ODM: Government facing a credibility gap on national security

Kenya: ODM has said that faith in government is steadily receding and Kenyans can no longer trust the highest officials in the land.

Here is a statement from ODM

Many Kenyans can remember growing up in a time when people assumed that if the government said something, it was true. That era is fading. Faith in government is steadily receding to the realm of the nostalgia for a vanishing past. Large numbers of our people are finding it hard to believe the government particularly on matters of national security.  We have a feeling that Kenyans are being governed by being misled and lied to. Official deception particularly over the critical matter of security is causing a major erosion of confidence of the Kenyan people in their government, leading to a deeper feeling of hopelessness and desperation.

The Government is routinely misleading the public to shield its incompetent officers and to protect the delicate power balance in the Jubilee Administration while Kenyans die.

This culture of misleading and lying to the public is being perpetrated from the highest levels of government, the Presidency. While Kenyans are crying for the President to take charge of security in Kenya, and as Kenyans are still dumbfounded by the massacre of 28 of their fellow citizens in Mandera, the President is taking it easy in Abu Dhabi watching his popular sport, Formula One.

On Sunday, the Deputy President told our shocked and angry citizens that more than 100 terrorists were killed following the Mandera bus attack that claimed the lives of teachers, police officers and ordinary citizens. There is no shred of evidence to back his claim. We doubt anybody believes the DP. “I wonder how this would restitute the lives of those we have lost even if this were true. We don’t believe the DP ourselves and we demand that top political and security leadership must take responsibility.

We have heard similar stories to the one from the DP before.  We were told that all the attackers in Westgate were killed. Then as now, there was no shred of evidence.

We were told that the attacks in Lamu early this year and later in Mombasa were the work of the Opposition. There was no shred of evidence.

We were told that there would be a Commission of Inquiry into the Westgate attack; to date, nothing.

We are concerned at the apparent use of the security apparatus to constitute a system of institutionalized lying to the public. Our young democracy requires a delicate balance of confidence between the people and the government.

If the governed are misled, if they are not told the truth, or if through official secrecy and deception they lack information on which to base intelligent decisions, we may keep moving, but not as a democracy and not as a thriving but a failing state. In the crucial field of national security, the government controls almost all the important channels of information. We fear that this information is being distorted.

We fear that insecurity is escalating partly because the government is relying on and believing its own lies and pursuing false “options and false scenarios.” In the process, Government officers live in denial even in the face of solid doubts on their credibility, ability and forthrightness. The insensitive behavior of the government on matters of insecurity will no longer be tolerated by Kenyans. We demand that the government compensates all the bereaved families including meeting all the funeral expenses.