HOW WILL THIS SOAP OPERA EVER END?
Story By Macharia Gaitho
Daily Nation , Kenya
March 13 2006
We are seeing more twists and turns in the national soap opera than
the hottest screenwriter in Hollywood can come up with.
We have seen bumbling cops. Armed raids on media houses by armed men
in uniform. Ministers revealing their serpentine ways. Politicians
getting in on the act with dark tales of mercenaries and assassination
plots. Power struggles in the Police Force. And, the latest instalment,
the alleged mercenaries coming out with counter-accusations against
their accusers. What’s happening?
It was Lang’ata MP Raila Odinga, a man who has a penchant for claiming
that his life is in danger, who started the mercenary tale.
To cap it all, he pinpointed the house where the alleged soldiers
of fortune were staying, and even produced grainy photocopies of
their passports.
He claimed that the so-called mercenaries were here at the service
of the Government, and had led the armed police raid on the Standard
Group publishing and broadcast outfits. They were also in touch,
he claimed, with a “Narc activist” known to be close to State House.
Into the mix came the latest spat between police commissioner Hussein
Ali and his CID director, Joseph Kamau.
It was Mr Kamau who had organised the Standard raid behind the back
of his boss, taking instructions directly from Internal Security
minister John Michuki, he of serpentine infamy.
When Mr Odinga came out with his tales of mercenaries, he was invited
by Maj-Gen Ali to provide more details. He pointed a finger at
Mr Kamau.
The commissioner, whose attempt to sack Mr Kamau for operating
behind his back had been foiled by Mr Michuki, immediately promised
an investigation.
But even before the investigation led by a subordinate of Mr
Kamau’s got off the ground, the CID boss dismissed all the mercenary
allegations as lies.
Then the so-called mercenaries, whose nationality Mr Odinga had in
the meantime changed from Russian to Armenian, came out with their
own set of counter-accusations against Mr Odinga, a man they claimed
to have done some business with.
It gets murkier and dirtier.
As the mud flows in all directions, one is not sure whether what
is being played out is some harmless slapstick comedy or a deadly
thriller.
But one can see in the middle of it all a government that has
absolutely no idea how to tell its side of the story.
Assuming that it is simply a propaganda war being played out, Mr
Odinga, at least until yesterday when the alleged mercenaries spoke
out for themselves, was well ahead of the game.
It does not matter whether the mercenary allegations were pure products
of a very fertile imagination. What matters is that as he provided
more and more detail – directions to the vacant residence, details
of where the alleged mercenaries had moved to once they were exposed,
copies of passports – his tale started to take on an element of truth.
Meanwhile, the Government remained mute. It simply had no answer to
all the allegations flying around.
Just as, we still recall, it could never and will never offer a
plausible explanation for the Standard raid.
The raid, we were told, was meant to stop publication or broadcast
of material supposedly harmful to national security.
Everyone saw that as a cheap lie. And the Government will never be
able to prove otherwise, unless by making public the very material
it deemed so dangerous in the first place.
When the mercenary tale was introduced into an already incendiary mix,
the Government obviously had absolutely no idea how to respond.
The trouble is that a government which tries to suppress what might
be merely embarrassing information by sending hooded and armed
men to vandalise media offices, terrorise staff, steal computers,
disable broadcast studios and printing presses and burn newspapers,
loses all credibility.
This will always be seen as a government desperate enough to block
some information reaching the public.
The very fact that the Standard raiders were hooded, as if on a very
sensitive counter-terrorism operations, in fact serves to buttress
the claim that some of the uniformed thugs might have been foreign
terrorists.
Will the Government disprove the claim by parading all those
who participated in the raid so that we can see they are regular
officers? I highly doubt it.
Will it make public the deadly information it might get from the
Standard computers to demonstrate that it, indeed, had a bearing on
national security? Never.
Will it trot out the operative who allegedly had links with the
alleged terrorist so that she can tell her side of the story? No way.
In any case, we have it on good authority that she is a private
citizen and has absolutely no ties to the Government or any official
in Government.
When you rattle a snake (whatever that means), Mr Michuki told us,
you must expect to be bitten. That remains the official explanation
for the armed raid on the Standard Group facilities.
But despite enjoying a monopoly on violence, as so memorably put
by Mr Kiraitu Murungi when he was still enjoying the trappings of
Cabinet office, it is the Government that is being bitten since the
Standard raid.
The mercenary tale may be pure propaganda and lies, as is very
likely. On the other hand, seeing the capacity of this Government to
resort to dirty, dangerous and illegal methods to silence critics,
it is also a tale that is entirely plausible.
Just a thought. In the past, it was Raila Odinga, and before that,
his father, who the authorities always suspected of having dangerous
links with the East.
Jaramogi in the early years of independence was being accused of
importing communist arms. Officials, now and also during the Moi
era, never tire of reminding all and sundry about Raila’s alleged
revolutionary mien since his days as a student in Communist East
Germany.
The Soviet Union is dead. Today it is Raila who is accusing a
conservative Kibaki government of importing mercenaries from the
remnants of the Soviet bloc. How things change! And how they remain
the same! Minister Maina Kamanda is accusing a company linked to
Raila of manufacturing arms!
Mr Gaitho is the managing editor, Sunday Nation.