HAS THE KRIEGLER REPORT GIVEN UHURU KENYATTA A ROPE TO HANG SOMEONE?

By Jerry Okungu
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
September 22, 2008

It is becoming a familiar song. The Kriegler report has rekindled the pre election debates. Experts and non-experts have found fodder ground to stretch our imagination to the limit.

Uhuru Kenyatta has become the choir master of one wing of the debate. He and his followers have chosen to misinterpret the Kriegler report and repeat the lie as many times as possible to make the lie look like truth.

I claim ignorance of the report because I have not received a copy. I hope to God Mheshimiwa Uhuru Kenyatta has read the entire report and therefore his inflammatory utterances are based on solid facts. As for me, all I have are excerpts from newspapers that seem to tell me a different story unless I’m daft enough not to understand the obvious.

What I have been reading in the Standard, Daily Nation and Kenya Times is that the Kriegler Report found no winner in last year’s presidential elections. According to that report, whether it was Kibaki or Raila, Kenyans will never know. I assume that they reached that conclusion based on impossibly jumbled if not intentionally distorted records the ECK availed to them.

If my memory serves me right, all along it was not Kibaki who personally rigged the elections for himself. The election results were messed up by the Electoral Commissioners who were in charge at the polling stations all the way to the KICC. If they messed it beyond recognition, how did they come with a clear winner? If Kivuitu confessed soon after that he did not know who won the elections; it is the one admission that has been vindicated by the Kriegler Commission.

Suppose Kriegler came up with the verdict that the results were rigged in favor of PNU, would Uhuru Kenyatta have called the ECK and PNU to apologize? Why are some national leaders getting more and more illogical by the day? Isn’t this the kind of self-righteous attitude that cannot help in the healing process? Can Uhuru tell Kenyans why his PNU got 43 MPs against ODM’s 100 seats? With his 14 KANU MPs, the combined seats could hardly reach 60. Where did the other votes come from to elect a PNU president?

Kenyans have hurt enough due to the elections of last year. Leaders who have no new ideas yet were fingered to have bought machetes and ferried militias to hot spots to kill and maim in the name of their tribes have no business polluting the political atmosphere further.

On another note, why is Uhuru Kenyatta latching on the Kriegler report at a time when Martha Karua has set her car that has no reverse gear in motion in Gatundu constituency? If Uhuru wants to run for President in four years’ time, he had better start mending fences with all communities all over the Republic. The place to start with is to convince Karua and Saitoti that he is a better candidate. Another thing; let him avoid like a plague any attempt by the sitting president to anoint him the heir to the throne like Moi did to him in 2002. It cost him the presidency.
If he thinks his few followers in Kiambu will give him the presidency or even the premiership, he has a surprise coming for him.

The 2012 elections will most probably be better managed. As a presidential candidate, if he wants to be nominated by PNU then he should be ready to fight for nomination the way ODM and ODM K did in 2007. The idea of running from competitive nomination process in order to get a free ticket to the general elections will not do. In PNU, he must be ready to face George Saitoti and any other aspirant who will emerge from the woodworks. If ODMK joins forces with PNU then Uhuru Kenyatta must be prepared to face Kalonzo Musyoka or any other presidential aspirant who will have joined the PNU bandwagon.

Again, if Uhuru Kenyatta really wants to be president, let him stop holding old grudges against his imaginary enemies. He must rise above parochial pettiness that cannot help this country to heal.

Finally, let Uhuru Kenyatta and his friends never think for one moment that Kenyans owe them anything. They have not forgotten what happened in last year’s elections. Their grievances were real and true, being factual notwithstanding because truth has no validity in law; fact has!

jerryokungu@gmail.com
www.africanewsonline.blogspot.com