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Citizen Weekly

Sunday 7 December 2014

NYACHAE ACCUSED OF USING OFFICE TO RETURN OLD ORDER THROUGH THE WINDOW

Could there be a scheme in the offing by the Charles Nyachae led Commission for Implementation of the Constitution to get an extension in office to finalise a grand plot by operatives of Kenya’s old order of the political and economic status quo to permanently frustrate the  implementation of the new constitution to their taste and permanently kill off the reform process?
Mid last week, Nyachae  presided over the unveiling of one of the CIC strategic reports at Ihura Stadium in Murang’a town, where the chief guest Murang’a governor Mwangi Wa Iria made a bold, loud public appeal for the powers that be to extend the Nyachae team’s term by a year or more “to continue doing the good job”.
It is worth noting that during the same function, Nyachae had merely mentioned in passing that he will not like the CIC term extended when it ends next year, but when the governor uttered his demand for an extension, Nyachae and all his commissioners applauded like a victory party in celebration with a partisan crowd, including his “political supporters” ferried in from Kisii county erupting in wild cheers. It came out like a choreographed endorsement!
Only recently, including last week he was quoted intensively in the media lamenting at the failure by the authorities and Kenyans at large to fully uphold and implement the new constitution.
His lamentations majorly mirrored similar regular ones from some CIC commissioners working directly under him, opposition leaders and members of the civil society. Occasionally, a few members of the governing Jubilee coalition have come up with similar complaints, though it is hard to believe they mean what they say.
It is very sickening that the chairman of the body that is constitutionally mandated to prefect constitution implementation resorts to mere complaints like would do helpless members of the public. It is, however, an open secret that for all the deeps in the implementation process, the CIC is very culpable at all turns.
Authors of the new constitution who provided for the creation of the CIC knew exactly that only an independent safeguard, not beholden to the executive could ensure full implementation of the new constitution. They knew that Kenya is captive of traditional status quo mandarins and their supporters who always want to frustrate reforms and would want to hijack implementation of the new constitution since the new laws anchor strategic and far reaching reforms that if implemented will transform the country for the better but to their disadvantage.
The CIC under Nyachae has been behaving suspiciously. By and large, they have abdicated their role and allowed the executive and some arms of government to mutilate the new constitution, frustrate implementation of certain key sections of the new laws and even to discreetly suspend those already in place to force partisan agenda on Kenyans.
Occasionally, in a routine that appears deliberate, the CIC has perfected the act of waking up to react like a mortician or auditor to put up a few feeble cosmetic fights against ills committed against the constitution whenever there is a public outcry. Why are they not proactive?
Under the watch of Nyachae whose term has only one year to lapsing, CIC has presided over the abortion of all reforms envisaged in the new constitution. Judicial reforms, police reforms, electoral reforms and more importantly “land reforms” have been deliberately stalled by vested interests in the executive with CIC failing to raise a finger.
The CIC has remained silent as the executive re-entrenched the archaic provincial administration without, at the minimum, altering its architecture to conform to devolution, as is clearly stipulated in the laws; or being totally scrapped, as was the overwhelming recommendation by majority of Kenyans.
The tragedy of our reforms effort, it is now evident, was enacting the new constitution at a time when the levers of executive power were still strongly in the hands of elite members of the country’s retrogressive status quo led by former president Mwai Kibaki who is in league with his predecessors Daniel arap Moi and the Jomo Kenyatta family and power cartels of the 1960s and 1970s.
The forces of the status quo, who hate reforms, trace their roots to the colonial days where they inherited the “home guards” and colonial bootlickers who taught them primitive accumulation of wealth, dictatorship, corruption and tactics of divide and rule to retain power.
Interestingly, vintage Mwai Kibaki, long before he facilitated the installment of Uhuru Kenyatta (a crown prince of the status quo) into the presidency to continue protecting vested interests, fished out Nyachae, a grandson of a colonial time home guard and authoritarian colonial chief from Kisii and planted him to head the CIC. It must have been to hijack the implementation process.
Nyachae is not only a grandson of the homeguard type but a son of an elite member of the status quo; former head of public service and minister Simeon Nyachae, one of the few remaining big faces (together with Moi, Kibaki, Jeremiah  Kiereini, Phillip Ndegwa and Mama Ngina Kenyatta) of the founding clique of Kenya’s imperial old order that will not let go, ever.
Unknown to many, Governor Mwangi wa Iria is a blue-eyed boy of some of the most powerful and influential courtiers of Kibaki, hence an operative of the corrupt and retrogressive Mt Kenya Mafia that committed the first sin of hijacking and frustrating constitutional and political reforms that Kenyans had planned to institute during the regime of the Narc government of Nak and LDP. A notable godfather to the Murang’a governor is Kibaki’s longserving friend, business partner and chairman of the blue chip milk conglomerate the Kenya Co operative Creameries Mzee Matu Wamae from Karatina, Nyeri.
Pundits are taking the Murang’a governor’s demand for extension of Nyachae’s tenure and the CIC’s time as a discreet maneuver by the Mt Kenya Mafia and their cohorts in protecting the status quo as both a reward to Nyachae for serving them right and also a move to keep him in place to finalise the killing of the reforms process permanently.
Does it surprise that when the Murang’a county government wanted an official residence for Mwangi Wa Iria, Mzee Matu Wamae facilitated the purchase of a posh house and estate belonging to the Nyachae family in Kangema. Locals complained that it was bought at an exorbitant price but they were silenced. It is said Nyachae’s law firm could have done the conveyance. Today, it is the governor being dispatched by his godfathers to kickstart a campaign for retaining Nyachae in office as a failed chairman of the CIC. And funds are availed for youth representatives from Kisii to be wowed by the public endorsement away in Murang’a to return home in Kisii with praises of  Nyachae’s greatness so as to make it easy for his election as Kisii governor come 2017.
Kenyans should focus more on this trend that can also be witnessed in other key players like parliament speaker Justin Muturi, Attorney General Professor Githu Muigai, IEBC chairman Isaak Hassan, Transition Authority boss Kinuthia Wamwangi, Ethics and Anti-Corrption Authority boss Mumo Matemu, outgoing Inspector General of Police David Kimaiyo and DPP Keriako Tobiko. They are expected to use their offices to fasttrack the ongoing reforms but instead they appear to be stalling or frustrating them.

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