The Star 11/02/2017

Police responded with indiscriminate use of force, maiming and killing citizens in their attempts to quell protests during the August and October polls, the Independent Medico-Legal Unit has said. In a preliminary report, the organisation indicates the police killed 23 people. It carried out postmortem examinations on 12 bodies upon getting consent from their families. Thirteen killings took place last month. “There’s no clear demonstration that police were shooting to defend their lives or the lives of others. In two cases where police indicated they were shooting to save lives from attackers, the supposed attackers were both shot in the back, indicating little chances of them being killed while confronting police with machetes,” IMLU executive director Peter Kiama said. The report shows one victim had multiple gunshots to the chest…

THWAKE DAM SITE Construction to begin next year Construction of the Sh36 billion Thwake Dam in Makueni will start next year. Vision 2030 director general Julius Muia yesterday said the government is in the final stages of compensating landowners. Water PS Zainab Hussein last month said the ministry had paid out Sh2.2 billion to 1,443 people and the remaining 198 would soon receive cash. See page 34 PRESIDENTIAL RERUN EU observers say it was better The European Election Observer Mission has said the repeat presidential election was far better than the August 8 election. In a preliminary report issued on Tuesday, it said the IEBC worked under difficult times while preparing the rerun. “The IEBC improved the standardisation of results forms and enhanced transparency.” See page 9 HASSAN OMAR Adds…

The National Assembly is expected to resume sittings on Tuesday next week and top on its business is the constitution of House committees. NASA has to appoint its House leaders ahead of the sittings. President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee, the Majority party in the Senate and the National Assembly, is keen to form the committees should NASA fail to submit the names of Minority leader, deputy Minority leader, its whip and the deputy whip. The Minority leader’s office is responsible for coming up with the list of members to be appointed to committees. Before MPs went on recess three weeks ago, Speaker Justin Muturi warned NASA that he would rule on which party among ODM, Ford Kenya, Wiper and ANC qualifies to produce the Minority leader. He told them to stop…

ARE there foreigners quietly reaching out to Uhuru Kenyatta (pictured) and Raila Odinga as a way of laying the ground for national dialogue? We are told that diplomats based in Nairobi and a former African President are involved in quiet diplomacy that, if it succeeds, will see both sides of the political divide agree to some dialogue in the coming days. KENYA’S image abroad was severely tainted after government operatives forged a letter purporting to be from the US Institute of Peace containing remarks about the October 26 fresh polls. The letter was in a tweet by a Ministry of Foreign Affairs operative. The fraudulent document is presented as a letter from former US Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson, who now serves as a senior adviser to USIP’s president.…

‘IT IS NOT TOO LATE FOR THE CHURCH TO PROPOSE A GOVERNMENT STRUCTURE BUT IT SHOULD PROPOSE IN A PROPER WAY. IT SHOULD BRING THE PROPOSAL TO THE PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY’ Senior leaders in President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party are discussing amending the Constitution to introduce a Parliamentary system of government and a Prime Minister. Multiple leaders separately told the Star yesterday the current winner-take-all presidential system is not good for the country because it creates instability every five years. It is understood Deputy President William Ruto favours the proposal discussed informally among Jubilee leaders. President-elect Kenyatta is yet to be briefed on the discussions and proposals. “We must find a way to make the country more stable and we should be able to accommodate more people in the leadership, a…

My view is that we adopted a Constitution about seven years ago, and the right thing for the country would have been to say we have been testing that document. The first election under the Constitution was in 2013, so we can talk about four years. If we are serious as a country, we would be saying can we now identify the challenges that have arisen and say how do we address them with a view to strengthening our governance system? Some of those things could be done through legislation and constitutional amendments that are aimed to improve the Constitution and not worsen it. When we were doing this Constitution, a number of us had taken the position of a parliamentary system. A parliamentary system offers an opportunity for negotiated…