Governance fights lead to ungovernable behavior

[vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]“Cabin crew, disarm doors and cross check,”said the Captain of Kenya Airways’ flight KQ444 that had flown from Nairobi, via Bujumbura and landed at Kigali International Airport last Tuesday. The time was 18:36 precisely. Exactly ten amazingly short minutes later I boarded the hotel’s shuttle to begin my ride to Serena Kigali. It had taken about 8 minutes to deplane, walk into a gleaming airport terminal where six immigration counters were fully manned by young, blue suited officers, get mildly grilled as to the purpose of my visit and walk through with my hand luggage straight out of the terminal. To the right of the immigration counters were two E-Gates, where Rwandese nationals could pass through with just their passports and no human intervention.

We drove out of the airport with the twinkling lights of the beautiful city laid out bare in front of the airport gates and straight into the busy but moving vehicular traffic. Having just arrived from the Ghost of Kidero’s Past,the clean streets were a stark reminder of how Nairobi continues to heave under the collective weight of uncollected garbage and unbanked cash collections. There had already been indications of the Rwandese obsession with health when we departed from Bujumbura about an hour before that. The crew had walked through the cabin of the plane releasing insecticide spray that the Rwandan health authorities required for any incoming air traffic to exterminate potentially harmful insects. Not so in Kenya, we welcome you and your frequent flying vermin.

I was in Kigali to attend a training program where the attendees were citizens of the East African Community member states. Tanzanian, Ugandan and Rwandese attendees brought my unceasing wonderment to a crashing halt as they bombarded the Kenyan attendees with questions about our prevailing political situation, particularly about a bold judiciary, an electoral commission in doldrums and two perennial protagonists that were both sure of victory come October 17th 2017. It was apt that the subject matter of the training – corporate governance- was being tested on a daily, if not hourly basis at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission(IEBC) later in the week. As at the time of writing this piece, 5 out of 6 commissioners had issued a press statement disowning a memo allegedly written by the Chairman Wafula Chebukati censuring the Chief Executive Officer Ezra Chiloba on the handling of the elections.

It is curious that the commissioners did not draw any attention as to the veracity of the leaked memo, which the more sober social media pundits had begun to question. In fact they inadvertently affirmed its authenticity by declaring that they had neither discussed nor sanctioned the memo’s contents, which they only learnt about through the media. What the five commissioners clearly demonstrated was that they were only standing behind their leader long enough to throw him under a bus, which is any chairman’s worst nightmare.

Add to that the fact that there is a communication leak of a confidential memo makes for the script of a Kenyan edition of The Poltergeist. It is unfortunate that a governing body like the IEBC’s commissioners has resorted to lifting up its skirts to reveal the family jewels through the media. There can be no winners with media wars.A chairman’s job is fairly difficult and requires high levels of emotional intelligence, diplomatic speak and consensus building amongst the various internal and external stakeholders that a board has to deal with including its own members.
This could only have happened if some of the Commissioners felt that their Chairman was not building consensus and getting the collective view of the Commission as the governing entity before making critical decisions, especially if he is not an Executive Chairman. I doubt that it was the intention of the drafters of the constitution to give executive powers to the IEBC chair by dint of his being the returning officer for presidential elections as provided for in Article 138 (10) of the Constitution of Kenya.

Our constitutional commissions seem to have created a mongrel of a governance framework that creates a blurred line between oversight of the administrative roles played by secretariats and the execution of the mandate for the constitutional commissions which some commissioners actually undertake. The governance incongruence that this electoral crisis has surfaced at the IEBC, which is quite likely replicated at the nine other constitutional commissions, is one that requires some reflection and urgent clarification by lawmakers of the next parliament.
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Twitter: @carolmusyoka

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Sights and Sounds of Kigali’s Finest

[vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]Last Tuesday I flew to Kigali on the early evening flight and landed into a warm, balmy city. As we deplaned and walked to the terminal, I saw a long line of passengers walking from across the tarmac having just disembarked from a KLM flight. I hightailed it down the escalators in the terminal building as I knew the lines at immigration would be insane. They ended up being insane. But I didn’t mind as it gave me time to observe the immigration hall inside the Kigali International Airport. The modern hall is purpose built, with high ceilings and an almost clinical white décor. Illumination from the bright lights bounced off the sterile white walls and onto the clean-shaven, smart and well-spoken immigration officers. They sat on high stools and were easily accessible due to the absence of the ubiquitous thick glass barrier found in many immigration counters.


Image from www.rwandagorillassafari.com

To the far right of the immigration hall were two channels of passage with a large welcoming sign above that said “E-Gates Nationals Only”. There were clear instructions pasted on the side on how to use the 21st century contraption: Walk to the reader, scan the bio data page of your passport, wait for the beep to signify transaction complete and voila, heaven’s gates would open and you, Citizen Rwanda will gladly step back home. I stood and stared for a long time as the only other airport I had seen this was London’s Heathrow. The only pity was that the bulk of the passengers from the two flights were non-Rwandese and so I only observed two citizens triumphantly sail through.

I was picked up by an extremely chatty driver named Tresor, who spoke fluent Swahili as he was born in Bujumbura where he said Swahili is more widely spoken due to proximity to, and large trade with, the DRC. Since I couldn’t get a word in edgewise past his excitable monologue I sat back to listen but I noticed a glowing orb in the far distance as we drove past the gates of the airport. It was a beautiful sight against the clear night sky and something that I had certainly never seen in my past Kigali visits. I parked that question for later. Tresor had much to say about how the city was now full of Chinese who had come to build infrastructure in Rwanda. I puckered my brow in reflection as I had observed massive buildings being put up in Sandton, Johannesburg by Chinese as well as critical arterial roads in Kampala not to mention our very own Kenyan railway and highways. Historians will more likely document the not so subtle Chinese infiltration of Africa, when the effects of this economic colonization shall be obvious. Within 15 minutes my curiosity about the glowing orb was assuaged as we approached the Kigali Convention Centre (KCC).

The Kigali Convention Centre
Image from http://www.newtimes.co.rw

In my past visits to this beautiful, serene city, I had driven past the construction of the $300 million KCC without paying much attention to the distinct spherical framework of the emerging building. The Rwandese government has constructed an iconic building that will become to Kigali what the Sydney Opera House, London’s Tower Bridge and Nairobi’s KICC have done in terms of being globally recognized city trade marks. Its curved silhouette, whose inspiration is the traditional Rwandese hut, is sheathed with luminous lighting that projects the ethereal glow I saw all the way from the airport. With a capacity for up to 5,000 delegates, the KCC has been built with the aim of making Kigali the premier conference destination site in the region. Together with the refurbished airport and a growing number of new hotels, the Rwandan government aims to use meetings and conferences as a key growth pillar for the economy. Next to the conference centre is a brand spanking new 292- room Radisson Blu Convention Centre Hotel which was opened just in time for the World Economic Forum in Africa (WEF) meeting in May 2016. I don’t think it was accidental that Kigali was chosen as the location for this annual meeting as the conference theme, Connecting Africa’s Resources Through Digital Transformation, was undertaken against a backdrop of free high speed wifi in most of the hotels and 4G free wifi provided in the public transport system.
Actually a Rwandese acquaintance reminisced with us the following day about the rapid growth of 5 star hotels in Rwanda. He spoke with bemusement as he recollected how the Kigali Marriott Hotel had been under construction for a long time and had literally been completed and furnished a month to the WEF conference. The government organizers were keen to ensure that WEF delegates had access to 5 star accommodations and couldn’t understand why the Marriott management was not ready to avail the premises for this momentous event. “The hotel is not up to global Marriott standards in its current form,” was the alleged response from the owners, “We need another three months before we can open the hotel.”

The government promptly bussed in experienced hotel staff from Kenya and Uganda, slapped a new banner at the front of the hotel calling it “Century Hotel” and sewed the same name on top of the Marriot name on the staff uniforms. By the time WEF delegates landed in May, the hotel was open for (temporary) business faster than you could say kusema na kutenda. Of course this is anecdotal but is illustrative of the can-do attitude that’s widely prevalent within Rwandese government circles.

A benchmarking visit to Rwanda is critical to any African that wants to see what urban planning, good road infrastructure (I didn’t feel or see a single pothole as I crisscrossed the city), extremely clean streets and excellent security looks like. On one of the nights we went out for dinner, we found women walking completely alone at half past nine, brazenly carrying handbags and visibly comfortable about personal well being. To paraphrase the Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina: One day we shall write about this place.

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Twitter: @carolmusyoka[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][/vc_column][/vc_row]