President Uhuru Kenyatta’s slip of tongue or costly gaffes?

President Uhuru Kenyatta during the Kenya Diaspora Easter Investment Conference 2015, at the Windsor Golf and County Club, Nairobi recently. [PHOTO: GOVEDI ASUTSA/STANDARD]

Kenya: President Uhuru Kenyatta’s style of issuing directives is taking a heavy toll on public confidence. Several of his recent orders have also dented his popularity.

A day to the Garissa attack, he haughtily dismissed as “not genuine” travel advisories by Britain and Australia to their nationals to keep off the Coast and Northern regions of Kenya in the face of imminent terror strikes.

“Let their taxi drivers not come. US President Obama is coming,” he said to laughter from the bemused audience.

He impulsively blamed the inadequacy of police officers for the attack that took 147 young lives after a poorly coordinated response and ordered the newly appointed Inspector General of Police to ignore a court order slapped on 10,000 recruits over a corruption riddled process and immediately have them in training.

What followed was an imbroglio with far reaching consequences on the recruits who saw their re-kindled ambitions die after the order was quashed for constitutional reasons and a humiliated President quietly let it be. It was yet another costly gaffe.

Kenyans will recall Uhuru’s assertion thus: Usalama waanza na mimi. Usalama waanza na wewe (security starts with me and you) when he belatedly jetted back into the country from a trip abroad days after the twin Mandera attacks that claimed 63 lives.

The President was in Abu Dhabi when 28 teachers travelling home for December holidays were butchered.

It is true elements of personal security rest with individuals, but how for Christ’s sake would the hapless teachers have known their bus was a target for terror attack?

Also recall his contention that the Government cannot provide a police officer for each individual. While factual, it couldn’t have gone down well with those grieving.

The country still awaits his promise to set up a judicial commission of inquiry to investigate Westgate terror attack that took away 67 innocent Kenyans and wounded 175 others.
The Mpeketoni incident was no better.

The President publicly trashed Al Shabaab’s claim of responsibility for the pogrom that took 60 lives, many of them settled there from Central Kenya by founding President Jomo Kenyatta and chose to term the attack ‘a politically motivated ethnic violence against a Kenyan community with the intention of profiling and evicting them for political reasons’.

Consequently, he ended up pre-empting an independent investigation of the attack and set the stage for inter-party blame game and irresponsible vituperations of hate messages to the delight of Al Shabaab.

The Leader of Majority and Jubilee’s cheerleader Aden Duale took to the floor of Parliament with raucous shouts of ‘we cannot allow you to kill our people’ and ‘wait for 2017 if you want to lead’, leaving no doubt as to his insinuation.

What was obviously a terror attack quickly mutated into fresh killings in Likoni, Mombasa by faceless gunmen targeting members of one community. Insecurity had unfortunately been used to fuel a siege mentality against ethnic communities that had nothing to do with the terror and government slip-ups.

Even as he swings a heavy cudgel against purported corrupt officials in his government, the President appointed to the board of Kenya Seed Company former Finance Minister Chris Okemo in spite of corruption and money laundering cases that require his repatriation to battle it out in court overseas. Okemo in his wisdom, turned down the offer until such a time that he will have cleared his name, a move that considerably embarrassed the presidency that had parried calls to revoke the appointment.

Also recall when a three-year-old girl was raped in Nyeri. Uhuru’s take was puzzling. At the official opening of 16 days of activism against gender based violence, the head of State publicly wondered why the girl’s parents could not protect her.

He said ordinary citizens such as the girl’s wayward uncles and not security agencies were to blame for insecurity in the country.

Public uproar

His statement caused a public uproar because the Constitution puts security squarely in the hands of Government.

The President’s directive at the official opening of the Global All in Campaign against adolescent infection and death by HIV/Aids to have students with HIV and Aids profiled kicked up a storm as soon as it was uttered.

The directive required the collection of up to date data on all school going children living with the scourge, something the Commission on the Administrative of Justice Chairman Otiende Amolo described as unconstitutional.

Mr Amolo, a member of the Committee of Experts, which drafted the 2010 Constitution said Uhuru’s order violated several sections of the supreme law.

He remarked in a letter to the President thus: “The directive raises legal and ethical issues that relate to the right to privacy and confidentiality for persons living with HIV and Aids. We are of the considered view that the directive may be counterproductive in the national HIV response and must be withdrawn.”