A Political Kenya: Latest Politics and Kenya Economy News

The Nairobi Stock Exchange Chairman, Jimnah Mbaru, who is also the CEO Dyer and Blair Investment Bank, has come under scathing attacks from small brokerage firms for what they term as his influence top have their licenses terminated.

This has not gone down well with the brokers since the chairman, who is about to retire from the elective position next month after years at the helm, has changed his tune and come up with proposals which might affect their business.

Among the contentious proposals the chairman is calling for is the increase of the minimum paid-up capital to at least Sh 400 million for investment banks while stock brokers would have a minimum capital base of Sh 200 million.

This has come hot on heels of the Capital Markets Authority report confirming that the NSE is controlled by a few stock broking barons who have overshadowed the affairs at the Nairobi Stock Exchange for the last 54 years.

Small brokerage firms who are struggling to survive are pointing an accusing finger at Mbaru, who with a strong interest in stock exchange through his now Dyer and Blair Investment Bank has taken advantage of loopholes at NSE to grab a huge share of the market. It is alleged that Mbaru, as the chairman, has been manipulating activities at the NSE with the pretext that it is business as usual.

Investors were shocked by news of the Francis Thuo and Partners collapse and the placement of Nyaga stock brokers in the cold only months after the chairman had expressed confidence that it was time for all Kenyans to change their minds and invest in the NSE. It came as a surprise when theChairman admitted that they were not aware that things were not well with the two firms.

What has confused everyone is the change of hand of ASHBU securities to Afrika Investment Bank. This happened without notice and up to date all customers know that the custodian of their shares in ASHBU simply because they were not notified of any changes. According to sources within the bourse Mbaru influenced CMA, to allow ASHBU securities to be absorbed by Afrika Investment Bank.

A close look by Weekly Citizen established that the Director of Afrika Investment Bank, Peterson Mwangi is, in fact, acting as proxy for Mbaru, who owns the company. Other sources have also intimated that Mbaru is Peterson’s foster father. Peterson has been the manager at Mbaru’s Equator Hospital at Nairobi West for a long period.

It is highly expected that CMA will close its eyes once more to the public after this exclusive report by Weekly Citizen about ASHBU Securities.

Meanwhile, directors of six stock brokerage firms whose annual licenses are due on May 26 are accusing the acting CMA chief executive, MS Stella Kilonzo, of harassing them when they already have the required capital base. This also came when the Safaricom Ipo was in progress and the negative picture chased customers away.

During the period, there was more positive report about NSE chairman’s firm, Dyer & Blair. People are eagerly waiting to see what will transpire after May 26 2008 since most of them have gone ahead and published their capital base, turnover for the year and market share (%) for public scrutiny.

When Weekly Citizen contacted them, NIC Capital director Kevin Bender, Discount securities chairman William Murungu, Bob Mathews stock brokers Bob Mathews, Ngenye Kariuki & Company’s chairman Ngenye Kariuki, Reliable Securities chairman Josphat Konzolo all agreed that there was more than meets the eye in the whole saga.

Market share statistics for last year indicates that the six brokers controlled 15 percent of the total equities turnover, equivalent to Sh 22 billion of the sh 175 billion traded at the NSE last year.

Much of their fear is that the NSE chairman, who is also their competitor, might force CMA to suspend their licenses leading to permanent withdrawal in what CMA terms as continued violation of rules. It is their wish that future NSE chairs will be neutral.

Meanwhile, CMA is now pushing for new laws that will limit the maximum shareholding an individual can own in an investment bank to 25 percent and increase the minimum capital to Sh 250 million from Sh 30 Million. Stock dealers will require a minimum capital of Sh 20 million, up from Sh 20 million.

Stock brokers should have a capital base of Sh 5 million. Another Sh 10 million is required for a dealing license.

Investment banks are required to have a minimum capital base of Sh30 million

The NSE requires brokers to include Sh 50 million in their valuations being the goodwill of a seat at the NSE.

NA – Not Available. Broker did not respond.

Since the December 2007 disputed elections the cancer of impunity is catching up like bush fire in Kenya. Criminals are turning into heroes and the downtrodden’s justice is disregarded depending on where you are standing. Criminal groups are holding the government and wananchi hostage ODM-style. ODM mass action was a bad precedent for Kenya’s justice system. Na bado.

Kalenjin warriors: Does Kenya law apply in the Rift Valley?

The debate of amnesty to Kalenjin warriors is gathering storm. William Ruto, the Kalenjin kingpin, sparked off the debate as a condition for allowing Kikuyu IDPs to be resettled back in Rift Valley. The Kalenjin warriors massacred Kikuyu settlers during the post election violence and destroyed their properties.

Martha Karua, the Minister for Justice, Constitutional Affairs and National Cohesion, has come out strongly against an amnesty deal for Kalenjin warriors stating that crimes against humanity should not be forgiven easily. She further stated even cabinet ministers who will be implicated in the massacres will not be forgiven and will face the full force of the law. A move seen to be aimed at William Ruto, the Minister for Agriculture who is suspected to have masterminded the ethnic cleansing of Kikuyus in the Rift Valley.

A group of Rift Vallet Kalenjin MPs led by Franklin Bett have accused Martha Karua of double standards for disagreeing with Ruto while supporting Mungiki dialogue with the government.

Mungiki

A contingent of GSU has finally been withdrawn from Maina Njenga’s house in Kitengela where they have kept a 24-hour vigil for more than a year.

The Mungiki is now a glorifed criminal gang that has caused untold suffering to Nairobi residents and its environs in the last 10 years. Now every politician worth his/her clout including the prime minister is lining up to pledge allegiance to the gangwith calls to free a condemned criminal. What about the justice of those who have suffered in the hands of the outlawed gang.

The Minister for Internal Security, Prof George Saitoti has contracted with the Prime minister over this matter.

Sabaot land defence forces

Sabaot leaders met with Raila complaining of Kenya Army violation of human rights in the crackdown against militia. Raila promised to raise their concerns in a cabinet meeting.

Embakasi Updates

The contestant line up is as follows:

Esther Pasaris (ODM)- former MD of Adopt-a-Light

Julius Were (ODM)- brother to slain former MP, Melitus Were

Dick Waweru (ODM)- former Nairobi lawyer, who contested and lost PNU nominations last year

Robert Asembo (ODM) – Nairobi lawyer who represented jailed Mungiki leader, Maina Njenga

Mohamed Sumra (ODM)- perrenial loser in the Embakasi MP race

Ferdinand Waititu (PNU) – former deputy mayor for Nairobi. Endorsed by PNU bigwigs. Contested last yearand lost to the late Mugabe Were who won with over 34,000 votes while Waititu garnered 28,000 votes. Endorsed by former Nairobi maypr John Ndirangu who garnered 22,000 votes in the last elections.

Kalembe Ndile (TIP) – former Kibwezi MP. struggling to get endorsement from the grand coalition government.

Whatis Raila’s Work?

The minister for Justice and the Minister for Agriculture are fighting in public?

The minister for internal security has contradicted the prime minister over Mungiki dialogue with the government in public?

Parting shot

1. Raila was booed by his fans in his Luo Nyanza grand home coming,will this be the beginning of the end
2. Equity was supposed to suffer economic boycott in February 2008 as an ODM strategy to bring PNU into submission. Raila was singing Equity banks genius in Bondo on Monday
3. Raila is in government and is easily missing on the corruption whistle-blowing art and abhors opposition, or is he safeguarding his plan B?

Interesting times these are.

Circus 1

Njenga Karume, the former defence minister and former MP for Kiambaa held a press briefing where he decried the government for harassment of the Mungiki sect members. Njenga and a group calling itself the Kikuyu Council of Elders called on the government to release Maina Njenga on bail so that he can organise to meet Prime Minister Raila Odinga as the prime minister had requested. He was accompanied by several former Mt Kenya legislators who included Joseph Kamotho.

Circus 2

In other news, former VP Moody Awori has declined to chair the committee appointed by current VP Kalonzo Musyoka to look into the grievances raised by striking prison warders, Awori said that there is no need of wasting time since all the issues raised are contained in a recommendation report that he drafted when he was VP and Minister for Home Affairs. He wondered why the government has taken so long to implement the recommendations.

Today, the President and Prime Minister visited Eldoret Show ground which is hosting many IDPs displaced during ODM's mass action in January and December. They later held a public rally at Kipchoge Keino stadium.

Kibaki and Raila face the challenge of making sure that no Kenyan is a refugee in Kenya. Many of the IDP camps are located in the Rift Valley. A number of Rift Valley MPs are opposed to the resettlement programme proposed by the government echoing what their constituents are saying. Several South Rift MPs have come out to strongly oppose resettlement a view that is seen in some quarters as an attempt to use IDPs as a pawn in their political game after being denied cabinet positions.

Human rights were violated in the Rift Valley with indiscriminate killing of Kikuyus and destruction of their property supposedly for voting for the current president. There have been claims of historic land injustices in the Rift Valley that the Kalenjin community want addressed before any resettlement. There is pressure for the government to settle the IDPs in Central province where they came from before they bought land in the Rift Valley. Large tracts of land owned by the Kenyatta family are the target of such settlement. In a way this will also be an implementation of ODM's Majimbo manifesto.

This settlement of IDPs from the Rift Valley raises fundamental questions. One it is a bad precedent if the rule of law is to prevail in Kenya. Crimes against humanity were committed and it is only fair and just that people are not allowed to break laws with impunity. The Kikuyus in Rift Valley bought land legally and that should be paramount and upheld. Secondly, how far back is claim to ancestral land justified. On independence day, on the scramble for Africa or when the earth and the heavens were created? Before the Kalenjin in the Rift Valley were the Maasais who also owned Nairobi. Should the Maasais also arise and claim their ancestral land?

The other side of the coin is that forced resettlement of IDPs will not work. No amount of police posts and presence will guarantee the returnees of their safety. The best protection is your neighbour. If your neighbour turns against you, then you are in hot soup. How are IDPs supposed to face their neighbours who murdered their fathers, mothers, sons and daughters in broad daylight? How are they to relate with the neighbours who are wearing their stolen clothes, rearing their cattle, filled their granaries with the IDP's harvest? It is a high time the truth, justice and reconciliation team got to work. There is need to tone down ethnic animosity between the IDPs and their former neigbours.

Back to Ruto, the Minister for Agriculture, a person perceived in some quarters as a warlord who plotted and funded ethnic clashes in the Rift Valley. He gave the president three conditions for the resettlement programme:

1. That all the people arrested and accused of ethnic cleansing of the Kikuyu community be released
2. That all the chiefs and sub-chiefs who were sacked for non-performance during the January, February pre-meditated clashes be reinstated
3. That the Government promise Rift Valley farmers that the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) will be compelled by the government to pay farmers on the spot on delivery of farm produce. He reinstated that NCPB will be selling CAN fertilizer to the farmers at a cost of Kshs 1,650 instead of 4,000.

IN THIS AND OTHER DEMOCRAcies, when it comes to enforcement of human rights, the judge keeps aside all other cases and hears the application of any person complaining of violations of his right to liberty.

The argument by legislator Franklin Bett and other Rift Valley MPs that the resettlement of internally displaced people “be not hurried” until the underlying cause of the fighting has been addressed, is an argument for suspending those provisions of the Constitution which protect the rights of others.

It flies in the face of constitutional truth about the proper way of redistributing wealth. It goes against the very tradition which this nation established in 1963. It amounts to an argument that the Constitution, which has the force of the law throughout Kenya, continues to be suspended in some parts of Rift Valley.

The MPs’ claim that the land problem was created by the President Jomo Kenyatta manifests their ignorance of the agreement reached over land during the 1962 Constitution Conference, which was attended by representatives of all Kenyan communities.

IT IS AT THAT CONFERENCE THAT a political settlement on the future of Kenya was reached. That is the ‘future’ which this nation has lived since 1963.

The names of all participants in that conference are reproduced in the report. Those who are alive today are former President Moi, Mr George Nthenge and Mr John Keen.

The MPs are, therefore, insulting the intelligence of Kenyans who have lived under that Constitution for 44 years.

The internally displaced Kenyans have a right to be resettled immediately in their homes, partly because as section 3 of the Constitution declares, it has “the force of law throughout Kenya”, and partly because the Constitution guarantees every Kenyan the right to move throughout Kenya and the right to reside in any part of Kenya.

Their displacement was a serious violation of the Constitution by some politicians and their supporters who, after the December 27 elections, acted on two dangerous heresies, namely:

(i) that there is a law which permits a person to suspend the operation of any part of the Constitution or other laws which he or she disapproves of; and,

(ii) that in a democracy, the so-called economic inequalities and imbalances in land redistribution can be corrected through violence.

Democracies are characterised by the observance of the principles that no individual or institution has power to suspend the operation of the law, and that all injustices must be removed through either a constitutional change, or through Acts of Parliament.

Following the 1962 constitutional settlement, Kenyans in 1963 acted in accordance with this constitutional principle, which provided for the transfer of land ownership from Europeans to Africans. They also recognised the institution of property, which included the property acquired through force during the colonial rule.

Section 197 established a Central Land Board, whose duty was to select agricultural land for purposes of settlement, to assess a fair purchase price, and to convey interest in land on the basis of willing-buyer willing-seller.

The Constitution rejected the nationalist claims that land had been stolen and, consequently, that the European owners did not have valid titles to land. It recognised as valid all the land rights which had been acquired since the commencement of colonial rule.

All the internally displaced persons in Rift Valley Province acquired land from former European owners through the Central Land Board, or through purchase, either individually, or through land-buying companies, which subsequently sub-divided it amongst shareholders.

The claim that any land in the Rift Valley, which was formerly owned by Europeans, belongs to any community is based on a rejection of the constitutional basis upon which the country became independent.

The MPs swore on January 15, 2008, that each of them “will protect and defend the Constitution of Kenya as by law established.” That Constitution, which they swore to defend, protects the right to life, the right to property, and the right not to be discriminated against on account of one’s ethnicity.

During the post-election violence, some members of one community evicted from their farms people whose pre-colonial homes were in what today are Nyanza, Western, Central and Eastern provinces. These are the people who constitute the internally displaced persons.

THE CLAIMS BY THE MPS THAT citizenship does not have the same and equal content for some Kenyans living in that province is preposterous.

Our economic, constitutional and political reality is that individuals from all communities own farms, homes, businesses and hold jobs in all parts of the country, including Rift Valley Province.

One fails to understand the logic that says that there are Kenyans who should not own farms or homes in some parts of the Rift Valley. The logic, which allows every Kenyan to work and carry on business at a place of his or her choice, applies to every inch in the Republic, including Rift Valley Province.

These MPs ought to apologise to the internally displaced persons for the criminal activities of their supporters, and lead in the campaign to correct the heresies on which the killings and displacement were based.

Dr Kuria is a constitutional lawyer and State counsel working in Nairobi.

The list of permanent secretaries appointed on Monday was disappointing. It went against the public wish. After grudgingly accepting a bloated Cabinet with its confused roles and heavy expenditure, Kenyans expected that the top echelons of the Civil Service would be better constituted.

It was expected that the appointing authority would dispense with political considerations and name qualified, competent and youthful people to top civil service jobs.

But this was not to be. People who should have long retired and political hangers-on were named to key jobs as patronage took centre-stage.

When the parties constituting the Grand Coalition today were campaigning ahead of last December’s elections, they all pledged to create a vibrant, youthful, representative and quality public service. The appointments made nonsense of these pledges.

It is futile for the Government to talk of creating jobs when top posts are permanently given to people who should be at home playing with their grandchildren.

Not only does this create discontent among career civil servants forced to stagnate in lowly positions, it also creates apathy, resulting in poor service delivery.

One of the factors that led to the violence early this year was the feeling of marginalisation amongst youth and some communities.

In particular, young, educated people resented being locked out of decision-making roles. Sadly, the appointments did not address this.

Kenyans want a break from the past. They want a revolutionised and rejuvenated public service. They want a system that recognises and rewards merit, and not one that thrives on old boy networks.

Although Kenyans have been tolerant and accepted some excesses by the Grand Coalition government, the leaders must not take too many things for granted. Increasingly, the coalition is exhibiting signs of insensitivity. That is dangerous and must be stopped.

We want to believe those oldermanent secretaries are around just for the transition, and they will soon be phased out, allowing the Government to make fresh appointments and rejuvenate public service.

Parliament Wednesday passed a Motion calling for merger of the national identity card and the voters card. If effected, it would mean that one holding an ID card would not have to register for a different card in order to vote.

The Private Member’s Motion passed unanimously and with support from the Government. But the implementation must not be rushed before all factors are taken into consideration.

One issue is that inclusion in the voters’ roll is voluntary. The Roll includes only those who specifically seek to be registered to vote. By contrast, the national identity card is not optional, but mandatory for all citizens over 18 years.

If the idea is adopted, will it mean that the ID cards’ register then doubles up as a voters’ roll?
Registration for voters card also gives one many options of constituency and ward in which to register, not limited to the narrow confines of place of birth or home area.

Will it mean that if one wants to change his or her voting station, it will mean applying for a new ID?
These are just some of the questions that arise.

There may well be more fundamental issues revolving around the planned project involving the design and issue of new-generation identity cards. That will be a mammoth and very costly undertaking.

In this generation, there is need to consider whether multiple cards and documents – including passport, driving licence, social security, health insurance, PIN card – can be replaced by one ‘‘smart card’’.

The technology exists, and if the voting card proposal is to be implemented, it must not be looked at in isolation.