By Oloo Janak
There is a a huge debate currently raging in Kenya about the
August polls; from the state of
preparedness of the electoral agency - the Independent Elections and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), security, government edicts about how
political actors and citizens ought to behave, before, during and after the
polls, and turmoil in political parties, among others.
The most recent edict by the security agencies that failure
to accept election results, and any public show of displeasure, including
picketing and demonstrations, will constitute an offense, is both ominous and
unconstitutional.
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| Journalists demonstrate against media laws in 2013 |
This pronouncement should worry us. There is already an
attempt to intrude into private conversation and free speech by security agencies
and the Communications Authority of Kenya through planting of monitoring
gadgets on the mobile systems to track calls and data.
Of course there has always been such monitoring on the phones
and trawling on social media for “persons of interest” across the board, including in the media. The recent pronouncements merely point to a heightening
of this surveillance on leaders, certain sectors including the media and
citizens generally.
There has been increasing talk that the government, borrowing
from its neighbors, Ethiopia, Uganda and Burundi, and other countries, plan to
shut down the internet completely across the country, or in “trouble spots”,
something they have denied vigorously.
The internet shut down is reportedly intended to paralyze the
possibility of it being used to mobilize citizens to show widespread dissatisfaction and public anger and violence in the event of a disputed outcome
of the elections, especially the most contentious, the presidential results.
There is a comparison those with memories and
experiences straddling the Kanu/Nyayo regime in the 1980s and 90s, and the Narc
regime of President Mwai Kibaki and the Grand Coalition Government of President
Kibaki and Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, can make.
The Kanu regime, at its most despotic period, throttled and
trampled on the rights of Kenyans, including press freedom with abandon. Many
people, politicians, lecturers, students, journalists and ordinary citizens
were intimidated, harassed, arrested, detained and even killed.
A number of publications, including the Church owned Beyond Magazine, were banned, media
houses and printing presses raided at dawn and copies of newspapers and
magazines confiscated, and even vendors stopped from selling some of the
publications.
Journalists, Pius Nyamora, Otieno Mak’Onyango, David Makali,
Bedan Mbugua, Gitobu Imanyara, publisher Njehu Gatabaki, Paul Amina, Wallace Gichere,
among others, were either harassed, arrested or jailed.
Mak’Onyango, then an Assistant Editor at the Standard was
detained as well as Amina, while Gichere was pushed down by state security agents from his apartment and
seriously injured, getting confined to a wheel chair till his death a few year
ago.
The Narc and the Grand Coalition regimes could be said to
have provided the most accommodating environment the media have ever had since
independence, which led to the growth and expansion of the media enterprises
and outlets.
Of course there was the blot of the Artur Brothers saga and
the midnight raid at the offices of The Standard Media group and the disabling
of equipment, and the harassment and prosecution of editor David Makali and team
over a tape thought to contain “sensitive information”.
The then Security Minister John Michuki was to justify the
raid, ominously warning that “if you rattle a snake, be prepared to be bitten
by it”!
Then there was the storming of Nation Center by the then
First lady Lucy Kibaki to protest what
she viewed as “media intrusion and hostility” towards the First Family.
At the height of the confrontations over the bungled
presidential election results in December 2007, the government suspended live media
coverage, claiming it was exacerbating violence.
But under the Narc regime, there was no widespread and
determined policy, covert or overt, to gag the media. The media grew bolder and
bolder, holding the state, its agencies and leaders to account in a manner
unprecedented, unearthing many misdeeds and scandals in the government.
A close analysis of the thinking within the Jubilee regime
over the last four years reveals a systematic desire to inflict a serious
assault on civil liberties including press freedom, ahead of the elections.There has been a clear hostility against the media with many
unfriendly political statements by different leaders including the declaration
that the newspapers are only “good for wrapping meat”.
There have been threats, harassment and arrests of
journalists and bloggers over this period and at least one journalist, John
Kituyi, the publisher of the Eldoret based Mirror
Weekly, was brutally murdered on April 30, 2015. Two other journalists, Bernard Wesonga and Joseph Masha also died under mysterious circumstances, which was generally believed to be suspected poisoning.
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| The late John Kituyi |
Between 2015 and March 2017, there were over sixty
journalists who were intimidated, harassed, assaulted and some, arrested,
and the culprits cut across, security agencies, state officials, politicians,
and political mobs, according to various reports by press freedom warch dog groups.
The acrimonious passage of the two media laws, the Media Act
and the Kenya Information and Communications Amendment Act 2013, with
constraining sections on media freedom, reflected a determination, not just of
the executive, but also the National Assembly, to reign in the media.
Media stakeholders, Kenya Correspondents Association, Kenya
Union of Journalists, Kenya Editors Guild, Media Council of Kenya and the three
media house, Nation, Standard and Royal Media unsuccessfully challenged the
constitutionality of the two laws, in a case that dragged on from January 2014
to May 2016.
The High Court declared the two laws constitutional, except
for two minor sections in the Media Act, which are yet to be deleted from the
Act, a year later. During the engagements between media stakeholders and MPs, the
hostility to the media and the hand of the executive in trying to reign in the
media were fairly open, and remain so.
The intention to interfere with and weaken press freedom and
bring media regulation covertly under the government also became obvious through
the mismanaged process of constituting the Media Council of Kenya Board, the
Complaints Commission and the Multi-Media and Appeals Tribunal.
The Media Council has been seriously weakened by the Media Act
and through lack of funding by the
government while some of its core functions have under the KICA Act 2013, been appropriated by the Communications Authority of Kenya.
The MCK Complaints Commission is limping and has not adjudicated
any land mark cases, opening up the media to expensive court litigation with the
possibilities as before, of crippling fines, instead of mediation and conciliation
that the setting up of the Complaints Commission was intended to deal with.
There have been attempts at passing legislation in parliament, which clearly
aim at inhibiting press freedom while some of the archaic laws which the
Constitution of Kenya 2010 rendered obsolete, remain in the statutes, and can
be activated any time, and more so, during the elections.
There have been attempts to pass other laws, including the
Security Amendment laws, which are not necessarily in good faith, but are
aimed at controlling and not facilitating the enjoyment of civil liberties. Fortunately,
the High Court nipped this in the bud.
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| Police beat up anti- IEBC demonstrators in Kisumu in 2016 |
There is the clear hostility and moves to inhibit the
operations of the civil society, including hostility to donors over civic and
voter education funding. Some NGOs have been de-rigistered and others are still
under threat. Two foundations associated with key opposition politicians,
Kalonzo Musyoka, one of the key principals in the Opposition Coalition NASA,
and Nairobi Governor, Evans Kidero, have been de-registered.
Security interventions, including those aimed at containing
terrorism, political dissent like the anti- IEBC demos and communal conflicts
such as those in Baringo,Pokot, Laikipia, among others, are largely punitive.
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| Scribe Isaiah Gwengi: Beaten by police |
There are reservations over the mapping of the country into
hot spots, the glib talk about dealing with “outlawed groups” and the initiative by
the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) to train and deploy
police and other personnel to “monitor hate speech”.
The re-emergence of the narrative of “peace” ahead of the
elections by sections of the political class, the clergy, outfits such as
Mkenya Daima and UWIANO, without emphasis on the overriding need to hold a free,
fair and credible elections, has not been received enthusiastically by sections of Kenyans.
The media industry players, especially editors and journalists are divided over
increasing calls that they join the band wagon of “preaching peace” ahead of
the elections but are agreed that a free press is essential and critical for
helping Kenyans make informed choices to guarantee, not only a less contested
electoral outcome but the survival of the fragile Kenya state.
Clearly, the media has the urgent responsibility to highlight
these debates, clarifying them, putting them into proper perspectives and asking hard
questions so that the emerging contradictions and pronouncements do not pollute
the national psyche.
Oloo Janak is a freelance journalist, Media Trainer
and Chairman, Kenya Correspondents Association(KCA).
Email:oloojanak@gmail.com
