I hear there is even an audial recording of it that can be accessed in the net. Anybody has it out there?

Something about helping kales move a certain farming community from the area.
This is bs of the highest order from somebody who should know better.

Ethnic incitement is a suicidal potion

At a time when Kenyans are still grappling with the pain of the mass killings that took place after the bitterly disputed 2007 Presidential election, and also struggling to find ways to dispense justice, an accusation of inciting ethnic hatred is the most scurrilous charge one could make against a leader.

And yet that is exactly what one Moses Kuria has been pandering recently. Having failed to generate sufficient news coverage in the media, he took out a full page advertisement in the Sunday Nation (WHO PAID FOR IT IN SUNDAY NATION?) alleging the Prime Minister had tried in a recent Kass FM interview to turn the Kalenjin against other communities living in the Rift Valley. Mr. Kuria says in the ad that he was filled with “unimaginable fear” as he listened to the Prime Minister”s “dangerous” interview!

If anyone is fanning incitement among communities, it is Mr. Kuria himself with the divisive but unsuccessful campaign he has launched.

Interestingly, he has begun his scurrilous crusade – whose not so hidden motive is to portray the ODM leader as an enemy of the people of the Mt. Kenya region – just as the Prime Minister had undertaken two historic visits to that area, to Meru the previous weekend and to Murang’a a fortnight before that.

The visits to these districts were designed to familiarise the PM with the concrete aspirations of their people for peace, development and a better life, and to understand how the government, and the Prime Minister, could assist them in overcoming the specific obstacles they see standing in their way. The visits were also designed to promote national cohesion and reconciliation.

Indeed, on the very day that Mr. Kuria’s full page ad appeared, there were articles in the media highlighting the impact of these visits, and the appreciation the people and leaders expressed for the PM having undertaken them.

Mr. Kuria’s divisive campaign also comes at a time when Kenyans are so tantalising close to adopting a Constitution after a 20 year long struggle. His is surely a desperate attempt to divert national attention from the key issue of reforms that we need in order to further revitalise and democratise our country and to ensure no community is ever again excluded from its gains.

A small minority of politicians, among whom Mr. Kuria features, have resorted to tribal incitement to prevent passage of the Constitution to protect ill-gotten wealth and power. There are men and women of goodwill who have genuine reservations about some aspect of the Constitution, but there is a small cabal which opposes it to protect their privileges through protecting the status quo.

It is the same approach that the people have adopted on the political front. They do not want their parties to be divisive and to be ethnically partisan, nor do they want their parties to be identified with any particular community. There is rightly great competition as political parties try to woo voters to their banner, but in a country as diverse as Kenya, with no community constituting a majority, only a political party seeking to provide sectarian leadership would want to exclude any community from its umbrella.

Kenyans know that ODM is not such a party. It is the country’s largest political entity, with more than twice as many Members of Parliament than its closest rival. Its political representation is also dispersed more nationally than any other party’s. That this is so is in part the result of the Prime Minister’s own long history of commitment to nationalist and indeed Pan African ideals.

In any event, as ODM leader, it would be suicidal for him to be inciting against ANY community. The same applies to him as MP for Langata, which is one of the country’s most ethnically diverse constituencies in the nation and whose seat he won with strong support from all communities.

In his incitement accusation, Mr. Kuria does not quote a single sentence that the PM might have used to incite the Kalenjin, exposing his crude attempt to demonise the PM without cause. He quotes only one word the PM used, “peremende” (sweets), claiming that when the PM said these were being offered to the Kalenjin by those they were fighting in the 2007 election, he was referring to ethnic fighting! Mr. Kuria seems to have forgotten that the 2007 election was “fought” between two political parties, ODM and PNU, not between communities living in the Rift Valley.

It was that momentous election struggle that the PM was referring to in the interview, a struggle that ODM decisively won but in which all communities, including Mr. Kuria’s, voted in large numbers for both parties.

As is now becoming clear in all parts of the country, the effect of the huge national reconciliation drive that we embarked upon two years ago is already being felt. Kenyans will not be so easily fooled by Mr. Kuria’s kind of ethnic incitement.

Anyang Nyongo