Breaking news tells death of Roads Minister Kipkalya Kones

Kenyan minister, asst minister dead in plane crash

10 Jun 2008 16:03:39 GMT

Source: Reuters

By C. Bryson Hull and Wangui Kanina NAIROBI, June 10 (Reuters) -

A Kenyan cabinet minister and assistant minister died on Tuesday along with two others in the crash of a light plane near the Masai Mara game reserve, officials said.

Roads Minister Kipkalya Kones, 56, and Assistant Minister for Home Affairs Lorna Laboso, 47, were aboard the plane with a pilot and a security guard, a spokesman for their party said. "I am confirming that they were on the plane that crashed. I am not confirming that they are dead, but the police are confirming that all aboard died," Orange Democratic Movement party spokesman Salim Lone said. Narok District police boss Patrick Wambani said all four people in the plane died.

There was no immediate confirmation for the cause of the crash in a remote area called Kojonga. "The plane came down on an unoccupied house and disintegrated, killing all four occupants," Wambani told Reuters in Narok, 120 km (75 miles) west of the capital Nairobi. In Nairobi, police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said the names of Kones and Laboso were on the flight manifest.

Both politicians were members of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party, which had opposed President Mwai Kibaki and advocated public protests after he won a disputed re-election in December. The vote sparked Kenya's worst violence since independence from Britain in 1963, and deal to end the political impasse brought ODM into a coalition government with Kibaki's Party of National Unity alliance.

Kones is a five-term member of parliament and was first elected in 1988, after a career as a teacher and manager at a produce firm. He has held several other ministries throughout his public career.

Laboso is a first-term legislator, who has campaigned against the cultural practice of female genital mutilation in her Kipsigis tribe. After a career as a secretary and accountant, she got her university degree in communications last year.

(Reporting by Wangui Kanina, Helen Nyambura and Bryson Hull; Editing by Jon Boyle)

This has all just been confirmed through our local news stations;
"Kones, Labosa, pilot Schner and bodyguard Kenneth Bett are all confirmed dead."

Normal service has been resumed ...

Well, after my break in bed for a week missing out on the world around me, reading the papers and listening to the news over the last few days makes me feel all warm inside knowing that out here in the big wide world nothing has changed.

Last week all the internally displaced Kenyans were asked to return home (and very kindly given an armed escort - just in case they decided they did not wish to return to their burnt homes and ravaged farms).

The civil service was put onto the list of "Who will we steal money from in order to afford the compulsory armed escort to take the internally displaced home?", along of course with the army.

Our government very kindly donated this money to the IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons), and made sure only to take it from those with a salary below the $300 per month line, so that all those above that line - such as of course the MPs who desperately need their cash (in order to have those smashing homecoming parties of their own!), and so therefore all those with the salaries of the $10,000 minimum PLUS expenses per month - didn't have theirs touched.

Like to keep it fair and equal in the government you know. If you've got nothing in life, then best give some of that away to those with less than nothing and then the big boys can sleep better at night!


What I really DO NOT understand is how the hell these people can seriously think that all Kenyans are that unfazed by this whole divide. Surely over the month of January, it became very obvious to everyone - including the outside world - that Kenyans are very unhappy with their lot and this incredible divide we have of the 'haves' and the 'have nots' has to come to an end, and solutions have to be worked out to lessen this gap. But no, imagine after all that bloodshed our politicians have the audacity to sweep it under the carpet pretty quick smart, blame it on someone else, and then get on with "Business As Usual"......

Why are we taking this???

You know there's a brilliant publication that has come out in the last week that outlines all this unfairness. It is called "Wajibu" and is produced by a few Kenyans who are really fighting for the rights of ALL of us. (If you click on that link, one of the members of the 'task force' that produced the magazine tells you how to get hold of a copy.)

The magazine identifies itself as "A journal of social and ethical conduct", and it highlights all these issues that our country has been through over these last few months, what we are still going through, and has some great articles on how ordinary Kenyans see the way forward from here.

What it does show is that there is definitely "Optimism about the possibility of a new Kenya", but it really is about time that our current politicians stopped their 'business as usual' and got on with developing this sanguinity.

As the editorial in the front of this journal quotes;
"This Kenya can only happen if all of us take our responsibility as citizens seriously and if our politicians strive to be the kind of leaders who put the welfare of the nation AHEAD of lust for power and greed for material benefits."

So let's go for it people, 'normal service' is not OK with us any longer.
Let's go with Obama on this one (seeing as he really is a Kenyan in American clothing!), and tell our government what we really want .....

"Change we can believe in"!

Our "Grand Coalition" government is at 'stalemate' ..

Well after all the ‘how to lose some kilos’ advice I was offered, I thought I’d better get to it. Then in this last couple of days on the British news, there is a story that has really caught my eye.

There’s been lots of talk of this website called Miss Bimbo, which is aimed at 9 to 16 year old girls, in which they are told to buy their virtual characters breast enlargement surgery and to keep them “waif thin” with diet pills, and it really made me think ….

It’s not 9 to 16 year olds that should be worried about the kind of rubbish it promotes, such as who’s got the trendiest hair do, clothes and skinniest body (with or without plastic surgery), but it should be shut down and immediately relaunched as a 25+ years old only site and it’ll be an instant hit !

I mean you only need read the front page of the site;

Become the hottest, coolest most famous bimbo ever!
Become the most famous, beautiful, sought after bimbo across the globe!
• Find your own cool place to live.
• Find a fun job to pay for your needs and all the clothes a Bimbo could possibly want.
• Date that famous hottie you've had your eye on and show the Bimbo world the social starlet you are!
• Even resort to meds or plastic surgery. Stop at nothing to become the reigning bimbo!

I’ll join up, get myself some diet pills, plastic surgery and some designer clothes and I’ll be all set to reface you bloggers out there as I resurface as Miss Bimbo Chick 2008, and I know you’ll all be dead impressed !



...... Then I took a look at our own headlines this morning;


"Parties want Annan to resolve stalemate"
“PNU and ODM blame each other after deadlock over how to share key posts”, and
“MP’s take a 3 week break” from Parliament - the "big house with no business to transact”,

and it got me thinking ……..

We could start an internet game here just for all our Kenyan Members of Parliament to give them something useful to do whilst they take yet another break, and it could perhaps stop their bickering and renewed threats of mass action. They could earn ‘power points’ instead of ‘bimbo attitude points’. They could even earn themselves cash, but only by completing different challenges online, and then they could be granted different ministries as per their outcomes of the various challenges.

Normal everyday people such as ourselves would think up the challenges and WE would decide WHO deserves each ministry – whether from the PNU or the ODM camp, it would be OUR choice!

You could have the solving of security problems challenge where you could resettle all the IDP’s safely back into their own homes without any further tribalism around to drive them out again, and if you won the challenge you could be awarded the MINISTRY OF INTERNAL SECURITY.

If you rebuilt streets that were totalled during the troubles such as those in Kisumu, you could perhaps garner yourself the MINISTRY OF HOUSING & DEVELOPMENT, and if you could persuade all foreign embassies to remove their travel warnings and accept you as an ‘honest type’, you could perhaps win yourself the MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS……
(Then again, it may be tricky for any one of our 200+ MP’s to win that challenge, I’m not sure ‘honesty’ is quite up their street.)

The MINISTRY OF EDUCATION will only be got by putting in some decent plans for free education that don’t relate to the nonsense of “building funds”, but actually genuinely give free schooling. Then the MINISTRY OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT would be given to someone who can actually prove that a plan of keeping the matatu’s out of the city centre and giving the contract of shuttle services to a few ‘friendly’ companies (and NOT ‘at a price’) will actually help the traffic congestion and will not just be a way to make an extra buck on the side and meanwhile heaping yet more costs onto the common wanainchi.

They could earn themselves Mercedes, security details, take away girlfriends and even extra salaries but instead of all this coming out of our hard earned taxes, it could be all virtual cash and controlled by virtual bankers (– such as me of course who will take up the MINISTRY OF FINANCE), who shall allow only necessary provisions for drawings of real cash by paying ALL MP’s bills direct.

Although all ‘virtual’ and ‘online’, these MP’s would be earning themselves a ton, have Mercs stashed at each of their various residences, and a ‘sweetie’ housed in the Penthouse suite at the Nairobi Safari Club.

All this will do their street credibility wonders, the real cash would still lie in the Central Bank coffers and would not actually be spent on these Members of Parliament and their fictitious expenses, but could be finally used properly on real projects that would have been thought up originally as challenges on line with proper input coming from real Kenyans living real lives and not those living in their posh mansions surrounded by cotton wool and not having a real clue as to what the rest of Kenya is actually going through.

I reckon this game has the potential to most definitely sort the men from the boys (or the women from the girls for that matter), and get our country finally back on the right track!

And if, by the way there was a problem with the adjudication of the whole event, (we’d be sure not to have the ECK involved in any online tallying!), there wouldn’t be calls of mass action but instead online internet hours would be limited to the side seen as not behaving themselves! That way, our MPs would need to complete their challenges more competently in less time, therefore actually making use of their brains for once perhaps for something more useful than finding out which clothes to pack for their next ‘retreat’.

Excellent plan don’t you think?

I think we should go ahead with it immediately.

We’ll call it whowantstobeaminister.co.ke

Right, first things first;
“Hands up, Who wants to be President??”

MP’s Stashing Cash

I just read this post by a fab friend over at Sukuma Kenya about our MP’s latest “lets feed ourselves first scheme”, which is about ‘the plans of treasury to siphon off billions of shillings out of public coffers into the MP’s retirement kitty.’

Surely, this has come as no surprise to any of us. I mean, ultimately, why do any of these people vie for a seat in parliament anyway ….



“Er, cash of course …. What else is there ?”

“Sorry, helping the country and its people, are you kidding?”

“Don’t be ridiculous now. Those promises of help are just words spoken on campaign trails in order to get elected. Surely, you don’t actually expect me to seriously achieve any of them, do you?”

“Ohhhhh, You Do?”

“Ah, interesting point, I’ll have to have an all expenses trip to the coast with all my other overpaid friends to consult on that one.”

"I'll get back to you............."

All these people take whopping bank loans in order to finance their ‘campaigning’ (– or paying of the people to vote for you.) They know full well that they will be able to pay the money back extremely quickly once they're elected and once they’ve worked out which approved local project that they promised they can siphon the cash off from.

Towards the end of the last parliament when the MP’s panicked on realising they may just be on their way out the door, they rushed themselves through a bill approving each of them a cool 5Million shilling (around US$75,000), handshake on retirement.

It was the one day in the entire 5 years of that parliament sitting that attendance was over 90%! Mmmmm, Funny that!

Now we have a new bunch of fresh faces sitting in the house, it has dawned on them that many of the ‘old faces’ were voted out and the chances are (seeing as most of them are totally unqualified, inexperienced and incompetent to hold such positions in government anyway), they too will be voted out 5 years from now.

So, first things first.

'Best get our retirement fund organized and then we can get on with the trivial thing of running the country.'

'You know siphoning off cash isn’t so easy these days with all those ‘transparency’ chaps looking over your shoulder, and you never know the day they may finally actually catch up with you.'

Rumour has it, that interviews for the vacant post of Executive Director for the Kenya Chapter of Transparency International are currently being conducted and that doesn’t bode well if you’re newly elected and not quite au fait with how to tap as much cash as possible off every project you’re involved in.

Once these MP’s have spent 5 years earning their 800 thousand shillings + (around $12,000 +) per month, you know there’s always going to be that small problem of then being able to sustain themselves in the manner to which they have become accustomed, and you surely can’t expect them to ever accept to being everyday wanainchi like the rest of us ever again.

Face it, they’re now someone don’t you know, and by the way ….

“WHO ARE YOU?”

Scandal – Kenya vs USA

Breaking news on CNN this morning when I woke up was;

“Sex Scandal Threatens Key Democrat”.

“New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, a key backer of Hilary Clinton, who rose to prominence by rooting out corruption, was facing calls to resign Tuesday over allegations that he paid thousands of dollars to a prostitute.”

Here in Kenya “Political Gossip” from one of our local dailies went like this;

“An MP from Western Province was held briefly Friday night when he was soliciting for sex. Police pounced on the MP at a parking lot with a half naked girl. The girl admitted the MP was just sampling the goods before they reached an agreement on the price. The policemen held the MP for one hour before they released him after he paid a substantial amount of money.”

Hmmmm, spot the difference and similarities between the stories.

For similarities, I have;

1. Turns out all men of power have to buy sex in order to get any at all!

2. Corruption is most definitely everywhere, no matter what the 'good guys' say.

3. You will eventually be caught out.

4. When you do happen to get caught, do what you can to get out of it smelling of roses.

... and the only difference I can see is that in Kenya no one really gives a damn for a small scandal anyhow, as 'Who are you?' unless you have a spot of 'take-away' going on somewhere, and if that means buying it, and then buying the silence of the cops so they don't let onto your wife - so be it!

If, the press gets hold of the story, it's not really an issue, you can just go with -

"You know you cannot believe a thing these journos write dahling,

they cannot tell one MP from another.

They are all just tribalists !"

The only thing I do advise to the Governor in the States is, perhaps he should have also done a little ‘sampling’ before parting with his cash ! Apparantly, that's the done thing to do :-)

All seems very friendly !

Well, yesterday Parliament was finally opened with some extra pomp and flair and what a jolly friendly affair it turned out to be.


Kibaki arrived in his usual style with red carpets and a jolly long motorcade with roads blocked and traffic tailed back out into the suburbs. Even Raila arrived in a much more dignified manner in his Lexus with the goons in the Navy Mercedes way behind so no chance of them showing him up again!

There was lots of hugging, 'opposition' MP's finally sat together, and there seemed to be a lot of laughter. There was some scheming of course - but that can't be helped I'm sure (- I mean you can only be elected to parliament if you can prove you're totally two faced - I think that's a prerequistite), and of course there was some unofficial closing of the eyes and nodding of the heads as the regulars dropped off to sleep.

Kibaki's speech was all about peace and reconciliation - but the words were written by someone somewhere knowing the International Press would be watching Kibaki yesterday, as the English language used in his speech had lots of jolly big words that Kibaki stammered over (much to the amusement of the Parliament), and at the end of the day - it all sounded like an insincere load of crap actually.

But anyway, we have to hope that whatever the words said, what he meant was "We shall work as a team and put Kenya back onto its feet."

Lucy Kibaki was suspiciously missing from the grand occasion. The official press report says she is at home recovering from an unspecified illness, rumours in the press say she doesn't like Raila's wife and therefore refused to appear and share pleasantries with the women. Personally I think that after the shenanigans of the past couple of months and all the court cases that are now pending against her, I should think our dear President has had quite enough of giving out goats and has had her locked up in a padded room and thrown away the key!!

Anyway today I shall have faith in my country and its new beginnings and shall block the past from my mind ..........
for the next one hour anyway just so that I can relax and have a coffee and think happy thoughts.........
THEN, I shall be back on the warpath. (I hear there's some serious accusations on the BBC about our politicians that I must get round to reading and ripping into.)

Do have a jolly good day yourselves too thinking happy thoughts because its FURIHDAY, thoughts are free and kidding ourselves that life is perfect is a fun thing to do once in a while. It costs nothing and seems to flush out the cobwebs.

As my son told me this morning as I crawled out of my bed with a pounding headache and after no sleep at all as an alarm had been going off continuously all night right outside my bedroom window, save for the couple of minutes every few hours when the guard tried to reset the damn thing, and it stopped briefly;

"Well Mum, at least you had 120 seconds of quiet sometime in the night!"
- He's right, I should be thankful.

Gossip, Rumour and Assumption

Kenyans are excellent when it comes to a spot of rumour mongering and gossip. You can always tell it's going to be a great Kenyan story as soon as it starts out with;

"You know, I don't like gossiping, but ......... Weellllll, Have you heard?",
and that's it, you know you're going to be all ears, you just can't seem to help yourself.

Well, when the story broke yesterday of the second MP from the Opposition party being shot dead not even 48 hours after coming to terms with the fact that the first MP, Were was shot, that was it, Kenyan's were off speculating before the sentence of "Did you hear?" was even finished, and from the comments I was left on my last post, we were all at it.

But here's the thing - Yes, we will all agree with the one comment saying that 99% of our MP's seem to have a zipper malfunction with their trousers and just can't seem to keep it up (the zip that is, now - stop it !)

We all know that 99% of Kenyan MP's (and a good majority of all Kenyan men in fact) are really quite partial to a bit of take-away (or a 'bit on the side' as they call it overseas), but I'm with the majority on this one that seem to point to the fact that it was 'Oh so convenient', that our friend Mr. Kimutai Too just happened to be cruising town with a spot of take-away, - that happened to be a lady cop – (I assume on duty, as she was in uniform, and was armed), a relative of his, and the fact that our very own police Commissioner, Major General Hussein Ali was so quick and forthcoming with a total explanation of what exactly happened in great detail without conducting any apparent investigations, and all within a just a few hours of it actually happening, it’s all extremely odd to say the least.

In the paper this morning we’ve had some superb reasons as to why Mr. Too had the lady policeman in his car;

“they were driving to the nearest hotel” – but obviously were totally lost as apparently there are no hotels anywhere near the area where they were shot

“the MP was teaching the woman how to drive” – er, most definitely why we vote our MP’s in – to teach the police how to drive – Gosh, of course, how silly of me not to have known that. In fact, next time, let’s just vote for the AA

“the MP was off to view a plot of land” – the only one that is perhaps vaguely plausible.

Other details that don’t seem to add up though in my book are –

Why was the policeman who committed the crime said to be one minute “known but on the run”, then an hour later he had “turned himself in”, then last night “he was caught up with in the next town and arrested”. Does anyone know anything about his arrest at all, how it came about and at what time of the day?

Then, once the police had the suspect in custody, he was “flown to Nairobi from Eldoret” and not kept in a cell in Eldoret so that he could be charged there. But why? Surely the cells in Eldoret are also lockable and the courts there seem to be dealing fine with charging the people they have caught so far to do with the rioting, etc.

The policeman's family were evacuated from their house within an hour of the shooting incident when a taxi came to collect them and took them away with a police escort to an unknown destination. Mmmm, ok, so why would the police assume his family was in danger if it really was just a 'love triangle' - surely we'd feel sorry for the woman?

The thing that really gets me after all this is the fact that the police, government and anyone else who has ‘assumed’ authority at the moment in this great country of ours, seems intent on pulling the wool over the eyes of all Kenyans.

I really wish Mr. Annan could just sort out this honesty issue first – then every other issue would surely fall into place.

Perhaps all MP’s, Presidents, Police Commissioners and anyone else with a bit of power in their hands should walk around with a lie detector strapped to them so that anytime they opened their mouth and total lies emerged, they’d get themselves electrocuted or perhaps kicked in the arse (both in fact would be good for me), and once their hair sticks straight up on end with all the electricity charged through it and their bums well and truly hurt from all the kicking,

THEN perhaps we may get somewhere – peace may be a possibility – and Mr. Annan can return to his lovely wife and children (I’m assuming here he does have some of those), and Kenyans can live happily ever after.

Second Kenyan opposition legislator shot dead

News from Reuters AlertNet

31 Jan 2008 10:14:06 GMT

Source: Reuters

NAIROBI, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Kenyan opposition legislator David Kimutai Too was shot dead on Thursday in the Rift Valley town of Eldoret, the second member of parliament for the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) killed this week, the party said.

"He has been shot dead, by a traffic policeman in Eldoret, we think. The circumstances are very unclear. This crisis is just getting deeper every day," said ODM spokesman Tony Gachoka. (Reporting by Andrew Cawthorne, Writing by Bryson Hull)

Whatever you can do, I can do better.

Well after a whole 24 hours of not a single tear gas canister being fired – in the centre of Nairobi anyhow – there was a turn of events. Not a good one sadly, although the angel Annan is expected to land any time now so perhaps he will be a small light in a dark place (not sure I’m convinced but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now and at least give him a chance to open his mouth). But today the PNU supporters decided it was far too quiet for their liking and seeing as it seems the ODM supporters seem to have gone back to work today, well then now it must be their turn surely for a spot of demonstrating – I mean, at the end of the day we are all fighting for democracy aren’t we, and we don’t want those Ninja Turtles getting too comfy sitting about in their posh padded outfits, best put them to good use - so they took to the streets.

PNU supporters today demonstrated about the ODM demonstrators demonstrating.
Er – Work that one out! ‘

All answers on a postcard to;

“What on earth were they thinking”,
Democracy Headquarters,
Parliament Building,
Nairobi City Centre.

Well, once the PNU supporters had had their say and a few cans of tear gas and a volley of bullets fired at them, they dispersed in order for all the newly sworn in Members of Parliament to be able to get down to the cash office to pick up their small salaries and allowances that they were ‘due’ for January.

Seeing as they actually had to attend parliament for the one whole day this month, and admittedly a long day, especially if your name began with something like ‘Y’ as they swore the MP’s in, in alphabetical order and the last ones were still going through the motions at 1.30 in the morning. And naturally we completely understand that during that 12 hours of so that they had to sit in ‘the house’, they did actually have to get off their backsides at least 4 times for a bit of a vote, oh and then of course the one time they had to go and swear in to a government that none of them seem to believe in, and yes, all the shouting that had to be done as well.

But it’s OK people, you take the full January salary for that one day as we completely understand what a incredibly stressful day it was for you all, so best you have Kshs 300,000/- as your basic salary just for being so, well, er, basic really, and then realising that can’t possibly keep you in the manner in which you wish to become accustomed, well then you can get yourself another 60,000/- for entertainment, 70,000/- for your rent, 250,000/- for vehicle maintenance (as of course we realise how much those damn helicopter spare parts can be), 40,000/- committee attendance allowance (whatever that is), and another 50,000/- constituency allowance.

Then of course in case the 750,000/- or so is not enough don’t you worry about a thing because there’s another 3.3Million shillings loan standing by for you so that you can buy that flash Mercedes you’ve always fancied, and then of course another 10Million, available for a house, all interest free obviously.

(By the way the shilling hangs out around 65 to the US dollar these days so we’re talking a salary of around US$11,500 or so with US$50,000 for the car loan and just over US$150,000 for the house loan.)

No wonder there is (so far anyway – likely to be many more before the end of the week) cases already in court where MP’s are challenging constituency election results, I mean with that sort of money at stake, monthly ………..

Sorry, just realised I’ve got to rush ………….
- Did I not tell you I was disputing the MP’s seat for the “MyGodThat’sALotOfCash” constituency………
I must get to court!