Author : kele man (IP: 41.220.120.75 , 41.220.120.75.accesskenya.com)
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Comment:
Raila Odinga took the Odingas Doomed Movement to Meru, the hometurf of one Mugambi Imanyara who sold him the certificate of the original ODM on the saturday of 27th October

The penta-goons were accorded a hostile reception by supporters of PNU who wanted to know what Raila had to offer.

Their pointman to the area, Joseph Nyaga, a member of the pentagon was met by cries of msaliti, msaliti as he tried to soften the ground by addressing the raging crowds in his local dialect embu which is said to be understood by the meru people.

In a bid to appease the raging crowd which was waving PNU banners, Raila stood and and eager to get to the point as fast as possible said that an ODM government would order KENYA AIRWAYS, to carry miraa on all its routes.
To quote him:
Ebu mjiulize kwanini ndege ya kenya airways huwa haibebi miraa? kwani miraa haiwezi kukuliwa nchi zingine, ni somali pekee? Serikali ya ODM itaamrisha Kenya airways ibebe miraa kwenye route zake zote.”

To which the crowds further chanted PNU! PNU!

What may have baffled observers is that Raila never mentioned what measures an ODM govt would put to ensure that miraa was consumed on all countries that are served by KQ.
Carrying miraa is not the problem, but surely can you force Ghanians to eat miraa just because Ghana is served by KQ?
What Raila should have told them is that his government would seek a market for this stimulant, so that farmers can have a wider and more lucrative market in the COMESA region, or in the SADEC region, or in the AGOA arrangement.

By saying that Serikali ya ODM itaamrisha Kenya airways kubeba miraa kwa route zake zote, Odinga displayed a very poor grasp of the dynamics of capitalist markets. He seemed to think that carrying miraa aboard a prestigious aircraft will automatically create market for that product. IT CANNOT. You cannot tell a woriah in dubai to buy your product simply because it was carried on KQ. Odinga showed a very very poor and amateurish understanding of how products work. You need to define a niche market, identify a need that you think can be met by your product, create a need for the product thru marketing, package the product (thats where KQ could come in), then sell it. i mean sean paul has repeatedly asked the jamaican govt to fly marijuana via the jamaican airline, so…thats a story for another day.
Otherwise trying to hype emotions of farmers by promising them that their product will be carried on KQ by force is really amateurish and i am sure cost him a precious 5% reduction in popularity.
It also gave impetus to the Kimunya quip a month ago that the stock market was not a fish market.

Stakeholders in KQ must be getting jittery at the prospect of having to be lazimishwad to carry miraa on all their routes and maybe ensure that the miraa is sold and come back carrying the money accrued from sales.

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Author : keep it up (IP: 41.220.120.75 , 41.220.120.75.accesskenya.com)
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Commentary:

Published on October 31, 2007, 12:00 am

By Josephine Ojiambo

Listening to majimbo proponents, one gets a feeling that this is just a red herring being tossed about to get a sticking and emotive election issue.

The proponents know that this election is likely to hinge on performance and not rhetoric. On this score the opposition  pro-majimbo or not  scores poorly. Consequently it is desperately searching for an issue that would make them look electable. This search has spawned a series of red herrings over the past five years, each of which just fizzles out.

Among these is what the media call “Anglo Leasing-style scandals”. This is the most meaningless phrase ever coined in Kenya. On-going scandals must be named.

That the scandals are “Anglo Leasing-like” but cannot be named suggests that they do not exist except in the scandal-mongers minds. Where documents are ever tabled, they insult our intelligence. The purported exposes leave much to be desired.

Other red-herrings are the Bomas and Kilifi Drafts of the Constitution. Both have not been presented to the public so that we see for ourselves, study and identify the problems and even suggest ways forward.

It has always been the politicians, their hang-abouts and the media that talk about them. We have instead been treated as idiots for whom the political class does the thinking.

A new red herring has been created. This time around the confusion called majimbo. I call it confusion because I do not really know what it is that Kenyans are debating. Even the proponents of majimbo themselves cannot agree on the subject.

Some say it is economic majimbo  whatever that is  while others hint at balkanisation of the country into semi-autonomous units going by whatever name. That the proponents cannot agree on the pet subject is a clear pointer to the fact that this is another red herring meant to whet the appetites of characters that spent their entire day talking politics even though they walk in tatters.

When challenged to explain their thoughts, the proponents pick on another emotive word, equitable distribution of national resources. Equity in distribution presupposes that all people contributed something into the pot. For instance, when we all buy shares in some company we qualify for dividends commensurate with our shareholding. So that if one owns a 100 shares they receive lower dividend than one who owns 1,000 shares.

So what does equitable distribution mean? Does it mean that we all contribute equally to the pot, but get short-changed when it comes to our share of the cake we helped bake? Or does it mean robbing some areas to develop others. If Nairobi needed a six-lane Highway and Nakuru also needed a similar road. Where would one build the highway first: in Nairobi or in Nakuru? If resources allowed, it would be ideal to build roads in both towns simultaneously. What if the resource do not allow? The decision will be based on different prioritisation criteria.

It has rightly been pointed out that the balkanisation of the country into political units that cede some sovereignty to central government is a difficult sale in Kenya. This is because such drastic change would require the amendment of the constitution, which defines Kenya as a unitary state. Such an amendment would require a referendum and there is no guarantee that Kenyans would approve such a shift.

Empowering the grassroots

So are we talking about something better than the Constituency Development Fund (CDF)? Here the proponents of majimbo are loudly silent. They are loud on equitable distribution of national largesse and silent on equitable contribution to its accumulation.

We, therefore, assume that the proponents of majimbo are talking about devolution of power to the grass roots, whatever that is. If devolution means empowering the grassroots to determine how to use state funds, then the Kibaki regime has already beaten them to it with Constituency Development Fund, CDF.

If we are talking about CDF, then we should be talking about how to optimally invest the ring-fenced allocations in the constituency. Again the majimbo proponents have lost to the current regime here, because the CDF Act has already authorised the employment of professionals to manage the funds.

But they could also be talking about the Tanzanias Ujamaa-style of devolution, which created a huge bureaucracy in the rural areas. It was not clear whether they were civil servants or Chama Cha Mapinduzi party cadres.

The bloated bureaucracy became a burden to the ordinary folk who were forced to pay all manner of taxes. For instance, fishermen paid 14 different taxes before the fish landed in the market.

There were taxes for owning chicken, goats, cows, all levied on the rural folk who sometimes could not even sell the animals.

Until recently, Kenya was the largest exporter of fresh water fish to the European Union in East Africa although the country controls only five per cent of Lake Victoria. Kenya was also the largest exporter of tanzanite, a mineral only found in Tanzania.

This is because fishermen and miners in Tanzania smuggled their produce into Kenya. Bureaucracy there had become such a burden, producers opted to evade the local taxman.

If we adopt a system of governance that creates a huge bureaucracy, the tax burden will surely rise. We could soon find ourselves opting to be poor rather than own a cow and invite more taxes.

A federal government for a country the size of Kenya is a disincentive to economic activity because of the tax burden. Small unviable states would levy all sorts of taxes to finance their operations because handouts from the state will not be enough.

We emphasize here once again that the proponents of majimbo are not clear on this subject. But they are not clear on anything anyway. They have promised to cut taxes and at the same time provide free primary and secondary school education. Others have promised to ensure that some 200 companies are listed at the Nairobi Stock exchange. Others have promised to fight poverty although they do not know what economic growth involves. They do not seem to understand that economic growth is the sure way to fight poverty.

Majimbo is apparently just another bogey by the talk-first-think-later class of politicians. The author is a PNU-Kanu official

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