AFRICANEWS

Kenya

The budget that was

Human rights

Finance Minister Francis Masakhalia presented his Millennium Budget on June 10 amid riots and points of order in Parliament. This being the third successive year that Kenya's budget has been presented amid protests, it is our correspondent's view that Kenya is headed for more instability if no effort is made to appease groups opposed to the way President Daniel arap Moi is ruling the country.

Nothing demonstrated better the tragic political and economic situation that Kenya is in than the circumstances in which the country's budget for the 1999/2000 budget was read. While the Minister for Finance Francis Masakhalia was battling efforts by some opposition legislators to disrupt his speech inside the chamber, the police and a pro-government militia referred as Jeshi la mzee ( Kiswahili for the old man's army) were viciously breaking up a peaceful demonstration that had been called by religious groups, including the Catholic Church. The march had been called by religious groups to protest a recent decision by President Daniel arap Moi to refer the issue of constitutional reforms back to parliament, where his party Kanu has the largest number of parliamentarians.

Among protesters seriously injured was Timothy Njoya a radical Presbyterian cleric who was baton charged by the police and beaten as the attackers chanted 'Moi atawale' (let Moi keep on ruling). This was after the cleric had led more than 20 legislators from a service at the nearby Holy Family Basilica towards Parliament. A police officer who participated in the attack on Rev Njoya is reported to have said: " We gave him a better dose than we did in 1997. If he does not watch out, we will finish him next time." In 1997, Njoya was among scores who were seriously injured as the police stormed the All Saints Cathedral, an Anglican church in the capital as they pursued pro-democracy protesters who had taken refuge in the church after the police had broken their rally in a nearby park.

The year 1997, when the country held its second general elections under a plural system saw a bloody clamour by civic, religious and human rights organisations that the Constitution be reformed. Their argument was that the document as it was then gave the president enormous powers. One of these groups, the National Convention Executive Council (NCEC) had even proposed to take over the responsibilities of Parliament if Moi did not give in. Moi gave in but through the country's legislature where he used the enormous number of his party's MPs and monetary inducements to fashion a constitution reform group called the Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group (IPPG).

That was the group that had been expected to reform the document until Kanu made an about turn a few months ago when it insisted that it be given more than half of the 14 seats in the group. The rest of the political parties refused and what ensued was a stalemate that worsened with Moi's demand that the reform be referred back to parliament, thus inviting widespread condemnation. It is in this environment of rising political temperatures that the march was called as the country waited for the budget speech.

However the demo had been called off by Catholic Archbishop Ndingi Mwana a'Nzeki who said that the march had been infiltrated by 'unwanted elements who were set to provoke violence. However, the congregation, led by Njoya, rejected the call and proceeded to the streets to confront the police.

Following the Njoya beating, calls have grown for the arrest and prosecution of the assailants. Despite pictures published in the Press of two plain clothes officers beating the cleric, Police Commissioner Philemon Abongo is yet to arrest any suspect and is not expected to do so, as according to Njoya, opinion that his attackers may not be exclusively from the Jeshi la Mzee militia but could also belong to the Presidential Guard that unleashed the 1997 violence.

The violence notwithstanding, the budget has been greeted with a lot of scepticism. While government stalwarts hailed it as a 'positive move,' workers' unions and opposition legislators dismissed it as a rich man's budget. "The increase of the fuel prices and kerosene will trigger an upward trail of all prices, including food and transport," warned the secretary general of the Dock Workers Union, Juma Khamisi. This was in reaction to the announcement by the minister for finance that fuel prices have been raised while some taxes like VAT were lowered. 'The budget is irrelevant and meaningless because the people that it is supposed to cater for are now being clobbered by security agents," said Charity Ngilu, the leader of the Social Democratic Party and who challenged Moi in the 1997 polls.

All these negative reactions are borne by the unstable economic situation that the government has created in the last decade. This has been as a result of corruption and mismanagement of resources, both which have reached dizzy heights. A few months before the budget, the country's banking sector tottered on the brink of collapse as nearly a dozen banks closed due to liquidity problems occasioned by crony lending and outright embezzlement. The most affected were the National Bank of Kenya (NBK) and the Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), institutions in which the government has a substantial stake. These are now being sustained by fresh injections of capital by the regime, which at the same time is not making any effort to pursue debtors most of whom are close confidants of President Moi.

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