Former President Moi Regrets Giving Power to ‘Renegades’

President Moi yesterday voiced his displeasure at the way the Country he ruled for over 20 years is turning into a more transparent nation ruled by laws of the land.

‘This country is going to the dogs’, he said in a speech at Kabarak shortly after he moved to the Supreme Court to challenge a lower court decision directing him to surrender a 100-acre farm in Kabarak a certain Mr. Bell. ‘In my day, I would have Mr. Malcolm Bell in the basement of Nyayo House getting a thorough lesson’
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‘Mimi niliguwa raisi wa Kenya. Hawa watu wananipelega gotini wanania mbaya, wameona ng’ombe ya kugamua’, he was quoted as saying. The former president looked thoroughly frustrated at the system and the new constitution. He feels the new constitution gives the common man immense power. That doesn’t sit very well with the former President.

His friends, including Nicholas Biwott, say that the former president feels that the new constitution gives the common Mwananchi power to sue influential and powerful people, even the government, which 'brings about decay of the moral fabric'
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‘There is no fear anymore, no respect. We are becoming a suing nation like America. Now influential people cannot even grab prime public land or land from the common mwananchi akin to what we did in my era. People in government cannot even raid the public coffers or be corrupt without the fear of prosecution. Getting into politics will one day become a very unattractive proposition. Which MP or Minister can survive on a 1 million shillings a month paycheck? That’s peanuts’, he was quoted saying.

Close friends say the former President feels that the Country should go back to his kind of governance. A dictatorship would be ideal: ‘life was simple, Courts respected influential people. The government, and especially the President, wielded immense power and everyone was in fear of the Police and the CID. Kibaki has made the Government and the Presidency soft. It's a shame, really’.

‘They are trying to make me broke by going after the land I own’. A friend is quoted as having overheard the former president lamenting. ‘What about the Kenyatta family? Why aren’t they going after them? They stole more than I did. Matter of fact the Kenyatta family stole millions of acres. I even hear they own Mount Kenya and will start charging any Mzungu who wants to climb it a fee! But no one is saying anything.’

The Kenya Mwananchi is waiting with bated breath to see the outcome of the case so they can jump on the suing bandwagon with earnest.