A LETTER TO ISAACK HASSAN by Jerry Okungu...A Must Read...

BY: Jerry Okungu, Nairobi, Kenya
March 7 2013

Dear Isaack,

This letter is from a concerned Kenyan who has a lot of respect for your person and office

I am writing to you concerning the ongoing election results, especially those concerning the presidential elections. What is currently going on is a cause for worry to any Kenyan who loves this country.

You may not appreciate how apprehensive ordinary Kenyans are when it comes to delayed election results. Their memories are still very fresh when they recall what happened to them in 2007 when presidential elections results were delayed as malpractices took over at the ECK offices across the country.

They remember just too well when a presidential candidate who had stretched a lead of 1 million votes in the first two days suddenly saw his votes vanish in thin air.

They remember how the ECK Chairman, the late Samuel Kivuitu could not reach or locate officers in various parts of the country with attendant quote that the ‘Returning Officers and some Commissioners had switched off their phones and were probably still cooking the results for their masters’.

After three days of tension, Kivuitu was whisked to a security room where he announced the results for the sitting president and thereafter driven at breakneck speed to State House to go and hand over the victory certificate confirming the reelection of the sitting president. This was shortly after sunset the same day.

I do not want to repeat to you what followed. However for one month, the country was up in flames as the international community trooped in to quell the fire. Had they not intervened on time, there probably would be no country called Kenya today.

What started as a rumour about vote stealing and ballot box stuffing were later confirmed by Justice Johan Kriegler, the South African retired judge who was brought in to investigate what went wrong with our electoral system.

His verdict was telling. Everything that needed to go wrong went wrong with Kenya’s elections in 2007. He condemned the ECK into extinction.

Unfortunately, what your commission is currently doing would look like you have borrowed the same script from Samuel Kivuitu and are bent on following it to the letter. And you want to take refuge in the letter of the law to let Kenya slide into chaos. You have put Kenyans on edge and set them on the path that will make them snap. When they do, it will not look good at all.

Why do I say this? I say this because you caused the tax payers of this country to spend Ksh 25 billion to enable your commission run a smooth and flawless election. Ksh 9 billion of that cash was used to buy and install a bio metric voter register together with an electronic voter register together with electronic links and computer servers with capacity to receive, transmit and store millions of data that the exercise would generate.

Going electronic was indeed a recommendation of the Kriegler Commission. And Kenyans agreed that it was better to spend US $ 100million on that electronic system if that was the price we were to pay for efficiency, speed, credibility and peace in our country.

Indeed you assured us that your team was fully prepared with well trained personnel stationed in Nairobi and every polling station in the country. You assured us that your powerful communication system would relay results from polling stations to County Tallying Centers and then to the National Command Post in Bomas.

However, three days after voting closed, the electronic system either broke down, was hacked or sabotaged. Three days later, you still could not get all returning officers into Nairobi despite the available airlift facilities in the country.

But more disturbing was the fact that it was beginning to emerge that a number of IEBC officials both at the head office and in the counties have been discovered to be involved in numerous election malpractices.
Cases in point have been unearthed in Kitale in Tranzoia and Nyali in the Coast regions. I’m sure you are aware of arrests that were made in Kitale and Nyali in the glare of television cameras.

Just in case it escaped your attention; two computer programmers thought to have corrupted or hacked your server were arrested during the week. This criminal act made it difficult for your IT staff to restore data lost. As a result, you abandoned the electronic relay of results and ordered all rerunning officers back to Nairobi to start tallying results manually.

I know this letter may be out of step with the current PR efforts you are currently engaged in to do damage control. I can see KEPSA and VISION 2030 CEOs have come out strongly in defense of IEBC and appealed for patience. Unfortunately, that patience that Kenyans displayed for the first three days is fast fading. Businesses are suffering as a result of this state of apprehension.

That said, I must commend you for having made the right decision to abandon the failed electronic system in order to get the results out as soon as possible.

When it is over, please have a look at your administrative set up and see if it is properly constituted and well trained. You may need to overhaul the IT and Human Resource departments to avoid future embarrassments.

Jerry Okungu
jerryokungu@gmail.com

The Kenya's Greatest Speech - A speech By Rt. Hon. Raila Odinga

It had been regarded as the Kenya's greatest speech of all time. A speech delivered by Rt. Hon Raila Odinga during the promulgation of the New Kenya's Constitution.

Here is the full speech .........

 

' SPEECH BY THE RT. HON. RAILA ODINGA, PRIME MINISTER OF THE REPUBLIC OF KENYA, DURING THE ENACTMENT OF A NEW CONSTITUTION FOR KENYA AT UHURU PARK, NAIROBI; AUGUST 27, 2010.

Your Excellency the President,

Your Excellencies Heads of State and Government

Your Excellencies the ambassadors;

Members of the diplomatic Corp;

Citizens and friends of Kenya:

Today, we mark the end of one journey, as we embark on the beginning of another.

On the Fourth of August this year, Kenyans stood one by one in the solitude of the polling booths and voted in favour of a new national Constitution. In that moment, so fleeting and yet so historic, decades of struggle for a better future were finally rewarded.

The Fourth of August will go down in history as the date on which we, the people of Kenya, formed a more united nation,  and established the groundwork for justice, unity and the full blessings of liberty for ourselves and for posterity.

No one could have thought that out of the bitter harvest of the disputed election and the violence that pitted our people against each other just two years ago, we would be witnessing today the birth of a national unity that has eluded us for more than 40 years.

Today, we close a long chapter in our history. We put repression, exclusion and heroic struggle behind us once and for all. We have opened a clean new page in our book. On that page, we begin writing the story of an equal and just society.

We gather here now to ratify the pledge we made to ourselves and to the world, that Kenya shall redeem herself and extend the frontiers of democracy and freedom. This freedom has eluded us for more than forty years. Each time we came close to attaining it, it slipped from our grasp.

Each time we missed it; ever-greater repression seemed to replace the justice we sought.

But a time comes in the life of every nation when citizens have to choose between the status quo and a future that is full of promise.

In dedicating this Supreme Law, we pay our respects to those who walked this land before us, who saw its beauty, and who fought for fulfillment for all its citizens.

We remember Pio Gama Pinto, Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Alexander Kipsang Arap Muge, Masinde Muliro, George Anyona, Katama Mkangi, Jean Marie Seroney, Henry Okullu, among many others who struggled for this day to come but did not live to see it.

We honour Kenneth Matiba, Charles Rubia, Martin Shikuku, Wangari Maaithai, Chelagat Mutai, and the Young Turks of the Second Liberation who pushed us closer to this day.

These are but a few of the Kenyan patriots who sacrificed to make today a reality. At great risks to their lives, they challenged dictatorship.

They paid great prices to liberate our country from impunity. Collectively, we owe them a debt of gratitude. In the words of the late Sir Winston Churchill…. “Never have so many, owed so much, to so few…” We thank and honour our President, Mwai Kibaki, who has today signed into law what we endorsed on the Fourth of August.

In 1992, when multiparty politics were restored to our country, Mr Kibaki joined hands with the Opposition. Ten years later, he led our country into a new era and towards the Constitution that we now unveil.

We thank the Grand Coalition Government for pulling together to deliver this critical item of our National Accord. We salute the women and the youth of Kenya for their heroic participation in the rebirth of our Nation.

We owe gratitude to His Excellency Dr Kofi Anan, a true friend of Kenya, and the team of Eminent African Personalities who stood with us at our lowest moment in our history and helped us trace our way back into sanity.

We proclaim this new Supreme Law in the firm belief that lasting peace and security and prosperity for all can only come if we all enjoy freedom and justice as equals.

The promise of this new beginning will be challenged by our traditional enemies; corruption and negative ethnicity. We must be vigilant and stop corruption from stealing our future and negative ethnicity from weakening our nationhood.

To those in charge of public affairs, may public service be what it is; public service; not self-service. This new beginning must mark the end of shallow political partisanship and herald the start of mature competition among political parties.

To all the people of Kenya, I say, thank you for taking your destiny into your own hands.

Among us today are representatives of the international community, some of whom have stood with us in good and bad times as we have continued our search for these new laws. We thank you. This Constitution is our humble contribution to the culture of democracy and human rights worldwide that you represent.

It is our solemn pledge that never again shall the laws of our land divide and authorise the repression and oppression of our people.

I have never said this with a fuller heart: God bless you all, and God bless Kenya.

Thank you.'

Source -Prime Minister Press Service.

The Ugly Side Of Kenyan Politicians

Memories of Zack pushing his wheelchair 3912KM towards South Africa to raise KSh. 250,000,000 to build a Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Center in Nairobi has never left our minds. It was unbelievable that even after such deadly adventure, he was not able to meet the overall goal of raising the Ksh. 25M.

Sadly, just after only five years of sitting on the comfy chairs of parliament that cost Kenyan taxpayers KSh. 84M, These MPs have decided to prepare going home with a sweet send-off package of KSh 2.1Billion !!!!!!!!!! Horrible. This is like looting!!!!

N/B This amount is enough to build 8 Spinal Injury Rehab Centers in Kenya, Train 403 Doctors from Primary School to University, equip 34 Radio Therapy Units, Build Two National Level Referral Hospitals, equip Theatres for 100 Hospitals, Supply Infant Vaccines for 3 years. Its time to These members of parliament stop this madness.