The power vacuum in Nairobi must be expeditiously resolved

Nairobi is one of the top cities of Africa. In East and Central Africa, it is rated the leading financial hub. It has always been a shame that this key metropolis should be run by a charlatan like Mike Sonko. Voters are squarely to blame for falling for his cheap populist theatrics and letting this embarrassment of a governor preside at City Hall.

NIGHTMARE

We should thank the heavens that the roller-coaster that has been Sonko’s governance seems to be ending. He never should have been governor. He can wear his bling for all I care.

What many of us residents objected to was the cavalier style he governed the city. He started as a joke, then slowly became a nightmare. He preferred to run the city without a deputy. County executives were intimidated and sacked at whim. He seemed unable to work well with any senior officer except a cabal that surrounded him and was accused of thuggish tendencies. His general character and behaviour was that of a low-level hooligan.

His habit of recording unsuspecting associates on his cell phones then making the unflattering conversations public is uncouth. Again, who can forget those weird posts on social media when he was dancing like an intoxicated person during a recent visit to France? The lowest of the Sonko farce was when on the Jeff Koinange TV show he said he used to smoke bhang with suspended Kiambu Governor Ferdinand Waititu in a toilet in Parliament when they were MPs. (Waititu was forced to deny ever smoking pot). As if that was not all, there has been talk that Sonko once escaped from Shimo La Tewa prison where he was serving a sentence.

STREET SMART

The governor claims his predicament is all about politics. I don’t know. Even if it is, he is clearly the wrong calibre of leader for the country’s most important county. Nairobi is a complex city that cannot be governed through comic displays and chest-thumping. The city needs a clean administrator, not a drama queen. Nobody knows how the so-called Sonko Rescue Team fits in. Residents must not be lulled to think it can be used  as a solution to the city’s deep structural problems.

Make no mistake, Sonko is very street-smart. He refused to countenance appointing a deputy who would overshadow him. This omission has left the county in its present crisis fumbling to find a way to replace him. In retrospect, his refusal to nominate a deputy governor seems to have been craftily and deliberately designed to remove the prospect of his impeachment because of a clear lack of an obvious replacement. As it is, the law is cumbersome when dealing with the removal of a governor, especially one with no deputy. Knowing this, Sonko has dug in his heels and insisted, absurdly, that he is still in office.

BITE BULLET

Legally, Nairobi MCAs can move to impeach Sonko then the charges be investigated by a Senate committee and upheld by a full Senate vote. Once the Senate confirms the impeachment, the assembly speaker will act as governor pending the election of a new governor in 60 days. Alternatively, the President, acting on a voters’ petition after consultations with the Governors’ Summit and the Senate, can appoint a commission of inquiry to look into the matter of a particular county’s suspension. That county government will stand suspended once the commission’s recommendations to that affect are approved by the Senate. A new county government will be elected in 90 days.

The Executive, the Senate and the MCAs must bite the bullet and act because Nairobi deserves better than the circus it is undergoing.

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Early election results projections on Friday indicate British PM Boris Johnson (BoJo) and his Conservative Party won big. It will strengthen BoJo’s hand in his Brexit plans in the coming year. A key dynamic of the election was the way the Conservatives played on the desire of most voters to exit the European Union whereas the Labour Party and much of the opposition sounded ambivalent. Anyway the victory was not all about BoJo’s savvy. Truth be told, Labour had a lousy candidate in Jeremy Corbyn. He’s an unreconstructed socialist of the old school whose ideas are no longer in fashion in today’s Britain.

UK BREAK-UP

Still, the bigger story in the days to come could be from Scotland, where the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) won a thumping 48 seats. The Scottish nationalists are fiercely opposed to Brexit and ardently favour remaining in the EU. Leaving the EU is popular in England (with the notable exception of London) but not in Scotland. SNP is expected to push for a fresh independence referendum when the PM executes his radical Brexit move. BoJo’s win will turn out to be very costly if it leads to Britain’s break-up.

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