Kibaki 's Goose is COOKED : Indymedia Kenya

Commentary By Onyango Oloo Founder Member of the Editorial Collective of the Kenya Independent Media Centre This is immediate gut reaction that I started writing three minutes after reading news of the cabinet reshuffle posted on the State House website of the Office of the President of the Republic of Kenya. Clearly this cabinet reshuffle was orchestrated by Kiraitu Murungi AND Chris Murungaru.

Mwai Kibaki has not done the MINIMUM that EVERYONE, including is ALLIES would have expected from him: FIRE Kiraitu Murungi, Chris Murungaru AND David Mwiraria. By retaining the trio, Kibaki is sending a clear message to Kenyans and the Western donors who prop up his regime that he is a virtual political recluse who is held hostage by the arrogant, venal bunch of corrupt power mongers that have brought NARC to the brink of virtual collapse. Having used up the wananchi's goodwill, the onus was on Kibaki to win back the trust of the Kenyan people and re-establish credibility among the Western donors. Apparently he is not just unwilling to perform this simple feat- he is totally incapable, reduced to an ailing marionette manipulated by a cabal of dangerous parvenu neophytes and harangued by a First Lady anxious to carve out an autonomous niche in the crowded kitchen at State House, Nairobi. Retaining Chris Murungaru in the cabinet is an act of gross political stupidity. Leaving Kiraitu Murungi unscathed speaks volumes of the chokehold that the Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister has on major decision making processes at the Office of the President. One can argue that in some respects,

Mr. Murungi is the REAL President of Kenya. It would appear that in their naivety, the besieged barons and mandarins of NAK have decided to throw down a desperate political gauntlet to their cabinet rivals like Charity Ngilu, Musikari Kombo, Raila Odinga, Anyang Nyongo, Kalonzo Musyoka and Moody Awori. Some observers will be left unsurprised if Kibaki's back room boys up the ante by giving British envoy Sir Edward Clay his marching diplomatic orders- even as it tries to play the tired nationalist "anti-imperialist" card that the Zimbabwean tyrant Mugabe has used to remain afloat and undercut his opponents down south. If this is in fact the gambit by Kibaki, Murungaru, Kiraitu and Mwiraria, then they will turn out to be worse political imbeciles and nincompoops than some of us thought them to be. The open dare to

Mrs. Charity Ngilu,

Raila Odinga, Musikari Kombo, Anyang Nyongo et al to react to Kibaki's reshuffle is CALCULATED to force a mass exodus from the cabinet so that the tribalists in NAK replace their departed colleagues with their ethnic kith and kin and discredited allies like Biwott and other losers from KANU and waffling social climbers in LDP, Ford-People and other fractions of the Kenyan mainstream political elite. This Kibaki-Kiraitu-Murungaru-Mwiraria gambit is DOOMED, dead in the water. With his silly non-reshuffle today, President Kibaki has signed his political death warrant. It is TIME the Kenyan people awakened in a mass democratic uprising to OVERTHROW this discredited regime riddled by corrupt tribalists who are too self-absorbed to care whether the ship called "Kenya" sinks or remains afloat. The next few days will set the stage for the unravelling of this dastardly regime. The opening counter salvo is expected to come from some high profile resignations led by Charity Ngilu, Wangari Maathai and Raila Odinga. This could very well be accompanied by a tightening of the diplomatic screws. What is critical however is mass movement in the streets of Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru, Kisumu, Eldoret, Kitale, Kakamega, Machakos, Kisii, Kitui, Kajiado, Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, Narok, Nyeri, Muranga, Embu, Meru, Laikipia and elsewhere. KIMEUMANA! Onyango Oloo in Montreal, Quebec Monday, February 14, 2005, 12:29 pm EST