Kenya Cabinet reshuffle, the ICC debacle, and the election date... joining the dots!

My mind is at it again. It is “seeing things”. First a disclaimer: What you’re about to read is just one of those flights that my head takes to paranoia.

Three weeks ago, someone earned the tag “bloody bure kabisa” (very useless) for exposing a contradiction in the President’s message as to the date of Kenya’s next elections.

You see, the President said the courts had instructed the country that the elections will be held in March 2013, I know that’s not what the courts said. But that’s not what I want to say today.

Days later, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission announced that the election date is March 4, 2013.

. I see a connection, but I have no evidence or as we say, I don’t want to impute improper motive on such a young commission or the Head of State. See what I mean?

Then, there’s the Gema meeting, just days ago, which, though planned weeks early, was full of its own intrigues. I didn’t attend the meeting, but the footage that I have seen shows that there was a fervent push to block the on-going trials at the International Criminal Court.

This week, the British minister for ICC and African Affairs landed in Kenya to address the issue regarding that controversial letter under parliamentary probe.

Well, the UK minister Henry Bellingham said the ICC issue was not part of his duty in the country, but then, we trust our Foreign Affairs Minister. He told us the letter had caused such a storm that Bellingham had to leave London for Nairobi to address the matter.

With Belligham around, the President announced that Kenya, really, a British oil company, Tullow, had struck oil in Turkana –that marginalized part of Northern Kenya, where foreigners from Uganda and Ethiopia, with guns, walk in and out at will, killing and stealing cattle.

And as Kenyans digested the oil find -- whose commercial viability will have to wait three more years, and then four more years for the drilling to take place, but only if there’s any money to be made in whatever that was found—something else happened.

The President unleashed a Cabinet reshuffle . Newspapers will keep on analyzing the reshuffle.

Now if my paranoid mind will join the dots for you, this is what I think: Everything that has happened was meant to hoodwink so you so that, for a moment, you forget about the ICC rigmarole and the next elections.

Mr Eugene Wamalwa has been deliberately sent to the Justice Ministry to implement the House resolution to pull Kenya out of the ICC. If that happens, the Ocampo Four will refuse to go to The Hague, essentially, following in the footsteps of the fugitive Sudan President Omar al Bashir. If that is not what Mr Wamalwa has gone to do there, I don’t know why he has been chosen.

Now, get the lawyer Moses Wetang’ula off the Foreign Affairs docket and bring in Prof Sam Ongeri. These two have issues in their dockets, and you are unlikely to have very nice things to say about them.

You think of Mr Wetang’ula, who now goes to Trade ministry and the embassy scandal explodes in your face. You think of Prof Ongeri and the scandal about free learning money for millions of Kenya’s children just crushes your heart.

The British announce that there’s oil, you shift your mind, to the riches awaiting the country and begin plotting about how to tap the expected resources. Meanwhile, their minister gets into the country and leaves with a dismissive tone regarding a controversial document that is part of the parliamentary records of Kenya.

That privileged document has its fair share of indictments on the UK government and getting it expunged will be topmost on my priority, if I were a UK minister. But I am not.

The Defence and Foreign Relations Committee can do its thing, but I foresee a crisis in that committee similar to the one that dogged the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee over membership. Just wait for Eugene’s replacement and see how the party with many MPs in parliament will react.

This is what all those prayer rallies and meetings were all about. You haven’t seen a thing yet.

When was the last time I was wrong about anything on this blog? I don't think I ever have...