Second Week of February 2010 Might be our Political Baseline, We will Benchmark Coming Weeks against this one.

The week ending on February 14, 2010 will/has gone down in Kenya's history as one of its kind. It's a week that saw eight officials in the ranks of permanent secretaries or their equivalents step down amid corruption claims in their dockets. But of course the big shot was the Prime Minister choosing Valentines day to unleash his hard power on two cabinet ministers Ruto and Ongeri by demanding them to step down to pave way for comprehensive investigation into maize and Free Primary education scandals respectively. Of course, the president of the people reinstated them and tagged a few lines from the constitution onto his statement to give it an imposing taste of legitimacy.


I would hate to foray into this whole mess of whether PM overstepped his constitution mandate or not. I would think his intentions were good, his means a bit drastic and negatively far-reaching. To me the Kibaki is just being Kibaki. Period. But what gives me hope is that we have a reached a point where actually scandals will for sometime and hopefully forever send high ranking officials in the government wobbling in the suits. If more than five permanent secretaries can step aside, there is a reason to celebrate our burgeoning demand for accountability within the government. It is paying off.


And that also leads me to think that after all Coalition government is not in crisis. It is just being a better government. It is proving to me that the best way to run a country weighed down by an ugly malady of corruption is to let political foes serve in the same office. They won't steal the banknote in the coffer because they can't share it.