Security officers patrolling the streets of Lamu Island when residents
were protesting the move by former Inspector-General of Police David
Kimaiyo to extend the curfew. PHOTO | KALUME KAZUNGU | NATION MEDIA
GROUP
The question in the mind of everyone of the country is whether
the changes made by the President to the country’s security leadership
after the Mandera terrorist massacres, will be sufficient to address the
insecurity the country is going through.
The removal
of Interior Secretary Joseph ole Lenku and the retirement of Inspector
General of Police David Kimaiyo represents a number of paradoxes, with
direct implications on the country’s security situation.
Plucked
from the obscurity of a career in the hotel industry, the country had
never heard of Lenku before he became Interior Secretary, in theory the
most powerful minister in the country. In practice, however, Lenku was a
paper tiger, whom nobody took seriously, and who controlled nothing.
It
appears the sole basis for choosing him was tokenism, something that
Jubilee had to do to avoid accusations that its administration lacked
regional balance. The appointment of Lenku was also based on the Jubilee
experiment of sourcing ministers from the “professional” rather than
political ranks. On the evidence of Lenku’s performance, the experiment
has failed.
VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCES
Given
that Lenku was never actually in charge of the security of the country,
in the first place, it is tempting to view him as a victim of
circumstances. He has been removed only because, being visible but weak,
he provided the perfect sacrificial lamb when the need to blame
somebody for the country’s security lapses arose. However, in defence of
his removal, it can be argued that he had to go because, having been
given the opportunity to establish himself in his new position, he
showed an inability to do so.
Most of what is said
about Lenku is also true about Kimaiyo. As the first Inspector General
of Police, Kimaiyo had the opportunity to shape this new office, where
he became the leader of a troika made up of himself and two deputies,
one for the Administration Police and the other for the regular police,
the two police formations the new Constitution had merged. One problem
Kimaiyo never resolved was the mutual resistance to integration by the
two police formations, which were previously independent of each other.
In
practice, the AP have no real work, other than regime policing, which
makes them a pet of the political establishment. Because they have
direct ties to the top, the AP easily ignored Kimaiyo. On its part, the
regular police, under the leadership of Grace Kaindi, a political
outsider, has remained rudderless and irrelevant. Since the political
establishment has the AP, it does not need the regular police, whose
deterioration it does not exactly mind.
The void
created by the decline of the regular police has been filled by the
rising AP and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations which, like the
AP, attracts direct political support that enabled it to also bypass
Kimaiyo. Under the Jubilee government, the DCI is more important than
ever before. The DCI has thrived because the police is run informally.
Under the circumstances, Kimaiyo, like Lenku, controlled nothing.
CHOSE PERSONAL SURVIVAL
The
temptation to feel sorry for him is only reduced by the fact that,
having grown in the police system, Kimaiyo had a better chance of
establishing himself in office than Lenku whose attraction, it seems,
was his pliability. Further, Kimaiyo embraced amendments to the Police
Service Act, that took away not only the autonomy of the Police Service
Commission, but also his own. He was in a position to resist these
changes but, it seems, he chose personal survival over the common good.
The
militarisation of the country, another unique feature of the Jubilee
regime, further complicates the work of the police. Ignoring the police,
the President works with the military in select domestic law
enforcement situations, reflecting his close personal ties with the
Chief of General Staff, Julius Karangi. Since the President has Karangi,
he did not need Lenku or Kiamiyo.
The incongruity,
again, is that while responsibility for internal security lay with Lenku
and Kimaiyo, the two did not have a free hand to manage security
because the military has become a central player in internal security.
The
failure to establish the promised commission of inquiry into the
Westgate debacle reflects the relationship between the President and the
military.
Because the situation permits him to do so,
the least that Interior Secretary-designate, Joseph Nkaissery, can do
is demand that, before he assumes office, Karangi should first retire.
If Karangi remains, Nkaissery will be unable to establish himself in
office and will end up like Lenku, accountable for security, but with no
authority to be effective. If, for good measure, the DCI director can
also retire, this will allow Nkaissery the free hand needed to be
effective.
The evidence shows that the management of
security is highly personalised around the presidency, with informal
reporting channels that undermine formal structures. Irrespective of
titles, ethnicity is a factor in determining who is important and who is
not. De-ethicising and formalising security decision-making remains an
unmet challenge in the Jubilee government.
As the
President reshuffles his security team, he should do the same for his
communication team which, like security, has badly let the country down.
While Manoah Esipisu remains an inspired choice, his
work is undermined by the frivolous entity calling itself the
Presidential Strategic Communication Unit. Without a real role, the
entity struggles for relevance and has lately turned into attack dogs,
imagining this is what the President desires of them. Unless the
President actually desires them to attack government critics on his
behalf, he must disband this group which cheapens his office
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