Over here it's all about Barry.

Well in our neck of the woods, politics has been diverted temporarily to front page stories all over about Barry, the Luo fellow from Siaya district who happens to be running for a seriously high powered presidential seat, although not here in Kenya I might add.

To those hailing from Western Province, there's absolutely NO explanation needed here as to who on earth I may be talking about, but for those of you from further afield who may be slightly lost, I am speaking of none other than Senator Barrack Obama.

To a lot of Kenyans (especially those from the lakeside), Senator Obama is nothing less than 100% Kenyan. His father came from here so that'll do it for us. The fact that the Senator has only actually visited this country three times in his entire lifetime is totally irrelevant, and the point that he hardly knew his father who is reported to have been a drunk and abusive husband is somehow totally overlooked.

I think this quote from Rob Crilly in "The Times" really sums up this Obama fever here in Kenya and what it's really all about ...... (a spot of cash and a free US visa);

"A steady stream of would-be economic migrants has been arriving at Granny Sarah's door seeking an American visa. Almost every day she has to explain that the U.S. embassy in Nairobi is the only place that can make their American dream come true. But even Granny Sarah admits to harbouring secret hopes of a local windfall if Obama's momentum carries him all the way to America's highest office. "What we hope is that with his Kenyan and Africa roots we will see some of the fruits of his power, like electricity, water and a new road," she says simply in her native Luo language."

At least she got herself an autographed picture...

By the way,"Granny Sarah" is actually Obama's step-grandmother and his grandfather's third wife. And the fact that she lives in a little house in a very small village looking after chickens and goats, has no running water or electricity, and it was her fellow villagers who raised money to get her a TV with a small solar panel so that she could keep up with US politics is of course of no matter now that young Barry's got a shot at the most powerful position in the world!

Hey, perhaps he'll chuck some extra aid money our way as payment for bringing up his father. I'm sure our local politicians could do with a bit more cash to squander on their expense accounts.

Politics the world over ......

This is politics the world over summed up perfectly by our man in The Standard today ....

The Chick's Sunday Political Commentary....

Politics in Kenya is increasingly depressing, but looking at the international news, I'm not entirely convinced that half the world is any better.

All that aside, here's a brief run down of where I see we're at right now.

You will be pleased to know that we are not currently under ‘Mungiki’ law in Nairobi at the moment and things have returned to the normal. I say we are not under Mungiki rule, but I’m sure the matatus are paying their ‘daily protection fees’ for operating and in those areas where Mungiki are the majority I’m sure that everyone is back to paying to walk to their house in safety, etc. as before but overall they have stopped holding the country hostage to their demands at this stage as Raila said last Thursday that he was prepared to talk to them and they have said that for now they will back off.

The saddest thing is in our country today is that we just brush it under the carpet, pay them off for now and hope they keep quiet for a while so that the government can get on with its inherent task of raping the country.

Kofi Annan is about at the moment and even he knows the score.

He has suggested that the ‘negotiation team’ has far from completed their task. Although they have finally named a cabinet, there are still the major issues of why this country blew up in the first place and how are they going to sort out those land issues and poverty issues, now all conveniently put on the back burner whilst everyone rushes round insisting on being addressed as “Mweshimiwa”!

Talk is that Raila wants everything out in the open for all to see what’s happening and how decisions for the country will be made, but then why is it that;

a) Raila has never explained what actually went on with his secret cabinet negotiations rendezvous, and how did he give in to the highly inflated numbers in the cabinet?

b) Thursday he said he would talk to the Mungiki so that they called off Friday’s ‘general strike’ that they were trying to hold, and yet since Thursday not a peep about it as if the trouble last week never existed.

I’m sorry but I know the favourite saying at the moment is “It’s not business as usual”, but seriously chaps, tell me what isn’t business as usual with the same old hidden scams going on left, right and centre and the press quiet about it all.

I’m not sure that anyone is willing to listen to Kofi Annan anymore as it seems that as far as those big boys are concerned, yes, they’re very grateful thank you for bringing us away from the brink of all out civil war, but as for all our inherent problems that got us there in the first place, well let them simmer for a few years and when we have another general election in 2012 the country can go through this whole nightmare once again because all those current “Mweshimiwa’s” will have voted themselves for a stonking retirement package, raped the country for as much as they can possibly get away with, achieved nothing with regards to the great poverty divide and any serious land issues, and then they’ll all leg it and leave it to a new bunch of ‘wanna be’s’ to fight it out.

Meanwhile food prices soar and shortages loom worldwide, and with our recent violence and displacement of farmers, these are more threatening to Kenya and the great rich/poor divide than ever before. Yet personally, I haven’t yet heard any talk of what the government may intend on doing about it anytime soon.

Perhaps the Italians have got it right ...

First things first.

If I receive yet another email about the bloody obvious or anything else equally unhelpful
– like ....

”make your girlfriend worship you by adding some more inches to your shaft”,

“14 different ways to crush pain and inflammation” or

“decrease your cellulite, lose body fat and increase your libido”

…….. Oooh, Oooh, Oooh, hold on, I didn’t delete that one did I?
Damn, Damn, Damn….,

I shall resort to this ………

But just as I was about to lob the computer out of the first floor window, some inspiration appeared on my screen in the form of a “Reuters News Alert”.

Listen to this,

“Porn star unveils Italy campaign weapon – her bottom”…..…..

But of course, what else is essential is any political office, besides a nice, pert bottom ??

I read on ….

Targeting her male fan base, the veteran of Italy's adult entertainment industry (porn star Milly D'Abbraccio) has plastered images of her derriere all around the Eternal City in a bid to win a seat in Rome's city hall.

If elected, D'Abbraccio wants to create a red light area with strip clubs, erotic discos and sex shops called "Love City" just kilometres away from the Vatican. "It would be something cute, clean -- nothing to do with prostitution," said the actress whose films include "The Kiss of the Cobra" and "Paolina Borghese, Imperial Nymphomaniac".

"People don't want to see these politicians' faces anymore," she told Reuters in an interview from her Rome apartment.

As for experience, D'Abbraccio acknowledges she is a political novice but she did play a powerful lawmaker in an adult film called "L'Onorevole".

"I played the part of the speaker of the lower house of parliament, who got very hot and then let herself go," she said.

Excellent, she sounds like an exceedingly special candidate for any political agenda, with her ‘cute’ and ‘clean’ ideas ….

Ms D’Abbraccio for President I say.

At least it’ll be much more entertaining than this lot we’ve got ourselves stuck with over here I’m sure, and I’d rather my taxes were wasted on ‘erotic discos’ and ‘strip clubs’ than wasted lining some fat oaf’s personal pockets!

I’ve no idea why any Universities bother to teach any courses at all in “Politics”, as obviously the only qualification it takes to enter into any political assembly worldwide is to be a complete twit. And the bigger the twit you are, the higher up the political ladder you are likely to climb!

Is this what Kenyans are reduced to?

Found this picture in one of our local dailies this morning with this caption;

“A man having fun at the Thompson Falls in Nyahururu yesterday. The falls attract many tourists but has in recent weeks recorded low numbers of visitors. The drop has been attributed to post-election violence.”

So there you go folks, just shows there’s bugger all news to report and Kenyans have nothing better to do than practice their levitating skills and hope someone takes a picture and puts it in the paper to waste some space!

Just to prove how far we haven’t got with these discussions, this is a little excerpt taken from the leading story in The Daily Nation newspaper this morning; “Kibaki’s proposals on how to end poll crisis” as how they all stand as of yesterday.

“According to a statement by the Presidential Press Service, the President was willing to work together and share responsibilities in Government with members of the ODM. The President, however, cautioned that any political solution that will be proposed must be in tandem with the current constitution.

………………………….

The Government side, which was expected to table its written proposal of a coalition government in which President Kibaki retained his positions as the Head of Government and Head of State with a readiness to appoint a non-executive Prime Minister, came up with a different suggestion.

They submitted that President Kibaki was declared the winner of the 2007 Presidential elections and sworn in office according to the Constitution and should be recognised by ODM as the legitimate winner of the polls.

...........................................

Now we’re going to have a little challenge.

Who can spot the difference between what is being said as of yesterday and what was being said 6 weeks ago when this row all kicked off and our country was put into this political stalemate?

Anyone who can find a difference deserves a fat reward, (not of course from me, as I, as usual, am totally broke and the 57/= that I have in the bank currently will not get you much further than buying yourself a packet of chewing gum – well perhaps of course not quite a whole packet as that would be 60/= but almost a packet of chewing gum).

But back to the point – what have these negotiating teams actually achieved, and does anyone know if Kofi Annan is perhaps looking for a house to buy so he can settle in Kenya for the next 5 years whilst he sorts this out, as he’s promised not to leave us in the lurch?

I only hope he didn’t have his fingers crossed behind his back when he made that promise.

The counting continues ….

Well the counting continues, and the police are getting busier. According to the Electoral Commission (ECK), the voter turnout was so high that the logistics are a little overwhelming when it came to counting – well that’s their excuse and they’re sticking to it!

What is quite interesting this morning is that yesterday evening the latest figures I got with regards to votes that had been counted for the presidential seat, Raila was way out in front with 56% and Kibaki had only 37% of the votes counted. The report said that at this time 21% of registered voters were included in these figures. Now this morning with 54% of the voting register having their votes counted, the figures look quite different. Now it shows that Raila stands at 45% of the vote and Kibaki takes 42%, so really quite a different story.

There have been a lot of current sitting MP's voted out. Some expected, but some a bit of a shock, such as the current Vice President losing his seat in his home town and all of the Moi sons who went up for nomination losing out to ODM party candidates which was quite surprising. This I think then shows the country is definitely looking for some change and less of the old school regime it seems which is a good thing, although some of the candidates voted in are complete unknowns with absolutely no history in politics at all (but heard the salary's good so stood for nomination), so it could be a very interesting Parliament.

I heard yesterday on one of the radio stations that the wife of one of these newly elected MP's had called the ECK yesterday to demand that their new salaries start immediately as her husband was not currently driving a Mercedes and she felt it was most definitely now his right to do so and she would like him to be issued with the cash to go and purchase one today!

There has of course been the vote rigging issues which have caused trouble in some areas, (although not half as many as I had expected which is good). The worst ones I know of seem to have been one in a district just to the east of Nairobi (not far from where I live) which is called Kajiado North and where a very strong ally of the incumbent President sits. There was an issue where someone said that two of the ballot boxes that arrived for counting yesterday morning were not sealed and were found to be full of paper rubbish and not ballots, so a crowd of people got wound up, started chasing the election officials about and smacked a few people, the counting was suspended and the riot police drafted in to watch the station. As far as I know, the counting has still not yet resumed in that district although the ECK said they were dealing with the irregularities.

Then just down the road (between me and town), there is a district known as Dagoretti, and although I’m not 100% sure what went wrong there, I do know that the counting was also stopped and the electoral officer in charge of that station has been locked up in a police cell since yesterday afternoon ‘for questioning’.

I have also heard of a few similar issues with some of the polling stations around the rest of the country but I have no facts on how many stations have suspended voting and what will happen next in those districts.

So things aren’t entirely peaceful – although so far it has just been a minor few incidents that I've heard of and all hell has not yet broken loose, and we can only keep our fingers crossed very tightly to hope that it doesn’t, AND we still have no certain winner and so we keep on waiting with baited breath!

So far we have quiet on the eastern front.

So far, so good - although of course i shouldn't speak too soon - but generally it seems that voting is peaceful throughout the country.

There were a few little set backs in the morning when some of the polling stations opened very late, due to various reasons such as the polling clerks not turning up or the polling register gone missing. Then up to fifteen of the wards (at last count), had to cancel their civic elections as some of the candidates were missing from the ballot paper. But no matter it seems, as in those areas they could still vote for their parliamentary candidate and the most important matter to hand - the presidency so they all seemed to be fairly satisfied with that.

It got slightly tricky in Langata, (an area in Nairobi), when Raila Odinga (one of the main two candidates up for the presidential seat), arrived at his local polling station to vote - at a pre-advertised, nice civilised hour of the day, with lots of pomp and ceremony - and his name was left out of the electoral register.

Anyway a couple of phone calls were made and a lot of shouting was done, and then an irate Mr Odinga leapt into his car and sped up to the Kenyatta Conference Centre where the election commission is holed up and jumped up and down outside their offices demanding to see somebody in charge.

He was then duly informed that the situation would be immediately rectified, (and not to get his knickers in such a twist), and that the electoral roll with his name on would be printed out 'tout suite' and by the time he got back to his polling station would be ready and waiting for him, and off he sped again, with a convoy of about 12 vehicles, one of which narrowly missed a rather bemused electoral official who was trying to chase after the cars to give them what i can only assume was the print out of the missing page with Mr Odinga's name on it.

So apart from that little mishap, and a couple of the electoral rolls for different regions ending up being sent in the completely wrong direction - such as the one for an area at the coast ending up in Kajiado - which is a town in the far north of Kenya and one of the polling registers that was supposed to go to Eldoret ending up in Naivasha, (around 200kms south of where it should have been), things seem to be going fairly well.

So its fingers crossed and see what happens as the day draws to a close.

Electioneering and Corruption ....

Now I’ve got a bit of ‘food for thought’ for all you chaps and chapesses out there.

To give you a bit of background – we have 3 main contenders vying for the Presidency of Kenya right now. There’s Mwai Kibaki – current president – political party PNU, whose slogan is “Kazi Iendelee”, which basically means “The work continues”. Then we have Raila Odinga – political party ODM (Orange Democratic Movement) whose slogan is “Raila Tosha”, which basically translates as ‘Raila, That’s it’ or ‘Raila is enough’, and whose party is symbolised by one orange. He’s a fellow who used to be in the same party as Kibaki and played a very significant part in getting Kibaki elected 5 years ago but got himself fired from government a while back for going against the president in some issue or other. Then finally we have Kalonzo Musyoka – a very well educated, well spoken fellow who used to be in the same party as Raila but they parted company when they couldn’t agree on who should vie for the top job so he’s now the ODM Kenya party symbolised by one and a half oranges and hasn’t got much hope of getting in as according to the polls, his rating stands somewhere round the 10% mark so he’s not really being counted by the masses as much of a contender.

We’ve got serious campaigning going down with the run up to elections on the 27th December and in our “honest” see through electioneering that we have around here, basically there is a lot of cash changing hands.

You can get paid as part of ‘rent a crowd’ at any campaign rally, which is great for all those out of work slum dwellers who generally have nothing to their name – they rush from rally to rally picking up cash and a new wardrobe of whichever party nominees t-shirt they may be handing out, plus a bunch of posters they can use as wallpaper in their shacks – so it’s quite a worthwhile job really, (although sadly after the 27th it won’t last, and the rich will keep their money, and the poor will continue to be incredibly poor.)

The other way of making yourself some money is to turn up on election day for a bit of a vote where they will be loads of goons hanging around every polling station, handing out money to get you to vote for their party.

Talking to a bunch of people today – not your wealthy ‘drive cars and live in nice houses’ types but general ‘wanainchi’ – which are your everyday fellows – bit of a job, (if they’re lucky), probably a room goes with it and they earn around 8 to 10 thousand shillings a month – which is somewhere between 70 to 90 Euros. Anyway I wanted to know the general opinion with regards to how they think the election may go as according to the pollsters it's a very tight race between the top two. Turns out most of them are on Raila’s side as they think he’s the ‘Robin Hood’ type and will be the best for all those on the poverty line (and very much below it). There’s a few that say they would rather Kibaki keeps going for another 5 years and continues with whatever work he has started, because no matter how much we wish to complain about the current president, there is no doubt that he has done quite a lot of good for this country – he could have done a hell of a lot more that’s for sure, but at least he has made some few beneficial changes.

The argument between the two (as Kalonzo seems not to feature in their books), is that Kibaki is a Kikuyu and being the largest tribe in Kenya is seen as holding all the money for himself and his fellow Kikuyu’s and for that reason is creating tribalism. Raila, on the other hand, has been rushing round making friends with all the different tribes (and seeing as we have 52 different tribes in this country, it is probably a very wise strategy) and he has already slotted a few of them into his clique – known as the ‘Pentagon’ and is promising to install them all into prominent parliamentary positions.

I can understand how this distinction has come about between the two of them, but I’m not sure that it’s entirely true and here’s the dilemma …….

A lot of the fellows I spoke to say they are god fearing Christians and for that reason they will not take the cash to vote for someone that they have no wish to have in parliament.

But what I say is ‘Why not take the cash – see it as a Christmas gift – then go and vote for whoever you believe in.’
– Is that wrong when you have nothing and people are willing to hand over bank notes even though they cannot follow you into the polling booth and see who you really stick your cross by? Would you still call that corruption or just a case of taking from the rich if they’re so intent on handing it out anyway??

Now, there’s some food for thought wouldn’t you say!

Preparing for a brighter future!

If this is us preparing for a brighter future - what hope do we have really?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

Fellow Kenyans, Give up the tribal politics!

Its politics, politicians and policies round our parts at the moment. It seems you cannot have a conversation lasting more than about 5 minutes without touching on the subject, so I thought perhaps I should post my 5 cents worth – although as a mzungu chick in this part of the world my opinion may not be worth much, I still have the same rights as every other Kenyan – and that includes my right to vote – whichever way that may be.

I read an excellent article in the press in one of the dailies which was a comment on the issue of politics and tribalism.

First of all can I say, I’d like to totally agree with the fellow who said that all those who felt he should vote with his tribe should basically ‘Get Stuffed’! A Kikuyu guy wrote the comment stating that the fact that although a fellow Kyuk has been in power, this has not altered his life (or any other Kikuyu for that matter) any different from any other Kenyan. Likewise in our constituency we’ve had a Luo in power for the past however long and there are no Luo’s I know of around here that have benefited – or not as the case may be – any more than the next guy whichever tribe they may be from.

Majimboism (the latest buzz word in the politicking factions) – according to the proposed constitution – is the decentralization of government with more power to the people, and although this sounds great on paper, Kenyans extremely tribalist roots will suggest they get their own tribes in and all others out! .. and the case of sharing out the cash to run each constituency will be a whole debate of its own …

Fair? … – I doubt it!

A colleague in the office told me of a scam that was going on throughout the last general election that had a gang of goons going around the villages telling the voters they felt wouldn’t swing Kibaki’s way that if they put an X in the box for Kibaki, it would mean that you didn't want him for president.

- Nice way to garner some votes wouldn’t you say!

Voting on tribal lines has become so ensconced in the Kenyan culture, you’re a Kikuyu – then obviously you vote for the Kyuk, a Luo for the Jaluo and a Kamba for the Kao – the others just get conned into voting for whoever the goons who get to them first tell them to vote for.

Please fellow Kenyans, let’s wake up and smell the roses. Let's vote for those with the best policies, those that will make our great country move forward and upward as it deserves to do.