Initiate dialogue to stop Kenya’s slide into anarchy
Protestors jumping on the road at Kisumu Boys Roundabout as a teargas canister goes off behind them as they tried to access the CBD during anti-government protests in Kisumu on March 27, 2023.
The last two Mondays of Azimio demonstrations have sparked serious concerns.
There is every indication that despite their planners’ declared intentions and promises of keeping them peaceful, the demonstrations, initially planned for Mondays, until the Kenya Kwanza administration caves in to Azimio's demands are fast assuming chaotic proportions.
Most worrying is that rather than serving the citizenry and living up to its motto of “Utumishi kwa Wote” (Kiswahili for ‘Service to All’), the National Police Service (NPS) is playing partisan with its leadership and officers unabashedly leaning on the Kenya Kwanza side.
The facts are glaring, starting with the NPS Director-General, Mr Japhet Koome’s attempt to impute criminality on Azimio demonstrators and the posting of fake photographs.
Granted, Mr Koome apologised for the fake photographs, blaming it on the pressure under which his officers were working. However, that apology only served to cast the police boss and his entire team in a bad light, seeing his office should be at the forefront of detecting crime and assembling evidence.
Other than NTV’s blow-by-blow account of where and when the fake pictures were taken, Taifa Leo’s headline, ‘Udanganyifu wa DCI’ (DCI lies), won readers’ hearts.
Social media commentators later accused DCI of exposing photojournalists to grave harm. Indeed, demonstrators turned against photojournalists on seeing DCI’s fake posts, accusing them falsely of sharing their photographs with the police.
The foregoing lends credence to the fact that rather than protecting demonstrators, who are protected under the Constitution of Kenya 2010, the fake pictures served to criminalise the protesters. Article 37 of the Constitution states: “Every person has the right, peaceably and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket, and to present petitions to public authorities.”
It is true that demonstrations in Kenya are rarely incident-free, but, at the same time, it is undeniable that demonstrators by and large try to maintain the peace until the police provoke them.
Sadly, when this happens, the demonstrators end up as cannon fodder as already evidenced in the death of a Maseno University student.
Morphing into anarchy
If last week’s protests cast DCI boss Koome in a bad light, those of Monday brought to the fore a disturbing probability… that the demonstrations could be morphing into anarchy as seen in the happenings on Northlands estate, associated with former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s family and the vandalism that was directed at the Odinga family’s Spectre International Limited—a gas cylinder manufacturing enterprise
The sound of power saws as they brought down trees painted a picture of impending anarchy, which, once again, casts the NPS in bad light—that it was not on hand to protect personal property.
This country has laws to protect individual and community land rights. Reckless utterances that are believed to have led to the invasion call for police intervention. Short of this, Kenya is rapidly descending into a state of anarchy whose consequences are too grave to contemplate.
It behoves Azimio and Kenya Kwanza leadership to initiate dialogue for the sake of Kenya.
Ms Kweyu is a consulting editor with The Editorial Centre
