Friday, October 05, 2012

K24's jihad against the MRC

What the hell is happening in Mombasa? Since when have idiots with pangas taken on a Cabinet Minister and his armed bodyguard? In fact, how the hell did the bodyguard end up dead? What the hell is going on in Mombasa? The idiots on K24 would have you believe, without the benefit of an official police statement, that the Mombasa Republican Council is behind the deaths of the the fisheries minister's bodyguard's murder and that the three other men killed in the aftermath of that murder are members of the no-longer-proscribed MRC. What is K24's agenda in all this?

When the High Court reversed the Executive's order that the MRC be listed as a proscribed organisation whose membership would be an offence, it set the stage for continued instability throughout the Coast, but especially in Mombasa. This came in the aftermath of several terrorist outrages in Mombasa in which al Shabaab sympathisers in Mombasa were fingered as aiding that perfidious bunch of alley cats. Try as we might, we are yet to draw any links between the MRC and al Shabaab; until yesterday's incident, the MRC has not been linked to any terrorism-related acts or even to attacks on individual members of the government. Indeed, Mr Kingi, the fisheries minister, is not the only Coast MP who has refused to kow-tow to the demands of the MRC. If this is an MRC escalation, does it mean that it is no longer keeping away from violence in advancing its objectives and will it consider teaming up with the lunatics from across the border in Somalia?

Which brings us once more to what motivates K24 in constantly creating the impression that the MRC is a terrorist outfit or linked to terrorism and terror organisations. Perhaps we should be making enquiries about the ownership of Mediamax, K24 parent company, and whether the owners of or, shareholders in, Mediamax have land interests at the Coast and whether the activities of the MRC threaten these land interests. It s unusual for a media house to launch a jihad against an organisation all on its own, even one as reprehensible as the MRC. The demands of the MRC for secession should be rejected by all Kenyans. Their arguments based on the agreement between Jomo Kenyatta and the Sultan of Zanzibar are so much water under the bridge that it will take a war of secession for them MRC to get their way. But the official neglect of the Coast and the peoples of the Coast should be subjects of public debate with the objective of addressing them once and for all. At the heart of their complaints is the persistent theft of their land. No one should deny that when it comes to land, the peoples of the Coast, especially the ones on the historical ten-mile coastal strip, have received the short end of the stick and that their demands are legitimate and will continue to form the basis for complaints against p-country folk.

So, are the owners or shareholders of Mediamax property owners at the Coast, were these properties obtained using less-than-legitimate means, and are these properties at risk because of the activities of the MRC? Is K24 being used as a tool to foment official trouble against the members of th MRC despite the High Court declaring them a legitimate organisation? Is K24 asking Kenyans to trust that its Jihad against the MRC is not motivated by the selfich reasons of its owners? What are they not telling us?

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