Grand Regency Saga

The Grand Regency (GR) Hotel saga is evolving by the day:

The Libyans have used locals to buy the GR Hotel for them.

The same law-firm (Watengula, Makhoka, ---) facilitated the sale on behalf of both the Government and the Libyans! Interesting?

It is being reported that Hon. Orengo's Office now reveals that the Hotel its Land were sold at Ks 1.8B and not KSh. 2.8 B!

It looks like the President has given the Prime Minister the mandate to clear the mess; Mr. Odinga is chairing a Cabinate Sub-committee on the issue; the Ag Mr. Wako, the embatled Finance Minister, Mr. Kimunya; the Justice Minister Mrs. Martha Karua and Mr. Orengo (the Whistle Blower) are part of the committee.

By doing this Mr. Kibaki is trying to sacrifice the young Hon. Kimunya froma distance---No wonder, all the usual dogs of politics in Central Kenya have told Kiminya to carry his own Cross! When PM Odinga, Justice-Minister Karua and Ag. Wako are through with Kimunya, I believe there will be a unanimous recommendation by the PM's committee to the President Kibaki to fire Kimunya ! And the President will use his pen then--- that is if Kimunya will not have resigned after Hon. Imanyara's expected Parliamentary censor. This happens all the time to every small fish in politics; they are used then dumped.

Do you see how a PM can do the job of an embatled President?

But the bigger question is why Libya needs a prime location in Africa's Key international gateway? Is it the Libya-Uganda Axis and their PanAfrican Dreams? the same axis Moi feared? Why is a Ugandan the Chief Engineer under the new management at GR Hotel?

JR Alila

http://www.eastandard.net/news/?id=1143989420&cid=4

The Grand Regency Saga

That part of the Kibaki government was party to the Grand Regency Hotel's illegal tranfer to Libya, reminds all Kenyan's of age of the Goldenberg Scandal. This transfer will sound like a fairy tale to Mzee Moi who never trusted the Libyans.That President Kibaki transferred a prime piece of property to Gadafi behind the Minister of Land's (Mr. James Orengo of ODM) back must be a shocker to Prime Minister Raila Odinga and his ODM Party (The Kenyan Gov't is a coalition one between Kibaki's PNU and ODM). As the details of this scandal unfold, one must wonder whether the Coalition Goverment will survive another year. Competitive politics is about image; and sleeping in the same bed with a corrupt political partner does not go well imagewise with ODM or any other party or individual.

But can ODM bolt out from the coalition? Under ordinary circumstances, the answer should have been yes. But Kenya's current circumstances are not ordinary, they are extraordinary. The 2007/2008 post- election crisis left Kenya wounded in by every measure of governance: belief of Kenyans in their goverment as a protector-of-all is shattered; the economy is ruined; Kenya's international image as a beacon of regional stability dented; Kenya's thin ethnic fabric was exposed and shattered by a crisis that pitted tribe-against-tribe, leading to persons who are permanent refugees in their own country--these are the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

Prime Minister Odinga and his ODM Party should stay in the Union with PNU but only for the following reasons: to act as a watchdog from within the government,even if a partially toothless one ; to babysit (alongside sensible individuals from PNU) the constitutional-review process and to negotiate the enactment of the same into law; and lastly to shephered Internally Displaced Persons (IDPS) back to their homes through a genuine reconciliation process.

Of the above concerns, I feel most for the IDPs who are still in Refugee Camps, and whose plight must continue to be the concern for every Kenyan of goodwill--a lame President with 4 years to go is not what every Kenyan, and more so, the IDPs needed for their country which is still reeling from the fumbled Presidential Election of late last year. The IDPs are going to be the victims during Grand-Regency Saga. Increasingly, the IDPs must singularly look to ODM to solve their plight because PNU is going to be a party in disarray due to the expected fallout from the Grand-Regency Saga. The government must show goodwill and make it easier for ODM leaders (particularly from the Rift Valley) to be able to do local reconciliation work , by it releasing any youth it is holding for a petty offence from the post-electoral crisis.

JR Alila

Hon Odinga: A Man of Grit

When Hon Prime Minister Odinga thought he had negotiated a coalition deal that had pulled Kenyans out of the Jaws of the hyena in the name of a blood-sucking mayhem precipitated by the bungled 2007 electoral process---a stollen election that had pitted Kenyans against Kenyans, leading to spiralling intertribal killings and wanton destruction of public and private property, and a crisis that threatened to make Kenya another failed state---than sections of his ODM party started complaining that their tribes were not rewarded fairly in coalition cabinet appoitnments, even as these elements knew that ODM's glass was only half full, or as PM Odinga is wont to put it in the language of a "hunter-gatherer" who always hope for a brighter hunting day, "even the tail is meat."

While still mourning two of his winning team members (Were and Kirui?) he lost to guns of envy in Embakasi and Ainabkoi, a section of his parliamentary majority is forming an Oppostion group to the PNU-ODM Coalition Government, ostensibly because they never got cabinet appointments in the Grand Coalition Govt. What self-centredness!

On a June by-election night, PM Odinga and his ODM lose two MPs to an aircraft accident as the pair of Hon. Lady Laboso and Hon. K. Kones (both Kipsigis) were on their way to a campaign for a fellow Kipsigis for the then vacant Kilgoris seat.

On election night, the Masai bolt against ODM and vote for one of their own, Hon. Konchella of PNU. Managing tribalism can be hell, and no party understands this it better than PNU. ODM emerges from from the by-elections with two MPS dead, and three wins (in Wajir, Ainaboi, and Emuhaya), and loses Kilgoris and Embakasi (because of poor fielding ... Mrs. Passaris couldn't have done better than some Wekesa or Omolo. Nairobi politics, like all Kenyan politics, is tribal even as ODM thinks otherwise. ODMs the party got burnt in Kilgoris and Embakasi.

Hon PM Odinga is fighting land kingpins and absentee landowners, some within his leadership ranks, and his President is not making it any easier for him. PM Odnga is calling corrupt African Dictators like Mugabe what they are---something most African leaders don't (Read: Read JR Alila's Thirteen Curses of Mother Africa). PM Odinga has taken the issue of Amnesty to people arrested for various crimes during Kenya's 2007 electoral crisis (he calls them political prisioners) head on---again his President is not with him in this.

This Kenyan Leader and face of ODM Party is a Man of Grit. The question is whether the ODM coalition will hold as PNU cut and dice the poltical landscape. Hey I heard Gema has had anew birth!

Watch this space.

NEW NOVEL

WHISPER TO MY ACHING HEART[ISBN 1438207514. EAN-13: 978-14 38207513]A novel by Joseph R. AlilaPublished by CreateSpace An Amazon.com Company(http://www.createspace.com/3341373)]JR Alila’s WHISPER TO MY ACHING HEART is a story about two widows overcoming great odds to become mothers of a future people. In this moving-yet-romantic, love story, a young widow (Apiny) finds herself to be the bearer of the damning, spiritually-untouchable label in the male-dominated Eighteenth-Century Africa. Ejected alongside her widowed mother-in-law (Awino) and ridiculed by friends, Apiny waits for fifteen years before she receives another man in her bed. But this comes only after Awino remarries and raises a miracle son (Otin) who is called upon to walk into Apiny’s house while still in his teens. But, even after getting all the handsome sons and beautiful daughters she wished for from her youthful lover, Apiny is not at peace in her heart. She mourns and struggles in her heart as her youthful husband is compelled by cultural traditions to receive his own wife.

Copies also available at http://www.amazon.com/

Is ODM a Party in Peril?

Are these pangs of 2012? A Hon. Namwamba insists on a core opposition in the Kenyan Parliament with ODM as its center. Hon. Odinga (the PM) says no because ODM is in Government. But is ODM really in government?
We know that Hon. Odinga is the PM in a coalition government in which Hon. Kibaki of PNU is the President. It is accurate to say that Hon. Kibaki is the government, and PNU is the government. It is also accurate to say that Hon Odinga is part of the government, and so is ODM. But who calls the shots? It is Hon. Kibaki, the one who sleeps in State House.
Is Hon. Namwamba right in agitating for an official opposition in parliament? I believe he is right because Kenya is a multiparty state. Moreover, ODM admits that it is only partly in government and has assumed a holding posture in readiness for 2012. Moreover, the key pillars in ODM are approaching the "Namwamba problem" differently as the dance for positions for 2012 begin.
Hon. Odinga reads Hon Namwamba's intentions correctly: this group is out to pull the rug from beneath the coalition government, but he is also weary of 2012---what with Hon Mudavadi and Hon Ruto maintaining a neutral stance, if not soft, on Namwamba and company.
Is this the begenning of fall-outs and reallignments for 2012?
Watch what Maasai and their South Rift friends are doing. In the upcoming June 2008 by-elections; this core ODM group is going for anybody Maasai in any party. Will the ODM center hold? Will Mudavadi and Ruto allow PM Odinga to make another shot at the Presidency in 2012?

Spirituality and Luo Marriage

Sunset on Polygamy
(A Novel by JOSEPH R ALILA):

(PublishAmerica, 2007)

http://www.publishamerica.com/shopping/shopdisplayproducts.asp?catalogid=18178

In this African, cultural-anthropological drama, the author (Joseph R Alila) explores such universal issues as competitive love and romance, spirituality and moral conduct and order, farming, fairness, power structure, conflicts and conflict resolution, all within the context of a polygamous Luo home, as seen through a grown-up child's eyes. Beyond the polygamous home, the author takes us through an anthropological, communal tour of the spiritual underpinnings of such issues as farming, death, mourning, marriage, remarriage, courtship, morality and order, and power within a Luo communal unit. Alila delicately addresses the conflict between (arcane) cultural practices and spiritual understanding of a disease and its possible cures, on one side, versus proven modern medical evidence and understanding of a disease epidemic and its management, on the other.
In Sunset on Polygamy, the author teaches that, even in a polygamous home, the man and every woman must communicate, must play, must occasionally visit, verbally, physically and mentally, one-on-one, so as to survive `the grind' that is life in polygamy. This one-on-one communication among all parties must continue even as families move through crises.

LUO ORAL TRADITION: (Kenya Elections 2007 Fiasco)

Enjoy this piece of Music; a demonstration of the great Luo Oral Tradition.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8-TBtiacAI&feature=related