Friday, June 15, 2012

What next for national security?

The deaths of Prof George Saitoti and Joshua Orwa Ojode reinforce the received wisdom that Kenya's national security establishment is moulded in the image of the politicians in charge. Sad as their deaths are, as we bury them, we must remember that the nearly stillborn police reforms are crucial from removing the over-mighty yoke of the Executive from security policy. There have always been powerful security policymakers in Kenya and in the deaths of the two, Kenya is now forced to contemplate a policy apparatus that is devoid of leadership that can be seen. The roles that the Commissioner of Police, the Commandant of the Administration Police, the Director of the Criminal Investigations Department, the Director-General of the National Security and Intelligence Service, the Commandant of the General Service Unit, and the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of State for Internal Security and Provincial Administration play have continued to be invisible to the general public. It seems that the only persons privy to what goes on in the national security establishment are those who are tasked in keeping us safe from the dangers of the world.

The police spokesman, speaking after the disruption of the first Limuru 2B rally last month, stated that the police was acting on intelligence that the dreaded Mungiki was being revived under the guise of a political rally called to counter the GEMA rally earlier on.In the wake of the Assanand's House explosion, he stated that the police had intelligence that pointed to the involvement of al Shabaab terrorists operating in Nairobi. For a public that has decidedly turned its attention away from all that matters and concentrated its mind on the mundane question of who will succeed Mwai Kibaki in 2013, this is enough to satisfy its curiosity. For the rest, it is inadequate to explain what our national security policy means and how best it can be implemented in the face of overwhelming odds, from a dwindling revenue collection exercise to the increasing cost of living and poverty levels among the youth and the working classes.

The manner in which the Lady Justice Kalpana Rawal-led Board of Inquiry conducts its its investigations shall demonstrate the strength and resilience of Kenya's national security establishment as well as expose the weaknesses that are inherent in it. The appointment of the team, as is normal in Kenya, was shrouded in equal parts mystery and confusion. Even after two previous air traffic crashes that claimed the lives of Mwai Kibaki's ministers, it seems as if there is no plan on how to investigate such incidents. The aftermath of the Assanand's House explosion, as in the aftermaths of all other deadly explosions in Nairobi, it remains unclear who is in charge of the ensuing investigations, how and when foreign experts will be invited to participate, and more crucially, what the results of the investigations are. In the absence of a transparent and accountable process, even the Prime Minister's exhortations to avoid speculation will not relieve the public from engaging in bouts of conspiracy theories. And in our heightened state of ethnic chauvinism it is all but impossible to erase the stench of an ethnic conspiracy behind the deaths of the two; in the last three days, rumours of a burgeoning political alliance between Prof Saitoti and Mr Ojode have fuelled speculation that they were both murdered to prevent the Professor from making inroads in Luo Nyanza in his quest to succeed President Kibaki.

Nzamba Kitonga's Committee of Experts drafted into the Constitution a somewhat coherent national security structure, delineating areas of responsibility in order to streamline the process and delimit the powers of those who would seek to keep us safe. The CoE attempted to constitutionalise what is usually a dynamic and fluid administrative procedure because many Kenyans feared a return to the dark days of the Nyayo House torture chambers. In going to this extreme, the CoE failed to appreciate that national security matters tend to evolve and take unpredictable paths and they require public officers charged with national security responsibilities sometimes to act swiftly without taking into account the fine print of the Constitution. Even Barack Obama, the US President, in his zeal to keep the United States safe from harm, has taken to approving personally who will be eliminated by drone strike and who will not, something that the US Constitution or the laws of the United States did not anticipate when the US Constitution was drafted in 1776.

Mwai Kibaki's successor must perchance work with what he has and this means that in crafting a national security policy, it is time that we evolved from the over-secretive way national security is handled in the corridors of the Executive. In the absence of an effective press, the Executive must pursue a proactive public disclosure programme to ensure that Kenyans have the correct information at the right time in order to appreciate the extent to which the Executive will go to keep Kenyans safe. Even taking into account the need for secrecy, it is imperative to make Kenyans partners in the handling of national security matters by educating them fully on who is in charge, what powers they enjoy and what they can and cannot do, from the legal to the administrative. George Saitoti and Orwa Ojode were products of a bygone era and as we mourn their deaths we must be prepared to abandon their hidebound ways. By properly investigating their deaths and making the results of the investigations public, perhaps, in some small way, we shall be able to craft a more robust and responsive nationals security establishment that we can all have confidence in.

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