Raila: I am not willing to take insults and defiant acts from PNU partners

Sunday Nation: You have issued stinging criticism of President Kibaki in recent days. What has changed?

Raila Odinga: What I’ve been talking about is first the macro-issues of the government. The way the government is trying to discharge its responsibilities and tackling reforms. Then there is the micro – the nitty gritty of how the government is operating. A time has reached when we can’t keep some of these things under the carpet. After what happened at Kilaguni, we felt that it was necessary for the country to know the truth about the inside happenings.

What is your specific criticism of President Kibaki?

There’s always need for consultations, disclosure and confidence, particularly when you are running a coalition government. It’s different from when you are running a government of one political party where the President can act and explain himself later. We are coalition partners and partners have a responsibility to their constituency. If decisions are made, and you are not consulted, you look irrelevant. That’s why we have always demanded that there be consultations and that our support should not be taken for granted. We are an equal partner in the coalition.

You have weekly meetings with the President. Has this not been an adequate avenue for discussion?

When we meet, we compare notes and diaries. But in between, other things happen and you are informed as if in second place. Examples are when heads of state and government visit the country – Turkey, Iran, Burundi. They come here and you only get to know after. Discussions and negotiations take place in State House and you only get to know after. Or even when the President travels out of the country and signs agreements and we are not informed. There are other details that I don’t want to go public about, but what I’m saying is that there has been little consultation.

Does that go for government appointments as well?

Exactly. A major appointment is made – vice-chancellors, chancellors, diplomats, judges, PSs, parastatal chiefs – without consultations at all. The law may specify that the President appoints but that is a president who is not leading a coalition government. When a president is leading a coalition government then those powers need to be shared. There need to be consultations.

They will tell you that the Accord contradicts certain sections of the constitution. The fact is that the Accord says that if there is contradiction, then the Accord prevails. The Accord itself is part of the constitution and it creates a government led by two principals. They want to run a coalition government the way they have been running one-party governments in the past. They just want to ignore clear provisions in the constitution.

What corrective measures can be taken?

We must sit down and discuss. For example, the killings of the Oscar Foundation human rights activists . . . I went public and said that we need to engage the services of other institutions because the police are themselves suspects, thus our appeal to the international community.

The US government came forward and offered assistance of the FBI working together with the Kenya Police. I wrote to the minister for Internal Security, instructing him to operationalise this offer and make it possible for the FBI officers to team up with the police. I copied the letter to the President and the US Embassy.

To my surprise, nothing was done. Neither did the minister respond to the letter. Instead, they wrote to the ministry of Foreign Affairs asking them to respond to the US government telling them that the government had rejected the offer because Kenya had the competence and there were suspects in custody.

I did not know about this correspondence until I learned about it from the US Embassy. That is an act of insubordination. The minister for Internal Security falls under the PM. We thought we’d find the answers in Kilaguni. We’d agreed to go to a secluded place and talk openly and frankly to each other. There was not supposed to be any media there initially. When we got there, the media was there, even the Presidential Press Unit. There was no secrecy any more.

From your vantage point, where are we headed to as a country?

What we are demanding is that we sit and discuss these issues frankly, to take stock of what has happened and how the management systems can be strengthened. Look at Agenda 4. We need to fast-track this agenda. I’m talking of electoral reforms, judicial reforms, police reforms, constitutional review, regional disparities – these are fundamental reforms that are lagging behind.

What happened to the promise by you and the President to sack ministers?

The media had its own agenda. The President said that those who were dissatisfied should quit. I had talked of ministers against whom there is proof of involvement in corruption. But again, all that kind of thing will come when we want to look at the Cabinet and we want to reshuffle. It’s not just individuals that we want to deal with but institutions. If heads roll and the system remains, even the new ones will continue to do the same things.

What do you make of Ms Martha Karua’s resignation from the Cabinet?

I’m on record saying that when she felt she was ineffective she had a right to resign. This is just one isolated case. You will remember that I talked of the need for radical reforms in the Judiciary, and I have said that the Chief Justice is himself an impediment to reforms in the Judiciary.

I once suggested that we introduce performance contracts in the Judiciary, and this was resisted by the CJ. I have been on record that the entire criminal justice system – the State Law Office, the Judiciary, the Police, the KACC – needs reforms. The war against corruption cannot be won when these institutions are not working in tandem.

When you think of the MoU you signed with President Kibaki in 2002 and the National Accord you signed with him five years later, do you get a sense of déjà vu?

Circumstances are different this time. The MoU was not legally enforceable then. This time round, the government is entrenched in the constitution. The situation is different.

Is the atmosphere for reform right, given how the coalition partners are treating each other?

The only time we have achieved reforms in this country is when Kenyans have stood firm and forced the Executive to agree to some reforms. I know that we are dealing with a conservative elite that is very happy to perpetuate the status quo. My view is that it’s again time for Kenyans to rally together so that these reforms can at least be achieved. I’m ready and willing to team up with the rest of Kenyans in the process of pushing for these reforms.

Do you regret signing the National Accord?

I don’t regret it. It was the only option available to us at the time. People were dying. There were people hell-bent on retaining political power irrespective of the cost. Many more lives would have been lost, and Kenya would have disintegrated if I had not agreed to negotiate and eventually sign the accord. It was the best decision and I have no regrets.

You recently referred to the 2007 elections; who won, who lost. Is that still relevant to Kenyans?

I don’t think it is good to go back there. But I will quote Mr Kriegler (the South African judge who chaired a commission of inquiry into the disputed elections) when he came to see me in my office and prefaced our conversation this way:

“Raila, every child and every fool in this country knows who won the election. I don’t think that it is my responsibility to tell Kenyans who won the elections. I don’t think that it is my responsibility to tell Kenyans who won or lost the elections. I don’t think that I would support the process of healing and reconciliation if I go that route. So I want to tell you that I’m not going to waste my effort going that route. My recommendations will come out in a way that is going to be supportive of the process of healing in order to avoid a recurrence of what this country went through.”

That is what is not known to Kenyans, and that is why he came up with a winding statement that the election was too flawed to tell who won or lost. He was just playing diplomacy. It’s not that we didn’t know. I don’t want to go back to that, but when you are pushed too hard and people trash you; when you see people not accepting the Accord, you sometimes feel constrained to remind them that is where we are coming from.

I don’t want to talk about remunerations for example. I didn’t talk about it until Muthaura went before the Akiwumi commission and talked about it. You’d ask yourself: Who sent Muthaura? How can a civil servant be talking about the salary of a PM? That should be the work of MPs at the very best. He’s just a PS. How would he get the courage to talk about government. Who is government?

We had not discussed that issue. The other time he was talking about pecking order in government. The President, the VP and the PM. That is a big insult to the ODM fraternity. The ODM has signed an accord between two principals. How does one principal become lower than the assistant to the other principal? Those are the kind of insults that we are not willing to take.

What’s your message to Kenyans at this point in time?

All is not lost. I think that there is still a chance to get things going. What we are demanding right now is to have an opportunity to discuss with our coalition partners. We agreed with Kofi Annan that the President will nominate one person and I will nominate one person who will agree on the agenda for discussions and then the meeting that aborted in Kilaguni will be reconvened maybe in the course of next week, and then we will have the regular Cabinet meetings.

We hope that we will use that opportunity to agree on how to manage this coalition on a day-to-day basis so that we can fast-track the reform agenda. Time is running out because come next year, we will be in mid-term and people will begin to think about the next elections.