Travelling is fun, especially in the region. Nairobi is on the top of my favourites. At intellectual level, there is still a lot of idealism left at the top. Kenyans diplomatically swallow a lot of white-wash because even in their darkest days, you can no longer expect the kind of nervous breakdown certain systems in Uganda find themselves in today. In one week, stories of an overpriced dam cracking, complete death of a radiotherapy machine (Kenya has five units at the regional level), death of the oxygen machine (just one in Mulago) are hard to beat.
The Kenyans have had to deal with two weeks of relatively ‘bad’ news. A runner who lost his prize money to government officials, the closure of Chase Bank. The big one was when the Chief Justice Willy Mutunga who is thinning the ranks of the formerly bewigged, two tribunals are investigating two Judges; one of the Supreme Court accused of eating a $2 million bribe and the Deputy Chief Justice Rawal over overstaying in office after attaining retirement age.
Mutunga wakes up one day and expresses “disappointment” with the police for teargasing CORD politicians who marched to the headquarters of the Independent Election and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). This makes him one hell of a hot commodity, especially when one looks at the Ugandan Supreme Court, which found legal a number of questionable practices, including the recruitment of crime preventers to instill the level of fear in the public that is often reinforced by teargas, live bullets etc., all in the name of law enforcement.
The wide yawn of Mutunga was good news; Kenyan managers have not been doing particularly well. Shareholders are mad with them. Kenya Airways is limping on after surviving for years on cooked accounts. But the limping is not good for an international carrier, especially if it starts falling behind on maintenance, starts to fail to keep time and meeting payroll and other bills on time. Depositors are worried looking at a cluster of banks that may need to raise money in the bond market to shore up deposits that are perilously close to the capital adequacy requirement.
Psychologically, Kenyan egos must also have been hurt by Uganda’s delayed decision to stick with new kid on the block – Tanzanian President – John Magufuli’s pipeline. Sometimes, Mr Museveni makes the right decisions under pressure. Given the range of bribe-taking reports coming from Kenya, Mr Museveni, whose own government suffers from the same problem, put his bet on Magufuli.
Magufuli is a former minister of Works, making him hands-on. This reality check may have come on even stronger after Museveni’s own reading of the situation in Karuma that the works were not only shoddy but also dangerous.
When it rains in Kampala soaked under rich loans from the World Bank, one wonders whether the city has gotten round to replacing the drainage engineer. The last ones could not cope with the aggressive flower potting and the fact that the cake lady always wanted to move the flowers around for maximum beautification effect. The flowers received more attention than the fountain, which ran dry.
I doubt that she has had the time to visit Nairobi where drainage, in all the mess they are in, works almost flawlessly, water flows lazily on slow days to a screeching halt in the city below the streets dominated by concrete pathways, a category where Kenya still finds themselves number one when they are not welcoming terminally ill patients from Uganda in their hospitals.
Mr Ssemogerere is an Attorney-at-Law and an Advocate. kssemoge@gmail.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment