to live is to work

....and the only thing which lasts
is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,
don't turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,
and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what's alive in the furrow, what's dead in yourself,
for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;
from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

from Throw Yourself Like Seed, Miguel De Unamuno
(translated by Robert Bly)

This poem grounded me today, as I grapple with the strangeness of dropping back into Planet Bay Area, where nothing appears to have changed since I left 8 months ago. How is it possible that one of my worlds, Kenya, has been ripped apart, lies in bleeding fragments, while another is still lush, tranquil, and unmoved? How to even begin to answer, when a checkout clerk says cheerfully: "New Year going well for you?"

Work is the constant I orient myself around. What am I here to do, in the next 6 weeks before I return to Kenya?

Kahlil Gibran's phrase runs through my mind a lot: Work is love made visible.

My ritual, since I landed, is to set my alarm for 10 minutes before sunrise each morning. I propel myself from bed before my first waking thought. Fumble on clothes, socks, gloves, woolly hat, with chilled fingers, to get outdoors under the sky by the time it lightens. Everything is so sharply etched in the knife-edge cold of dawn - leaves, magnolia buds, the Marin headlands over the pale waters of the Bay. In that stinging silent clarity, I can contain all the contradictions. Stretch my lungs to the icy air, stretch my mind and body to the privilege of being alive, of throwing myself like seed into what I can do.

Continue to look for beauty

said digital artist Deamer Dunn, when he sent me this new piece, based on Pulling Saris From Suitcase.

Other Shailja-inspired pieces created by Deamer, are Hands N Air, and Jacaranda Time. Re-reading Jacaranda Time makes me want to cry. The Shailja who danced through puddles, anticipating change, however imperfect, belongs to a different world, a different lifetime.

30 hours that destroyed Kenya

Kenyans for Peace, Truth and Justice yesterday released the data,, findings, analysis and verification of the legal working group, following their intensive investigation of electoral anomalies and malpractices that plunged Kenya into civil war. The four documents:

1) An analysis of the differences between the presidential and parliamentary vote in 2007, using the 2002 results as a benchmark.

2) An hour-by-hour log, compiled by Kenyan election observers, of the last phase of the presidential tallying. Their testimonies expose what can only be termed a resolve among electoral officials—including Commissioners and staff—to obtain a pre-determined outcome, whether supported by fact or not.

3) A table of these anomalies, malpractices and illegalities committed in at least 49 constituencies across the country.

4) A summary of the findings.

Read the full reports here.

Indiscriminate police fire

on unarmed protestors in Kenya, finally captured on video.

In the last three days, The Man In Black has become, for Kenya, something akin to the student at Tiannamen Square. The most graphic and unforgettable symbol we could have of the brutal consequences of state repression.

What You Can Do

Independent global non-profit, Avaaz, has created a very effective, easy-to-use, online campaign for a viable peace in Kenya.

Click here to send a letter to your Foreign Minister, that will keep the pressure on the Kibaki regime to agree to a mediated resolution that delivers electoral justice.



Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Washington DC, and Geneva.

Not senseless "savagery"

From The Guardian

The violence in Kenya may be awful, but it is not senseless 'savagery'. Our exotic fantasy of Africa means we fail to understand the real reasons for conflict in developing countries.

Madeleine Bunting, Monday January 14 2008

It will be Kofi Annan's turn tomorrow to arrive in a tense Nairobi, following in the steps of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and John Kufuor, the Ghanian president and head of the African Union, last week, and US diplomats and the former Sierra Leonean president the week before. As the tourists abandon Kenya's beaches, the country has tragically become the premier destination for a new type of visitor - the international mediator. But so far, all of them have managed no more than what could be described as a minibreak, hastily repacking their overnight bags with nothing to show for their efforts.

Kenya is stuck in a dangerous stalemate, with no point of agreement between Mwai Kibaki, who has claimed presidency in the recent contested election, and his opponent, Raila Odinga, from which to start negotiations on power-sharing. The country is bracing itself this week, when the newly elected MPs are due to take their seats, and there are fears fisticuffs could break out in parliament. Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement is poised to rally its supporters back on to the streets in protest at what they believe was a rigged election by Kibaki.

In London and Washington, not to mention Kampala and Kigali, there is close to panic. London needs Kenya to be an African success story; it gives the country 175 million pounds in aid a year. The US badly needs Kenya as a stable ally for its post 9/11 strategy - it is a vital intelligence base for the Horn, Yemen, the Gulf and east Africa. Meanwhile, Africa's landlocked neighbours need Kenya as their link to the world economy; already fuel supplies are running short in Uganda and trade through the port of Mombasa has ground to a halt. No one is underestimating the scale of this crisis.

While western diplomats and aid officials are quietly gritting their teeth with a combination of frustration and anxiety, the media story - with a few exceptions such as Peter Kimani, a Kenyan journalist on openDemocracy.net - has been simple: utter bewilderment. Here is how the story has been framed: the peaceful Kenya we know and love from our holiday snaps has suddenly erupted in senseless, tribal barbarism.

There are two old elements underlying this perspective. There is the persistent western fantasy of the exotic that we project on to Africa. But the peaceful, palm-fringed beaches of our holiday albums (I have them too) are the creation of our tourist imagination, which strips out what we can't or don't want to understand. They have nothing to do with the tumultuous, violent, rapidly changing reality of Kenya in recent years.

Secondly, the coverage shows how quickly the west reverts to racism. Why is the word "tribal" only used to refer to Africa? Why don't we talk of Belgian tribes or Middle Eastern tribes? No, only in Africa is inter-ethnic violence cast as "ancient", immutable tribalism, associated in the European mindset with barbarism and irrationality. It's a language of self-congratulation - we are civilised, Africans are not. How else could the ludicrous analogies with Rwanda have popped up? Kenya and Rwanda have completely different histories, ethnic relations and political economies. But that is swept aside as irrelevant, and the implication is that African violence is all basically the same. It's as if someone had claimed the blazing Paris suburbs of 2005 were the new Bosnia.

The bewilderment is born from ignorance. In Britain, a glamorous melange of White Mischief, Elspeth Huxley's The Flame Trees of Thika and a safari trip has passed for "knowing" the country. But Kenya is a complex society with 48 different ethnic groups and the highest internally displaced population in Africa, largely consisting of Somalis and Sudanese. It has some of the biggest shanty towns in Africa and its burgeoning, largely unemployed, population struggles to secure some of the gains of the recent economic boom. It's hard to imagine any country negotiating such chronic insecurity and rapid social and economic dislocation without conflicts of interest flaring up. It's why a close Kenya watcher like David Anderson, professor of African politics at Oxford University, is not particularly surprised by the violence of recent weeks.

Anderson's most important work recently has been the analysis of how violence has become a part of Kenyan economic and political life. In poorer suburbs where crime is endemic and the police ineffectual and corrupt, gangs have proliferated. They demand bribes from local businesses and how they work is not much different from the police or private security companies.

Just as the success of your business depends on paying off such gangs, so in politics your success depends on your ability to mobilise the support of "youth wingers". Unemployed young men are used to protect supporters and intimidate opponents. Their tasks can run from ripping down posters of an opponent to torching a neighbourhood. As the price of Kenyan politics has soared, politicians literally can't afford to lose and gangs are part of the strategy to ensure they don't. Always, there is the possibility the gangs will use the screen of politics to settle their own scores.

This "economy of violence", as Anderson describes it, can mobilise deep resentments along ethnic lines. Eldoret, the scene of the horrific church massacre earlier this month, is famous as a flashpoint. This is the region where Kikuyu, the biggest ethnic group who have done the best since independence, acquired land in the 60s dispossessing the Kalenjin - a grievance that has festered unresolved ever since.

What you end up with in Kenyan politics is a combination of the local and the global - Odinga was already planning to copy Ukrainian-style mass demonstrations in the case of electoral defeat back in November. But calling his supporters (and his gangs) on to the streets unleashes its own momentum of frustration and anger, some of which goes back to generations-old land disputes, while some is much more recent, provoked by the Kikuyu middle class who have done so well under Kibaki.

The violence that results is certainly barbaric - children were reported to have been thrown back into the burning church in Eldoret - but it is not about a primordial African capacity for savagery. In a study of the appalling violence in Africa in recent years, Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing, the author, Professor Christopher Cramer, argues that, on a continent that has seen more wars since 1990 than in the whole of the previous century, violence can be a form of communication of last resort. When all other channels of seeking justice for embittered grievances in a corrupt regime appear to have been exhausted, some will see violence as the only way to protect their interests. That doesn't make the violence right, but neither does it make it necessarily senseless. It can have its own awful rationality.

What we are seeing in Kenya - and in other unstable developing countries - is how human beings behave when faced with the kind of chronic insecurity that globalisation is incubating the world over. Dislocation breeds fear in which old, buried identities become an insurance policy - who looks out for you? - or make you a victim. The outcome is always tragic, and that is what is making so many Kenyans so anxious.

m.bunting@guardian.co.uk
Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited

European Parliament Resolution on Kenya

17 January, 2008

The European Parliament,

– having regard to the preliminary statement of the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) to Kenya of 1 January 2008,

– having regard to the Declaration by the Presidency on behalf of the European Union concerning the African Union mediation efforts in Kenya of 11 January 2008,

– having regard to the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights, 1981, and the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, 2007,

– having regard to the African Union Declaration on the Principles Governing Democratic Elections in Africa, 2002,

– having regard to the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation and the Code of Conduct for International Election Observers, commemorated at the United Nations on 27 October 2005,

– having regard to the Partnership Agreement between the members of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States, of the one part, and the European Community and its Member States, of the other part, signed in Cotonou on 23 June 2000 (the Cotonou Agreement) and amended in Luxembourg on 25 June 2005, in particular Articles 8 and 9 thereof,

– having regard to Rule 103(4) of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas presidential and legislative elections were held in Kenya on 27 December 2007, in which nine parties fielded presidential candidates, including Mwai Kibaki of the Party of National Unity (PNU) and Raila Odinga, leader of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM),

B. whereas the two major parties, the PNU and the ODM, won, respectively, 43 and 99 seats out of a total of 210 in the national parliament,

C. whereas the 2007 presidential elections in Kenya fell short of basic international and regional standards for democratic elections and were followed by rioting that led to the death of over 600 people,

D. whereas the political violence that followed the elections led to the displacement of 250 000 people and affected between 400 000 and 500 000 Kenyans, specifically from the cities of Eldoret, Kericho and Kisumu, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),

E. whereas the current political crisis arose mainly from tension in the former National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), which won the Kenyan elections in 2000, when Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga agreed to share power, an agreement which was not honoured,

F. whereas the recommendations made by the 2002 EU EOM were not taken sufficiently into consideration, including those on the size and boundaries of the constituencies for the general elections and the recommendation that the tenure of the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) should be extended to six months after general elections, in order to enhance its independence and professionalism,

G. noting that the atmosphere of the 2007 electoral campaign was characterised by a strong political polarisation between the Kibaki and Odinga camps, which led to a tense atmosphere in their respective ethnic communities,

H. whereas the presidential elections have betrayed the hopes and expectations of the Kenyan people, who eagerly engaged in the electoral process by voting in large numbers in a peaceful and patient manner,

I. whereas intense diplomatic efforts, including the mediating mission of the African Union chairman and President of Ghana, John Kofi Agyekum Kufuor, and efforts made by four former presidents have failed to resolve the political crisis,

J. whereas on 8 January Mwai Kibaki unilaterally appointed 17 members of his cabinet, before the international mediation had run its course, thus effectively pre-empting a tripartite negotiation and prompting the ODM to resume mass protests,

K. whereas during the election campaign freedom of association, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly were broadly respected; whereas the campaign was, however, also marked by ethno-political divisions, which contributed to the volatile situation in the run-up to the elections,

L. whereas the international community did not pay sufficient attention to the underlying ethnic tensions and must henceforth take this issue into consideration in any future mediation efforts in the current Kenyan crisis,

M. whereas the ECK oversaw the logistical and technical aspect of the elections, improved access to voter registration centres and trained the polling staff,

N. whereas the ECK did not, however, demonstrate the impartiality, transparency and confidentiality that are prerequisites in a democratic election, and whereas this is reflected in the flawed procedures for appointing ECK commissioners,

O. whereas the EU EOM observers were welcomed by the relevant authorities at polling stations, where polling was conducted in an orderly manner,

P. whereas the EU EOM observers were not, however, given similar access to tallying stations and whereas they concluded that the lack of transparency and adequate security procedures severely undermined the credibility of the presidential election results,

Q. whereas turnouts of over 90 % were recorded at certain polling stations and whereas the ECK voiced doubts about these unrealistically high figures,

R. whereas the EU EOM concluded that, overall, the election process prior to tabulation was well managed and that the parliamentary elections were deemed largely successful,

S. whereas the EU EOM concluded, however, that the tallying process in the presidential election lacked credibility and therefore expressed doubts as to the accuracy of the results,

T. whereas, according to the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, threats have been made against members of the Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice Initiative (KPTJ), a coalition of independent NGOs which was formed in the aftermath of the elections to denounce electoral fraud and support freedom of expression and association in the country,

U. whereas Kenya has made commitments to respect for fundamental civil rights, democracy based on the rule of law and transparent and accountable governance within the framework of the Cotonou Agreement,

1. Condemns the tragic loss of life and critical humanitarian situation, and calls urgently on the relevant authorities and stakeholders to do their utmost to bring peace to the Republic of Kenya and to ensure respect for human rights and the rule of law;

2. Endorses the conclusions presented by the EU EOM in its preliminary statement;

3. Regrets that, despite the broadly successful parliamentary elections, the results of the presidential elections cannot be considered credible owing to widespread reports of electoral irregularities;

4. Deplores the fact that Mwai Kibaki, appointed his cabinet unilaterally, which severely undermined mediation efforts;

5. Calls on Mwai Kibaki, to respect his country’s democratic commitments as enshrined in the Constitution of Kenya, the African Charter of Human and Peoples' Rights and the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, and to agree to an independent examination of the presidential vote; urges the Kenyan authorities, in addition, to facilitate such an investigation in order to redress the situation and make the perpetrators of the electoral irregularities accountable for their actions;

6. Urges the Kenyan authorities to guarantee in all circumstances the physical and psychological integrity of KPTJ members and all human rights defenders in the country and to put an end to all acts of harassment directed against human rights defenders in Kenya;

7. Calls on both sides urgently to engage in tangible remedial action through negotiation; supports, in this regard, further mediation efforts by a panel of African elders led by Kofi Annan, the former United Nations Secretary-General;

8. Calls on the Presidency of the European Union and the Commission to monitor closely the mediation mission led by Kofi Annan and, if required, to ensure an immediate continuation of those mediation efforts by a high-level European Union delegation, possibly in the context of a joint EU-AU initiative; calls on the Commission to offer to the Kenyan authorities all necessary technical and financial assistance in the process of an independent examination of the presidential elections, as well as in the steps deemed necessary to redress the situation;

9. Welcomes the fact that the newly elected parliament showed its independence by the election of Mr Kenneth Marende as its speaker and underlines the decisive role to be played by that parliament in restoring civil liberties in Kenya;

10. Calls for concrete measures to establish a truly impartial Election Commission which will be better able to conduct free and fair elections in the future;

11. Draws attention to the statement by Samuel Kivuitu, Chairman of the ECK, who has distanced himself from the presidential election results published in the media and called for an independent inquiry into the allegations of fraud;

12. Calls for fresh presidential elections should it prove impossible to organise a credible and fair recount of the votes cast in the presidential election by an independent body;

13. Regrets the failure to take advantage of the opportunity provided by the 2007 presidential elections to consolidate and further develop the electoral and wider democratic process;

14. Calls on the leadership of the political parties to take responsibility for preventing further violence in the country, demonstrate a commitment to the rule of law and guarantee respect for human rights;

15. Is deeply preoccupied by the social repercussions of the current economic crisis, its detrimental effect on the country’s socio-economic development and the economic consequences for neighbouring countries, which depend to a large extent on Kenya’s infrastructures and whose humanitarian situation is being undermined by the crisis;

16. Calls on the Kenyan Government and the Commission to arrange rapid humanitarian assistance to the internally displaced people and to provide all necessary humanitarian relief workers;

17. Calls on the relevant authorities to ensure free and independent press coverage and to reinstate live broadcasting with immediate effect;

18. Regrets the disbursement of European Development Fund budget aid to the Kibaki government directly after the elections, which could be misconceived as demonstrating political bias, and asks for all further budgetary support to the government of Kenya to be frozen until a political resolution to the present crisis has been achieved;

19. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the governments of the Member States, the government of Kenya, the Co-Presidents of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly and the Chairmen of the Commission and the Executive Council of the African Union.

Driving the violence

Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Kenyans for Peace, Truth, Justice
Statement from Concerned Citizens and Governance, Human Rights and Legal Organizations

We speak in the name of Kenya's governance, human rights and legal organizations, as well as the concerned citizens who have been working with us over the past weeks.


We have received alarming reports from human rights monitors in Nairobi’s low-income areas. They report that local political leaders are mobilising gangs of youth to deter attendance at rallies called by the Orange Democratic Movement on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

These leaders are taking advantage of the police ban on the said rallies to incite youth along tribal lines, with calls to rise up and ‘defend their government’. This information is already causing great anxiety amongst residents of the affected areas, causing further displacements of families as they seek to flee the threat of violence. These insidious activities are confined to low income, high population areas, Police protection for the poorest sections of society is sadly wanting, allowing such militia to rein havoc.

The continued ban on public rallies creates an environment for the criminal element to breed fear and perpetrate acts of violence against innocent Kenyans. The ban creates the impression that the government is at war with its citizens, and that citizens need to take sides-perhaps even through violence. This situation is untenable. Unless addressed, we fear it will degenerate into a catastrophic cycle of ethnic hate and violence.

We hereby reaffirm the universal right to organise and assemble. We ask the police to uphold this right, and protect the lives of each and every Kenyan citizen, regardless of ethnic origin, economic status, or political persuasion.

The continued lack of dialogue between the Party of National Unity and the Orange Democratic Movement is driving further divisions between communities in the country. We urge comprehensive dialogue not only to redress the electoral travesty that took place, but to also address the underlying causes of ethnic division and political violence in our nation.

Lastly we urge the police to investigate these reports with haste, and to immediately arrest the said perpetrators of political violence, and to ensure adequate security and protection in the affected areas and other political hotbeds around the country in the days to come.

Nairobi's Kiss FM radio station

is the one station that has most consistently challenged Kibaki's illegal ban on live broadcasts. And continued to bring voices for Peace With Truth and Justice to Kenyans.

So I was delighted to be invited onto their Big Breakfast show yesterday, to share excerpts and talk about my Letter to Kivuitu. I also recorded a reading of the full letter for them. If their lawyers give the go-ahead, Kiss FM will lay down a musical soundtrack under the words, and play the piece as often as they can, on all their shows.

Parliament opens Tuesday

ODM and everyone who feels Kibaki is in office illegitimately and illegally considers him to be re-convening parliament on the basis of his first term.

Two Constitutional principles are at play here:

1) The President serves a five year term. Kibaki's five-year term expired on December 30th. Hence the PNU excuse for haste at swearing him on that day.

2) The President continues to serve until a new President is sworn in.

As the current situation is unenvisaged in the Constitution, the assumption has been that second principle prevails.

It is in everyone's interest to have a new Parliament in place for the next phase of the struggle. This includes who'll sit on government side - not just a symbolic but also a constitutional question, given that the majority party, in this case ODM, is meant to do so.

Kirui Statement - ECK Whistleblower

Kipkemoi Arap Kirui is a bravel whistle blower who stood up for the truth at KICC when the ECK's gang of 22 was robbing the nation. It is now being claimed he was never an ECK employee. Before he went to exile, Arap Kirui, was known for over a decade in the Kenyan human rights community as a man of irreproachable integrity. His statement below is available both in soft and hard copy at the KNCHR.

STATEMENT

My name is Kipkemoi arap Kirui, 40 years on January 24th. I am a Clerk Assistant at the National Assembly working at the Table Office. I am a lawyer.

This is my statement of activities that took place at the Electoral Commission of Kenya’s National Election Centre at the Kenyatta International Conference, Nairobi in December 2007 during the nomination and voting exercise.

I am writing this statement on January 2, 2008 in hiding. I am not able to lay my hands on a number of documents which would provide further evidence of the irregularities that I witnessed during the vote tallying exercise.

Sometimes late in November 2007, after I proceeded on my annual leave, I received telephone and later written instructions from Principal Clerk, Mrs. Consolata Munga, on behalf of the Clerk of the National Assembly assigning me duties at the Electoral Commission of Kenya to assist in the General Elections Nomination Exercise and later at the National Tallying Centre after the voting was concluded.

The nomination exercise was orderly. At least at the ECK nominations processing centre. I was in charge of Coast and Nairobi. Though I was apprehensive about Lang’ata and Kamukunji constituencies, the exercise went on smoothly.

On December 19, 2007 I got another phone call from Mr. Mutungi a colleague from the National Assembly Hansard Department asking me to report at the KICC. He told me that I had been assigned the duties of a Team Leader of Team II (Night Duty). I was at my home in Western Kenya. I took a bus the next day for Nairobi. I arrived the same evening and reported at the KICC National Tallying Centre. Work had not started. So I proceeded to my residence to rest. I reported to work early on December 21st and found a slow briefing process going on. The officers in charge of staff were a Mr. Simon Njoroge Inegene (a nice gentleman I later learned was a Human Resource Officer with the ECK, and effectively in charge of staff at the venue temporarily hired by ECK for the election exercise), and others were Mr. Njogu, Mr. Laichena, Mr. Koech and Mr. Chepsat who I never got to interact with so much except in their course of issuing instructions. They took us through some briefing.

The staff at the National Tallying Centre were largely school leavers and students in colleges in town. They were handpicked by officials from ECK. The briefing process was haphazard and wanting in many ways. Recruitment of staff continued until the eve of the Election Day.

Duties: I was made the Deputy Team Leader of Team II (Night) under a Mr. Chris Musyoka. Things later changed and a Mr. Malonza was posted. He never stayed long and a Mr. Njuguna was posted as Team Leader. At one time on the night of 28th Mr. Njuguna admitted to the team that he did not understand what he was expected to do. He asked that I assist. I was already apprehensive because around this time, a number of my colleagues who were in other teams were smelling mischief. We went round whispering. It was tense. We were expected to make calls to Returning Officers (ROs) to start receiving preliminary results where vote counting had been concluded. For the Presidential Elections, the ROs must deliver physical copies of the statutory declarations. The ROs are not empowered to vary results declared at the tallying level. Most of the ROs had been allocated satellite phones, mobile phones and adequate airtime for the exercise. They also had Fax machines. Each Team at the KICC also had five telephone/fax lines. The process was supposed to be smooth. We were supposed to have received the preliminary results by midnight.

I was in charge of Galole, Bura, Lamu West, Lamu East, Taveta, Wundanyi, Mwatate, Voi, Dujis, Lagdera, Fafi, Ijara, Wajir North, Wajir South, Wajir West, Wajir East, Mandera West, Mandera East, Moyale, North Horr, Saku and Laisamis constituencies as a Deputy Team Leader (Night).

On the night of the 28th we sat for long hours without any call from the Returning Officers. We attempted to call them one by one. There were 21 constituencies under my charge. There was no response until about five in the morning when some who sounded sleepy and uncooperative refused to give any information saying they had nothing to give. They would then hang up. Some rendered themselves completely unreachable. I left work at 7.00 am. Concerned.

I left the Hall to find strong General Service Unit (GSU) police officers within the building on every floor and outside the building arranged a metre a part round City Hall Way, Parliament Road, Harambee Avenue and Taifa Road. They had sophisticated weapons, namely, powerful machine guns, grenades and teargas canisters. [It was a scene of tension building up typical of what I saw in the famous movies ‘Hotel Rwanda and ‘100 Days’. I must also indicate here that I had accompanied officials of the KNCHR and Kenyan Members of Parliament to Rwanda in 2004 on what I regarded as a ‘pilgrimage to conscience’. I still went back to Rwanda in 2006. I decided to commit myself to the course of human rights and justice]. I went to sleep. I did not have a wink. I watched the news coming in in consternation. The results were coming in too slowly.

I took some light lunch and proceeded to work at 5.00 pm. I never used my car. Matatus were hard to come by. So I left early. I alighted at the Times Tower bus stage and walked up the few metres to KICC Harambee Avenue gate. It was barricaded by the GSU. I was asked to go round to the City Hall Way gate. It took me around twenty minutes to get through the GSU stops and questioning (This would ordinarily take a minute). I got to the office at 7.15pm.

December 29th. It was tense. The day staff had left in a huff. Never handed over to me. They handed over to my new Team Leader. Constituencies received: Lamu East, Lamu West, Wundanyi and Dujis. The statutory documents Forms 16A, 17 and 17A did not accompany them. I refused to deal with them. For most of the night, we kept calling the ROs. The Ijara, Galole, Wundanyi and Dujis statutory documents were never received at all.

Why? The Day Team Leaders responsible did not sign for receiving them. They left it to us. Form 16As had not arrived. There was word going round that we do not accept results without Form 16A because my colleagues doubted the incoming data. Work stopped until around midnight when one sleepy looking guy was ushered in. He was from Moyale. He started with a quick doze. He did not have his Forms 16A, 17 and 17A. I asked him to rest while I consulted. I talked to a Mr. Chepsat who advised that I do not receive the results. I did not. Hours later Chairman Kivuitu would be going public with Moyale results. After Moyale, we received Saku and Laisamis. No Forms 16A, 17 and 17A again. I refused to receive them. My Team Leader went ahead to receive them nonetheless. ECK Chairman went ahead to announce them. The figures were in a number of instances overstated. I was perturbed. There is no reason why the ROs did not get back to us with the statutory documents three days after the vote tallying at the constituency.

My colleagues informed me of reduction and suppression of results in some constituencies. This is when I raised the alarm. I hit the roof. I pulled my Team Leader Mr. Njuguna aside and I started by saying “My brother, this is an important national exercise. I am concerned that we are not following the law and we are letting down Kenyans …” He told me that he was recommending to his bosses that I be removed because I was proving difficult. He actually went ahead to report me to a Mr. Koech who dismissed him and asked him to cooperate and work with me. He went back to the work station. I came back to find him addressing the team members. I informed them that I regarded the work we were doing as an important national exercise and it demanded patriotism and a non partisan approach to issues. I told him that I demanded his respect and cooperation. He said I should leave if I so wished. I left in a huff…

I feared for my life. I never took the matter up with ECK Commissioners.