Uganda Police Use Pepper Spray to Subdue, Arrest Besigye

Uganda police have used pepper spray to drench the eyes of opposition leader Kizza Besigye and arrest him!

What is happening in Uganda is quite sad indeed. For the fourth time, Besigye has been arrested for taking part in protests over rising cost of food and fuel. Initially, the police (authorities) were against Besigye and others talking part in the walk-to-work demo, because it supposedly interfered with traffic etc.

But now, this morning, Besigye was arrested while driving to work. He had initially tried to walk to work, but was stopped by police at his gate. He decided to drive, tailed by police and supporters, before being blocked at a junction by security forces in Kampala suburb.

Reports say, after a long standoff, police smashed his car window with a hammer, dragged his bodyguards from the vehicle and beat them up, severely. Other officers smashed other windows with pistols and drenched Besigye with pepper spray, pointing the gun at him. He was eventually pulled out of the car, dragged along the road and tossed into the back of a nearby van.

I think Museveni is too scared the protests may snowball to consume his government, feeding on the disillusionment of the many.

Of Readers and Blog Colour Background

Thank you for the several comments to my private e-mail account in light of the various posts I have been publishing in this blog.

Some are very enlightened, some cheeky, while most are clearly of readers who are so informed of many issues in this country. As I wrote some months ago, I dont publish readers' comments, simply because I got many things I do during the day. I often write either late in the day of do most of writing over the weekend.

I, however read all the comments. Maybe sometime in the future, i will let the blog become more interactive, not now though.

I changed the background of the blog this week - i suppose i am getting too old for bright papers and pages .Thank you for reading.

Unbearable Kenyan Food Costs

Below is a statement by Consumers Federation of Kenya (Cofek) about the planned protests to demand action over high food prices:

 

Kenya's fuel and food prices are fast becoming unbearable for majority Kenyans. The current increment cannot be sustained. Its adverse effects will be felt for a long time to come socially, economically, environmentally and politically.

The country's highest leadership can no longer bury its head in the sand and assume the business as usual posture on pro-poor interventions.

Kenya's fuel prices poses a serious threat to the country's stability as the country heads into a transitional general elections in August next year. Indeed, it is a defining moment in our country's history and one that will shape our immediate future.

Several excuses have been advanced - weak shilling, high inflation rate, the Northern Africa and Arab world crisis, among others. But those are just excuses not because they are not valid but because there is little Kenya can do about them.

On the contrary, no one is talking about the internal factors of the high prices. From lack of political will (not surprising that neither President Mwai Kibaki nor Prime Minister Raila Odinga have found it necessary and urgent to speak about the fuel and food crisis) to outright corruption and institutional gross ineffiencies and open secret that some quarters could be using the fuel crisis to fundraise for the 2012 general elections.

We are disturbed that the Minister for Energy Mr Kiraitu Murungi has been playing politics with the matter of fuel prices for a while. He has been left to walk away with many unexplained issues - from the "Triton Scandal" where the taxpayer lost Sh7.8 B to politically connected shenanigans; the irregular award of the 30% quota for the National Oil Corporation of Kenya (Nock) which Nock couldn't service after all; the poorly representative (stakeholder and regional) key energy parastatals and the Energy Regulatory Commission.

The minister is yet to explain the fraud that was the so called "free energy saving bulbs" that were hardly distributed and accounted for. The list is long.

Tired of the double-speak from a Minister of Energy who publicly confesses a formula applied by ERC is a flop without generating an alternative, Kenyan consumers are saying enough is enough. It is for this reason that we are calling for peaceful demonstrations on Tuesday, 19th April from 12 pm at Uhuru Park in Nairobi and other major towns across the country.

Arrangements for the peaceful demonstrations are now complete. In Nairobi, the consumers will congregate at Uhuru Park from where short speeches from invited leaders (including several sitting and former MPs).

The procession will then follow Kenyatta Avenue and present its petition to the Hon. Kiraitu's Nyayo House 9th floor office, thereafter present the same petition to the speaker of the National Assembly and finally to the offices of the Prime Minister and the President.

Our partners are working on the route details in other parts of the country. We appreciate the support of Kenyans and other friends of Consumers Federation of Kenya who have given us support and especially for the goodwill messages.

Led by our Secretary General, Cofek will be addressing a press conference in Mombasa (Travellers Beach Hotel) tomorrow, Monday, 18th April from 11 am where I will give final details of the Tuesday demonstration.

We urge all media houses to dedicate their editorials messages to fuel prices crisis on Tuesday. We appreciate those that are already doing it.

Stephen Mutoro, Secretary General, Consumers Federation of Kenya (Cofek)

Rise in Kenyan Fuel Prices Promises Strife

With further rise in cost of fuel, food prices will escalate to their highest levels yet


Fuel prices have reached record level in Kenya and a consumer rights group has called for massive protests next week to press the government to do better on this subject.

From today, fuel prices are rising to the highest point since the country started using petrol, diesel, kerosene and the rest. In 2008, when one barrel was selling for 140, local petrol selling at 110 shillings.

Now, from today, in the latest review released by the Energy Regulatory Commission, super petrol will now sell at 111.17 shilling per litre in Nairobi, while diesel will cost 107.52 shillings.

The shock is with Kerosene that will sell for 100 shillings per litre in Lokichogio, and 90 shillings in Nairobi. In other places, the prices fall somewhere in between those ranges.

Today, Consumers Federation of Kenya (Cofek) has condemned the latest increment in petrol prices, saying it will further complicate the lives and livelihoods of Kenyans. ''It is unheard of for a litre of kerosene to cost Sh92 when Kenya is neither at war or could be deemed to be a failed state,'' Cofek said.

''Additionally, we are calling upon consumers and other like-minded stakeholders to prepare themselves for a major public peaceful demonstration, next week, through which we will present memoranda to Parliament, Office of the President, Office of the Prime Minister and Mr Kiraitu’s office,'' Cofek said.

Kind of taking cue from Ugandan opposition groups, Cofek  asked ''motorists and commuters to consider walking to work and keep our roads free of vehicles apart from emergency cases, as practically as possible''.

From the look of things, fuel regulation in Kenya has grossly failed. Fuel is expensive in Kenya because the government takes up to 28 shillings for every litre of petrol. Of course there are other factors like inefficiencies with state agencies refining, processing and transporting the commodity. Also there are some further gross inefficiencies with storage.

So the latest rise is bound to bring strife in Kenya. It will push the poor Kenyans further into abject poverty, and thousands of middle class earners to poverty, while creating room for crime, violence and despondency in the nation.

Fuel has a direct impact on food. What drives a nation is a well-fed population. In the past several months, food prices have been rising so steeply in Kenya. Now, average earners are spending over 48 per cent or so of their incomes to feed their families.

So with the latest rise in fuel costs, food prices will rise further, promising anger and violence among the population.

France Bans Muslim Face Veil

France is moving to defend its secularism - although no one has threatened that secularism.

From today, 11 April, a new law banning garments that hide the face takes effect.

Basically, an Islamic cloth that reveals only the eyes,  while covering the entire head and part of the face - the Niqab - is being banned in the nation of Muslim minorities. Interestingly, this law was drawn without reference to religion.

Niqab

I am not sure but it is my feeling that with this law, the French government is saying Islam is a threat to French culture!

A woman who repeatedly insists on appearing veiled in public can be fined 150 euros. Anyone forcing a woman to wear face-veil will be jailed.

How it goes with this law will provide guidelines to the rest of Europe on how to deal with this issue.

Hijab

So, with the new law it is expected that Muslim women in France should be wearing veils that expose their faces - Hijab.

Citizen's Julie Gichuru Interview Bungle

There are many Raila Odinga's apologists in the Kenyan media. One of them is Julie Gichuru of Citizen television. You probably remember her as the crying presenter on Citizen TV series on the aftermath of the 2008 violence.

 

Ms Gichuru

 But, let me start from the start.

In July 2008, Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta gave an interview to the BBC World News Television. 

Kenyatta spoke to Stephen Sucker in Hardtalk show, an interview programme that airs in both domestic BBC and World New TV via sat.

 The programme often asks politicians, leaders and busines people very hard questions.

In Kenyatta's interview, after an introduction Sucker said. ''Uhuru Kenyatta, welcome to Hardtalk… I want to quote for you words from a speech your Prime Minister Raila Odinga delivered here recently. He said, 'we have been to hell and back'. Now, what makes you in government think that you are back?''' The story is not what Kenyatta responded, rather, what the presenter asked.

I am reminded of this interview after watching Julie Gichuru of Citizen TV interviewing Kenyatta last weekend, and a week earlier, William Ruto, MP.

In many ways, the interview went to expose the glaring incompetence and thickheadedness of some of the most celebrated Kenyan journalists. The bias and absence of interviewing skills were laid bare by the two interviews. Even worse, the two interviews were aired live.

Beyond her outrageous dressing code, which is not an issue in this blogpost, Ms Gichuru failed to get the interviewees to answer some of the most important questions that he audiences would have been interested in asking. If anything, both interviews degenerated so badly.

On 27 March, Ruto was being interviewed in the programme. Ms Gichuru clearly suggested to him that one good thing with ICC trying him, Kenyatta and four others is that it will remove some politicians from the next elections.

When Ruto responded that it was unfortunate that she had suggested so, she kept quet, implying that she had meant so. This is a wicked bias, considering that journalists should not show prejudice for interviewees, rather, treat them with decorum.

Ruto's courtesy kinda saved the otherwise ugly interview. Now, Kenyatta was watching the programme and felt pissed off. When he was contacted by Citizen on Friday to show up on Sunday at nine in the night for a live interview, he agreed, but was drilled on how to deal with her.  

 

In a sexier pose

On 3 April, 9.13, Kenyatta is live. (See video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXIOsVSxDQs) He sat laid back, sounded rude and made faces. 

He was clearly disgusted by her line of questioning. But it appears he was just prepared to take on her head on. The interview was a mistake from the start.

He told Kenyatta that he has not been working, just politicking. When Kenyatta said ''if some people want to politick and not work, we can do that'', she responded, ''for the sake of the nation, can you give us a break, can you stop it?''

So in a way, the interview became so ugly. Ms Gichuru panicked, shaking a bit and Kenyatta took control of entire interview, not answering questions and saying what he wanted, when he wanted to.

It is clear she did not know what she wanted to ask. If she did, she did not know.

Julie Gichuru - who, when her baby died, publicly told colleagues she was going to have another baby to replace the dead one - represent a generation of mediocre Kenyan journalists who are education but have no passion for what they are doing. 

Or, more corrently, they have their own poltiical agenda to drive.

See BBC interview here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImreW9AHm3g)

Sex, Money and Power on Trial in Italy

I submit that three elements are on trial in Italy - sex, money and power - as the trial of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi opens today in the Mediterranean nation.

Berlusconi is accused of paying an underage prostitute and then abusing his position to cover up his alleged offence.  All three judges presiding over his trial are women!

Prosecutors say Berlusconi paid for sex with a very beautiful teenage Moroccan belly dancer Karima El Mahroug, also know as Ruby (also nicknamed "Ruby Heartstealer"). They will argue in court that the girl was 17, then. 

Ruby

In a separate case involving the same prostitute, Berlusconi is accused of abusing his power by calling a Milan police station where Ruby was being held, accused of theft, and demanded that she be released. Berlusconi said she the girl was the granddaughter of Hosni Mubarak, the former president of Egypt.

In court, his defence will say she was 18 at the time she had sex with Berlusconi. Fourteen is consent age in Italy. But it is an offence paying for sex with a prostitute under 18.

But really, this trial appears about power, first. Italian MPs have voted to challenge the legitimacy of the trial. Two, sex, third, money!

See our previous post on this here.

Shame of JKUAT Students' Sex Video

There is a new sex video making rounds on the internet.

It is a long recording involving two Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology students.

It is not on Google YouTube yet, but can be downloaded here.

I have just been too busy with many issues to find time to comment on this rubbish.