Can Kenya learn from Park Geun-hye presidency?

South Korea's elected her first woman president, Park Geun-hye on December 19^th 2012. Ms Park is the daughter of former military strongman Park Chung-hee who ruled South Korea with an iron fist for 18 years. Her campaign was both bolstered and dogged by the legacy of her father, who built South Korea's economy while crushing dissent. She defeated the Democratic United Party (DUP) candidate, Moon Jae-in. There are a lot of lessons to learn from her presidency, particularly Kenya at a time that The Economist reported that Kenya is among the worst countries to be born in, in 2013. Well, this is not something I smile about, more so as a young Kenyan woman. However, there may be some truths to it. Now I know I am playing the devil advocate but there are some things that indeed make Kenya a not so ‘cool’ place to be. Right from politics, security as well as available opportunities that young people can tap into.

I will therefore consider the president-elect Park Geun-hye as a case study on what I as a young Kenyan woman leader can learn; more so from her race for presidency.  Park, who said she had never married or had children has devoted her life to public service, will inherit a formidable array of economic problems such as youth unemployment, inequality and the challenge from a hostile North Korea when she takes office. This I consider vital particularly as Kenya is bracing for its next general election elections in March 4^th 2013. Hopefully, leaders from Kenya and Africa can draw lessons from Parks stratagem. I acknowledge that it is not prudent to “copy-paste” her formula therefore, I will modify and even try to make better few of her ideas to be in tandem with my Kenyan context. Furthermore, I know that some would sneer at my thought of getting lessons from a “dictator’s daughter” but I know for a fact anyone can learn from everyone, what you decide to use is upon you.

Park Geun-hye

The first strategy Park is using is to have a working group/team also her transition team. President-elect Park Geun-hye has a team that was and is charged with hammering out key policies on her behalf and ensuring that her ascent to the top office runs smoothly. Her appointments show her to be a traditionalist who relies on trusted aides and familiar faces. On this note, Kenya needs to clearly distinguish this from the hurriedly made political marriages a.k.a coalitions. These ‘marriages’ are merely vehicles that will drive most leaders into positions of power and once there file a divorce thus render these unions obsolete. Having a team instead of being part of a ‘forced’ conglomerate is probably the manoeuvre Martha Karua is using; in that instead of getting into a coalition with another leader, she like Park has surrounded herself with a team of volunteers who believe in her aspirations and objectives and they selflessly work toward achieving them. This however is not to say that all coalitions are useless, emphasis should be on which coalitions are issue based and not working on personal attacks of the other camp. At this point sadly, most of the coalitions are ridden with internal disgruntles, uncertain strategies and one gets the feeling that some are in this election race merely to loose and be remember in history as having run for political office.

Second strategy, closely linked to the first is trust. This strategy I believe is the corner stone to any endeavour one undertakes. In fact Park Geun-hye is famous for the style in which she will run her government. It is dubbed ‘trustpolitik’. This came at a time that Koreans consider themselves “shrimps among whales” in relation to China, Japan and Russia. However, Park who others call ‘ice-queen’ taking the ‘trustpolitik’ path despite the “shrimp tag” seeks to improve bilateral relations and to persuade N.Korea to curtail its nuclear program and reunification in the end. Ms Park has based her approach on reciprocity where she says she will start with small economic projects and humanitarian aid, and engage further with the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un. This contrasts with the leadership style of her predecessor, Lee Myung-back whose policies severed any links with N.Korea. This method reminds me of the current call for succession by the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) in Mombasa who want to annex Mombasa (Kenya’s port city) due to concerns of marginalization and unfair development. I think whoever will become the 4^th president of Kenya can use this idea. In that it provides room for dialogue and trust in addressing the pertinent issues underneath the call for secession. Issues raised by MRC are indeed valid and have not been addressed fully but merely wished away by use of force to nip them from growing. In this case, MRC like a season river may not be seen flowing on the surface but it is certainly underneath and if not checked will rise and burst its banks over time. With this strategy, Ms Park seeks to bridge the political divide among the South Koreans and hopefully unite the two Koreas. Concerns of MRC need to be looked at objectively and where possible address them conclusively.Some may term this as idealist thinking but realists emphasize that the end justifies the means therefore; I think it is worth trying with Kenya.

A third strategy would be regional inclusion in all policy formulation and implementation. Ms Park has for instance taken care to give prominent roles to natives of Jeolla province, such as Han Kwang-ok, head of the subcommittee on national unity. Jeolla suffered under successive military regimes in the past, and always votes for the DUP rather than Ms Park’s Saenuri Party. Kenya on the other hand has a major issue of regional cronyism manifested as tribalism and unequal development. This is now worsened by the fact that particular regions represent particular tribes and their development or lack of it, hints on the previous leadership at the national and local level. With the political coalitions whose common thread is the mantra of “uniting all Kenyans in one” is merely a façade and not issue based manifestos. Park has been careful to avoid showing regional cronyism that tripped her predecessor President Lee Myung-bak. Regional cronyisms energize and sustain ineffective leaders who have the support from their regional base. Therefore, as dynamic as it is a leader would time after time redefine their regional identities to align with perceived personal or group imperatives at the expense of the larger community.

Kenya is 50 in 2013, and these three strategies out of the many that Ms Park employs would be instrumental in addressing our persistent and emerging problems of development and security. It will be remembered that Korea then a poor state from Asia approached Kenya for its Development Blue-print. This blue-print was the Kenya Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965 drafted by Tom Mboya and Mwai Kibaki that would ensure rapid economic development and social progress for its citizens. Robert Greene’s First Law in his book 48 Laws of Power says: Never outshine the master. Well, Korea has proven that indeed this law can be broken because at 2012 Korea has outshined Kenya in all aspects. Korea is the eleventh biggest economy, sixth biggest exporter and hopefully soon become the eighth biggest trading nation while Kenya is still a developing state. Maybe it is about time for Kenya to learn from Park Geun-hye. Change is good, right?

On Political Coalitions

By Mzalendo

Having an executive president makes the stakes in the race for presidency necessarily high. The stakes are made even higher by the impending cases against DPM Uhuru Kenyatta and Eldoret North MP, William Ruto, at International Criminal Court, and what either of the two winning the presidential seat would mean for the cases.

Voting patterns in the country coalitions mean that coalitions may be necessary component for winning the elections. The election threshold for president as provided for in the Constitution states that, “a person shall be declared duly elected President if he or she is the only candidate nominated for election.” Of course this is unlikely given that several aspirants have already declared their intention to run for president (see their credentials here).

In the alternate the constitution also provides that a person can become president if they, attain more than half of the votes cast in the election plus of 25 per cent of votes cast in more than half of the 47 counties. However as a consequence of our motivations for voting and voting patterns it is unlikely that any presidential candidate running alone can attain this threshold.

Hence the rush we saw the week before last by political parties to form coalitions to meet the requirement that coalition agreements entered into before the election be deposited with the Registrar at least three months before the election.

Ideally coalitions are supposed to be an agreement for cooperation between different political parties on a common political agenda. However from the leadership squabbles emerging from the coalitions formed less than two weeks ago it is difficult to figure out whether the coalitions were formed with a coherent political agenda other than winning in mind.

Even if we give coalitions the benefit of the doubt and presume that they were formed on the basis of a common political ideology/agenda, it is at this juncture difficult to tell what that agenda is. As it stands neither of the two coalitions that have emerged as the forerunners, Jubilee Coalition and CORD (if not in fact, then certainly in terms of press coverage) have articulated a coherent policy agenda with regards to the issues that a majority of Kenyans care about i.e. security or the economy.

In fact from the disputes over presidential candidature, it becomes ever more evident that the main purpose of political coalitions is to clear the election threshold i.e. garner the minimum percentage required votes nationally to win.

However whether coalitions formed will hold until March 4, 2013, remains to be seen, particularly where ‘dark forces are at play’.

What are your thoughts on the coalitions?

Kenyan Thoughts I

We are not all responsible for 2008 Mayhem
By Lukoye Atwoli

In an attempt to sound reconciliatory and avoid inflaming passions one way or another, many commentators have taken to asking Kenyans not to point fingers at those they think are responsible for our ethnopolitical crises, including post-election violence after the 2007 General Election. Most have argued that all of us are to blame for these problems, having contributed to the current state of near-total state failure in one way or another.

This phenomenon is not new, however. The claims climaxed some time in 2008 as everyone who could be heard in the public space was busy emphasising peace and reconciliation, and discouraging those of us who thought we had an idea about what had happened to our country from speaking out.

Telling us that if we search deep within ourselves we would find some reason to be guilty was their way of silencing us and buying space for whatever they were calling peace and reconciliation.

Let me be the first one to remove myself from this herd of murderers and arsonists, if no one else will speak out for me.

On the morning of December 27, 2007, my family and I used the Kisumu-Eldoret road via Nandi Hills on our way to Eldoret town where we were registered to vote. All along the way, it was already evident that all was not well.

Burnt tyres, logs and rocks blockaded parts of the road in some areas, evidence that some demonstration or riot had already taken place even before Election Day.

People milled by the roadside at most urban centres we passed and, in some places, there was a bit of shouting and sloganeering that we assured ourselves was born of the usual electoral euphoria.

On the outskirts of Eldoret town, we learnt from the news on the radio that some vehicle had been torched in town, suspected of carrying marked ballot papers.

As we voted, we were acutely aware of the tension, and the possibility of post-election violence. Subsequent events, as they say, are inscribed in the history books.

Two weeks before the 2007 General Election, I had penned an article denouncing acts of violence that had been labelled “political violence”.

I rejected this tag, instead characterising looters and arsonists as common criminals using politics as a convenient cover.

But for the context set in the campaign period, anyone reading that article today would be forgiven for thinking it was discussing the post-election violence.

I was, therefore, utterly shocked when almost everyone feigned surprise and claimed that the post-election violence was unforeseen and caught them by surprise, when all indications before the election had been that a peaceful outcome would be the exception, not the rule.

With this background, I challenge these “peacemakers” to point out what I did to be held responsible for the violence that erupted after the election, and the subsequent dysfunctional government that was rammed down our collective throat.

As a matter of fact, my colleagues and I were intimately involved in designing a response to deal with the physical, psychological and social outcomes of the violence after it broke out.

This habit of rushing to implicate whole populations betrays a mindset that is comfortable with a herd mentality of crime and punishment, which is antithetical to the liberal democracy we are apparently forging in Kenya.

Kenya: Soaring Cost of Living

The buying power is about to be gravely eroded due to high inflation levels now projected to shoot to an all-time-high of 18 per cent by the end of the year. Ones hard earned money now has less value and cannot buy the same goods it used to a few months back. 

Shortages of food and fuel in Africa; Kenya in particular are sending the cost of living upwards, threatening political and social crises. Kenya has relatively advanced agricultural and industrial sectors and substantial foreign exchange earnings from agricultural exports and tourism. Yet it is a low-income country and ranks 128th among 169 countries in the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index, which measures development in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment and standard of living.

Now, food prices are skyrocketing across East Africa- by some estimates as much as 30 percent since January. Small-scale vendors are also feeling the pinch. A vendor at the City Market, Howard Mutua, says the rising costs are cutting into his profits.

"By the time I take it from the farmers up to here I am using transportation which is really high. So I end up increasing my price and that also affect my customers. They are taking less."

Mutua, like most Kenyans, holds the high taxes imposed by the government on fuel imports are directly to blame for rise in basic commodities and consequently for the rising cost of living. With the government heavily taxing oil imports, the cost of petroleum in Kenya has risen from around $1 per liter to over $1.30 in just the past few months.

"The best thing I would advise the government to do. They should tackle the fuel problem," Mutua noted.  "If they could work on that fuel problem, I think everything will be well."

But high taxes are not solely to blame for the rising cost of living.  Kenyans have been hit from all sides by rising inflation, government tariffs, import mismanagement, Middle East conflict and climate change. As Economic analyst Robert Shaw explains, Kenya's underproduction of staple items has placed it dangerously at the mercy of local and global economic instability. Kenya produces an estimated 200,000 tons of corn each year, but consumes nearly twice as much.

"In the case of oil it is the volatility that has been taking place in North Africa and some of the Arab countries," noted Shaw.  "On the other side of the coin, a number of these countries, including Kenya, are particularly vulnerable to those increases because they are major importers of not just oil but also food. Kenya imports three quarters of its wheat, three quarters of its rice." The price of corn has tripled since last year, forcing the government to remove the 50 percent tax on imports. On April 19, hundreds of Kenyans marched from Uhuru Park through Nairobi’s central business district and gathered in front of Parliament to demand action on the rising cost of living. This comes at a time that consumers are forced to buy basic goods like soap, sugar and oil in tiny quantities. In light of this, government response on the rise in cost of living has been slow.  Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta announced a 20 percent tax cut on fuel two weeks ago. The subsidy has come into effect in time for a fuel shortage across the country.  In Nairobi, roads have been gridlocked from morning till night as customers queue in front of petrol stations in the hopes of finding fuel. , Martha Karua, Member of Parliament for Gichugu said corruption and inefficiency by regulators were key parts of the crisis in Kenya. She called on government “to clean up the National Oil Corporation, the Kenya Power and Lighting Company and the Energy Regulatory Commission to protect the common man from these surging prices”.

Inflation threatens to strengthen the rise in prices. April saw a 12.05 percent inflation rate, the highest in nearly 18 months. Kenya is not the only country in east Africa feeling the effects of global and local instability. Rising prices in Uganda have triggered protests and demonstrations over rising costs. Uganda President Yoweri Museveni has insisted there was nothing his government could do about skyrocketing prices, while vowing to suppress public protest against rising inflation.

"The prices can only go down through increased production," he said. Over the past month, the protests have been crushed with the full force of Uganda's military and police. The scenes of opposition leaders being arrested and beaten have triggered international condemnation and pushed the country to the brink of a political crisis.

Kenya is hoping to avoid the same fate, but may not be able to stem the rising tide of discontent. On Labor Day, the leader of Kenya's Central Organization of Trade Unions, Francis Atwoli, threatened strikes and protests if demands for a 60 percent increase in the minimum wage were not met. As prices continue to rise, Kenyans are watching and waiting to see if the government can head off what some are calling a looming crisis. Budalang’i Member of Parliament, Mr. Ababu Namwamba. His motion to form a select committee of Parliament to look into the rising cost of living in the country was approved by parliament Wednesday 11 May. The Parliamentary Select Committee formed to investigate the increased cost of fuel and food begins its hearings next week and has invited the public to give its views.

Cost of living is the cost of maintaining a certain standard of living. Changes in the cost of living over time are often operationalized in a cost of living index. Kenya a population of 39,802,015 according to the 2009 Census results has about 15,449,430 poor people who live in rural areas. The number of the poor, nearly half of the total population is likely to rise if the soaring cost of living in the county is unchecked.

I am not my TRIBE.I am KENYAN.

Oh, so you are Kilonzo...Mkamba...?

An innocent question right? WRONG.

What does my tribe have to do with my

Potentials? Failures? Achievements?

These stereotypes grate me to the marrow.

You hear of a heist and the immediate thought is...Kikuyu's are involved.

Or a bar brawl and conclude these Luo's and fights.

Pirates ring Somali.

Plus many other tribal comparisons...many at times it’s an individual who has messed up but the whole clan is smeared with the iniquity.

I don’t know about you but this has got to STOP.

How?

It starts with Me, You and US.

Let us the youths create awareness to our peers, parents and community that:

NO TRIBE IS SUPERIOR.

We are Kenyans and this is what is very important.

Our diversity is supposed to unite us.

We are ONE out of MANY.

Unless we put aside our tribal differences, we will always experience the hate speeches lined with sarcasm, suspicion and disunity.

A time bomb

Reflect on Rwanda’s genocide.

TUACHE UKABILA.

In any case when it rains does it recognize anyone by its tribe or affiliation?

It drenches all equally.

Question: Wewe ni mkabila gani??

Answer: MIMI NI MKENYA