IS THERE SABOTAGE IN THE MAU COMPLEX EVICTIONS?

Dear Sir/Madam, Apparently no one can compute the “unestimated sum of human suffering that the Mau complex evictees are undergoing. It looks as if the Government is cold hearted and callous towards its own people or that it seriously underestimated the humanitarian crisis that was likely to emerge. Still it may be that some politicians are out to create the impression that the Government never cared to plan for the evictions at all. I find it difficult to believe that the Government can become a savage to its own people. Going by the sentiments of the chairperson of The Mau Task Force, the Ministries of water, security and special programmes ought to have been on the ground complimenting the eviction exercise. But they are conspicuously missing in action. So to me the only plausible reason would that the exercise has been reduced to a political ping pong with a view to using the illegal settlers as a smokescreen. Any Tom, Dick and Harry knows that this exercise bears all the hallmarks of political sabotage. But is this sabotage is likely to affect the country more than the individual(s) targeted? Social and economic prospects are more at risk than an individual`s political ambitions. A section of Rift Valley legislators, believe that the PM is out to create a humanitarian crisis to gain a global platform in Copenhagen climate talks. At the moment there is a barrage of condemnation and vitriol most foul leveled against the person of the PM. In fact it has now belatedly dawned on a section of the Rift Valley MPs that the PM is a pretender to the throne! This reaction was not unexpected since the issue was bound to bring about the shifting political alliances. You see, politicians like love and hatred, are two sides of the same coin. I do not think the PM is so naïve as to connive to drive illegal settlers from the forest and to become mince meat to his political archenemies. He cannot be so naïve as to loose such a huge and vital voting block in the Rift Valley! That is why I smell a rat. Could it be that there is sabotage? Taletellers allege that a section of the Rift valley legislators are out to deride the eviction exercise and make it appear the worst form of a humanitarian crisis ever witnessed in Kenya. In fact, in their own words, the 2007 post election IDP crisis will be pale a shadow compared to it! That is why they have gone ahead to tell “their” people not to move an inch from the perimeter fence of the Mau complex in order to proclaim to the whole world how wicked the government is to their people! Is it not pretentious for the MPs to raise the issue of compensation for a people who acquired the forest land illegally? Illegal settlers have over time been evicted in Mt. Kenya, Mt.Elgon and Embobut in Marakwet without compensation. The thinking seems to be that since the government is buying land for the internally displaced victims of post election violence so must it buy land for the illegal settlers evicted from the Mau forest. But what these politicians are not telling us is that they are the very ones who allowed these people into the forest to act as a shield against themselves and those who bought illegal land from their dubious companies. Alluding to compensation will be akin to legitimizing a wrong. We must not allow politicians to institutionalize this problem because in the words of Nikki Giovanni (1943), a US activist, writer and educationist “once you institutionalize a problem, then you do not intent to solve it.” However, it is the melodrama surrounding the MPs that has pundits pondering. To some it is first aimed sanitizing the cyclic post election violence in the region and secondly to force the Government to abandon the noble rehabilitation of the country`s forest cover. If indeed this is the reality then it is quite repulsive and unacceptable. The country must not give into this mind numbing political gimmicks. It is unimaginable, obnoxious, cold and callous for the” real Land Lords” of the Mau complex to use the hapless illegal settlers as a smokescreen to perpetuate their selfish interests. This noble eviction exercise must continue for to sabotage it, or to fritter will bring upon us all the reproaches of the after time. TOME FRANCIS, BUMULA CONSTITUENCY.