Wednesday, February 27, 2008
No peace, we die
KISUMU, 26 February 2008 (IRIN) - Roselyne Anyango, 32, is an HIV-positive single mother who moved to Naivasha five years ago to work on a flower farm. When violence broke out after December’s disputed elections, she and her two children, aged 13 and six, were forced to flee. Her elder child has special needs.
For safety, they were taken to Kisumu where most of the population is Luo like themselves but then they were told to move on to their “ancestral lands”. But Anyango knew she would be rejected in the village where she grew up because she had separated from her husband and is living with HIV/AIDS.
MoreODM Says It is Not to Blame for Stalled Talks
By David Ohito, Ben Agina And Ayub Savula
Nairobi
ODM emerged from the heated mediation meeting and said it was not to blame for the suspension of talks.
The party pointed fingers at their rivals in Government for changing positions and sabotaging talks in a ‘disturbing manner.’
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A disciplined force not immune to ethnic tension
Xan Rice in Nairobi
The Guardian, Wednesday February 27 2008
Kenya’s military has an excellent reputation at home and abroad. Apart from a brief, failed coup attempt by air force officers against former president Daniel arap Moi in 1982, it has kept out of politics.
The army is regarded as professional and disciplined, having protected Kenya’s borders during the civil wars in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and Uganda. Staffed with volunteers, it has played a major role in peacekeeping missions on the continent, and in Bosnia and East Timor. “Though not brilliantly equipped, it is a well-trained, disciplined force,” said a European analyst in Nairobi.
Cooperation with the British army, which has training facilities in Kenya, is strong. There are also links with the US military, especially since al-Qaida bombed the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998.
During his 24-year tenure Moi made sure his Kalenjin ethnic group occupied many top army positions. This changed under Mwai Kibaki, who retired many of Moi’s generals and replaced them with members of his Kikuyu ethnic group.
The more than 20,000 rank and file troops are ethnically diverse, however. Analysts say that with the opposition having swept six of the country’s eight provinces in the presidential election, it is likely that the bulk of these soldiers would have voted for presidential challenger Raila Odinga rather than Kibaki.
This may be the main reason why Kibaki resisted sending in the army as the post-election violence spiralled. Even within the armed forces, there are those who believe that if troops are asked to quell further protests in opposition strongholds, the military could be split along ethnic lines - with disastrous consequences.
Amnesty Plans Protests for Action
The Nation (Nairobi)
By Kevin J. Kelley And Sam Kiplagat
Washington, DC
Street protests and Internet activism are being encouraged worldwide today as part of Amnesty International’s Day of Action for Kenya.
“Around the world,” says Ms Ann Corbett, Amnesty’s US-based Kenya specialist, “Amnesty groups will demonstrate solidarity with the people of Kenya and call on the Kenyan Government to protect people from politically motivated and ethnic violence.”
MoreMedia’s role in the Kenya election fallout
As Kenya’s tenth par liament met for the first time last week, the violence that rocked the country after the announce ment of Mwai Kibaki as the presi dential winner in the Dec. 2007 elections had largely died down. But the country is bracing for more violence and turmoil. As Kenyans and the international com munity try to come to terms with what happened, it would be useful to systemati cally think about the role played by the key institutions of democracy. In Kenya, the media, together with a robust civil society, has been a key force for democratisation. But as things unravelled after the elections, one could not help but wonder whether the Kenyan media could have done better, whether media could have helped forestall the fallout.
MoreTalks fail: Army is Kenya’s best hope
Britain on Tuesday said that the Kenyan army is now “by far the best option” to stop a sectarian bloodbath as peace talks in Nairobi between the government and opposition were suspended.
The Foreign Office Minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations, Mark Malloch-Brown, said that there was a serious risk of renewed bloodshed if talks broke down irrevocably. About a thousand Kenyans have been killed since disputed elections in December and 600 000 have fled their homes after rival gangs, organised largely on ethnic lines, went on the rampage.
MoreRice Faults Leadership in Crisis
The Nation (Nairobi)
By Anthony Kariuki
US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has said the failure of leadership is responsible for the delayed solution to Kenya’s crisis.
She has also stated that there can be no excuse for further delay and warned that both sides’ relationship with her government hinges on their cooperation to reach a political compromise.
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Mediation - Kikwete Travels to Nairobi
By Paul Amoru
(The Nation) Nairobi
African Union chairman, President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, is due in Nairobi this afternoon to support Kofi Annan’s mediation efforts over Kenya’s political crisis.
It will be the first time for President Kikwete to visit Kenya since the country fell into a political crisis following the disputed presidential election in December.
MoreLeaders Urged to Find a Quick Solution to Crisis
The Nation (Nairobi)
By Lucas Barasa
Nairobi
President Kibaki and ODM leader Raila Odinga have been urged to speedily agree on a solution to the current political crisis in the country.
Chief mediator Kofi Annan made the call as Mr Odinga announced that power-sharing to facilitate constitutional changes was the only solution to the crisis.
Addressing journalists at Pentagon House in Nairobi after a meeting with Mr Odinga, Mr Annan said the talks between PNU and ODM that he chaired required the parties’ leaders support and political will to succeed.
MoreKenya opposition calls off protests
Al Jazeera English.
Kenya’s opposition has called off planned street protests intended to pressure the government into agreeing to a power-sharing deal.
Raila Odinga backed down over Thursday’s planned protests as he and Mwai Kibaki, the president, came under increasing pressure to reach a compromise deal to end the country’s post-election crisis.
“We ... are committed to the talks,” Odinga told reporters on Wednesday after meeting Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general who is mediating crisis talks in Kenya.
“We have postponed until further notice any actions planned for tomorrow.”
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Annan meets Raila and Kibaki over deadlock
Talks seeking to end Kenya’s post-election crisis ended in a stalemate on Monday after Government and ODM negotiators failed to agree on the role and powers of the proposed prime minister. And last evening, chief mediator Kofi Annan said it was now up to President Kibaki and ODM leader Raila Odinga to resolve the deadlock. He said that the negotiators had done their part in the talks and were incapable “of resolving the outstanding issues”. “I am now asking party leaders Raila Odinga and President Kibaki to do theirs,” he said in a statement issued last evening after meeting both Mr Odinga and the President.
Earlier in the day, the Government and ODM negotiators declared that there was no need for more meetings and asked Mr Annan to reach out to President Kibaki and Mr Odinga before the talks can resume. The deadlock also dashed the hopes of Kenyans who had been expecting the two sides in the conflict to strike a deal this week to end the violence in which more than 1,000 people were killed and an estimated 350,000 displaced. And last evening, ODM secretary-general Anyang’ Nyong’o said the party had given the police a three-day notice for countrywide mass action to begin on Thursday if the talks do not yield results.
Lawsuit on mediation hits a snag
An attempt to stop the adoption of resolutions of Annan-led mediation talks has hit a snag. The High Court declined to issue temporary orders to that effect, pending the hearing and determination of a suit challenging the mediation talks. Justice Joseph Nyamu said Section Three of the Constitution gives the mediation team the right to assemble and express themselves. He also declined to allow the applicant, Mr Anthony Kirori, orders to inform the respondents about the suit through the media. However, he certified the case as urgent, ordered Kirori to serve the suit papers in the next seven days and fixed a hearing date for March 3. The judge also ordered that the case be heard when all parties are present.
OCHA Kenya Weekly Humanitarian Update vol. 6, 20 - 22 Feb 2008
I. General Overview
The congestion and crowded conditions in some of the IDP camps has raised concerns about lowering standards of service provision as camps such as the ASK Showground in Eldoret which was designed to hold 15,000 people is now hosting 21,000 while the showground parking lot in Nakuru that was meant for 8,000 is hosting more than 11,000. The need for additional sites to ease this congestion becomes critical as larger or additional camps which can be properly planned will allow for improved service delivery and facilities. The government.s plan to consolidate small camps into larger entities is designed, in part, to ease the process. New sites continue to be developed and laid out but tents are needed urgently to ensure that IDP families are sheltered. Tents have already been provided in the Molo site, the Nakuru Showground parking lot and two sites in Naivasha.
ODM Calls for Mass Action
ODM last night called for mass action on this Thursday following the stalling of the Kofi Annan mediation talks.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200802252040.html
How to Implement Power Sharing Deal Between the President and Raila.
Wachira Maina
It is not hard to see what will happen to Kenya if a settlement is not reached between the Government and the Opposition in the ongoing political negotiations mediated by Dr Kofi Annan. Violence in the Rift Valley and Nyanza will resume and intensify; Uganda, Southern Sudan and Rwanda will be blockaded; transport, in recent years a major hard currency earner, will collapse; the current food shortages in parts of the country will deepen and urban food prices will spike. The region will be destabilised and the current economic crisis compounded. Most worrying, and as the International Crisis Group warns, militias are arming. This should give pause to all. There are between 1.9 to 3.2 million small arms in private hands in the Southern Sudan and probably twice that number in Somalia. Kenya’s borders with both countries are open spillways, allowing easy inflow of these weapons.
A deal must be reached if Kenya’s descent into what the Economist calls ‘hell’ is to be arrested. Happily, the key elements of an outline deal are on the table: power-sharing between the president and a prime-minister within a government of national unity, constitutional reform within a year, a re-run of the presidential election in two to three years and long-term measures to deal with poverty and inter-ethnic inequalities. But none of these proposals has been fully thought through and how to implement will be difficult and controversial.
Consider the power-sharing proposal first. The details are not agreed but the arguments on both sides are clear and entrenched. The Government says that any power-sharing between the president and the proposed prime-minister must be within the current Constitution.
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