Kenya killing recalls Moi era

The Daily Telegraph ^ | 16th September, 2003 | Adrian Blomfield

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A senior Kenyan academic who called for dramatic cuts in the powers of President Mwai Kibaki was shot dead at the weekend.

Odhiambo Mbai, a political scientist and official of Kenya's constitutional convention, was murdered by gunmen who stormed into his home in Nairobi.

President Mwai Kibaki Dr Mbai told colleagues three days before he died that he had received death threats and was being followed.

A political scientist, he was a senior official of a conference drafting Kenya's new constitution, He had been due to unveil proposals tomorrow to transfer powers from Mr Kibaki to the new post of prime minister.

Mr Kibaki won a landslide electoral victory in December after the resignation of Daniel arap Moi on a manifesto that included cutting the near-dictatorial powers that Mr Moi accumulated in his 20 years in power. Now he insists that he must retain them.

Yash Pal Ghai, the chairman of the constitutional review, accused Mr Kibaki's government of being an enemy of democracy. "Intervention has become more pervasive, more critical, more brutal," he said.

Several political figures were murdered during Mr Moi's presidency, most notably the foreign minister, Robert Ouko, in 1990.

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Kenya's new president has shown himself to be as corrupt, as tribalistic and as murderous as his predecessor, Daniel arap Moi. The U.S. must protest this murder and must withhold all aid until the Kenyan government launches a full investigation (if it is capable of doing that) into a political assassination that was clearly ordered from within the heart of government.

[propertius]

ping

[LenS]

And Africans lose again.