After just a year in power, how is Kenya’s coalition government doing? Well, to many in the East African nation it seems unimpressive and out of touch.

With corruption scandals mounting and his government reeling from public disapproval, President Mwai Kibaki called his first news conference in years — to talk about his wife.

To widespread bemusement,  he chose not to address national problems, but to rail against media stories that he had a second wife.

For many, the bizarre event symbolised a disconnect between leaders and people that is jeopardising a divided coalition government and fuelling disillusionment.

“Yeah, yeah. Who cares?” asks one woman in a camp for internal refugees, turning away from Kibaki on TV in a withering portrait by Kenya’s leading political cartoonist, Gado.

People complain the unity government of Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga is simply failing them.

“We are dying and being killed. We are being repressed and oppressed … And Kibaki talks about his personal life!” said commentator Keguro Macharia.

Some Kenyans predict the coalition will split. Others want a new election.

Yet with memories of last year’s post-election violence still raw, and given Kibaki’s survival of past crises, some analysts say the government will just limp along chaotically until a 2012 poll.

“It’s a horrible conundrum,” said a foreign diplomat in Nairobi. “Kenya obviously needs a fresh start, but that risks inviting in the demons again. The alternative is stagnation and paralysis for the next three years, which is sad.”

Civil society groups say the coalition government is guilty of runaway corruption in almost every ministry.

The government is further provoking the public by failing to take seriously accusations that security forces have killed hundreds of people illegally, critics say. Thousands of students took to the streets on Tuesday in a protest against the alleged killings.

The disillusionment seems to have taken a generalised aspect beyond the usual tribal and party political lines.

“There is a revolutionary feeling,” anti-graft activist Mwalimu Mati told Reuters.

In one survey last month, when Kenyans were asked what was the coalition’s greatest achievement, 70 percent said none.

Another poll this week showed a third of Kenyans want a new election, although two-thirds also said they feared another round of violence at the next election.

Adding to the tense politics, Odinga’s wing of government — borne out of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement that says the Dec. 27 presidential election was stolen from it — says Kibaki’s side is riding roughshod over it.

Some members of Kibaki’s Party of National Unity have told ODM to get out of government if they do not agree with its appointments, statements and decisions.

Odinga is in a bind, seeing his reputation fall fast as he is part of a non-reforming, under-performing government, but loath to go back into opposition.

His claim to moral authority has been dented, too, by accusations that one of his men, Agriculture Minister William Ruto, was responsible for kickbacks and corruption. Ruto denies the charges.

Odinga’s frustration is obvious. After the murder of two rights activists last week, he even warned that Kenya was “hurtling towards failure as a state.”

Kibaki has stayed largely silent and above the fray.

Plenty of government ministers and parliamentarians openly acknowledge that much is wrong in Kenya right now, although they accuse critics of exaggerating the problem for political ends.

For now, Kenya’s common people, or “wanainchi” as they call themselves in Swahili, are pleading for more responsible government.

A U.N. investigator has castigated Kenya’s police force for hundreds of alleged extra-judicial killings and called for both its chief and the Attorney General to be fired immediately.
 
In a scathing indictment of the east African country’s security forces, Philip Alston, the U.N. rapporteur on extradicial executions, said he had received overwhelming evidence during a 10-day tour of systematic, widespread regular and carefully planned killings by the police. He said they were “free to kill at will” and did so with impunity for motives ranging from private disputes to extortion, to shooting a suspect instead of making an arrest. “The Kenyan police are a law unto themselves and they kill often and with impunity, ” said Alston, a law professor from Australia. In a statement laced with angry sarcasm, he accused the police of failing to provide him with virtually any of the information he sought, including the number of officers in the force. He supported allegations that police had killed 500 suspected members of the notorious Mungiki crime gang in 2007 in an attempt to exterminate it and 400, mostly opposition, demonstrators during a post election crisis last year — as reported by an official inquiry. Army and police are also accused of torturing and killing at least 200 people in an offensive to suppress a rebel movement in western Kenya.
 
Alston demanded the immediate dismissal of Police Commissioner Hussein Ali but did not stop there. He said long-serving Attorney General Amos Wako, who he accused of consistently obstructing attempts to prosecute those in high positions for extrajudicial executions, must also go, calling him the embodiment of a system of impunity. Alston added that Kenya’s judicial system was bankrupt and another obstacle to achieving justice.  And he even attacked President Mwai Kibaki for remaining completely silent about impunity.
 
Alston’s condemnation was perhaps the most high profile and powerful in recent years but it follows numerous reports by human rights groups about extrajudicial killings by the police. Ali, an army general who has led the force for five years, has survived numerous other controversies.
 
The government spokesman, Alfred Mutua, who as a sideline produces a popular television cop squad drama, immediately rubbished Alston’s statement, saying he had not been in the country long enough to draw accurate conclusions. But Kenya’s biggest newspaper, the Daily Nation, noted in an editorial that this was a routine response from the government and the U.N. official’s report could not be dismissed so lightly, an opinion shared by the other big daily, the Standard. But the government appears set to ignore even such high profile criticism, as it has done with allegations against the police in the past.
 
The case also underlines the divisions within Kenya’s unwieldy Grand Coalition government, set up almost a year ago to end ethnic bloodletting after the disputed election that killed around 1,300 people. Alston was invited to carry out his investigation by this very government, although it is not clear who did so. He said Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Justice Minister Martha Karua had expressed concern about his report. Odinga was quoted in the Nation as saying: “We must act on the report. No one will be spared. I am not willing to compromise on this one.” He doesn’t seem to have spoken to Mutua.  
 
But whatever Odinga says, nobody is holding their breath for a radical overhaul of the police despite wide public disgust over their tactics. A recent opinion poll showed that 70 percent of Kenyans surveyed felt the coalition government had achieved nothing since it was formed last April. Only 33 percent thought any political or business leader guilty of organising the election violence would ever be convicted. Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who led mediation to end the crisis, warned that political manoeuvres delaying the establishment of a tribunal on the violence threatened the country’s stability.
 
Will Kenya ever tackle these fundamental problems? Will violent police ever be brought to book?

A new book on corruption in Kenya is considered so explosive there that copies are only being sold under the counter in Nairobi by some book sellers too nervous to display them openly.

“Within these pages, we stand eyeball to eyeball with corruption. The book is an ironclad tell-all that mercilessly bares all to the light,” said the local Sunday Nation newspaper in a review of Michela Wrong’s book. “It feels dangerous to just read, let alone write.”

Just published, “It’s Our Turn to Eat” tells the story of Kenyan anti-corruption whistleblower John Githongo, who uncovered details of one of the country’s biggest scandals, the $750 million Anglo Leasing affair involving inflated security contracts.

At the heart of the book is a portrayal of an ethnic clique intent on enriching itself and holding on to power - a picture familiar to many other African states.

We are told that, as Githongo’s investigation deepens, the circle of suspects widens to include many senior officials, members of the Kikuyu tribe, Kenya’s biggest, to which Githongo and President Mwai Kibaki belong. When he made his findings public in 2006, Githongo was vilified by critics for betraying his tribe in exposing “Africa’s Watergate”.

“The title of the book is an appeal Githongo’s colleagues made to him: ‘It’s our turn to eat, John. Don’t rock the boat’,” said former British envoy, Edward Clay, who once equated the Kenyan government’s tolerance of grand corruption to vomiting on the shoes of the donors who provide aid. “For the corrupters it is a sweat provoker,” he said at the book’s launch in London.

Wrong’s book is being serialised in Kenya’s biggest newspapers, The Nation and The Standard, at a time when the government is again tainted by scandal.

Since Kibaki’s disputed re-election set off tribal-based clashes that killed at least 1,300 people last year, a unity government bringing in leaders from other ethnic groups including the Luo and Kalenjin, as well as Kikuyu, has been accused of foul play over everything from the sale of a hotel to fuel and maize supplies.
   
Even for a nation used to hearing about corrupt practices, the scandal involving the mismanagement of maize reserves has stoked anger at a time 10 million Kenyans face starvation.

“People are really mad because politicians used a system devised to bring down maize flour prices to enrich themselves,” said one Kenyan professional in Nairobi. “The flour is still expensive, inflation is up and drought is threatening lives. People are baying for blood.”

For many kenyans, it seems Kibaki’s promise to end graft, the pledge that first brought him to power in 2002, sounds as hollow as ever.

So, what can be done?

Wrong argues that the key to fighting graft in Africa does not lie in fresh legislation or new institutions.
   
In Kenya, as in many other countries, the anti-corruption body is “part of the grand corrupters’ game, providing them with another bureaucratic wall behind which to shield, another scapegoat to blame for lack of progress,” she says.

“Rather than dreaming up sexy-sounding short cuts, donors should be pouring their money into the boring old institutions African regimes have deliberately starved of cash over the
years: the police force, the judicial system and civil service”.

Donors, she said, “would do better to target the Western companies, lawyers’ chambers and banks which make it possible for crooked African leaders to spirit hundreds of millions of dollars out of the continent each year.”

Do you think that would help? Do Githongo and other whistleblowers make a difference?

President Mwai Kibaki’s naming of a key ally, Uhuru Kenyatta, as his new finance minister to replace another supporter, Amos Kimunya, does not come as a surprise to some.
Kimunya, who stepped down last July after he was accused of corruption in the handling of the sale of a luxury hotel, has also returned to parliament — replacing Kenyatta as trade minister.
Kimunya was not reinstated even after he was cleared by an official enquiry into the controversial sale of the luxury Grand Regency Hotel in the capital.

The long wait for someone to fill the finance position suggested to some that Kibaki was not comfortable bringing his ally back, given his tainted name.
His appointment to the trade ministry could mean Kibaki did not want to lose him from the cabinet altogether, although some analysts say it was a move to save face.
Pundits also say Kibaki did not have much room to manoeuvre in picking Kenyatta. Many MPs who support the president are parliamentary neophytes without much experience in running a powerful ministry like the treasury.

But the wealthy Kenyatta is an old name in Kenyan politics. His father was an independence hero and the east African country’s first president.
Political analysts think Kibaki could be positioning key allies, such as Kenyatta and Kimunya, for a stab at the presidency in 2012.
Ironically, Kenyatta contested for the top job against Kibaki in 2002. But the finance ministry post will not be easy. Kenya macroeconomic indicators are weak — GDP growth in 2008 is estimated to have halved to 3.5 percent, compared with 7 percent in 2007, and annual inflation in December reached a staggering 27.7 percent.
The budget deficit is yawning and is expected to widen further as the government subsidises food costs for some 10 million Kenyans facing hunger.
The government also faces uncertainty financing its $12 billion budget for the current fiscal year after it was forced to cancel plans for a $500 million Eurobond because of the global economic woes.
This is further exacerbated by tighter revenue flows.
So even though Kibaki may have appointed Kenyatta with 2012 in mind, the difficult job of getting the economy to grow during a global recession might not endear the new finance minister to many in the poor country.
Has Kibaki made a good decision?

Long-suffering Kenyans have once again had their hopes dashed of a new era of political progress freed from the depredations of their notoriously venal politicians, after a wave of high-level corruption scandals and factional squabbling inside the government. 
 
President Mwai Kibaki first won power in 2002 riding a wave of popular support for his promises to end the corruption and  misgovernment of his predecessor, Daniel arap Moi. Disillusion soon set in with massive graft scandals that mirrored the worst of the Moi years tarnishing Kibaki’s image as a reformer.
 
Then hopes rose again last April when a “Grand Coalition” was formed between Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga to end two months of brutal ethnic bloodshed after a disputed election, in which at least 1,300 people died and 300,000 were forced from their homes. Despite the formation of the biggest and most expensive government since independence to pander to  the interests of both sides in the election dispute, there was optimism that a wind of change was blowing after decades of abuse by politicians pursuing only narrow tribal and regional interests as well as lining their own pockets.
 
Kenyans sick of the old political class had swept away more than 60 percent of parliament in a powerful vote for change. The new law-makers were said to be of a different cloth, more professional and educated and interested in the welfare of the nation .
 
Early signs were promising with Kibaki and Odinga reported to have struck up a strong and productive relationship and cooperating on policies that brushed aside the protests and pressures of powerful political pressure groups.
 
But the early optimism generated by the post-election settlement has dissipated less than a year later.  Squabbles between Kibaki’s PNU party and Odinga’s ODM, who accuse the president’s close supporters of bypassing them to force through controversial decisions they oppose, are so bad that a new 12-member committee has been set up to mediate within the government. The MPs, already among the world’s best paid, refused to back down on voting themselves fat tax-free allowances despite heavy criticism and pushed through a media bill seen both at home and outside Kenya as a blatant infringement of the rights of the country’s vibrant press - a powerful democratic force.
 
But worst of all, the recent revelation of a string of scandals ranging from the tourist authority to the theft of millions of dollars of petroleum products are a clear sign that not much has changed. The sheer scale of the accusations of graft has shocked many Kenyans. The most damaging is over the diversion of precious reserves of maize, Kenya’s staple food, to bogus millers while almost a third of the population are facing famine because of a long drought. As myriad scandals came to light, the heads of the cereals, petroleum and tourism authorities were all sacked. “In one year only, Kenyans have been treated to a magnitude of corruption they have never seen,” said Okong’o O’Mogeni of the Law Society of Kenya.
 
Foreign analysts say the coalition government is likely to survive its many disputes and will probably last until the next elections scheduled in 2012. None of the parties benefitting from the bloated coalition government are thought likely to want to precipitate a political crisis before then and much manoeuvring is focused on who will make a run for the presidency when Kibaki has to step down after his second term. The relative stability, unexpected when the post-election crisis ended in April, has encouraged positive forecasts for Kenya’s growth by 2010 in contrast to many other frontier markets.

But when will Kenyans get the honest politicians so many of them yearn for, so that this country can develop its full potential as a gateway to a wide swathe of central and eastern Africa and meet the government’s goal of turning it into a prosperous, well-governed country by 2012?

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki’s New Year address had a sobering message; east Africa’s biggest economy should brace for a tough year because of the global financial crisis.

It was not the most encouraging message after a year that had few silver linings for the country of 36 million, still recovering from a bout of post-election violence early last year.

But the global crisis has strained even some of the world’s most advanced economies as well as many across Africa and Kibaki was not about to shield Kenyans from reality. He even cancelled the traditional New Year’s Eve state ball that is held in his official residence in Mombasa, on the steamy Indian Ocean coast.

Government minsters and officials, used to ushering in the New Year with a waltz with their spouses at the party, had to quickly make new plans for the occasion.

Indeed, redrawing plans, revising growth numbers and tightening belts is a routine which Kenyan officials are used to by now. Last week, the economic secretary in the ministry of finance told Reuters that growth estimates for 2008 had been lowered to less than 3.5-4 percent, down from an earlier forecast of 4.5-6 percent.

In the same week, the government stated its intention to declare a national emergency over a drought that has left about 10 million facing starvation.

In the trendy parts of Nairobi, all seems to be fine.

Young urban professionals still flock the numerous malls and coffee houses for a bit of shopping and animated catch-ups over drinks.

But underneath the calm, most have had to tighten their belts. A newspaper cartoonist depicted how hard times were forcing a rethink of cultural norms. Families were dispensing with the tradition of sharing a meal with visitors by asking them to carry their own food.

What expectations do you have for Kenya in 2009? How is the global crisis being felt elsewhere in Africa?

After a decade of rampant destruction of the Mau forest water catchment in western Kenya, the country’s coalition government seems firmly united in trying to save the complex before more serious damage is inflicted on the economy.

U.N. officials say this is no longer simply an environmental issue but something that has huge importance for the whole country. Already two of the top three foreign exchange earners — tourism and tea — are feeling the impact of falling water levels which have also forced the postponement of a major hydro-electric project. 

Prime Minister Raila Odinga describes the forest’s destruction as a national emergency. Both foreign and local officials say there is no gap between Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki on the issue.

Saving the forest will involve huge costs to resettle and compensate some of the thousands of people living illegally there and restore tree cover which produces vital supplies of water. Officials say they expect international donors to provide major financial help.

Until a few months ago, the destruction of the forest was a familiar story of land grabbing, illegal logging and the allocation of government land to try to win votes. It began in 1997 when the government of Daniel arap Moi gave large plots away in exchange for electoral support.

Then, this year, the United Nations flew Odinga and other officials over the forest to show them the extent of the destruction, shocking them into urgent action.

The government is pushing ahead despite the fact that many of the area’s MPs and voters belong to Odinga’s ODM party. Unlike the past, political considerations are being pushed to one side in the national interest. U.N. officials call this process unique for a country long blighted by the depradations of powerful and greedy politicians.

This momentum is all the more striking because Odinga and Kibaki were bitter enemies before and during a bloody political crisis in the first two months of this year when around 1,500 people died in tribally-based clashes following the president’s disputed victory in an election.

Does the Mau forest issue mark a turning point in Kenyan politics or is it a one-off. What do you think?

Only a few months ago, it seemed all doom and gloom for the Kenyan economy as post-election violence threatened to wipe out gains and stymy growth.
 
Tourists were cancelling safari and beach holidays in their droves. Gangs were rampaging around the agricultural heartlands. And few would dare to journey on roads full of boulders, burning tyres and knife-wielding youths.
 
Yet even back then, some analysts argued that East Africa’s strongest economy should be able to withstand the electoral crisis, provided it was brought to a rapid halt.

And stop it did, after President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga buried their differences over who won the Dec. 27 vote in a coalition government formed in April.
 
Now foreign and local investors have given a resounding thumbs-up to Kenya’s economy via the largest InItial Public Offering in the region’s history. The offer for mobile operator Safaricom was over-subscribed by 532 percent, shares leapt 50 percent in the first hours of trading and 860,000 people bought shares via the IPO. 
So is Safaricom indicative of Kenya’s recovery, or is there still a long way to go?
 
Have investors got over the shock they received earlier this year?
 
How does Kenya compare to other sub-Saharan African nations — neighbours Uganda and Tanzania; or heavyweights South Africa and Nigeria — as an investment destination? Which are the sectors to put money in?
 
And can the shaky coalition hold?