UPDATE
NOW APPEARS OBAMA’S COMMUNIST MUSLIM COUSIN IS PM OF KENYA
Cabinet: Kibaki meets ministers
Story by NATION Team
Publication Date: 2008/04/01
Cabinet ministers have said they are ready to work with ODM leader Raila Odinga to implement the power-sharing deal signed in February, sources close to the meeting have revealed.
President Kibaki chairs a Cabinet meeting at his Harambee House office in Nairobi on Monday. Photo/PPS
In the first formal Cabinet meeting since President Kibaki and the Prime Minister-designate signed the deal to end post-election violence, the ministers also agreed on the need to speed up the resettlement of displaced families.
They also challenged the police to beef up security and crack down on those threatening the refugees who are willing to return to their farms.
However, the 15 ministers said President Kibaki should not share executive authority with any other office. The President can consult on who should be in government but the final say on who should occupy which position should be left to him, sources privy to the talks said.
Determine size
Sources said the ministers wanted the President to determine the size and structure of the Cabinet and insisted that he should not be dictated to.
The team said it was ready to work with Mr Odinga, the Prime Minister-designate, but claimed that he was “a man under siege”.
According to the sources, the ministers said Mr Odinga was “a different man” when he consulted with the President but often appeared to be a changed person after consulting his party.
However, Mr Odinga’s spokesman, Mr Salim Lone, said in an interview with the Nation that the party was ready to meet the Government coalition to resolve the impasse over the Cabinet.
He said ODM had a clear perspective on what the accord signed between President Kibaki and Mr Odinga entailed.
The accord was signed on February 28, to end post-election violence in which over 1,200 people were killed after a dispute over the presidential election results.
The deal also provided for sharing of power between the President’s party, PNU and ODM.
And while addressing the Africa economic minister’s conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Monday, Mr Benjamin Mkapa said the power- sharing deal signed by President Kibaki and Mr Odinga provided the framework for peace.
The former Tanzanian president was a member of the team of eminent Africans that negotiated the deal.
“I don’t think there is a Cabinet crisis since they are already agreed on the framework,” said Mr Mkapa.
Give up slot
He said the task of naming a Cabinet should be left to the two leaders.
According to the sources who attended Monday’s Cabinet meeting, some ministers are said to have expressed willingness to give up the slot of Local Government Ministry to ODM.
The ministry, alongside those of Finance and Internal Security, are among those yet to be agreed on. Both PNU and ODM have been laying claim to the portfolios, sparking the crisis.
However, a Government source later said that the issue of giving up the Local Government seat had not been discussed.
An ODM source later said that the offer was not sufficient.
Monday’s meeting was attended by 15 of the 17 ministers because Foreign Affairs minister Moses Wetang’ula was away on official duties in Maputo, Mozambique, while Science and Technology minister Noah Wekesa was out of Nairobi.
The Cabinet appeared to add new qualifications for those hoping to be in the new line-up to be named by the President and the Prime Minister-designate, Mr Odinga
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/01/23/kenya17859.htm
I knew, the moment Kofi Annan’s name was mentioned, the instigators of the violence in Kenya would be rewarded:
Kenya: Opposition Officials Helped Plan Rift Valley Violence
Police Should Protect Displaced Persons Camps
(Eldoret, January 24, 2008) – Human Rights Watch investigations indicate that, after Kenya’s disputed elections, opposition party officials and local elders planned and organized ethnic-based violence in the Rift Valley, Human Rights Watch said today. The attacks, targeting mostly Kikuyu and Kisii people in and around the town of Eldoret, could continue unless the government and opposition act to stop the violence, Human Rights Watch said.
Human Rights Watch called on the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leadership to take immediate steps to stop its supporters from committing further attacks. At the same time, Human Rights Watch said the Kenyan police should urgently deploy extra officers to the region to protect displaced people and resident Kikuyu communities.
“Opposition leaders are right to challenge Kenya’s rigged presidential poll, but they can’t use it as an excuse for targeting ethnic groups,” said Georgette Gagnon, acting Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “We have evidence that ODM politicians and local leaders actively fomented some post-election violence, and the authorities should investigate and make sure it stops now.”
Research by Human Rights Watch in and around the town of Eldoret, which has borne the brunt of the Rift Valley violence, indicates that attacks by several ethnic communities against others, especially local Kikuyu populations, were planned soon after the elections. In some cases, local elders and opposition politicians appear to have incited and organized the violence. Since December 27, 2007, clashes between members of the Kalenjin and Luya communities and their Kikuyu and Kisii neighbors in the Rift Valley have left more than 400 people dead and have displaced thousands more.
Human Rights Watch interviewed members of several pro-ODM Kalenjin communities who described the ways in which local leaders and ODM party agents actively fomented violence against Kikuyu communities. A Kalenjin preacher in a village in Eldoret North constituency told Human Rights Watch that on the morning of December 29, 2007, a local ODM party mobilizer “called a meeting and said that war had broken in Eldoret town, so the elders organized the youth into groups of not less than 15, and they went to loot [Kikuyu] homes and burn them down.”
The following day, the village held another meeting and the youth marched to the nearby town of Turbo. They were turned away by police. But they returned early the next morning, catching the police off guard, “and burnt almost half of the Kikuyu shops in town, including the petrol station,” according to the preacher. Human Rights Watch visited Turbo and found that most Kikuyu-owned buildings had been laid to ruin by the attackers. Displaced Kikuyu seeking shelter at the police station in Turbo confirmed to Human Rights Watch that their homes and businesses were destroyed by groups of Kalenjin youth.
Human Rights Watch spoke to numerous members of Kalenjin commmunities around Eldoret who provided similar accounts. In many communities, local leaders and ODM mobilizers arranged frequent meetings following the election to organize, direct and facilitate the violence unleashed by gangs of local youth. In one case, an ODM councillor candidate is said to have provided a lorry to ferry youth to burn the homes of Kikuyu families in a neighboring community.
Many Kalenjin community leaders told Human Rights Watch that if the area’s ODM leadership or the local Kalenjin radio station KASS FM told people unequivically to stop attacks on Kikuyu homes, then they believe the violence would stop. “If the leaders say stop, it will stop immediately,” said one Kalenjin elder.
Human Rights Watch also collected accounts from several Kalenjin men present at community meetings where local elders and ODM mobilizers urged Kalenjin residents to contribute money toward the purchase of automatic weapons. Some communities have reportedly managed to obtain such weapons already. The same sources confirmed that plans have already been made to attack camps of displaced Kikuyu and the two remaining neighborhoods in Eldoret town where many Kikuyu homes remain intact – Langas and Munyaka. continued...