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Kibaki gives out land for
‘Yes’ review vote
Monday October 3, 2005
The Standard
By Nixon Ng’ang’a
The Government will resettle
families evicted from Mau Forest before the November 21 referendum
in a move clearly aimed at wrong-footing the No platform.
President Kibaki will announce the
resettlement of the families this week as the Yes platform, which
was re-launched on Saturday in Nakuru, gathers momentum.
The beneficiaries of the
Government’s referendum giveaway will include 12,000 Ogiek
families who the President shall give title deeds in Tinet Forest
in the Rift Valley before the plebiscite.
And Lands Minister Amos Kimunya
yesterday confirmed the President would make a "key
pronouncement" on the fate of the Mau Forest evictees.
Said Kimunya: "We’re working
on the Mau question and similar issues across the board and in the
course of the coming week, the President will be making a key
pronouncement on the matter."
He admitted that the resettlement
had been catalysed by the raging debate on the referendum and the
need to placate potential voters angry with the Government for
kicking them out of land they claim they own.
The families were uprooted from
their lands and their houses torched by security officers early in
the year to protect water catchment areas and to preserve forests.
Yes campaign strategists believe
the Mau evictions have embittered Rift Valley politicians and
hardened their resolve and that of their supporters on the
referendum.
Already senior politicians, such as
nominated MP Kipkalya Kones, have vowed they would not vote "Yes"
unless the Mau families are resettled.
The harshest criticism of the
Government’s action has so far come from the Kanu leadership,
especially by Chairman Uhuru Kenyatta, Secretary General William
Ruto and Executive Officer Julius Sunkuli.
Yesterday, it emerged that several
officials of the Ministry of Lands officials worked throughout the
weekend to prepare the necessary paperwork to facilitate the
resettlement.
It is also expected the
resettlement would later be extended to benefit those kicked out
of the Mount Kenya, Aberdares, Marmanet and Mount Elgon forests.
However, Kimunya ruled out allowing
the evictees to return to forest land, saying there would be no
compromise on the need to protect ecological zones.
He also declined to give details on
where the evictees would be resettled, saying only that the
Government had the means to get alternative land.
Kimunya said he expected the
resettlement, which follows in quick succession the Government’s
concessions on two other contentious land issues, to provoke
accusations of political expediency.
Independent sources revealed that
the President was considering presiding over the presentation of
titles to those whose revoked documents have been passed as
‘clean’.
Sources at the Ministry of Lands
revealed that a list of 10,000 people who bought land in Mau
Forest during the last regime, and whose titles Kimunya revoked,
had been drawn up for resettlement.
An inter-ministerial committee
chaired by the Head of the Civil Service, Mr Francis Muthaura,
will receive the final report today for onward transmission to the
President.
The committee resolved to ask the
President to give the Commissioner of Lands the powers to resettle
and compensate the evictees with land elsewhere "in equal
measure".
The President is then expected to
initiate the process of getting the money to buy the land,
preferably from the Consolidated Fund.
The committee has representatives
from the Ministries of Lands, Environment, and the Office of the
President.
The resettlement process is a
turning point for a Government that dispatched security forces to
flatten homes, schools and churches.
The change of heart was being seen
in political circles as another political carrot being dangled by
the Yes team to increase its share of the Rift Valley Province’s
2.5 million-vote basket.
Those affected are mainly from the
Kalenjin and Maasai communities whose leaders are campaigning for
a No vote in the referendum.
The exercise would be part of the
Government’s plan to mitigate opposition to the proposed
constitution by addressing what Kimunya described as "genuine
pockets of discontent."
"We are not talking of an
election here. We are addressing a more important issue of a
constitution that is a lifetime document.
"We don’t wish to be seen as
a Government that denied people the right to good choice because
of rigidity over issues that could be negotiated," Kimunya
said.
On Thursday, the Government
rescinded a ban on demarcation of land under 2.5 acres in tandem
with the degazettment of the Amboseli National Park to a game
reserve.
Amboseli was downgraded to a game
reserve under the management of the Ole-Kejuado County Council.
Both decisions, which appeared
aimed at benefiting small-scale landowners and the Maasai, have
been seen as tailored to win support for the referendum.
President Kibaki leads the Banana
campaign — the more prominent part of the Government favouring
the proposed constitution and that is under great pressure from
the Orange team whose members are drawn largely from the Liberal
Democratic Party and Kanu.
The Mau evictions are thought to
have estranged the Government from the resident Kalenjin community
that was beginning to warm up to Mr Nicholas Biwott’s informal
cooperation with President Kibaki.
But even after Internal Security
Minister John Michuki named an 18-member team to investigate the
legality of the evictions in July, the community has remained
bitter with the Government.
The evictions led to a showdown
between Kimunya and a section of the community’s MPs who even
roughed up the Minister in Parliament over the matter.
Debate on the referendum has proved
an attractive forum for evictees and their MPs to settle scores
with the Yes camp as manifested in their hostility to the Yes
campaign team.
So hostile have been the crowds
that Biwott and his MP lieutenants have opted to sit on the fence
in the debate fearing a backlash from their supporters.
But asked whether the Government
was now backtracking on its stated policy of being ruthlessness
with those thought to have acquired public land fraudulently,
Kimunya said it was merely giving the policy a human face.
"We’re not going back and
the policy remains. But we must balance between saving forests and
wananchi’s humanitarian needs," he said.
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