NTV live – SHOWDOWN

Just watched a programme in the last hour on Nation TV called “ShowDown” where they had Martha Karua, for PNU, and James Orengo, for the ODM side debate against each other, and what came out of it really?

Well I hung on every word, or so I thought, although it was kind of tricky not to drift off as they repeated the same thing again and again no matter what the question was! And all I can honestly say I heard repeatedly is this;

James Orengo say it was a ‘stolen election’ and Kibaki must admit that he did not win, and Martha Karua said; “It was clear Kibaki won, and if ODM accepted the tallying for Raila, why couldn’t it accept the numbers for Kibaki.”

They argued over the tallying and what happened and what didn’t happen

The firing went backwards and forwards and all I really got out of it is that although they “say” that PNU is ready to talk and ODM is ready to talk, they certainly do not agree on what they have to talk about!

Martha says they are not getting into any ‘mediation’ process, but dialogue only.
Orengo then said that there was no political goodwill in ‘dialogue’ and that these high profile mediators did not come to Kenya to ‘have a cup of tea’!

Orengo says the ONLY way forward is to have a rerun of the elections within 90 days as the current constitution says if there is no clear winner, then this is the way forward.

Martha retaliated with “Unless ODM takes this to court, and give the evidence to prove this, then the rerun of the elections cannot happen”.

Orengo said this was obviously impossible as if they took it to court, chances were they would still be waiting for a resolution in 5 years from now as history shows that the courts are compromised as the judges are appointed by the ruling government’s side and back in 1997 Kibaki took a case to court against the then President Daniel Arap Moi, and that case wasn’t solved until late 2005. ODM says therefore that by taking this case to court is just a trap by the government to do nothing for years and there would be nothing that ODM could do about it.

There was a lot of bickering about what, and what not, Kibaki’s government has achieved in the last 5 years and who scuppered the talks on the new constitution that was promised back in 2002 – Funnily enough, they both blamed each other!

Martha blamed Orengo for propaganda, and Orengo blamed Martha and the PNU for surrounding Kibaki with ‘power hungry old men’ who were not willing to discuss anything reasonable and were the ones who helped steal the election from Raila, and they went on disagreeing until, finally they agreed to ……….

Er, absolutely BOG ALL actually !!

At the end of the programme, Ms Karua and Mr Orengo were asked to shake hands. I honestly thought Martha was going to spit in his eye! As for Orengo, shaking Martha’s hand looked for him like an incredibly painful procedure – but perhaps she had one of those trick things in her hand that gives you an electric shock – in fact, she must have because that’s what his face showed – sheer pain!


And after that little debate, I’ll leave you with some up to date news.

1. Raila has called off tomorrow’s demonstrations at the request of the mediators – hope the supporters get the MEMO because that’s only just happened within the last half an hour and most Kenyans are probably all tucked up in bed by now. (Funnily enough, watching TV news is not generally on the evening agenda of slum dwellers who are lucky if they even have a roof on their head and power is certainly a rarity in most of those areas.)

2. Kofi Annan has spoken to Raila – although we are not told what about, but he didn’t speak to Kibaki and has rescheduled meeting him until tomorrow, so we will just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.

- Mmmmmmm, Seems we’re getting quite used to that!