LET THE REFORM PROCESS  IN THE POLICE FORCE BEAR FRUITS
Massive reforms within the police force have been witnessed lately and this is a welcome move for Kenyans.Indeed,the recent vetting process for top-ranking officers within the force ha begun to change the Kenyans' attitude towards this crucial institution for a country's internal security.

Kenya's police force for long has been marred by high levels of corruption,nepotism,ignorance to the plight of Kenya's populace,non professionalism due to recruitment of unqualified recruits among many other negative attributes the force was engulfed in.
With the new constitutional dispensation therefore,the force is yet to fully reach the envisaged levels in the reform process.

For instance,the coming out of three young men from Nyeri to the public limelight to confess that they had wrongly been placed under 'the most wanted persons' list puts to questions the intelligence modalities that the police use to identify these suspects.

Flanked by the KNHR(Kenya National Human Rights Commission) officials and looking innocent,the three young men frankly said that they were ready to face the court and co-operate with the police force in identifying their misdeeds.

According to the new constitution section 25(a),it provides the rights and fundamental freedoms that a person is entitled to,one being the freedom from torture and cruel,inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.Contrary to this,the police have caused unnecessary psychological trauma to these young men by putting them in such a dreaded list .

For a long time,the civil society groups have been blamed to co-operate with criminals by the ploice thus becoming a' great impediment' in improving security levels in Kenya.
Since the NARC government took over power in 2003,hundreds of innocent young  men especially from Central Kenya ,have been subjected to untold torture on grounds of being Mungiki suspects.Many of these jobless youths are still languishing in Kenyan prisons and cells because their cases are still pending or were convicted on malicious grounds.

When the UN special rapporteur to Kenya,Prof.Philip Alston, compiled a report to indicate the height of extra-judicial killings in Kenya,many leaders in the government stood up with every form of condemnation to the report,many saying it was biased and shallowly researched.
It was only a short time after he had presented his report when two Oscar Foundation activists,Samuel Kamau King'ara and Paul Oula were shot dead on allegations that they were linked to Mungiki underground operations.Later media-friendly Mungiki spokes-person,Gitau Njguna was killed in cold blood.

The discontent here is that the police should carry out thorough and in-depth professional investigations before rushing to brand innocent youths 'wanted criminals' tainting their image in the public domain.

This is a key challenge to the government to honour its promises to the youths to create more job opportunities.Aristotle,a great Greek philosopher,once said that poverty is the mother of all crime.Indeed,the ever-escalating crime rate is caused by high poverty levels among the disillusioned Kenyan populace,especially the youth.This will only be achieved if transparency and accountability reigns in public institutions to coincide with the new dawn.

Wanderi wa Kamau,
Egerton University,Nakuru.
 

 ETHNICITY OUR GREATEST UNDOING
In Towards Genocide in Kenya:The Curse of Negative Ethnicity,Koigi wa Wamwere points out that balkanization of the Kenyan society into ethnic federal states by our volatile and polar political system is the cause of the current socio-political woes the country is undergoing through, since independence.

The balkanization process,which is steered by the opulent political class uses the propaganda of ethnic hatred to advance separatist politics to reach their political goals.When a community in Central Kenya is mythologized by their tribal kingpins to believe that a community in Western Kenya is their enemies,this sentiment is passed on from one generation to another-and this is the root cause of the ever unending tribalism cancer in Kenya.

I laughed when I watched one of the G7 lieutenants stand in the podium to ' preach  peace and harmonious co-existence' among the Kenyan citizenry.Ironically,in' pacifying and uniting' these Kenyans,he said that they should not co-operate with the leaders of 'other communities' because they had rejected to support a bill seeking to see one of their 'member' approved by parliament to hold a strong position within the judiciary.
Now,one wonders whether there is any difference in old-style divisive politics of the KANU era and mature politics in the new constitutional order.

These are the leaders who have come out to express their presidential bid in 2012.Where are they driving back this country to?Did they not feel the carnage that post-election violence of 2007/2008 left to helpless Kenyans who continue to languish in abject paucity and desperation?

Okwudiba Nnoli in the introduction to Government and Politics in Africa puts the image of African politics as 'nasty,brutish and bestial'.He continues'...detractors can easily point to the one-party system,the life presidency,the ubiquity of negative ethnicity,religious strife,political violence,genocide,military rule,the rigging of elections,corruption,abject poverty and the nightmare of refugee flows in the history of African politics...'
In reference to the above  description of African politics,and our own Kenyan situation,some leaders have spent almost all of their adult-life in parliament.The keys to survival have been politics of patronage and hoodwinking the electorates.

How do one feel,succession politics at the height of skyrocketing food prices and high inflationary rated to starving and disillusioned citizens?This is a demonstration of the worst kind of negligence by leaders to the Kenyan citizenry.

Another take:the irony of the ongoing Conference on the implementation of the Constitution.While August acts as the deadline in which key bills for the  new law to be fully in force,the parliament has only managed to pass only seven out of 50 bills which are instrumental fot the transition period to end .And with the parliament engulfed in unnecessary political contests,the common mwananchi will continue to wallow in hard economic times as the Kenyan shilling continue to depreciate aganist other international currencies.Having reached a mark of Sh.92 aganist the US dollar,economic pundits are warning of difficult times ahead.

Our leaders should go back to the drawing board and re-think of Kenya's future rather than engaging in blame-games.The G7 lieutenants have the power to end the current IDP menace because it is their communities who loathe aganist each other.I believe if this alliance practice policy-oriented campaigns and be ready to preach peace without blaming other communities for their woes,this country can make great strides socially,politically and economically.

Let the ongoing Conference on Constitutional Implementation process be a breakthrough for speeded up implementation to restore Kenyans' hope on the new law's implementation.

The destiny of this nation lies with our leaders' accountability.

Wanderi wa Kamau,