When the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission Report was released after officially being handed over to the president, there was plenty of mixed reactions on the same: the major one probably being a mixture of anxiety and concern and also lots of suspicions and paranoia. However, the report went ahead to expose some of the rot the post-independence governments from 1963 to 2008 and their cronies have for a long time imposed on the citizens that they vowed to serve with dilligence, accountability and responsibility, transparency and efficiency, effectiveness and utmost-expediency; but soon dissolved these and other virtues in the solvent of impunity and reverse democracy, with the resultant solution being gross human rights violations, gruesome atrocities, alienation and mass massacres, increased impoverishment and ignorance, massive corruption and misappropriation of public resource, tribal instigations and ethnic violence, increased social stratification, political assassinations of dissents, amongst other heart-wrenching occurences just for self-aggrandizement purpose. The TJRC Report had a condition that was indispensable. It was to be made public once the country’s Chief Executive laid it on his hands. The submission of the report occured on the 21st of May, 2013, but after much pressure had been exerted on the government by the media, the civil society and the public. The delay in receiving the report by the government had aroused multiple suspicions as to why it was shying away from receiving the report as per the constitutional provisions. However, soon the suspicions would be brought forth to light. Once the report was handed over to the president and its contents made public, the suspicions that abound the delay in receiving the report by the government were exposed: it had implicitly and explicitly named some of the present and past officials in government as possible suspects to be probed further on the major issues it had exposed. The president and his deputy and the president’s kin were adversely mentioned in the report! The over 40 000 witness confessions which had been collected countrywide (despite the government trying to sabotage the Commission’s execution of duties) had provided an insight into which the declaration of the past would probably lead to crucial expositions that would either re-open ‘covered’ wounds or heal them permanently. The report was however not received well by some quarters of the public and the government. Some of the individuals mentioned in the report spoke out declaring their ‘innocence’ and declaring their readiness to defend themselves in court. Others (the likes of the infamous propagandist Dennis Itumbi) started advocating for the ‘forget and move on’ narrative in apparent defence of their political masters and/or other ulterior forces. Others expressed their loss of hope that the report will never be implemented, bearing in mind the shelving of previous similar reports by the past governments whenever they (governments) were implicated. However, the queer couple is that of two guys who are currently in court with a petition to prevent the tabling of the TJRC report in parliament! The report further raised eyebrows when its chapter on land appeared with the signatures of two independent commissioners (Chawatama and Slye) missing. The dissent report released by the commissioners (with the inclusion of the other independent commissioner named Dinka) exposed gross alteration of the report on the land stuation. Apparently, a senior official in government had directed some of the contents of the report to be handed over to the Attorney General, and even after the alteration, demanded the printer not to include the omitted clauses but to include the revised ones! The report was submitted to the president even without the consent of the independent commissioners or the inclusion of their dissent report. The TJRC report was discussed across all sectors of the public presence. There were discussions and demystifications in offices, the media and the social media, bars and restaurants, industries and places of manual work, in public forums and places of rendezvous, in the surbubs of the rich and the shacks of the poor, in towns and in villages…the momentum upon the release of the report was high during that precise period. The desire to know the contents of the report could not be quenched easily. However, Kenyans are quick to grasp just like they are quick to forget. By now (three weeks later), the momentum with which the report was received by the public has pathetically waned. The only proof of the discussions of the report could (maybe) only be found in the social media, media archives and the medula oblongatas of the masses stored in dormancy. In such an instance, this kind of complacency and resilience gives the forces of impunity the momentum to craft excuses and cover up stories to cast the report findings into oblivion. The report provides gruesome details that need to be acted upon (with mass pressure forthwith) in order to diagnose the remedy for them (reconciliation, prosecution, economic empowerment, resource allocation, etc) in order to create the necessary positive precedent for other similar future occurences and the order of resolving them in order to create a near perfect structure that is devoid of all forces of impunity. With this in place, the report (and other shelved reports and unaccounted negative occurences) provide the declaration of the past. The diagnosis of today should be the implementation of the recommendations and resultant possible solutions, which is the prerogative of Kenyans to follow up to ensure that this is established and executed, since past precedents have shown that the forces of impunity are opposive to change and are still out to retain us back into retrogression and the travesty of civilization. In order to realize the fruits of democracy, it is up to all of us (the beloved citizens of Kenya) to sacrifice our comfort zones to ensure that such retrogressive documented occurences are re-written in order to bring back good governance virtues for a sustainable predictable postive future. I am ready to stand straight and be counted in this endeavour to the fullest realization. Are you? epikkenyan.wordpress/2013/06/08/declare-the-past-diagnose-the-present-foretell-the-future-%E2%80%95-hippocrates/
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:15:22 +0000
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