru Kenyatta was appointed Finance Minister, I exclaimed aloud “…what a joke!” But when I cooled down, it dawned on me that his appointment had only one purpose. The man will not create new wealth; he is there to protect old wealth. Period!

My second hypothesis regards the Kibaki choices and actors. If his motive is to protect wealth, who will execute the brief? Which crony will succeed him? Is it Mr Kenyatta? My submission is that the propertied are shameless.

If Mr Kenyatta is the man to protect their turf, they will install him and swear him in at night if they have to.

However, I doubt that he is their choice. More so because Mr Kenyatta himself told us that: “… some people claim that I am in the Waki List”.

If he is indeed on this list, he will have to climb down from his new high. He will have to resign pending investigations as required by the Waki process. What about Mr Kalonzo Musyoka, the Vice-President?

This man is not wealthy; he is just rich. Riches can be squandered in one generation, but wealth takes generations to exhaust.

And because Mr Musyoka does not understand wealth, he cannot be on the Kibaki short list. The same applies to M/s Martha Karua. She is just a peasant from Gichugu; not sufficiently pedigree.

Although she has promise, they view her as nothing but a clever ‘‘chatterbox’’. This leaves us with only one man – Prof George Saitoti. He is Kikuyu and not Kikuyu.

http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/-/440808/519248/-/42c8wl/-/index.html

Go Mutava Go!!!!!

2009-01-18T15:07:00.000-05:00

Gachoka MP Rev Mutava Musyimi says President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga are responsible for recurrent problems bedevilling the country. Musyimi accused the two principals driving the Grand Coalition Government of failing to give proper direction to national issues. He cited the current food crisis which has been declared a national disaster and corruption scandals facing the government that need proper guidance.

The Gachoka legislator urged the two principals to deal severely with those mentions in various scandals in order to restore dignity and respect into key institutions charged with critical services to the people.

He said it was time heads start rolling for the sake of majority of Kenyans who still have faith in the leadership of Kibaki and Raila. "Any one at the centre of scam should be relieved of his duties and prosecuted for the public to regain confidence in elected leaders" he lamented.

Mutava claimed that the government had lost moral authority in governing as it was unable to guarantee security and life of it citizens. The MP said that it was immoral for the government to stick to power without giving Kenyans quality leadership promised in the national accord.

Speaking in his constituency yesterday, Mutava noted that the two principals promised Kenyans rule of law but bad governance has continued to dog the current government. Mutava asked the two principals to spearhead reforms to address a myriad of problems bedevilling Kenyans today.

The legislature said that with proper governance, Kenyans should not die of or suffer from food related problems. Meanwhile, a family in Mwingi has buried its 13-year-old, standard two son who died from a famine related complication. This comes in the wake of governments move to invite humanitarian assistance of up to Sh37 billion to alleviate hunger across the country.

With the poor family unable to put food on the table for three days in a row, Kilonzo Kyule had no choice but to devour wild fruits that made him ill with constipation. "Once he ate the Mbu tree fruits, he was unable to answer calls of nature for three days and he developed stomach complications resulting in his death on last Thursday," said the deceased boy father Kyule Mulingwa. Meanwhile National Vision Party (NVP) has condemned political grandstanding in the Grand Coalition, saying the ever ending squabbles is to blame for the current problems.

The party cited the famine that has been declared a national disaster and the high cost of living in urban areas as indicators that the government is not addressing the real problems facing our people.
http://www.kenyatimesonline.com/content.asp?catid=2&articleId=1518

What is Communication?

2009-01-18T14:34:00.000-05:00

Communication is the process to impart information from a sender to a receiver with the use of a medium. Communication requires that all parties have an area of communicative commonality. There are auditory means, such as speaking, singing and sometimes tone of voice, and nonverbal, physical means, such as body language, sign language, paralanguage, touch, eye contact, or the use of writing. Communication is defined as a process by which we assign and convey meaning in an attempt to create shared understanding. This process requires a vast repertoire of skills in intrapersonal and interpersonal processing, listening, observing, speaking, questioning, analyzing, and evaluating. Use of these processes is developmental and transfers to all areas of life: home, school, community, work, and beyond. It is through communication that collaboration and cooperation occur.[1]
Communication is the articulation of sending a message through different media,[2] whether it be verbal or nonverbal, so long as a being transmits a thought provoking idea, gesture, action, etc. Communication is a learned skill. Most babies are born with the physical ability to make sounds, but must learn to speak and communicate effectively. Speaking, listening, and our ability to understand verbal and nonverbal meanings are skills we develop in various ways. We learn basic communication skills by observing other people and modeling our behaviors based on what we see. We also are taught some communication skills directly through education, and by practicing those skills and having them evaluated.
Communication as an academic discipline relates to all the ways we communicate, so it embraces a large body of study and knowledge. The communication discipline includes both verbal and nonverbal messages. A body of scholarship all about communication is presented and explained in textbooks, electronic publications, and academic journals. In the journals, researchers report the results of studies that are the basis for an ever-expanding understanding of how we all communicate. Communication happens at many levels (even for one single action), in many different ways, and for most beings, as well as certain machines. Several, if not all, fields of study dedicate a portion of attention to communication, so when speaking about communication it is very important to be sure about what aspects of communication one is speaking about. Definitions of communication range widely, some recognizing that animals can communicate with each other as well as human beings, and some are more narrow, only including human beings within the parameters of human symbolic interaction.
Nonetheless, communication is usually described along a few major dimensions: Content (what type of things are communicated), source, emisor, sender or encoder (by whom), form (in which form), channel (through which medium), destination, receiver, target or decoder (to whom), and the purpose or pragmatic aspect. Between parties, communication includes acts that confer knowledge and experiences, give advice and commands, and ask questions. These acts may take many forms, in one of the various manners of communication. The form depends on the abilities of the group communicating. Together, communication content and form make messages that are sent towards a destination. The target can be oneself, another person or being, another entity (such as a corporation or group of beings).
Communication can be seen as processes of information transmission governed by three levels of semiotic rules:
1. Syntactic (formal properties of signs and symbols),
2. pragmatic (concerned with the relations between signs/expressions and their users) and
3. semantic (study of relationships between signs and symbols and what they represent).
Therefore, communication is social interaction where at least two interacting agents share a common set of signs and a common set of semiotic rules. This commonly held rule in some sense ignores autocommunication, including intrapersonal communication via diaries or self-talk.

In a simple model, information or content (e.g. a message in natural language) is sent in some form (as spoken language) from an emisor/ sender/ encoder to a destination/ receiver/ decoder. In a slightly more complex form a sender and a receiver are linked reciprocally. A particular instance of communication is called a speech act. In the presence of "communication noise" on the transmission channel (air, in this case), reception and decoding of content may be faulty, and thus the speech act may not achieve the desired effect. One problem with this encode-transmit-receive-decode model is that the processes of encoding and decoding imply that the sender and receiver each possess something that functions as a code book, and that these two code books are, at the very least, similar if not identical. Although something like code books is implied by the model, they are nowhere represented in the model, which creates many conceptual difficulties.
Theories of coregulation describe communication as a creative and dynamic continuous process, rather than a discrete exchange of information. Canadian media scholar Harold Innis had the theory that people use different types of media to communicate and which one they choose to use will offer different possibilities for the shape and durability of society (Wark, McKenzie 1997). His famous example of this is using ancient Egypt and looking at the ways they built themselves out of media with very different properties stone and papyrus. Papyrus is what he called 'Space Binding'. it made possible the transmission of written orders across space, empires and enables the waging of distant military campaigns and colonial administration. The other is stone and 'Time Binding', through the construction of temples and the pyramids can sustain their authority generation to generation, through this media they can change and shape communication in their society (Wark, McKenzie 1997).
Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication
Am studying communication right now and I found this piece to be valuable
GB

Toward an All E-Textbook Campus!

2009-01-14T13:06:00.000-05:00

Many colleges are experimenting with e-textbooks these days. But at Northwest Missouri State University, President Dean L. Hubbard hopes they’ll be an e-book only campus (or close to it) soon — as soon as the market will allow it. “We’ll move as fast as the industry moves and they’re moving very rapidly,” Hubbard says.
Northwest Missouri has long bought textbooks on its students’ behalf, renting them in exchange for a $6 per credit hour fee. The university is now piloting a move away from purchasing the paper kind. This spring, the 6,700-student university bought e-books for about 500 students in 10 different courses — including College Algebra, Intercultural Communications, and the Enjoyment of Music. In addition, McGraw-Hill is making digital access codes available to up to 3,000 more Northwest Missouri students who are using texts available in both formats.
The pilot actually began, on a smaller scale, this fall, when the university experimented with e-books and, specifically, the Sony PRS-505 e-reader model — ultimately determining that the Sony model “was not necessarily designed for what we want to do,” says Paul Klute, the assistant to the president. So this spring, students will primarily use their laptop computers, already provided to them by the institution, to read the e-books (although a smaller group of students will test out a newer version of the Sony e-reader, Klute explains).
Klute says print will probably always have some place at Northwest Missouri; for example, in the case of an older textbook that is considered definitive in a field. Still, print would be the exception, not the rule. In making this shift, university officials cite a desire to cut costs, and to be “on the cutting edge” of trends in learning and technology.
Citing the e-book’s built-in interactivity, “I’m convinced,” says Hubbard, “that students will read more and they will learn more, by using this medium.”
The proposal to go (almost) e-book only does raise some questions, however — including what the renters, i.e. students, will think. The university will be surveying students throughout the spring, but data from last fall suggest split opinion. “Our quantitative feedback suggested to us that about 50 percent of our students like the idea of electronic textbooks and 50 percent don’t,” Klute says.
He adds: “I do think that we’ll see that 50 percent that don’t like e-textbooks shift as they become exposed to the electronic textbooks.”
“That’s just a hypothesis of mine and one that we hope to realize as the project moves forward.”
“I think there’s a lot of interest, and I think a generally supportive attitude certainly among the members of the faculty that I visited with,” says Doug Sudhoff, the Faculty Senate president and an assistant professor of mass communication. “There may be some faculty who will have a really hard time letting go of the traditional textbook. That’s true anywhere. But I think, in general, as we see the results of the pilot project and if those results are positive, I think you’ll see that faculty move pretty quickly to adapt their courses to online textbooks and adopt them for their courses.”
President Hubbard also cites a hoped-for cost-savings of at least 50 percent. And that raises some questions given the college’s current rental model: While e-books are cheaper, on average available at half the price of the printed version, the university currently replaces rental textbooks on three-year cycles — getting three years’ use out of a single bound book. By contrast, consumers typically buy timed subscriptions for the half-price e-books: 180 days for books to be used in semester courses, or 360 for those used year-long.
“We would have to better understand how our rental model would work with the current system of distributing e-textbooks,” Klute says.
“We haven’t made a deal yet, we’re still piloting it,” explains Hubbard. “But we’ve been very candid with the publishers that we are not going to spend any more than we’re currently spending and we would expect over time to spend less.”
That’s a reasonable expectation, says Frank Lyman, executive vice president at CourseSmart, a digital textbook company started by five major textbook publishers. “It’s a reasonable expectation that an institution pursuing digital aggressively should be able to save money for themselves and their students. Having not been involved with Northwest Missouri, I don’t know what the dynamic is there,” Lyman says.
Lyman says that with 5,029 textbooks now availability digitally, CourseSmart covers about 30 percent of the market. “For institutions that are going to be aggressive about pursuing this goal” — of being all e-textbook — “I think the opportunity exists for them to have 50, 60, 75 percent of their titles covered by e-textbooks within the next year.”
He adds that a few for-profit colleges have already moved to e-book only in certain curriculum areas. “As with a lot of things, the non-profit colleges and universities are trying to see if there’s something they can learn from the way the for-profits operate,” Lyman says.
CourseSmart reports that 72 percent of their customers say they would buy some or all of their textbooks in electronic format in the future. Likewise, “Our research shows that a very high percentage of students who actually use these digital textbooks have a positive experience. Most recommend it to their friends,” says Jeff Ho, a project manager at McGraw-Hill, one of five publishers that Northwest Missouri is working with.
However, an August report by the Student Public Interest Research Groups found that 75 percent of students surveyed said they’d prefer a printed textbook to a digital one. Thirty-three percent said they felt comfortable reading on a computer screen, 22 percent were uncomfortable and 45 percent were in the middle.
“It’s a sentiment shared among a lot of educators that it’s the 21st century; we should be using computers for all of education. As we wrote in the report, to some extent it’s true,” says Nicole Allen, the report author and the textbook advocate for Student PIRGs. “We’ve just got to remember that reading a Facebook profile is not the same thing as reading a textbook.”
“Textbooks are necessarily disconnected from students’ needs as consumers, because textbook sales are not driven by students; they’re driven by faculty,” she says. “It’s important to remember that the consumer actually does have needs and desires and the students do have preferences as to whether they want to switch to a digital book or a print book, and they’re different. The best thing is to give students options, and a lot of them can make that determination themselves. I’m not saying that switching to e-books is wrong. I’m not an educator; I don’t know. But I represent students’ needs as consumers and you can’t rely on the market to address those needs.”
In an e-mail, Abby Freeman, Northwest Missouri’s Student Senate president, expressed support for the university’s ongoing pilot.
“I think it demonstrates that NW is continually searching for methods to improve our university and the educational setting for the students. Though the original use intended for the [Sony] e-readers may not be the best option for the students of Northwest, the continued piloting and research into the programs and their benefit is great. I think students enjoy exploring new opportunities in their classrooms and discovering if those options are a benefit to the university.”
— Elizabeth Redden
Reporter
Inside Higher Ed
Washington, DC 20008

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/14/ebooks

The Ten Roads To Riches!

2009-01-02T01:42:00.000-05:00

1. Start a successful business.
2.Become a CEO of an existing firm and juice it.
3.Hitch to a successful visionary's bandwagon and ride along.
4.Turn celebrity into wealth.
5.Marry well---really well!
6.Steal it---legally--no guns!
7.Capitalize on other people's money!
8.Invent on endless future revenue stream.
9.Trump the land barons by monetizing unrealized real estate wealth.
10. Save hard, invest well.

Gleaned from Ken Fisher's book.

What Kenyan Institutions Can Learn From the Van Andel Institute!

2008-12-17T13:51:00.000-05:00

The Van Andel Research Institute - Organizational Analysis

Culture
The Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) has a strong corporate culture that is seen in all levels of culture: artifacts, values and basic assumptions. VARI has both visible manifestations of its culture as well as strong currents beneath the surface. At first glance it is clear that culture of VARI places a very high importance on the outside perception of others. Additionally, there is a culture of collaboration although this is clearer at the artifact level than throughout the organization. The personal beliefs and values of the scientists also provide a strong sense of individual achievement and a culture of autonomy amongst the scientists.

Artifacts
Artifacts, or observable symbols, architecture, behaviors and slogans are apparent at VARI from the moment an individual approaches the building. The building architecture was designed to give the impression of a high tech, cutting edge facility, a notch above others. The building façade provides an impressive image along the Grand Rapids Medical Mile. By breaking away from a traditional square building, VARI sets itself apart from others and creates a culture of elitism. This supports the culture at VARI that the scientists are world-class and utilize the most recent and newest technologies in support of the mission of improving human health. The culture of VARI is one of sending a strong image into the community of cutting edge science and high tech experiments – the building clearly shows this.

In addition to the interesting building structure, upon entering the lobby of VARI an individual is greeted with a large expansive space and a hanging exhibit by Dale Chihuly. The exhibit and the large space again support the culture of being an exclusive group and successful institution. The front lobby area has an expensive look and feel which furthers the culture of elitism.

In addition to the building and lobby area the culture of being an advanced science facility and again, separate from the other entities on the Medical Mile is exhibited through the number of security checkpoints in the building – even to enter the office space and elevators security badges are needed. The front desk is staffed by security rather than a receptionist. Theses artifacts support the notion that Van Andel Research Institute is a step above the others and also that is highly values that others have that perception as well.

Values
Values are the levels of a corporate culture that are shared by members. They are the underlying values, assumptions, beliefs, attitudes and feelings that members of a group have. At VARI the values of the staff are diverse due to the wide variety of ethnic backgrounds but they area few values that are shared by all. The main value shared by all employees at VARI is the strong desire to improve human health and advance scientific research. This is a value that is held by scientists and administration. This is a value that began with the founding of the Institute and the formation of the endowment to further life sciences. It is the strong value of Dave Van Andel and of the found Jay Van Andel to improve human health. The nature of the work at VARI – medical research – is evidence of the value. Scientists are very focused around their specific areas of expertise all with the same goal. The publications and discoveries scientists produce are artifacts that exhibit this value.

However, although all scientists and employees have the same value of improving human health and clearly exhibit that in their work there is also a value of personal success. Scientists are recognized and awarded based on individual achievements – not over VARI success. The more publications, grants and funding as well as internationally recognized discoveries the more successful the scientist. This value of individual success is reflected in the lack of interdependence and lack of group efforts between the 18 individual labs. The scientists work independently from one another and are more likely to collaborate with an outside partner that with another scientist in the Institute. While artifacts such as press releases and joint authorship on articles gives an impression of collaboration the underlying value is still to build individual credit and esteem.

Basic Assumptions
Basic assumptions are the underlying beliefs that individuals have – and may not even realize – yet they can greatly influence the culture of an organization. At VARI there are basic assumptions that are illustrated in the demographics of the employees. The management of VARI is dominated by white males; additionally the majority of the PIs are male as well. Whether or not this was a purposeful decision it is still an underlying aspect of the culture at VARI. Additionally, VARI has conservative values at its core from the Van Andel family. While it is harder to see the basic assumptions in artifacts and actions the support of Senator McCain and opposition to embryonic stem cell research by the majority of leadership are two recent examples of the conservative nature of the organization.

Mechanistic vs. Organic Structures

The Van Andel Research Institute operates primarily in an organic structure. The administrative group operates in a more mechanistic way but also works on changing project teams and on task-adjusted working groups and teams which is characteristic of an organic structure. In an organic structure employees contribute to a common task of a department and work on task adjusted projects through team work. Additionally there is less hierarchy of authority, less control and fewer rules. Finally knowledge and control of tasks is distributed throughout the organization and communication is horizontal. These are all characteristics of VARI.

Scientific labs each have a Principle Investigator however the scientists collaborate within the lab planning their own experiments and making adjustments based on continual findings. For example, if an assay produces an unexpected result the scientists work as a team to determine what happened and plan subsequent experiments to prove or disprove hypotheses. This highlights the distributed control of tasks and horizontal communication that is key to an organic structure. Additionally, due to the exploratory nature of the work there are very few rules implemented through vertical communication. While the scientists are required to act in fiscally responsible ways they have flexibility in spending lab budgets, are able to design experiments as they see fit rather than following strict rules and may publish or collaborate with any partners or publications. As previously mentioned, the administrative side is slightly more mechanistic and has rules with regard to accounting and information technology procedures but employees still have discretion in activities and are encouraged to join project teams and help where their skills can be best utilized even if outside the department. This encouragement of cross-function collaboration and task adjusted work adds to an organic feel.

Organic structures work best in uncertain and complex environments. The area or scientific discovery and research is highly uncertain and complex – new discoveries are being made daily that challenge conventional thought and require adjustments to research efforts. The uncertainty in the success of experiments and the low probability of success in research and drug development further the need for a structure based on teamwork.

From a structural design perspective, the Van Andel Research Institute operates in a cross between a divisional structure and a matrix structure – while still maintaining its organic nature. From the divisional perspective, each lab could be seen as a division operating independently from other laboratories. However, each lab does not have its own HR, accounting, purchasing and IT functions – these are centrally housed. With the core administrative services and core technology labs servicing multiple labs or projects a matrix structure could be applied. In the matrix structure each lab would be a product or project that utilizes the core services as needed. The matrix approach encourages innovation and creative thought but takes a significant amount of time to coordinate. As VARI is still a relatively new organization (only 10 years old) it will be interesting to observe changes in structural organization as the Institute grows and matures.

Technology, Differentiation, and Integration

Technology
Technology is much more than the computer and electronic technologies utilized in office and homes and it is also more than the scientific equipment used at the Van Andel Institute. Technology encompasses all the tools, techniques, machines, processes and actions used to transform inputs into outputs in a system. Looking at VARI technologies from multiple approaches will provide greater insight into the operations of VARI.

Joan Woodward classified technologies based on systems of production – small batch and unit production, large batch and mass production and continuous process production. Each method of production is a technology used to create a product. At VARI small batch and unit production is the technology used. Scientific experiments and trials are used to create output specific to customer specifications. Often the customer is the scientist seeking results but in some cases service work is done for pharmaceutical companies where each project is custom designed. A recent example is was a project for a major pharmaceutical company in which human lymphomas were implanted into mice in order to test an experimental new treatment. This highlights the customer specific nature of the projects. The scientific experiments are not mechanized and require highly skilled human workers to complete; additionally as previously mentioned there are few formalized rules or procedures and they operate in an organic manner.

A second aspect to analyze technologies from is from departmental technologies framework presented by Richard Daft and Norman Macintosh. Looking at the variety and analyzability of the tasks performed different technologies are needed. Analyzability refers to the extent in which a task can be reduced to predetermined steps and variety refers to the frequency of unexpected and novel events. The tasks at VARI have high variety and low analyzability. While the steps in a set process, centrifugation for example, are high analyzable the overall experiments are always different and changing due to the high variety and uncertainty of what the results will be. An interesting aspect of scientific research is that the results are not known prior to starting a task or activity – this is extremely high variety. These factors require nonroutine departmental technologies. The majority of the tasks at VARI fall into this category with the exception of the administrative support functions such as accounting, purchasing and contracts which are much more analyzable and have lower variety. The administrative functions require routine departmental technologies.

In looking at the relationship of department technology to structural and management characteristics, as expected, nonroutine departmental technologies are related to organic structures with low formalization, low centralization, an importance of training plus experience (at VARI PIs all have Ph.D.s and have completed post-doctoral fellowships to gain experience).

Differentiation and Integration

In order for the Van Andel Research Institute to have success individual laboratories and individual scientists need to have scientific discoveries that will lead to the award of federal funding or to revenues from outlicensing technologies to pharmaceutical, biotech, diagnostic or device organizations. To do this coordination and workflow interdependence is essential.

As discussed in an earlier analysis, VARI is increasing differentiation in job function with the addition of more specialized core services and the addition of new scientists. With this increased differentiation in job role integration through coordination is needed. The Van Andel Research Institute operates in a reciprocal interdependence model as described by Thompson. What makes VARI a reciprocal model rather than a sequential model is the mutual adjustments that are required throughout a research program. While there are sequential steps to follow each step creates an output that may require a change in course or the repeating of early steps. Additionally, this reciprocal coordination extends to the relationship the labs have with the administrative team. Depending upon discoveries or research needs continual adjustments to agreements and budgets are made. There are cross-functional teams made up of scientists within a lab and scientists from core labs and potential individuals from the external environment as well – these complex relationships require face-to-face communications often through unscheduled meetings and a focus on integrating the pieces. An example of a reciprocal interdependence is in VARI’s relationship with Spectrum Health. At any given time multiple projects are occurring with many individuals – recently a new protocol was initiated to obtain tumor samples from surgical patients – as patients entered surgery a team was called together to properly obtain and transport the sample and then scientific experiments began and were continually adjusted with input from both researchers and physicians.

In addition to the coordination and workflow interdependence, VARI also should consider the sociotechnical system model to design for joint optimization. For the most success organizations need to combine the characteristics of the social system, analyzed in organizational behavior with the technical system seen through organizational design.

The writer is a graduate Management student in USA.

Kenyan President heckled over Media Bill during Independence Celebration!

2008-12-16T12:50:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, 16th December 2008. 3:47pm

By: Manasseh Zindo.

Nairobi: The Government of President Mwai Kibaki in Kenya is slowly losing touch with the people since his disputed controversial re-election in December 2007 that plunged Kenya into deadly post-election violence. The coalition government has angered the public by the refusal of Members of Parliament to pay tax and passing of a draconian Bill to muzzle the Media.

On Friday December 12, Kenya marked 45 years of self-governance since it gained independence from Britain but the celebrations at the Nyanyo National Stadium in the capital, Nairobi, was marred by protests, and arrests of journalists, and activists.

The journalist and civil rights activists were protesting a bill passed by Parliament on Wednesday December 10, which gives the government powers to control the media. The bill known as the Kenya Communication (Amendment) Bill 2008 has caused outcry from media practitioners who have declared that the media is under attack.

Protests over attempts to muzzle the media, rising food prices and failure by MPs to pay taxes forced the President to cut short his speech during the Friday’s Jamhuri (Independence) Day celebrations. More than 70 people, among them journalists, were arrested and locked up at various police stations in Nairobi.

Radio presenters Walter Mong’are popularly known as “Nyambane”, Kiss FM personality Carolyne Mutoko were among those held by police. Mr Mong’are, who had been seen earlier mingling with other journalists at the venue, changed his clothes and donned a white and black stripped shirt and pants, the official attire in the country’s jails.

He made an attempt to access the podium where President Kibaki, the First Lady, Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka were seated, but security agents quickly pounced on him. Mr Mong’are was wrestled to the ground and kicked by senior police officers as he made his way into the stadium dressed in clothes resembling those worn by prisoners to symbolize impending imprisonment of media if the controversial bill passed by Parliament is signed into law.

A section of the crowd tried to hurl plastic water bottles at the security agents who were carrying the comedian out of the stadium but failed to stop them. Ms Mutoko was arrested as she arrived at the stadium dressed in a black T-Shirt with the inscription “No Tax, No Tax Uta Do? (What will you do)?”

The crowd remained unexcited as President Kibaki went round in his ceremonial military Land Rover, in protest against the arrest of comedian-cum-journalist Walter Mong’are. At one time, a crowd at the one of the terraces attempted to break the gates, demanding to take a petition to the President. Chaos followed as the police struggled to restrain the unruly crowd. But even after succeeding, a section of them continued shouting “tuna njaa” (We are hungry), disrupting the speeches. Moment after President Kibaki had finished his official address in English and turned to Kiswahili he was forced to cut short his speech when one protester who had sneaked his way into the VIP dais shouted the president down. Mr.

Frederick Odhiambo, a member of the Bunge la Mwananchi, (Parliament of the People) had managed to make his way into the VIP area and sat about 10 meters away from President Kibaki, Prime Minister Raila Odinga amongst a bevy of invited leaders and envoys. His arrest among VIPs shocked the country and VIPs themselves who, ostensibly, never expected such an incident to occur in their midst.

Questions were asked how he made his way there and sat on a seat reserved for an assistant minister. Shortly before the incident, an angry President Kibaki who had apparently been appalled by heckles and shouts of “hunger, hunger, we want food and MPs must pay taxes” had said: “Let those who want to fight do so”. The President had made the remarks after a section of the crowd shouted at him when he started giving his Kiswahili speech.

Before forcing the President to cut his Mr Odhiambo who was just 10 metres away shouted: “The rich are oppressing the poor, MPs are not paying taxes and Kibaki has not said anything”, as the presidential elite security descended on him. The incident became more dramatic when the president told-off the heckler: “If you are out of your mind, blame yourself,” Kibaki to the heckler in Kiswahili and hastily ended his speech. The President, First Lady Lucy, Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka immediately left the podium with other VIPs in tow.

Following the arrest of Odhiambo, members of Bunge la Mwananchi (The Parliament of the People) in a letter addressed to Kenyans and friends of Kenya, said that Mr. Odhiambo was descended on by the security. “They descended on him and mercilessly carried him off, covering his mouth so that he could not be heard,” the civil society organization said in a letter signed by George Nyongesa and e-mailed to media houses.

Mr Frederick Odhiambo was taken to the hospital the following day (Saturday) under tight security but he told the press that he was tortured in police cell with his private parts injured. He was admitted at the Nairobi Women Hospital where he is being treated.

At the Friday celebrations, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, a darling of the people, was also shouted down as he tried to calm the public. Also arrested at the celebration was Mwalimu Mati and his wife Jayne, both of Mars Group, a human rights non-governmental organization based in Kenya.

Police targeted people who wore T-shirts that bore messages of dissatisfaction with the recently passed Communications Bill, which is designed to curtail the freedom of the press. The T-shirts also had messages denouncing the high food prices, failure to tax MPs’ salaries as well as failure to implement the Waki Report. The T-shirts bore messages like, ‘Tumechoka (We’re tired)’, ‘Enough is Enough’, ‘No MPs Tax Uta Do (What will you do?)’

Early on Thursday evening, a day before the celebration Kenya Television Network Managing Editor, Linus Kaikai iced it with a personal letter to President Kibaki, urging him to correct the wrong done by Parliament. Mr Kaikai reminded Kibaki of a recent tête-à-tête they had at Maasai Mara Game reserve. Kaiaki reminded the president of his past pledges to protect the media and took him through instances when journalists and media houses had been unlawfully raided and harassed by State authorities.

Last year, Kibaki had assured the country the protection of freedom of expression and the Press. He said his Government would continue to work with the media to ensure Press freedom is respected and enriched. Kibaki, one of Kenya’s longest serving politician said this was essential not only because it is a basic right but also because it is vital for development of democracy.

In Mombasa, journalists covering the celebrations had tape strapped around the mouth as a way of protesting the law allowing a government-appointed commission to determine broadcast content, and giving the Minister for Internal Security powers to raid media houses. Two years ago Kenyan security agent and wife of President Mwai Kibaki in separate incidents invaded media houses in Nairobi and hold the media houses hostage for several hours.

The Friday arrest of journalists in Nairobi and members of the civil society received immediate condemnation from a section of leaders in Kenya. Kenya Editor’s Guild chairman Macharia Gaitho condemned the government for carrying out the arrests. He said: “We’ve had very sad happenings today. Journalists and members of the civil society have been arrested for expressing their opinions.” Mr Gaitho said the arrests were as a result of the media’s campaigns for MPs’ taxation. He said the media fraternity demanded an apology from President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga for the arrests.

Kenya’s renowned lawyer and former MP Paul Muite criticized the actions saying it was regrettable that 45 years after independence, Kenyans still face dictatorship. "It is a violation of freedom of expression and this must be condemned," Muite said while visiting the detained journalists and civil right activists at Langata police station.

Wife of Prime Minister Mrs Ida Odinga was among the first to condemn the bill and offered the media her support. She also denounced the arrest of journalists and activists. Mrs Odinga, an advocate of democracy in Kenya, said in the past when she was facing tribulations, it was only journalist who were listening to her and writing her stories.

“I have walked along a rough path in the politics of Kenya. During that journey, most of the times, friends deserted me when I was viewed as bad company for holding certain views. In all those moments, the only people who were willing to listen to me and tell my story were journalists. They did it either as professionals or as friends. My conscience therefore cannot allow me to keep quiet when the media is under attack,” she said.

She termed the arrests of journalists by the police as outrageous. “How can the police arrest people who were demanding the right to do their job?” Ida posed in a letter faxed to media houses.

Student Organization of the University of Nairobi chairman Dan Mwangi said the MPs were against the campaign by media to have their allowances taxed. “They are trying to apply the same thing they did on former Finance minister Amos Kimunya to silence any voices calling for taxation of their salaries,” Mwangi said.

Centre of the Kenya for Law and Research International chairman Morris Odhiambo said the MPs were revenging after the media waged a campaign to push them to pay tax. Mr Odhiambo said the “media were on the forefront on the tax issue and this has been seen as a threat to these MPs”. Labour Union Secretary General Francis Atwoli described the actions by Parliament as a big step backward in the war against dictatorship. He termed the bill as archaic, draconian, and retrogressive. Atwoli accused MPs of betraying the media.

Women Rights advocate and former Nominated MP Njoki Ndungu trashed the draconian media law as ‘unconstitutional’. Njoki advised the media to move to court to quash the clauses that bestow overwhelming powers on the Internal Security Minister and the Communication Commission of Kenya. "The court has the power to invalidate the sections which are unconstitutional," said Njoki.

Lands Minister James Orengo, a member of Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) joined in and said the Kenya Communication (Amendment) Bill 2008 was unconstitutional and negates section 79 of the constitution that guarantees freedom of expression. “The position of ODM as far as the media bill is concerned is that it is should not have been there. As a party we do not support it because it reduces the democratic space,” Orengo, one of Kenya’s most respected lawyer said.

Mr Orengo said ODM was not party to the new media bill as it was approved by the cabinet before the formation of the Grand Coalition Government. “If the president assents to the bill, we still have a right to go to court though I do not think we want to go that direction,” he said.

The Lands Minister who represented Prime Minister Raila Odinga at a press conference in Mumias Western Kenya, said Information Minister Samuel Poghisio from the rivalry ODM-Kenya Party of Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka took the bill to parliament when other MPs were meeting President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga on the formation of a special tribunal to try suspects on the post-election violence.

“Many of us were not in the house when the bill was going through,” Orengo reiterated. “The media had made frantic efforts to intercept the Bill before it got to the floor of the House. But MPs, angered by a parallel campaign to have their allowances taxed, saw in this Bill a weapon to hit back and punish the media. Without minding the consequences, it took only 25 out of the 222 MPs to pass it this week,” said The Standard Newspaper.

Lands Minister Orengo noted that there were sufficient laws in place that needed only slight modifications if any to give the media more democratic space. “This bill takes us back many years democratically. But I want to assure the media fraternity that the Prime minister is right now engaged in discussing the matter further,” he told the press on Saturday.

Mr Orengo confirmed that the Prime Minister Raila Odinga was scheduled to meet with media owners association where he'll receive a petition from the media owners. “There are things one must stand and speak against without hesitation. With all good intentions this bill is going to fail,” Orengo assured the media fraternity.

The Minister said that it was embarrassing to see the state resort to coercion to limit the freedom of expression which he said consisted of the freedom to hold peaceful demonstration. “I feel a little ashamed that people like Nyambane (Walter Mong’are), Mati (Mwalimu) and Caroline Mutoko could be arrested for doing what is right,” said Mr. Orengo.

Mr Orengo said that ODM has listened to the public outcry and would announce some kind of agreement to remit their taxes. The party also pledged to rally legislators to reach a compromise to allow their salaries and allowances to be taxed. The Lands Minister, a former political prisoner said there was need to review the draconian Bill.

Other MPs who condemned the bill and arrest of journalists included Budalang’i MP Ababu Namwamba who said the arrest of journalists, signaled the return of repression in the country. His Cherengany counterpart Joseph Kutuny accused Information Minister Samuel Poghisio of habouring a hidden agenda against the media. Local Government Assistant Minister Njeru Githae said, if put in the wrong hands, the Bill was draconian but added the Bill would only put restrictions to those who do not want to remain professionals.

Anglican Church Maseno South Diocese Bishop Mwai Abiero said passing the Bill was an affront of Media freedom. Abiero read mischief in the move and accused the Ministry of Information and Communication of hiding something from Kenyans. The National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) also condemned the bill and arrests.

Kitale Catholic Bishop Maurice Crowler urged President Kibaki not to assent to the Bill. The Council of Imams and Preachers in Kenya (CIPK) said Kenyans were losing faith in the Tenth Parliament. “It is quite true now that they are not happy following heightened coverage by the media on their failure to pay taxes,” said CIPK National Organizing Secretary General Sheikh Mohamed Khalifa. Communication and Information Minister Samuel Poghisio says the Government has no interest in muzzling the media or to control their content, but the Media in Kenya says history show that, there is every legitimate reason to express reservations.
http://www.religiousintelligence.co.uk/news/?NewsID=3508

Kenyan bets KSh100m on digital printing!

2008-12-16T03:08:00.000-05:00

By JUSTUS ONDARI Posted Monday, December 15 2008 at 16:37
Ensconced on the right wing of the second floor of Rehani House on Nairobi’s Koinange Street is an innocuous sign announcing the address as the home of Liberty Graphics and Print Ltd.

No big deal. In any case, what would be so special about a graphics design and printing press in a country where every nook and cranny is teeming with all manner of printing outfits?

Nothing could be further from the truth. Liberty Graphics and Print Ltd is no ordinary printer. If anything, it is the nerve centre of what promises to be the first phase of a multimillion investment by a Kenyan, Mr Wilfred Saroni, returning from the Diaspora.

“We are bringing the very latest in cutting age digital and online on demand printing technology to Kenyans. Unlike other printers, we are not using plates,” says Mr Saroni, who is seeking to replicate a model perfected by American giant, FedEx Office, formerly FedEx Kinko’s.

Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka is expected to officially open the business tomorrow. The 2005 New Hampshire Businessman of the Year says he is going for the high-end printing market, which is currently served by printers based in South Africa and China.

The investment, in which the entrepreneur has already pumped Sh100 million, could have been a franchise of FedEx Office if things had worked out as planned.
Impressed by the success of the seventh largest printing company in North America, Mr Saroni dreamt of being allowed to establish a franchise of the chain store in Nairobi.

However, as it turned out, his was just that — a dream. The chain store’s management rejected his proposal, saying Kenya was a small market.
They politely informed him that they were already operating in Africa’s biggest economy, South Africa, providing printing, photocopying and binding services as well as video conference facilities.

It was then that it dawned on the Caplan University, USA, MBA graduate that he could go it alone.

“It has always been my plan to invest in Kenya and East Africa after doing business in the US for ten years,” says Mr Saroni, who was awarded the Ronald Reagan Republican Gold Medal in 2006 by senior members of the US Congress for his hard work and entrepreneurial acumen.

At a time when the Government is making every effort to attract foreign investors, including offering them incentives such as tax waivers, Mr Saroni feels the same should be extended to Kenyans in the Diaspora.

His call for the support of Kenyans in the Diaspora and the decision to return to the country coincides with the release of government statistics showing that local investors are more effective in fighting high rate of unemployment in the country compared to the much sought-after foreign investors.

Official statistics show that whereas the locals invest less than the foreign counterparts in the economy, they create more jobs.

According to the latest Kenya Investment Authority statistics, local investors pumped about Sh9.1 billion into the economy in the first three months of the current fiscal year compared to Sh27.6 billion in foreign investments.

This saw the country attract investments worth Sh36.7 billion against a target of Sh23.5 billion as KenInvest issued 34 investment certificates out of the 37 investors who applied over the period.

The locals created 1,343 jobs compared to 95 jobs by their foreign counterparts during the period, which ran between July and September this year. Mr Saroni already has 25 employees on his payroll.

“It shows that, if well promoted, local investors cannot only contribute to the fight against employment, but also spur economic growth,” says Ms Susan Kikwai, the KIA managing director.

Mr Saroni, who has every reason to understand what it takes to not only run but sustain a business having seen one of his business in the US go bust, says the cost of doing business in the region is much lower than in the US.

The New Hampshire Board of Nursing withdrew the operating licence of his Nashua Nursing School in New Hampshire mid this year after it ran into financial problems, a development that he attributes to the turmoil that is facing the US economy.

“It was a painful experience but big multinational companies like AIG, Ford, Crystler and GM are facing problems and Wall Street is crumbling. My business was not an exception,” says Mr Saroni whose other two other schools – Holden Medical Institute – are still operating.

Mr Saroni, who went to Kimana primary and secondary schools, does not rule out divesting from the business, saying that when the right time comes, he will consider an “appropriate exit strategy”.

He is currently liquidating his equity and interest in one of the investments, Holden Centre, a 300,000 square feet property. Since the past sometimes determines the future, how sure can one be that Liberty Graphics and Print will survive?
“My business approach is never to look back on lost business but to focus on the success of new and ongoing ventures,” he says, adding that, “The closed school is only relevant to the extent that it taught me a lesson on business management.”
Using funds from minority partners and personal savings, he is in the process of setting up four retail outlets around the city centre at a cost of between Sh40 million and Sh50 million each.

“We expect our state-of-the-art printing press on Mombasa Road to be up and running at a cost of Sh100 million,” he says, adding that already he has sealed a number deals for the two months old business.

Using his networks, the entrepreneur aims to tap into the fast growing graphics outsourcing business in the US market where the company is also registered to operate.

With the proposed fibre optic cables expected to reach the country by mid next year, the entrepreneur who received the Head of State Commendation from President Kibaki this year says the cost of communication will go down significantly.

“This will enable us to link up with our clients abroad at a cheaper rate and faster,” he says, while urging the country to adopt appropriate technology.
“It is easier for Kenyans to adopt, say, wireless technology communication than the US, which had to grapple with what to do with thousands of landline telephone cables already laid in the ground,” he adds.

Another bolster to businesses like Mr Saroni’s is a bandwidth subsidy that the government initiated this year and which is being administered by the ICT Board.
Maintaining that the country’s business environment has improved, he calls for a reduction in the amount of paperwork involved in registration of a business.
For instance, in line with the proposed reforms being pursued by the Kenya Revenue Authority, only one form should be used in the registration for things like the PIN and VAT (Value Added Tax).

Similarly, he feels the proposed amendment of the Companies Act to allow for an individual to set up a business will make the country a better investment destination.

Yet, like a sore thump, infrastructure remains a major challenge and he cites the port of Mombasa, the road network and power supply as some of the areas that need immediate attention.

“It is time we amended our laws to allow dual citizenship,” says Mr Saroni, whose ambition is to expand the business across the East African region and take it to the public by listing at the Nairobi Stock Exchange in five years.
http://www.nation.co.ke/magazines/smartcompany/-/1226/502546/-/stw4slz/-/index.html

Global Mind Change

2008-12-10T15:40:00.001-05:00

Graft: Top Leaders Look The Other Way!

2008-12-10T14:48:00.000-05:00

There is an interesting heading on the East African Standard that says “Graft: Top leaders look the other way” http://www.eastandard.net/politics/InsidePage.php?id=1144001288&cid=289&

I am of the opinion that corruption, poverty and the poor in Africa pose a tremendous danger to the security of the world today than some of the previously perceived enemies of world peace. I fully agree with those who have asserted that the most potentially explosive force in the world today is the frustrated desire of poor people to attain a decent standard of living. I speak as an African who has experienced both poverty and affluence. I grew up in poverty. I have worked in the slums and I have had the opportunity of visiting different parts of Africa and the Western world where I have experienced the two contrasting lifestyles-poverty and affluence.

In a 1992 address, former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali stated that the deepest causes of conflict are "economic despair, social injustice, and political oppression”. I was a student at that time so I started to examine his statement from a theological and social point of view. Later on I discovered that I needed to examine it from an economic view point and I have been doing that for some time now.

By choosing to ignore the deteriorating economic state of most Africans, the religious bodies in general and the developed countries in particular, may in essence be mistaken to be endorsing the plight of the poor as a noble affair. If this matter is not addressed adequately, it could also enhance the conception by many people that the Gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ is irrelevant to the modern person. Or that God is dead, as some erroneous thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche have claimed in the past. Let me hasten to add that I have keenly analyzed what the world leaders like former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush together with their colleagues from the developed countries have done to reduce the debt that African countries owe to the Western financial institutions and nations, but I believe that a lot more needs to be done collectively if poverty in Africa is to be eliminated.

I am convinced that the religious bodies and the Free Society institutions are in possession of the most effective remedy for a holy and equitable reconstruction of the economic order in Africa, which as to force, comprehensiveness and results is unsurpassed. The remedy is the unabridged and unmutilated message of personal virtues, when applied, not only to the individual, but also to all and every relation of social life. This will address the moral issue which is at the core of Africa’s economic woes. If the African leaders were to have their morals refined so that they respect and live virtuous lives, corruption would become history on the continent of Africa within months and the economies of most African countries would begin to grow tremendously.

I am fully convinced that the key to the rejuvenation of the African economies lies in the stakeholder’s formulation, implementation and evaluation of economic policies and strategies both at the local and national levels. I am fully convinced that the stakeholders (Government, private and civil society organizations) in Africa must be strongly concerned and involved in every charitable endeavor that is predisposed to improve humanity’s welfare not merely in its way to paradise, but also in its hunt for happiness, holiness, harmony and joy here on earth. I disagree with those who propagate a futuristic Gospel which calls on the African people to suffer just for a little while for they are going to enjoy in heaven.

It is my strong call to religious people to have the courage to seek economic justice for the poor, even if that means disapproval by those in positions of authority. This is where I fully concur with one Mohandas Karamchand Mahatma Gandhi. Let them torture your body, break your bones or even kill you, but do not compromise human dignity for anything!

I also fully believe that it is time for the religious organizations in Africa to acquaint themselves on available and productive economic intervention measures. The Rev. Todt once said, whoever would understand the social question and would contribute to its solution must have on his right hand the works of political economy; on his left those of scientific socialism and before him must keep the New Testament.

I can only add to Rev. Todt’s statement that such a person should have the Old Testament too because it contains valuable insights on economic justice issues. Until now, the religious organization’s approach to social and economic justice challenges has been pitiable and disappointing. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's important question still echoes in many of our minds when we think of the issue of economic justice in Africa. Dietrich like many African scholars today, ask, who and where is Jesus Christ for us today?

Dietrich may have lived at a time of great persecution in his native land, Germany, but many in Africa today still identify with him when it comes to economic deprivation. So as one preaches and teaches about a God who listens to the cries of His people, many Africans must be wondering who and where that Jesus Christ is for them today.

I am constantly irritated when so much phony socio-economic knowledge and strategy for African modernization is presented to Africans. The religious bodies in Africa find themselves immersed in a swimming pool of challenges that Africa has never been confounded with before. This is why I feel that the subject of faith and economic systems deserves individual treatment in the wider context of international planning, strategizing, formulation, implementation and evaluation of economic growth policies. How I wish our institutions of higher learning would revise their curriculums and address this crucial need.

We who are in institutions that are advocating and fighting for a free society see that the opportunity to be in this world in this century presents us and the religious bodies with equally a colossal advantage and a challenge like has never been perceived by any other generation past. It is a difficult but great era with multitudes of opportunity for bettering the well being of mankind. We observe that human kind is transiting through another of its historical crises on its frontward march on the road to a more ideal spiritual, social and economic order.

I always feel bad when people, especially politicians in my own mother country think that neither the religious books nor the religious bodies have an authority on the particulars of supporting economy, lawmaking and business methods. This is something that ought to be straightened by all means. Both the religious bodies and their faiths must tell the humankind by what standard he should be directed. They have a duty to guide the leaders to expel selfishness from a person’s motives and put brotherhood at the front as his determining principle. The religious bodies need not to be a passive observer in a world that is characterized by identity syndromes. The religious bodies in Africa need to be radically developing and readjusting or re-evaluating her theology on current issues like economic systems. No one is claiming that the religious books can solve technical economic problems. Let the technical problems be handled by the technicians who have the expertise in this field. However, it is obvious that the religious bodies need to become a dynamic force in Africa as far as the running of the economic system is concerned. Let the faiths influence the paradigms of the economic system.

I also believe that purity opens up the purse. St. John speaks of perfect love in his epistle, and he says: One ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath the world’s goods, and beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how doth the love of God abide in him? (1 John 3:16-17). I know some of you are already beginning to brand me a socialist. Such acts do not make one necessarily a socialist or a liberal or a conservative, but it does create in one an active sympathy with social needs. My call on the religious bodies here is to get people where they can have pure hearts. Let them be free from sin and they will be able to sympathize and empathize with their economically disadvantaged brothers.

As to the present wage and profit system of business, only a few leaders in the religious bodies realize that it will eat up the whole continent if it is allowed to obey its own greed, while the religious bodies look with distrust on those of their members who try to unearth and apply religious social ideals. The religious bodies need to help come up with economic policies that will check the growth of this vice. The religious bodies need to take up the work of social and economic reconstruction as a definite policy and on a large scale. We need Africans to be entrepreneurial but they should also be considerate so that those who are endowed with more riches do no compete unnecessarily with their poor bothers. They should instead create some space and give leverage to those who need to uplift their economic status.

I also call upon governments in the developed countries to consider working with the Free Society institutions on the African continent to equip the Africans with the right economic policies. Let them go further and equip them with virtues, skills, tools and resources that will enable them to produce resources, manage them and utilize them on their continent for the glory of God. Otherwise, if African Governments continue to be given economic aid yet their people lack virtues, skills and tools to take advantage of the resources that they have on their continent, Africa will continue to wallow in poverty and it will continue to be a threat to world peace especially now that Africans have discovered that they can be enlisted in terror groups like Al Queda and the Somali pirates!

KENYA’S WEALTH IN FOREIGN HANDS!

2008-12-10T13:45:00.000-05:00

If Kenya were a cake to be shared out,Kenyans would only lay claim to 31 per cent of the country’s total wealth. The rest would go to foreigners. Agriculture,tourism and banking,which combined bring in the country’s largest earnings,are in foreign hands. Last year,tea,tourism,flowers and coffee earned the country Sh140 billion,nearly half of the annual national budget. Of this money,only 31 per cent ended up in the country - as tax and real earnings to the nationals. And shareholding in the richest 20 companies that trade at the Nairobi Stock Exchange is foreign. The skewed distribution of wealth between foreigners and Kenyans puts paid to all efforts since independence to hand control of the country to its citizens.

Tea growing,which earned the country Sh43.5 billion last year,is concentrated in the hands of six leading agricultural companies whose shareholding is largely foreign. Up to 78 per cent of earnings from tea went,therefore,to foreigners - leaving the balance for Kenyans. The Big Six in the tea sector are Unilever Tea Kenya,Kakuzi Ltd,Williamson Tea Company,Kapchorua Tea,Limuru Tea Company and Sasini Coffee and Tea. The British-owned Brooke Bond Group holds 43.1 million shares of the total 48.8 million shares issued in Univeler Tea Kenya . The same group owns 54 per cent of the total 3.9 million shares issued in Limuru Tea Company. In Kakuzi Ltd,foreigners have a total shareholding of 68.3 per cent of the total 19.6 million shares issued. They hold the shares through Bordure Ltd and Lintak Investment Ltd,with 35.1 and 33.2 per cent shareholding,respectively.

Britain’s Williamson family has a controlling majority shareholding in both Williamson Tea and Kapchorua Tea companies. In Williamson Tea,it holds 67.2 per cent of the total 8.8 million shares issued through their company,Ngong Tea Holding PLC. In Kapchorua tea,they hold 40 per cent of the 3.9 million shares issued. Sasini Tea and Coffee Ltd is 87.3 per cent owned by business magnate Naushad Merali,a Kenyan. Merali’s companies hold his shares in these businesses: Legend Investments Ltd (51.7 per cent),East African Batteries (18.7 per cent), Yana Towers (15.9 per cent) and Swan Estates (1.04 per cent).

The reinvigorated tourism sector,which earned Sh42 billion last year,is also foreign-owned. And just as the Sh43.5 billion earnings from tea sector ended up in foreign pockets,so did the Sh42 billion that came from tourism. Tourism earnings went into three directions: Hotels,airlines,and travel/booking agents,in that order. Of Kenya ’s 290,000-plus tourist hotel bed spaces,foreign hoteliers own 74.3 per cent of it. Tour flights to Kenya are entirely in the hands of foreign airlines. It is all the more foreign-dominated in the traditional tourist peak periods of Easter and Christmas,when there are no scheduled flights to Kenya ’s tourist hub of Mombasa . During the two seasons,tourists arrive in Mombasa in chartered jets arranged by European tour operators.

Foreign companies stationed in European and American capitals also entirely control hotel bookings and transfers. Where internal travel is concerned,foreigners too,dominate by owning 7 of the 11 leading local tour travel firms. At the end of the day,tourism in Kenya remains a foreigners’ enclave with indigenous Kenyans left to scratch the surface on petty trades like selling curios and prostitution. After years of lobbying,last year the European Union set aside Sh250 million to economically empower indigenous Kenyans to get a fair share of the lucrative industry. Seven projects were targeted to tilt the balance in a programme called Tourism Diversification and Empowerment Project. But a spokesman at the Nairobi EU office said the money is yet to be released as project proposals submitted are still under evaluation. The only hotel chain listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange is the TPS Serena. The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development holds the company’s majority shareholding through its company,TPS Holdings Limited.

Horticulture,which earned Kenya Sh28.2 billion last year,is the country’s third largest foreign exchange earner. It,too,is a foreigners’ affair. Indigenous Kenyans mainly come in as casual labourers on the flower farms. Of the 44 certified companies dealing with horticulture products,26 are foreign-owned. But an even bigger irony is that the leading 10 players in the industry - all foreign-owned - bag 83 per cent of the total income from the sector. Flower farming (floriculture) is the key plank in Kenya ’s agriculture sector. Seventy six per cent of Kenya ’s total flower production is concentrated in foreign-owned flowers farms around the Naivasha area. The big three are Homegrown,Sulmac and Oserian. Late last year, Kenya overtook Israel and Columbia as leading exporters of cut flowers. But you would not know that from the world’s leading flower auctions in Amsterdam and London . Why?

Foreign flower exporters in Kenya have registered their companies abroad - mainly in Amsterdam - and sell flowers they have grown in Kenya under a foreign label. In that case,while flowers from a local company are sold in Amsterdam as flowers from Kenya ,Dutch companies growing their flowers in Naivasha sell theirs as flowers from Holland . The consequence of it is that flowers owned by Dutch companies receive preferential treatment at the auction,including exemption from the strict EU-imposed export rules. Flower auctions in Amsterdam and London account for 65 and 25 per cent of Kenya flower sales respectively. Of the approximate 60,000 tonnes of flowers exported from Kenya last year,37,000 tonnes were sold in Amsterdam and London auctions as flowers from Holland . The statistics can make it look like the entire flower industry in Kenya is one big conspiracy against indigenous people. Foreign air charters,the only ones used in flower transport,charge the highest rates in Nairobi . Freight charges on flowers from Kenya are twice those in the capitals of Kenya ’s nearest competitors Israel , Columbia and Costa Rica . There are also 40 to 45 per cent higher than in Egypt and South Africa , Kenya ’s two biggest competitors on the continent. At $400 a day,inspection and storage charges at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport are the highest in the world. So is the freight charge of $1.85-$2.2 per stem.

Flowers sold in Kenya ’s name are inspected stem by stem at the JKIA at the cost of 12 Euro cents a stem. Those grown in Kenya but marketed by overseas-accredited companies are only inspected in bulk. On average,it costs upwards of $1 million to set up a typical flower farm on a half acre spread,which in turn brings in a $50,000 a year. Kenya’s fourth leading export earner,coffee,is equally depressing on the ownership scale. The majority of small-scale coffee growers in Kenya sell coffee raw from the farm,earning less than 10 per cent of what the finished end product earns in foreign markets and in a foreign label. Though touted as an agricultural country,the other large-scale agricultural activities in Kenya are also foreign-owned. Rea-Vipingo Plantations,which deals mainly in sisal and dairy farming is 77 per cent owned by the Robinson family of England . They hold the shares through REA Holdings PLC,Unibuckle Holdings Ltd and REA Trading Ltd.

Del Monte,world famous for pineapple products,is entirely a French affair and sells its products with the label “Made-in-France”. The question of who owns Kenya ’s wealth sticks out like a sore thumb in the banking sector. The leading two banks with a combined market share of 71.4 per cent are Barclays Bank of Kenya and the Standard Chartered. They are foreign-owned. Barclays Bank plc of London owns 68 per cent stake in Barclays Bank of Kenya . Standard Bank Africa,a London outfit,in turn owns 81 per cent shareholding in Standard Chartered Bank. To avoid domination by foreign banks, Nigeria and South Africa enacted laws on percentages of shareholding a foreign bank could own. Foreign ownership is also the same cord that runs through key blue chip companies listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange. At the East African Breweries,British-owned Guinness plc holds 63.5 per cent of the total equity,leaving Kenyans to scramble for the rest. Guinness shares are held in the names of Diageo Kenya Ltd and Diageo Netherlands B.V.

In the Nation Media Group,the Aga Khan holds 28.2 million shares of the 35.6 million shares issued. The Aga Khan’s shares are held in the names of the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development and Amin Nanji Juma. In Kenya Airways,Dutch company,KLM,holds 40.6 per cent equity. In Total Kenya Ltd,French companies Total Outre-mer and Elf Oil Kenya Ltd,own 77 per cent of the total shareholding,while in BAT Kenya Ltd, Molensteegh Investment BV of London ,holds 68 per cent of the total shareholding. The question of who owns Kenya ’s wealth generated a national debate in 1968 when the National Council of Churches of Kenya published a paper entitled: “Who Owns Kenya ’s Industry?” In the paper,the late Anglican Bishop,the Rev Henry Okullu,regretted that five years into independence,”the compass needle had not moved in the direction of indigenous ownership of Kenya ’s wealth.” Thirty-seven years later,the Rev Okullu would turn in his grave to note that the needle has drifted even further away.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/note.php?note_id=48970286982&ref=nf

An Open Letter To Hon Ababu Namwamba!

2008-12-07T14:15:00.001-05:00

Your Excellency,
As much as we detest this method of communication, we are obliged by the prevailing circumstances to use this medium to express to you our feelings and aspirations.

Your excellency, we have been your ardent admirers and supports right from the beginning. We love and respect you as our leader. We know you are not perfect so we do not expect you to be without blemish.

However, we would like to let you know that you are our selected candidate for presidency in Kenya in 2012 so we would like you to start working on your Kenya General Election Team for 2012 as soon as possible. We have the will, the ability and the opportunity to transform Kenya into a Developed nation with you as our President. We have the resources, the connections and the international support to achieve this noble goal.

Yours

Gerald Baraza, Ph.D Candidate.

The Discipline of Teams: What Kenyans Need to Learn

2008-10-08T23:33:00.000-04:00

A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. The difference between teams that perform and other groups that don't is a subject to which most of us pay far too little attention. Teams and good performance are inseparable; you cannot have one without the other. Most executives advocate teamwork. And they should. Teamwork represents a set of values that encourage listening and responding constructively to views expressed by others, giving others the benefit of doubt, providing support, and recognizing the interests and achievements of others.

Committees, councils, and task forces are not necessarily teams. To understand how teams deliver extra performance, we must distinguish between teams and other forms of working groups. That distinction turns on performance results. A team's performance includes both individual results and "collective work-products". Teams differ fundamentally from working groups because they require both individual and mutual accountability. Teams produce discrete work-products through the joint contributions of their members. The first step in developing a disciplined approach to team management is to think about teams as discrete units of performance and not just as positive sets of values.

The essence of a team is a common commitment. Without it, groups perform as individuals; with it, they become a powerful unit of collective performance. Teams develop direction, momentum, and commitment by working to shape a meaningful purpose. Most successful teams shape their purposes in response to a demand or opportunity put in their path, usually by higher management. The best teams invest a tremendous amount of time and effort exploring, shaping, and agreeing on a purpose that belongs to them both collectively and individually.

The best teams also translate their common purpose into specific performance goals, such as reducing the reject rate from suppliers by 50% or increasing the math scores of graduates from 40% to 95%. Specific team performance goals help to define a set of work-products that are different both from an organizationwide mission and from individual job objectives. The specificity of performance objectives facilitates clear communication and constructive conflict within the team. The attainability of specific goals helps teams maintain their focus on getting results. Specific objectives have a leveling effect conducive to team behavior. Specific goals allow a team to achieve small wins as it pursues its broader purpose.
Performance goals are compelling. They are symbols of accomplishment that motivate and energize. They challenge the people on a team to commit themselves, as a team, to make a difference.

Goals help a team to keep track of progress, while a broader purpose supplies meaning and emotional energy. In addition to finding the right size, teams must develop the right mix of skills, that is, each of the complementary skills necessary to do the team's job. Skill requirements fall into the technical or functional expertise, problem-solving and decision-making skills, and interpersonal skills.

Organizational Behavior Class- By Gerald Baraza
Gleaned from Katzenbach, Jon R. McKinsey & Company; Smith, Douglas K.

Case Study: Nucor Steel Corporation.

2008-10-06T01:26:00.000-04:00

Nucor Corporation is characterized by its owner‐operators who take pride in their work and teams and as a result have created great profitability for a traditional steelmaker. Nucor is known for many things including its pay practices that base earnings on performance as well as the value and trust the corporation places in its employees. At Nucor employees are rewarded based on their effort, treated with great respect and empowered to make decisions based on their expertise and knowledge. Nucor is a unique organization among its rust‐belt counterparts. To understand its success it is necessary to understand the leadership mentality, empowerment strategy, motivation and rewards base as well as its approach to change and innovation. All of these elements have turned Nucor into a desirable place to work with the potential for future success as it acquires new entities and grows.

Leadership
When looking at the Nucor Case Study, it is advantageous to discuss the leadership styles in relation to the Vroom‐Jago Leadership Model as well as other concepts and issues of leadership. The initial leader to focus on is F. Kenneth Iverson, a former Nucor Steel President (1965‐1999) and legendary leader. His leadership fostered the close‐knit culture that exists even today.

When Iverson and Sam Siegel, Financial Vice President, initially assumed leadership roles, they exhibited the AI Autocratic style at individual and group level in selling off many wide‐ranging operations to focus on one area. They also made the decision to move corporate headquarters to where it is even today, Charlotte, NC. From that point leadership has continued to have a basis in the group with Nucor employees empowered to make decisions that will benefit the organization. Nucor Steel‘s leaders also exhibited other Vroom ‐Jago leadership styles as they evolved to the present day. Iverson installed radical concepts giving employees better pay and real power exhibiting GII decision Style: willing to accept and implement employee decisions. Current CEO Daniel R. DiMicco uses a different leadership style when purchasing 13 new companies and instilling the unique culture in those new facilities. Nucor management, as a whole still focuses on the people in the front line of their business predominately using DI individual style leadership and GII group level decision style.

Different perspectives of leadership also can explain Iverson and DiMicco. Both exhibit traits of charismatic leaders. The case study points out how employees are willing to accomplish tasks based on an emotional commitment to Nucor Steel. The example of electricians helping sister plants in another state on their own initiative shows, when crisis arose, the employees showed extraordinary behavior. All General Managers contact a new GM within 2 days of starting in a different factory, offering help, and meaning it. This behavior is unconventional, and counters to established norms in the current business culture. Only a visionary charismatic behavior from the leader could motivate such commitment.

Leadership approaches discussed here point out that leadership is an exchange process with employees. A look at transactional leadership and transformational leadership helps further explain Nucor's success. Transactional leaders help the follower identify what is done to accomplished desired results and ensure the resources are on hand to complete the job. Transformational leadership motivates followers to work for goals rather than on short term self-interest this leader is able to express clear vision and inspire other to accomplish that vision. Nucor's management, in this case study continually exhibit transformational leadership attributes. When Nucor employees innovate themselves out of tight spots, the leader’s charisma has instilled this sense of value respect, and pride. The General Managers reaching out to the new GM shows leaders reaching out to help individual needs. These leaders allow the employees to rethink rational ways to correct problems, and do not intervene in work tasks unless people are sidetracked. The most important aspect of transformational leadership is charisma coupled with other roles. The deep emotional attachment to Nucor management is one facet of this style. These leaders also play the role of teacher, coach, mentor, reformer, or revolutionary further establish their transformational style of leadership.

Power
In addition to the various leadership styles and involvement of the employees and commitment to the organization there are different types of power between leaders and employees at Nucor. There is a lot of employee power at the Nucor Steel Company generating from the flat organization structure found within the company and the leaderships focus on employees. A standard joke in the company is that if you were a janitor and you got five promotions you would have the CEOs job. Unlike the pyramid structure that is found in other companies, at Nucor the CEO believes that he is the one who was at the bottom and he works for all the others in the organization.
Power within Nucor, as in other corporations, comes from two places: interpersonal and structural. With the flat organizational structure at Nucor the majority of the power is interpersonal rather than prescribed by the organizational structure and layers of management. At Nucor employees have a large amount of power – specifically expert power. Expert power arises an individual has the ability to influence as a result of a highly valued expertise regardless of job title.

Expert power is clearly exhibited in the case study when employees call upon each other (as in the case of the Hickman plant calling expert electricians from another plant) and when leadership entrusts decision making to employees. In addition to expert power, referent power is also common among Nucor employees. Referent power is based upon charisma – whether it is the charisma of the CEO or of the line worker, this type of power comes from interactions with others. Not only did Nucor leaders Iverson and DiMicco have structural power they also had referent power from charismatic leadership styles.

Where interpersonal power results from expertise, attitudes and actions, structural power comes from the organizational structure itself. At Nucor with its flat hierarchy structural power is not the main source of influence or power. A type of structural power that is present is the decision making power of the employees. Individuals at Nucor have a broad range of decision making power as seen in the electrician situation. The decision making power is based on the premise that they will make the best decisions for the organization since their compensation depends on the organizational success.

Motivation & Rewards
When looking at the Nucor Corporation, it is important to understand why the employees are motivated to act the way that they do. Nucor has high job satisfaction which in turn brings improved job performance. This improved performance benefits everyone in the company instead of just management at Nucor.

Herzberg's two factor theory is utilized in the Nucor case study. The people from Nucor demonstrated there were motivators by traveling to fix a problem that was a great distance away. The people in this situation had achievement, recognition, and responsibility all in mind when they decided to take steps not required to help others in the organization. Achievement motivated the employees in the example because they knew that they were helping the company immensely and this would in turn help them. The recognition would be shown in their personal pay checks. The responsibility in this situation was the people agreeing to help out without any supervisors there to persuade them to go. Additionally, teams in Nucor's situation are beneficial in motivation. People are willing to help one another because both people will be rewarded for a job well done. The mentality of "us guys" instead of "you guys" motivates people to form teams in a manner that is beneficial to the company.

The hygiene factors in Nucor case does not apply to their company. The areas of dissatisfaction that most other companies face such as pay and security do not come in to account. The factory workers by percentage make a much more comparable amount to their managers in comparison to different companies.

The primary reward for the executives at Nucor is financial compensation, including benefits. In their roles as executives, they naturally have many of what could be considered rewards by others in the organization. Autonomy, the ability to effect decision, and many other roles are a natural part of the role as an executive within an organization. The executive salaries are on average are a bit lower than average, while performance based pay is more and makes up more than 50% of total compensation.

The performance‐based component is primarily paid in the form of stock options and restricted stock. Options allow the holder to purchase the stock at a specified price, usually lower than market value. Restricted stock is direct partial ownership in the organization that vests over a period of time. These types of rewards are common among executives, as there is a direct correlation between how the company performs and the ownership stake the executive receives in the organization they have the ability to effect.

The employee reward system contains both financial rewards (including benefits), as well as non financial. The average employee at Nucor makes $100k a year, 20% more than industry average. This reinforces the organizations belief that people are the backbone of the company, and further strengthens the commitment to try and retain its employees. One of the most difficult aspects to manage in the milling industry is the turnover and training of employees; Nucor has recognized this and used financial rewards to deter this from taking hold within its own organization.
The employee also has intrinsic rewards available within the organization. They include: completion, autonomy, achievement, and personal growth. Moreover, they are all encouraged within the culture. This is most evident in the recalling of employees taking it upon themselves to help during a time of need. This allows them to grow, achieve a goal, make their own decision, and work until completed.
Approach to Change.

In analyzing the Nucor example, several observations can be made on change within the company and can be analyzed from the following viewpoints:
•
the external and internal forces driving change,
•
the agents of change involved,
•
the benefits and drawbacks, and
•
Innovation
Nucor is committed to its mission, taken from the company website, of “being the safest, highest quality, lowest cost, most productive and most profitable steel and steel products company in the world”. Therefore, reasons for change will be driven, as with any competitive company, by market conditions and competition. Under the three external force categories of economic, technology, and social / political change, changes based on market and competitors fit under the area of economic forces. An early example of an external economic force that caused the company to change was the high cost of steel in the 1960’s.

This high raw material cost drove the company to investigate how to supply its own bar steel rather than buying it on the open market. This was the start of an entire production strategy that is responsible for the survival of the company today. Another example of external forces of change facing Nucor today is the Crawfordsville plant which lacks access to a large waterway and therefore has to use ground transport for products, exposing the company to high fuel costs and their fluctuations. This is an example of external forces causing competitive disadvantage which will drive change into the organization.

Internal forces are also a factor of change at Nucor. The example cited by David Hutchins, a frontline supervisor at the Auburn, NY plant, explains that instead of slowing down his group’s production cadence in response to a problem occurring downstream in the manufacturing sequence, his group goes to the “bottleneck” and helps solve the problem. This seems characteristic of the way change is brought about and is an example of internal change forces. As employees recognize problems within the organization, they initiate change to solve the issues. Another example of internal forces requiring change would be the Crawfordsville plant’s limited capacity to produce wide sheets and the fact that it is Nucor’s oldest sheet mill. These limitations, internal to the company’s production facilities, will drive needed change.

The agents of change at Nucor are primarily internal change agents. The highly motivated workforce initiates change motivated out of rewards and personal implication that is tied to the culture of the organization. The example of the 3 electricians ‐ who went, of their own initiative, to the Hickman plant that was not theirs, and spent 20 hr days working over the weekend to get the electrical grid back up and running so the plant could perform to production plans – shows the level of empowerment and implication of the Nucor employees and that they didn’t depend on people outside the company to initiate the needed changes. Another illustration of internal change agents at Nucor is when the new manager of the Grapevine, TX plant received calls from all the other plant managers offering help if needed. The reflex of the Nucor employees is to personally involve themselves wherever they are needed.

There are several benefits to the Nucor approach of responding by internal change agents to internal and external forces. The company doesn’t have to depend on external change agents that need to spend time learning and analyzing the problems before initiating change. This is a gain of time and also expense since the external change agents charge consulting fees. There is also a major benefit in the creation and maintaining of the culture of “us guys” who are responsible for the business results at every level of the organization. The fact that the employees initiate change when they find problems within the company (internal force of change) is beneficial because not only is there a constant flow of continuous improvement effort that address specific issues, but also all areas of the company are enhanced from a performance standpoint because the entire workforce has the entrepreneurial spirit to impact results everywhere in the company.

This same spirit and benefits apply when economic or environmental conditions are identified and require change (external force of change). Because the whole company is striving to reach performance goals, the external forces of change motivate company‐wide adjustments to operations and strategy.

Possible drawbacks to Nucor’s approach would be that external change agents might be able to see blind spot areas that the internal change agents might miss. Another drawback would be that the internal change agents are also responsible for the daily running of the business and therefore might not have all the necessary resources (time and energy) to implement all the necessary changes and end up in a “burn out” situation.

The Nucor culture of continuous improvement toward performance goals also drives innovation. The early example of high steel prices compelled the company to innovate by changing their business model to use a process that was new to the US steel industry. Nucor switched to European type electric arc furnace mills (called minimills), which not only were cheaper to build but also used less expensive scrap steel to supply raw material.

Nucor also implemented this type of recycled scrap steel production on a larger scale than had ever been tried. Another example of innovation is the use of a West German technology to create steel sheets out of thin slabs that was at the origin of the Crawfordsville plant ‐ the world’s first thin‐slab cast mill. Innovation and change is ever‐present at Nucor. The company faces constant external and internal forces of change and the resulting innovation and change is seen as the responsibility of every Nucor employee. As the article states, “…Nucor employees have to innovate themselves out of tough spots and into more profitable ones. Changes have to be made often to the environment.”

As Nucor Corporation continues to innovate and grow as an organization, success will require a continuation of the innovative work practices they have implemented. Through empowering employees, providing rewards based on the achievements of the company, motivating team members and continuing to drive change they will have continued success. Nucor’s historical financials (www.nucor.com) show a steady increase in sales and earnings. Their corporate policies surely contribute to the successes as many other steel mill and industrial organizations have failed. In the words of Louis L. Schorsch, president and CEO of Mittal Steel USA (a Nucor rival), “In terms of a business model, they’ve won in this part of the world.”

Study done by:
Kim Selleck
Theresa Wood
Dave Miller
Gerald Baraza
Bill Reynolds
Jeff Williams
Organizational Behavior: Management Class of Professor Allene Kief

What is the most corrupt nation in the world?

2008-09-29T13:00:00.000-04:00

ABOUT THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES.

2008-09-22T01:39:00.000-04:00

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight...

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.’

* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

* Name your kids Willow, Trig, and Track, you're a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive and next in line behind a man in his eight h decade.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and then left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a true Christian.

* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

* If your husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DUI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

Political Violence in a fledgling democracy.

2008-09-17T15:39:00.000-04:00

Professor Julius O. Ihonvbere

Mr. Chairman, it is not my intention to speak for too long today. I would prefer to be brief and to leave enough time for discussions and questions. Let me also confess that I hurriedly put this lecture together in the last two hours or so. I think it does contain enough to generate some conversation. I have left out details of violence. I chose to focus on the conceptual aspects of the problem though I would use examples as necessary. I thank you for honoring me with your invitation. I commend you for your courage, vision and commitment to the truth in a society that is as decayed as ours.

Thirty seven years ago, a young, charismatic and courageous military officer declared in a coup broadcast:

Our enemies are the political profiteers, swindlers, the men in high and low places who seek bribes and demand ten percent, those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers and VIPs of waste, the tribalists, the nepotists…(Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, January 1966 Coup Broadcast.)

Ladies and gentlemen, let me ask a few questions: Are the political profiteers gone from the Nigerian society? Are the bribe takers gone? Do they demand ten percent or more today? Are those that seek to keep Nigeria permanently divided gone? Are the VIPs of waste no longer with us? What about the tribalists? Are they gone? Are they weaker in their politics? What about the nepotists? Have they been reformed? If we can answer “yes” to one of these questions, we can end the lecture right here, go home, pop some champagne and sing halleluiah because our country has been reborn. Let me put it to you all (as if you did not already know) that our country is still in big trouble. These troubles were not created by some invisible elements or by God. They were generated and nurtured by people that live amongst us; people that we all know very well. In fact, in many instances we have encouraged and protected these characters and this attitude has emboldened them to take more risks in perpetuating their dubious agenda. Today, we are all paying very dearly for the indiscipline, irresponsibility, arrogance, limited vision, wickedness and greed of this group. Unfortunately, their pathological fixation of irresponsibility, nepotism, corruption, waste, and other lucrative unproductive but not really helpful ventures have percolated to the lowest ebbs of our society to such an extent that even ordinary people now mimic the decadent elite. This is very unfortunate for a creative and hardworking people.

It is the coalitions, contradictions, distortions and disarticulations arising from these factors and forces that shape the content and context of our politics and society. It is the inability of the state to emerge as a relatively autonomous force; the inability of the governing class to build hegemony and emerge as a ruling class; the contradictions of production and exchange relations; and the continuing marginal location and role of the social formation in the global power balances that have created the foundations for political rascality in Nigeria. Thus, rather than build structures, ideologies, relationships, networks, and enabling environments to build a nation-state (if not a nation) out of the contending diverse interests, identities and nationalities that occupy our political landscape, the opportunistic politics of the power elite has rather, congealed alternative sites of loyalty and power. It has enthroned and reified normless politics, alienated significant communities that continue to survive and operate outside the hegemony of the state, and promoted a culture of cynicism and reliance on extra-legal processes and actions that now guide relations between the people on the one hand and the state and its custodians on the other. It is not an accident therefore that informality and informal relations continue to reign supreme whether is it to get a job, scholarship, admission, contracts, relate to public institutions and officers or whatever, Nigerians consider first an informal approach before or alongside a formal one.
Text of public lecture delivered under the auspices of THE BREEZE MAGAZINE, Airport Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos March 14, 2003

Read the rest of the lecture here:
http://www.ihonvbere.com/julius/2008/09/political-violence-in-a-fledgling-democracy/#more-166

WHO WILL AMERICANS HIRE TO BE THEIR CEO?

2008-09-15T22:14:00.000-04:00

Obama:
Occidental College - Two years.
Columbia University - B.A. political science with a specialization in international relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

& Biden :
University of Delaware - B.A. in history and B.A. in political science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank 894 out of 899 (meaning that, like George Bush, McCain was at the bottom of his class)

Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in journalism

Now, which team are you going to hire to lead the most influential nation in the world?

KDPM STATEMENT ON THE INTENDED REMOVAL OF THE DEPUTY GOVERNOR OF THE CBK

2008-09-13T16:59:00.000-04:00

WHEREAS Mrs. Jacinta Mwatela has served diligently at CBK since 1977, rising to the position of Deputy Governor and,

WHEREAS Mrs. Jacinta Mwatela served faithfully and effectively in an acting capacity when former Governor Andrew Mullei was removed from the Governor’s office and,

WHEREAS Mrs. Jacinta Mwatela, an extraordinary banker and public servant has an exemplary record of service at the CBK showing a personal commitment and struggle to make the Bank a reputable and respectable institution in Africa and,

WHEREAS Mrs. Jacinta Mwatela’s "replacement and promotion" to the position of permanent secretary for the Ministry of Northern Kenya and Arid Lands was not inspired by a sense of gratitude for the 30 years of exemplary service she has given to the CBK and,

WHEREAS Mrs. Jacinta Mwatela should have been made Governor because she had the academic qualifications and work experience needed for that office and,

WHEREAS Mrs. Jacinta Mwatela has been outspoken and uncompromising on issues that have to do with procedure and accountability and,

WHEREAS Mrs. Jacinta Mwatela now finds herself fighting to keep her hard-earned position at the CBK

THE KENYAN DIASPORA PRO-DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT WISHES TO STATE AS FOLLOWS:

THAT Mrs. Jacinta Mwatela’s purported removal from the office of the Deputy Governor of the CBK is illegal.

THAT the Government of Kenya has a constitutional obligation to respect the principal of the Central Bank’s independence which it subscribes to.

THAT the Government of Kenya has a constitutional obligation to keep politics out of the running of the CBK.

THAT decisions affecting the running of the CBK should not and must not be influenced by political considerations of a few power-hungry politicians.

Michigan On Fire For Obama!

2008-09-13T10:56:00.001-04:00

The Coming of the New Organization: Is the Kenyan Industry Well Prepared?

2008-09-07T00:29:00.000-04:00

Peter F. Drucker, a writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist” who was widely considered to be the father of “modern management,” in his 39 books and countless scholarly and popular articles explored how humans are organized across all sectors of society. More than 20 years ago he observed that the levels of management in large businesses are going to be reduced drastically in the next 20 years. He saw that the businesses will have no choice but to become information-based. According to him, the impact of computer technology on capital-investment decisions is going to be huge. Drucker rightly believed that before the advent of data-processing capacity using computer technology actual analysis used to take many years but now with a spreadsheet anyone can do the same work in few hours. He predicted that computer technology is going to eliminate all the layers of management levels and managers that function as boosters for the faint, unfocused signals that pass for communication in the traditional pre-information organization.Drucker believed that unlike today’s big companies, the large, information-based organizations will more likely resemble businesses of a century ago where all the knowledge lay with the very top people and the rest were helpers or hands.

When one looks at the various industries that we have, you notice that this kind of change can already be observed in pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, and paper-making industries. In these research-oriented businesses, the traditional sequence of research, development, manufacturing, and marketing is being replaced by synchrony where specialists from all these functions work together as a team, from the inception of research to a product’s establishment in the market.

A keen observation at the development in the various industries shows that information-based organizations require clear, simple, common objectives that translate into particular actions. They also need concentration on one objective or at most, on a few. Because of this, an information-based business must be structured around goals that clearly state the management’s performance expectations for the enterprise and for each part and specialist and around organized feedback that compares results with these performance expectations so that every member can exercise self-control. The key to such a system is that everyone asks: Who in this organization depends on me for what information? And on whom, in turn, do I depend?

A number of management problems will surface in the information-based organizations. These will include developing rewards, recognition, career opportunities for specialists, creating unified vision in the organization of specialists, devising the management structure for an organization of task forces, ensuring the supply, preparation, and testing of top management people. The other challenge that information-based organizations face is giving its organization of specialists a common vision, a view of the whole.

Lastly, the hardest challenge will probably be to ensure the supply, preparation, and testing of top management people. With the number of middle-management positions sharply cut, where will the information-based organization’s top executives come from? What will be their preparation? How will they have been tasted?

OBAMA-PHOTO U WON'T SEE ON FOX!!!!

2008-08-06T02:09:00.000-04:00

NO REMEDY FOR SACKED UNIVERSITY LECTURERS !

2008-08-04T23:51:00.000-04:00

 By Monica Achode - Advocate

August, 2008

Nairobi

Republic V The Vice Chancellor Jomo Kenyatta University of
Agriculture and Technology [2008] eKLR (www.kenyalaw.org

)

High Court at Nairobi

J.G. Nyamu (J)

 July 25, 2008 

The remedy of judicial review is concerned with reviewing not the
merits of a decision in respect of which an application for judicial
review is made, but the decision - making process itself

The High Court on the 25th of July 2008 dismissed an application on
judicial review brought against the Vice Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta
University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT). The applicants, Dr
Cecilia Mwathi and Mr Moses Muchina, had come to High Court seeking
orders to quash the decision by the Vice Chancellor made on the 25th
October, 2006 terminating their services and employment as academic
staff members of the University. They also sought orders compelling
the Vice Chancellor to reinstate and or recognize the applicants as
members of the academic staff of the said University.

The application was based on the grounds that the Vice Chancellor
acted improperly and in abuse of his powers. The applicants further
claimed that the decision was in breach of the rule of law, fairness
and natural justice as well as the rules of the code of conduct and
ethics. It was the applicants' contention that the decision was
oppressive and discriminatory. The applicants claimed that the
respondent had no powers to hire and fire University staff as this
power was vested in the University Council under sections 16 and 20
of the JKUAT Act No 8 of 1994 and the attendant University statutes.
The application was opposed by the Vice Chancellor who also happened
to be a member of the Inter-Public Universities Councils
Consultative Forum (IPUCCF).

 Strike Notice

The Applicants had been employed as lecturers by the University.
They also held the positions of the Chairman and Secretary of
University Academic Staff Union (UASU) respectively, of JKUAT
Chapter. The Applicant together with other officials of UASU had
issued the Minister for Labour and Human Resource Development with a
21 days notice to strike. The said Minister tried to intervene and
UASU vowed to go on with the strike. On 18th October, 2006, the
Applicants and other UASU officials of JKUAT Chapter called a meeting
to plan the launch of the strike. Contemporaneously, the Industrial
Court issued an order restraining the imminent strike or any
interruption of services by UASU and its members.

On the said 18th October, 2006, the JKUAT University Council held a
meeting and resolved that the respondent would take disciplinary
action against any UASU member that participated in the impending
strike. The Applicants encouraged their members to go on strike and
on 23rd October, 2006, they participated in the unlawful strike. On
31st January, 2007 the JKUAT Council Academic staff Disciplinary
committee met and ratified the termination of the applicants
employment. It was for this reason that the applicants brought the
application to the courts seeking judicial review over the decision.

It was the applicants' claim that the terms of service for Academic
Staff established a statutory and contractual relationship between
themselves and the University. According to them, the letter of
termination did not quote under which councils meeting the
disciplinary action against them was discussed and passed after
proper deliberations. Their argument was that the procedure: to
appear and be heard by the Council; to call and examine witnesses;
and to appeal to a full Council, was not followed by the Vice
Chancellor.

The Vice Chancellor in opposition to the application argued that the
orders sought by the applicants were directed to the wrong party as
neither JKUAT nor its Council was enjoined as parties to the suit. He
stated that it was only the Council that had the mandate to dismiss
the applicants. The Vice Chancellor maintained that the notice of
termination was properly served and although the applicants had the
right to appeal against their termination from employment they chose
not to do so. The termination was later ratified by the University
Council after the applicants waived their right to appeal. As such
they were barred from alleging that they had not been given an
opportunity to be heard.

Court Analysis

The Court considered the arguments put forth both by the applicants
and the respondent and felt that the issues before the court were
threefold: whether the respondent acted improperly and in abuse of
his power in terminating the applicants services as lecturers;
whether the decision of the respondent to terminate applicants
services had any basis in law and if it was oppressive and
discriminatory; and whether judicial review remedies were the most
efficacious for the applicants in the circumstances.

It was clear that the applicants had been employed by JKUAT as
lecturers. It was also apparent from the provisions of the said Act
that the University Council was the supreme body in all maters of
governance, control and administration of the University. The
applicants conceded that they were appointed by the University
Council, not the Vice Chancellor, in their respective positions and
that the university Council had powers to remove them from the
office. They failed to discharge the onus of demonstrating that the
respondent had abused his power in terminating them.

Justice Nyamu noted that the applicants admitted that they attended
the Council meeting of 18th October, 2006. It was therefore not true
that they were never given a chance to be heard before their
termination. A public body or a local authority while formulating a
decision in circumstances to which the principles of natural justice
apply did not need to observe the strict procedures of a court of
law. The court found that there had been no abuse of power by the
respondent who actually followed the procedure for removal from
office of academic members of staff.

The Court appreciated the fact that the statutes allowed the
dismissal of academic staff, and that the general principles of the
law of master and servant as applied in employment contracts, applied
to lecturers. It was of the opinion that the remedy of judicial review
was concerned with reviewing not the merits of the decision in respect
of which the application for judicial review was made, but the
decision - making process itself. The case of Republic V Judicial
Service Commission Ex-Parte Pareno, [2004] Klr 203 At P.204 was cited
in support of that position.

Justice Nyamu was of the opinion that the court's function was to
decide on whether the process leading to termination was proper and
not to adjudicate on the merit of the same since it was not in
dispute that the applicants could be removed from office. From the
foregoing principles the court could not therefore substitute the
termination for anything else for example reinstatement because the
court would be usurping the power clearly vested in the University
Council and or the Vice Chancellor. It was for the above reasons that
the court found the application lacking in merit and dismissed it with
costs to the respondent.

Download Case
<http://kenyalaw.org/Downloads_FreeCases/Republic_v_VC_JKUAT.pdf>

The Krigler & Waki Commissions – A total waste of time?

2008-07-14T21:35:00.000-04:00

Hallow fellow Kenyans,

Much as I appreciate the need to "uncover" the truth, commissions of
inquiry haven't done Kenyans proud in the past. The ndung'u report on
grabbed land, the Goldenberg report, the Ouko inquiry etc etc continue
to gather dust at statehouse (their contents remain unknown to the
ordinary Kenyan).

How sure can we be that the Krigler & Waki inquiries will have their
recommendations made public, leave alone being implemented?

Serious questions arise, and Krigler's & Waki's is credibility is
based on the answers to the following main questions

• In the event that it emerges that PNU actually won (thanks to one
province). Will Hon.Raila resign as Prime minister and take up the
post of official opposition leader?
• If the elections were actually rigged and that PNU had infact lost,
will Baba Jimmy apologise to Kenyans and then leave for Othaya?
• If indeed it is made clear that the police used excessive force.
Will the Police Commissioner Major Gen.Ali be fired? (especially now
that he says he regrets nothing – not even the Rambo movie part)
• If it emerges that the polls were rigged, will Kivuitu be thrown
behind bars?

If the answer to any of these main questions is NO, then both
commissions are a waste of the public's time & resources.

By the way, most Kenyans will agree that the voting and the counting
went on very well. Trouble only began at the KICC during tallying when
it became clear that PNU was actually on its way out of power.
Why then is Krigler spending so much time & energy  going to Nyamira,
Kacheliba, Nyeri, Butula etc etc???
Will he ever question Jack Tumwa, and the other commissioners
Hon.Kibaki appointed unilaterally??
Will he ever ask Kivuitu exactly how it took 3 days "transporting"
bloated results from Kiambaa to KICC (Kiambaa is a mere 30 mins
journey to town).

See why am not so enthusiastic about these money guzzling inquiries???

Yours truly,
Alan E Masakhalia

DEAR KENYANS---WHAT DO YOU SAY?

2008-06-19T01:31:00.000-04:00

DEAR Prime Minister Odinga,

Please be advised that we take great exception to some of the words you have used in describing our leadership in Zimbabwe, when you know very well that some of those words you use could well be used to describe yourself and your new government.

We shall not repeat everything you have said otherwise we will not be able to make our point clear.

You recently called Zimbabwe Africa’s ‘eyesore’ and an example of ‘how not to do it’. You have also said that ‘disaster is looming in Zimbabwe’.

You made similar statements about Zimbabwe, before the current violence had started around the beginning of April 2008, as if you had some special powers of ‘reading the future’. Everything you predicted has happened in exactly the same way; yet there was no precedent to such election violence in Zimbabwe — at least of that nature.

Today Zimbabwe feels like Kenya in December 2007-January 2008, where bodies, for the first time, are burnt and body parts cut off innocent civilians in the name of politics. We had never seen this kind of violence and level of killing in Zimbabwe and we condemn it unreservedly.

We challenge you to read reports of violence documented on Zimbabwe and you will agree with us that this type of violence is a first in Zimbabwe’s post-independence history.

You have been recently installed as a Prime Minister after almost 2, 500 post-election deaths, violent deaths, in your own country where we saw some of the worst brutality on the African continent in this day and age. Three hundred of your own people died pre-election (before December 2007) — a number that the current violence in Zimbabwe could never match; yet you have the audacity to call Zimbabwe an 'eyesore'.

Mr Odinga, we know that two wrongs don’t make a right, so Zimbabwe is not exonerated from criticism and it should be criticized. But who criticizes Zimbabwe and using what words? The words you have used recently Sir, are not akin to a new leader and whose own country is still reeling from one of the worst violent episodes on the continent.

We are getting increasing concerned and frustrated that you are not using diplomatic channels in criticising Zimbabwe. You will soon be mirroring the utterances of the erstwhile enemies of Zimbabwe, who have closed all diplomatic channels and are now trying to use 'force' to bring change in the couintry. You might as well be representing those countries, and their interests in Zimbabwe, not Kenya.

We do not exactly know what ‘triggered you off’ as a new Prime Minister to dedicate your respectable offices to criticizing Zimbabwe in this manner, when you have the advantage of your 'good offices' to do so. We were hoping that if you had any concerns, as a ‘head of state’ you had the opportunity to visit President Mugabe and speak to him directly. But you chose to use different fora; just like those people who have traditionally been at loggerheads with Zimbabwe.

Cowardly Insults

In this regard, with all due respect, we think this is cowardly. As a ‘head of state’ why you preferred to use the World Economic Forum in Pretoria and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington as platforms for firing ‘insults’ at Zimbabwe, rather than engage the leadership to find common solutions, is not clear. Your silence on Darfur and your own problems at home on these same fora is very concerning.

When you said you are ‘enemy No 1’ in Zimbabwe, you were wrong Mr Odinga. Zimbabwe does not hate you at all. You are not the enemy. Why are you identifying yourself with the enemies of Zimbabwe? Why should Zimbabwe hate you? Or, to rephrase, do you want Zimbabwe to hate you? As a news organsiation, we are concerned by your statements, but hate is a far-fetched word. Afterall, you are an African brother.

We sincerely hope that you do not view your leadership as ‘a way of doing it’ in Africa. Your leadership as Prime Minister is yet to be tested, yet you have the audacity to speak ill about Zimbabwe's leadership.

As we speak ethnic tension in your country is showing no sign of abating and suspicion runs high in your cabinet. We do not know if President Mwai Kibaki shares the same sentiments as you on Zimbabwe. We have only heard your lone voice from your bloated cabinet.

The just-ended by-elections in your country have highlighted continued tensions between the coalition partners and the persistence of ethnic politics.

The coalition that holds your government together is still to be tested. We urge you not to be over-excited by power and start criticizing what you term 'old African leaders'.

We know about the disgruntlement that exists in your party today, and your desire to forgive those who have perpetrated violence in the post-election period which has been criticised by the Roman Catholic prelate Cardinal John Njue of Nairobi.

Many of your allies “have been disheartened by the success of Mr Kibaki’s party – and his Kikuyu ethnic group – in dominating a government conceived as a union of equals,�� according to the Financial Times.

Long-standing ethnic grievances over the unequal distribution of land, wealth and power in Kenya will not be resolved by a GNU, and we hope you know that. This, we know, is what triggered the post-election violence, although others have said it was your desire to attain power.

We hope you will not get so overzealous in your new job as to create new enemies for Kenya from old friends. You still have a long way to go before the next election (in 2012). There is still a lot of work to do on constitutional reform, on truth, justice and reconciliation, and on the ever contentious issue of land. These are very delicate areas and before you start presenting yourself as an effective leader, you have to resolve these problems first.

KENYA, NOT SO LONG AGO

We do not know who you represent in your views Mr Odinga, given that you seem to be distracting world attention from Kenya.

It would suffice to remind people of what happened to kenya in January this year, to contextulise our concern. Some quotations from the media not so long ago would help:

“An estimated 30 Kenyans of the Kikuyu ethnic group – many of them children – were burned alive after taking shelter from a mob in a church in the western town of Eldoret,�� CS Monitor, Jan 3, 2008.

“Ethnic violence continued to spread throughout Kenya on Sunday, with at least 7 people burned to death in their homes in a tourist town and more than 100 people killed in the past four days.�� Associated Press Janury 27, 2008.

In one incident, witnesses said at least 7 people and possibly as many as 14 had been burned to death after they were trapped inside their house. Associated Press January 27, 2008.

“On Saturday, hundreds of men prowled a section of the city with iron bars, poisoned swords, clubs, knives and crude circumcision tools. Boys carried gladiator-style shields and women strutted around with sharpened sticks. The police were nowhere to be found. Even the locals were shocked. ‘I've never seen anything like this,’ said David Macharia, a bus driver.�� Associated Press Janury 27, 2008.

This will suffice for now.

300 people died in pre-election violence in Kenya and 2,500 died post election violence. This number, by any measure, dwarfs the 65-70 deaths recorded by the MDC (Tsvangirai) in unclear circumstances, yet you call Zimbabwe an eyesore, without trying to engage the Zimbabwean government as a PM.

We feel that Mr Odinga you still have to prove yourself as a leader and therefore are unqualified to make informed judgments about other leaders. We do not know what advises your judgment.

We urge you to stop the globe-trotting and focus on troubles in Kenya and engage African (Zimbabwean) leaders. We also urge you to let Mr Kibaki sometimes comment on Zimbabwe. He is the president, afterall. We do not even know if he shares the same sentiments as you over Zimbabwe.

We also urge you to reduce the size of your cabinet. We know that cabinet posts in Kenya attract a monthly salary of nearly (US) $18,000 (£9,000). Assistant ministers earn a bit less - just over $15,000. (BBC)

We also know that there are “40 cabinet ministers and 52 assistant ministers, not far short of half the total number of MPs�� in your country.

“Ministers and their assistants also get allowances - that adds another $210,000 a month to the bill.

“To add insult to injury, the Kenyan exchequer only claws back a little in tax: only around $3,000 of the ministers' income is treated as taxable income.��

So we know that you spend at least US$1.5million a month on salaries alone — the Kenyan taxpayers’ money. What exactly are you managing in that country Mr Odinga? And couldn’t you use that money for land redistribution and dealing with ethnic divisions in your country? Do you think this is sustainable in the long run?

We have problems in Zimbabwe. We have to deal with them; but we do not need insults from you Mr Odinga. We need help. We did not insult your country or your leadership when innocent people died in Kenya in the name of politics.

We expect you, the new generation of leaders, to be exemplary, not derogatory and divisive.

What lessons are you teaching future generations of leaders?

Is this the best you can come up with in your first months of leadership?

Do you have to exploit every forum to chastise those who make mistakes and castigate your own continent?

The US$13m a year you are about top spend on your cabinet, according to the BBC, is enough to build around 50 new schools in Kenya. So is this not an ‘eyesore’ on the continent? Is this a ‘way of doing it’?

Having 40 permanent secretaries and their staff, adding hundreds of thousands of dollars more to the bill, is not a ‘way of doing it’, neither is it exemplary leadership on a continent that is trying to lift itself from years of foreign domination and extraction of resources.

Mr Odinga, we wonder why you have already been allocated 45 security staff and a fleet of cars to travel in, when you say the situation in Kenya is improving.

We also wonder why “cabinet ministers and their deputies get a minimum of five security personnel and a couple of shiny new cars.��

In a country with an annual per capita income of less than US$400, these statistics are shocking. They are irresponsible. They are an antithesis to development and an embarrassment to the continent, and definitely an ‘eyesore’ and a ‘way of not doing it’.

THE ZIMBABWEAN PROBLEM

Sometimes, Mr Odinga, we wonder if you really know the Zimbabwean problem — how it started and how long it took the government to get majority rule. We wonder if you have read the history of our relationship with the ‘wild wild West’. We wonder if you know how many people perished in colonial Rhodesian and how many people sacrificed their lives.

We also wonder if you know how many black Zimbabweans people fought in World War II and were only given 15 Shillings as compensation on return; and how your own people (the Kenyans) contributed to the British Empire in Burma and SE Asia and went back home to fight the same people for freedom. Obviously history is not important to you, Mr Odinga. We believe the world starts in 2008 for you?

We do not say seek retribution; but we say, ‘contextualize problems’ before you are given a ‘High Chair’ at some forum or institute. Have pride in resolving your continent’s problems; not castigating those who came before you. Even Catholicism was proved fallible, remember papal infallibility?

Why can’t Zimbabwe make mistakes without attracting your un-useful comments? Why can’t you take a trip to Zimbabwe and not to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. if you feel Zimbabwe needs urgent attention? Why didn’t you detour to Zimbabwe on your way to, or from Pretoria, where you were attending the World Economic Forum?

Why do you always have to score points by mentioning Zimbabwe — and not providing credible solutions — than by talking about Kenya? Is there not enough trouble in Kenya?

We urge you Mr Odinga, to diplomatically engage the Zimbabwean government.

People are dying in the country and your words are not very helpful to a situation that is out of hand. We all exercised caution when Kenya was burning. It still is burning today, and we are still exercising caution. We are not getting over-excited. That’s what leaders do — find strtategic ways to resolve crises, not attack other leaders.

We do not remember hearing President Mugabe refusing to meet you or criticizing you or Mr Kibaki. We also do not remember you offering to help Zimbabwe. We remember your hugs with opposition leaders soon after your ‘inauguration’ and hugs at the World Economic Forum with Tendai Biti and Jendayi Frazer. Those are more memorable than anything useful you have said or done on ‘really’ resolving the Zimbabwean crisis.

We urge you to clean house before you make any further embarrassing statements about Zimbabwe in your first few months of leadership; and we also urge you to seek diplomatic ways of engaging the Zimbabwean government.

While at it, please also ask the Africa Commission and its splinter organisations and their spokespersons to lead a diplomatic offensive on Zimbabwe rather than speak from London.

Also please ask Mr Tony Blair to encourage the ‘African Elders’ he currently leads, to use the same methods he used in a more difficult situation in Northern Ireland, in resolving the Zimbabwean crisis.

Zimbabweans are dying from violence and soberness and diplomacy by leadership is needed; not these divisive by-partisan statements likely to divide a continent that was moving towards a Pan-African integration.

RSVP.
Wed 18 June 2008
http://www.talkzimbabwe.com/news/117/AR … 06-18.html

Benjamin Fulford Interviews David Rockerfeller

2008-06-18T23:00:00.000-04:00

All Races Are Singing--OBAMA!

2008-06-13T17:16:00.000-04:00

http://www.dipdive.com/dip-politics/wato/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/13/barackobama.johnmccain

Michigandas-Obama Victory Party!

2008-06-04T14:29:00.000-04:00

KDPM is glad to announce that we will have an Obama Victory Party for all Michigandas at the University club, Grand Rapids,MI, tomorrow from 7.00p.m to 12.00 a.m.An official from the National Steering Committee will address the gathering. Indeed this is a historic moment for all of us and we are glad to be part of it.All are welcome.

Gerald Baraza,President, KDPM

Clinton set to concede to Obama!

2008-06-03T11:12:00.000-04:00

By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer 6 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton will concede Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign officials said, effectively ending her bid to be the nation's first female president.
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The former first lady will stop short of formally suspending or ending her race in her speech in New York City. She will pledge to continue to speak out on issues like health care. But for all intents and purposes, the two senior officials said, the campaign is over.

Most campaign staff will be let go and will be paid through June 15, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge her plans.

The advisers said Clinton has made a strategic decision to not formally end her campaign, giving her leverage to negotiate with Obama on various matters including a possible vice presidential nomination for her. She also wants to press him on issues he should focus on in the fall, such as health care.

Universal health care, Clinton's signature issue as first lady in the 1990s, was a point of dispute between Obama and the New York senator during their epic nomination fight.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080603/ap_on_el_pr/clinton