From: Judy Miriga
Folks,
Intent to politically manipulate and motivate Forceful migration of a community is illegal. These poor communities are given little choice to keep their homes and protect their social cultural heritage values or their traditions. As can be seen, there are behind the scene, constant inflicted conflicts amongst the communities to destroy each other during election time, or are offered worthless Shs 100,000 thousand to move out of traditional land with intent to illicitly get rid of small African peasant farmers and “rationalize” agriculture into large monoculture illegitimate and unconstitutional enterprising with Government protection that provide Clearance for unconstitutional amalgamation of land for unscrupulous Corporate special interest cartels through government lobby. This behavior must be highly condemned by all good people. We must jointly fight against such actions to wade off would-be neocolonialists, Apartheid system of racial discrimination and segregation enforced by illegitimate political system and tyrannies hopefuls.
It is stated that Devolution was changed by consensus, which consensus and who authorized it?
I am concerned about the weak position of our marginalized poor population who have been squeezed into forceful migration, into extreme hunger with abject poverty, pain and sufferings. The struggle to Constitutional Democratic Governance with Just Rule of Law seems afar when and if Devolution of Counties, Fair Distribution of Public Finance resources and freedom of choices to improve livelihood and survival is changed and manipulated to suit unscrupulous Corporate special interest, we all need additional strong arm from leaders of the world to help force the change we fought so hard to achieve over the years.
More consumers do not want Genetically modified foods and prefer Naturally and locally grown organic food produce without toxicity substances and is in the center of competition, Kenyans with the rest of Africa are ready to participate in progressive development in shared interest, under safe means where ecological environmental preservation from pollution are observed.
Are we Losing out to unscrupulous Special Interest Corporate Cartels
Have our leaders sold us to the rich, are we illicitly the slaves of the rich? Shall we stand up to face realities…..
The way things are going, we are soon going to find ourselves heavily controlled with no voice by the unscrupulous special interest throughout this transitional time where we expect we overwhelmly voted for the New Constitution to serve public interest. I clearly feel the burden and sense of losing something intangible of cultural heritage value and losing something more valuable as traditional community land for an exchange of cheap offer for Shs. 100,000 an average of a three month salary of a primary school teacher, or through politically motivated Civil conflicts like in the North Eastern. This is a rip-off and a way of THIEVING that must not be allowed to happen and we all must stand up to condemn it wholly.
We have lost so much over the years, and we are not ready to loose anymore. The world must unite with us to overcome. This is not a one Nation war of the unscrupulous, it has engulfed the whole Global region and it is spiraling out of control. We must all unite to nip it in the bud before it turns catastrophic…….Greece is a show-case and Chinese and Indians are the Mission Agents of the unscrupulous Corporate Special Interest we must watch and control…..so we can nurture a level playing field in an environment which is safe under Mutual common interest of all.
Peace, Love and Unity can only be realized where regulations are put in place and are observed by all, to protect peoples interest equally without discrimination or favour……..
FootNote:
[Feudalism: Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted to the mid-19th century. Serfdom included the labor of serfs (illegally) occupying a plot of land owned by the rich unjustly and are given rights to exploit certain fields of Public Interest ……to maintain their own subsistence of class. Serfdom involved not only work in the Rich people’s fields, but were made slaves, although they had legitimate ownership of land, mines, forests and roads, where the poor paid levy/taxes on behalf of the rich. The manor formed the basic unit of society of the Rich. They have free access to Nations economy and socially. Serfs were laborers who were bound to the land….. they formed the lowest social class of the feudal society. Serfs were also defined as people in whose labor landowners (the Feuds) held property rights.]
It is a truely a Very-Sad-State-of-Affairs……..Wake up people, wake up………..Stand Up and DEMAND for your rights……..Wake Up……!
See attachements which is self explanatory, very sad indeed, it brought tears to my eyes……..
In this instance, who is the Government???…..We demand for an immediate answers ……..As this behavior by the Coalition Government is not acceptable……This is “Intellectual Property Thieving”……..Legal Justice must prevail………
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
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Devolution law ‘was changed by consensus’
Kenya News.Net
Friday 10th February, 2012 (Source: Daily Nation)
That team also had officials from the Attorney-General’s Office, the Kenya Law Reform Commission, and the line ministries.
Responding to inquiries by the Nation, the CIC chairman said the changes regarding the role of the governor were removed, because the team saw it as superfluous, given that all laws are subject to the Constitution.
Clause 3… …
Changes were made to the draft law on devolution after agreement by all the players in the review process.
Kenya: Devolution Law ‘Was Changed By Consensus’
9 February 2012
Changes were made to the draft law on devolution after agreement by all the players in the review process.
The team spearheading the rollout of Kenya’s 18-month-old Constitution has said that there were adequate consultations to ensure that the final Bill did not in any way subvert the dreams enshrined in Chapter Eleven of the Constitution on Devolution.
Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution chairman Charles Nyachae noted that members of the Taskforce on Devolved Governments were part of the team that revised the draft Bill on county governments.
Superfluous
That team also had officials from the Attorney-General’s Office, the Kenya Law Reform Commission, and the line ministries.
Responding to inquiries by the Nation, the CIC chairman said the changes regarding the role of the governor were removed, because the team saw it as superfluous, given that all laws are subject to the Constitution.
Clause 35 (1) (i) of the original draft, stated: “Subject to the Constitution, the governor shall perform such state functions within the county as the President may determine”. The Bill as currently published in Clause 31 (2) (b) provides: “The Governor shall perform such state functions within the county as the President may determine.”
“The difference in the two Clauses is the omission of the phrase ‘Subject to the Constitution’. It was omitted for the simple reason that all legislation are ultimately subject to the constitution,” said Mr Nyachae.
The CIC chairman also said that the role of village elders had been dropped from the original draft to keep politicians away from citizens’ space.
“This was removed as it was deemed the forums ran the risk of being politicised,” said Mr Nyachae.
Tagged: East Africa, Governance, Kenya, Legal Affairs
How AG’s office is sabotaging devolution
Published on 05/02/2012
By Dominic Odipo
When the Task Force on Devolved Government (TFDG) went around the country last year collecting the views of the public on how effective devolved government should be implemented, there were a number of recommendations which stood out as bearing the stamp and support of almost the entire country.
Among these was the near-universal recommendation that, in order to allow citizens at the lowest or grassroots level to effectively address the issues that confront them every day, there should be established both Village Councils (VCs) and Citizen’s Participation Forums (CPFs) along the models that existed in most Kenyan communities during the pre-colonial period.
Duly recognizing the vital importance of these organs, especially for the minority or marginalized communities, the Task Force recommended that these organs be established by national legislation, not by individual county initiatives.
The rationale for this recommendation was very simple. If you leave this decision to a county which is dominated by one community, this community is likely to ride roughshod over the interests of the smaller communities within the county, effectively driving such small communities to the periphery of the periphery of the county’s development process.
If, for example, you leave it up to Baringo County to determine how governance at the grassroots level will be prosecuted, the majority Tugen community might ignore the wishes of the minority Njemps and Endorois communities, and deny them the right to form and manage their own nationally-recognized and supported village councils.
Accordingly, when the Task Force published its Draft Bill on Devolved Government last year, it duly included both the Village Councils and the Citizens Participation Forums.
Unfortunately, if you peruse the latest version of this Draft Bill, which has now been published as the Devolved County Governments Bill, you will find that the village councils and the citizen’s participation forums have both been removed.
In other words, the Drafters of this new Bill, whoever they might be, have unilaterally not only struck at the core of devolved government but they have also foolishly and cynically overturned one of the most popular recommendations that the Task Force received.
For a number of reasons, this blatant and cynical abuse of bureaucratic power must not be allowed to stand. First, there can be no real devolved government if the actual organs and mechanisms of devolution do not percolate to the grassroots level which, in this case, is the village.
Or, to put this in reverse, if the ordinary Kenyan citizen does not see the trappings and institutions of devolved government manifested at the village level, he or she will assume that no devolution has occurred.
Second, if the overwhelming majority of the people who presented their views to the Task Force said that they wanted to see these village councils and citizen’s participation forums established, who are these people who have Drafted the latest Bill on devolved government to exclude these organs?
Are there some hapless legal apparatchiks in the Attorney General’s Office who really do not know what they are doing or is this part of a much larger and sinister plot to defeat real devolved government?
There is also a particular security component to this matter which needs to be mentioned here. Every village in this country knows its thieves, robbers, murderers, or witches.
If you leave village government to the village itself, within very little time, these negative elements within the village will be identified and the necessary action taken to deal with the situation. If you leave village governance to a larger and more distant organ, the motivation of the villagers to confront such matters directly will be necessarily constrained.
If you let the villages run their own affairs, as the Task Force had proposed, and they refuse to identify the thieves, robbers, murderers and witches amidst them, then, in good conscience, you can let them stew in their own soup for a while before taking much more drastic, remedial action.
Fifty years after our independence, the Njemps are still fighting the Endorois in Baringo County; the Gabra and the Borana are still slaughtering each other in Moyale County and the Pokots are still causing havoc along their borders with the Samburu and Turkana communities. If we needed any proof that our governance systems at the grassroots level have failed, these killings are surely it.
This means that we need to overhaul almost all those governance structures which have existed at the community level since independence. We need to take real government to the grassroots through these village councils and citizen’s participation forums.
In its latest memorandum to Parliament, Sayari, the Nairobi-based think tank, in conjunction with CEMIRIDE, the Centre for Minority Rights Development stated:
“This Bill is subjecting voiceless grassroots communities to the vagaries of political dealings and power play at the county level. This is likely to harm politically marginalized and minority communities the most.” Indeed! ENDS.
The writer is a lecturer and consultant in Nairobi.
dominicodipo@yahoo.co.uk
Clashes over water, pasture displaces 40 000 in Kenya
NAIROBI, KENYA – Feb 10 2012 19:34
More than 40 000 people have fled recent clashes between two north Kenyan tribes over access to water and pasture, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Friday.
“Over 40 000 people have fled their homes in Moyale, northern Kenya,” said Alexander Matheou, the federation’s head for East Africa.
The UN had earlier said “tens of thousands” displaced by the fighting had fled into neighbouring Ethiopia, where the majority are living with host families.
Clashes between rival cattle herding pastoralists in the region are common, with herders often carrying guns to protect their animals, but the recent fighting has been unusually heavy.
The clashes pit two traditional rivals, the Borana and the Gabra, around the town of Moyale on the Ethiopian border.
“We have never seen before what we are seing this time, entire villages, entire schools destroyed, water points sabotaged,” Matheou said.
“Shops in Moyale are closed, houses, schools are empty, there is a very eerie sense like a ghost town,” he added.
“Conflict between the Borana and Gabra clans in north Kenya has displaced tens of thousands of people,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report on Tuesday.
Food for 15 000 people has been sent to the area, along with plastic sheets and household items for some 3 000 people, it added.
Fighting over land grazing rights in the remote Moyale region killed at least 18 people last month after two days of intense violence between men armed with automatic rifles and machetes.
The region was hard hit by severe drought in the Horn of Africa last year, exacerbating tensions over land in the area, and sparking tit-for-tat cattle raids.
KENYA: Clashes highlight dangers of devolution
ISIOLO, 3 February 2012 (IRIN) – Politically motivated violence in the northern Kenyan town of Moyale, which has left dozens dead and tens of thousands displaced in recent weeks, shows little sign of abating and there are fears that the clashes could continue until elections are held for new local government positions.
The main two pastoralist communities involved, the Borana and the Gabra, have a long history of sometimes violent competition over resources. But by many accounts, an unintended consequence of Kenya’s new devolutionary constitution has raised the stakes considerably.
The prospect of real political and budgetary power – concentrated since independence in distant Nairobi – rather than water, pasture and cattle-raid vendettas, now drives the violence.
“Every conflict in 2012 will have political and ethnic implications and can therefore not be treated as normal criminal activity,” Mzalendo Kibunjia, chairman of the National Cohesion and Commission (NCIC), said in a recent statement [https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=172600292840170&id=133856426714557].
The NCIC is a government entity set up in 2008 to eliminate ethnic discrimination and promote inter-communal reconciliation.
“The conflicts in northern Kenya must be treated as electoral related and not be dismissed as conflict over water, pasture and cattle rustling.
The NCIC has established that the ongoing violent conflicts [in Moyale and Isiolo http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94312 ] are politically motivated in anticipation of the 2012 elections,” Kibunjia said.
However, presidential, legislative and local elections might not be held until early 2013 according to a recent High Court ruling.
The Kenya Red Cross added: [ http://www.kenyaredcross.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=251&Itemid=124 ]
“The trigger of the current conflict is allegedly competition over positions in the county government structures as designated in the new Kenyan constitution and land-related issues.”
Incitement
The spate of sporadic clashes is thought to have been sparked by a single killing in early November just across the border with Ethiopia.
Since then, political leaders from each community have allegedly incited violence against the other, regardless of whether those members are combatants.
“Different communities used to share mixed schools, mixed waterholes, mixed shopping centres, mixed everything. Now they can’t be on the same street together,” said one aid worker, who recently visited the town.
Several political leaders, including a former member of parliament, have been arrested on suspicion of fuelling the increasingly generalized conflict.
“Here, a politician can kill his opponents, it happens every [election] year, but not a single politician or trader known to have planned and killed people has ever been convicted,” Aba Dika, an elder in Moyale, told IRIN.
However, Eastern Province Police Commander Marcus Ochola told IRIN such impunity was on the way out.
“I am confident our officers, who are still collecting additional evidence, will support strong cases against those responsible for these skirmishes,” he said.
Another police official said detectives were investigating reports that some suspects had used social media to incite violence and congratulate kinsmen when prominent members of rival communities had been killed.
Aid workers who visited Moyale said hundreds of houses had been burnt and that crops, livestock and property had been destroyed.
There have also been reports of shortages and increasing food prices due to the interruption of transport and the closure or destruction of shops.
Thousands of people – insecurity has prevented an accurate assessment – have been displaced from their homes, with many fleeing into southern Ethiopia.
The Red Cross estimates that 9,500 families – some 57,000 people – have fled, 60 people have been killed and more than 1,000 houses burnt.
The worst-affected areas include the settlements of Heilu, Kinisa, Buthye, Bori, Mansile, Illadu, Manyatta and Odda.
Traumatized
“The extent of displacement now and the indiscriminate targeting of the violence – women, children and older persons, any member of the [rival] community has been killed – have left people really traumatized,” said one humanitarian official, who asked not to be named.
“The fear is that between now and elections [we] will see displacement and returns, displacement and returns, with nothing really in balance. There won’t be much room for manoeuvre until some sort of political solution is agreed upon.
That seems very far away right now, from what we have seen,” he added. “It’s not easy to arrange peace meetings when the parties are so mistrustful and fearful of the other’s intentions. Willingness and commitment are not there at the moment, it seems. Willingness to cease hostilities has been very low. It’s quite tragic,” said the aid worker.
Education blow Education has been badly affected in Moyale, with 18 of the area’s 31 schools yet to reopen after the Christmas break and many school-age children among the displaced, either in Ethiopia or in makeshift camps.
Livestock trader Abduba Wario said his income had dried up because the town’s livestock market was closed and he had been unable to send his two daughters to school in the central Kenyan town of Meru.
“It’s risky, no trucks are available. I appeal to the government and NGOs to provide all school-children with transport and police escorts for learning in other parts of the country,” he said.
The state of education facilities serves as an important indicator of the wider security climate, according to the aid worker.
“Children returning to school is the first step in terms of reconciliation, a return to normality. If it is safe for children to go to school it is also safe for health workers and others to return to their posts,” he said.
Amid reports that leaders of warring communities have mobilized across the porous border, Kenyan security forces are working with those from Ethiopia. “We are liaising with our counterparts in Ethiopia to trace the fighters who fled when Kenyan security officers were deployed to quell the fight,” said a security official, who asked not to be named.
na-aw-am/mw[END]
This report online: http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94789