… is back. my stomach hurts.
Kibaki announced his new cabinet. He has also called for parliment to open on the 15th of January. Which on one hand is good that the government wants to start its work. There is just that thorny issue of all the controversy surrounding the election, the fact that the leader of the opposition still will not accept his defeat and a country still laying on its back from the violence of last week. One might have thought trying to clear up some of these issues would have had some priority, but then one isn’t a politician.
I see it going one of two ways: “not so well” or “oh F*@K…”
Hope I am just paranoid.
Not to be unsympathetic to your tummy discomfort… but what else do you expect Kibaki to do? In an uncontested election result, the announcement of the new cabinet would be assumed, and unsurprising. In this case, for him to do anything other than what would be normal under other circumstances would be to admit that the results were questionable and perhaps contrived.
Kinda like the NFL replay challenge rules – if you can run a play before the opposing team challenges the last play, no challenge can be recorded. In this political situation, to bolster his contention that he is the winner, he has to move forward as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
One would hope, however, that the disturbed masses would find a more useful method of expressing their dissatisfaction than destroying the fragile economic infra-structure they do have in place. I’m sure that the burning slum shops & houses really impact the wealthy ruling class folk who are the target of the genuine ire. I won’t hold my breath in waiting for such self control to happen.
Hey Rob,
As you might know, I’ve been working with some other Kenyans to create a site where people can report incidents of violence in Kenya (http://www.ushahidi.com). Consider adding one of the buttons found on the “about” page to your blog.
Please call, text and email your friends and family in Kenya about Ushahidi. You can now SMS an incident report in to +447624802635 or email tips to tips@ushahidi.com.
On top of all that, there is now a Flickr group to add your images too about this post-election crisis at http://flickr.com/groups/kenyaelections2008.
Erik
Kibaki and Raila have now shown Osama that his 1998 bombing that left about 150 people dead was just a shadow of the real thing. Osama was quoted in a video saying, “i can’t believe that this is the same country i bombed, these people have become professional terrorists.”