movie news : Kenya: Armenians? It's Only a Movie

The cartoonist Gado got it right. His daily offering in last Friday's Daily Nation depicted the Kenyatta International Conference Centre as a movie theatre showing the saga of The Artur Brothers. A poster to one side advertised the movie, showing them together with two African women - one old and one young. No prizes for guessing whom they were meant to represent - the repudiated daughter of the repudiated second wife now euphemistically referred to as a 'NARC activist.' Meanwhile, a woman excitedly described the contents of the movie to her male companion, "It has everything: intrigue, conflict, romance, betrayal, comedy and tragedy."

The reference was to the Presidential Commission of Inquiry now sitting on the matter, its proceedings open to the public. The sub-text was the turning of serious national proceedings into circuses where our outrage is silenced. Just as we did with the Goldenberg inquiry, we will troop to this inquiry's sittings in large numbers. We will exclaim and wring our hands, beside ourselves at the juicy revelations.

The proceedings will dominate media coverage for the duration. We will feel we participated. That we have learnt just how security is assured at our international airport. That we have sufficiently chastised and embarrassed the senior airports officials involved in enabling the breach of that security. Simply by being there. Or hearing about it. And discussing it, endlessly, tediously, with our families and friends.

For Kenyans, it is apparently now enough to know. But only after having resisted knowledge in the first place. Let us not pretend, after all, that we had not been forewarned about the presence of the so-called Armenian brothers in our country.

AND WE LET THE STORY DIE DOWN, while allowing the jurisdiction of our Police Commissioner to be trampled upon unceremoniously. Until the goings-on at our international airport when, finally (so the story goes), one brave minister apparently stepped up to the plate to enable the Police Commissioner to do his job.

But, even then, we resisted the logical progression from partial knowledge to full knowledge to decisive action. We decided that it was enough to know only as much of the story as is allowed to come through by inflexible and strict adherence to basic principles of law. Meaning that no inferences are to be drawn based on broader understandings of accountability. At all.

Thus the Judicial Inquiry into Goldenberg can be closed with absolutely no mention of our former president's good name. Even though he clearly had, if not legal accountability, then political accountability for everything that transpired under his watch.

Similarly, the only result of the release of John Githongo's dossier on Anglo-Leasing has been the resignation of erstwhile ministers, only for them to be resurrected unchallenged in various House committees - including those (gasp!) dealing with financial matters.

The events at our international airport, together with the discoveries made in the home of the "Armenian brothers" should have resulted in the prompt (and I do mean prompt!) sacking (not "resignations") of our Ministers for Internal Security and Immigration - just for a start. Because they are so clearly politically accountable.

Instead, what do we see going on before our very eyes? A movie.

We know what happened. The direct line of accountability that can be legally established and substantiated never tells the whole story. Political accountability demands more.

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