Hon. Musalia Mudavadi has called on President Uhuru to get his team back to the drawing board and have them come up with people-friendly interventions that will help us to defeat the virus.
The ANC leader said, if the president does not have the right people, he must shake up his team to inject in sophisticated and efficient people who will understand what the times we are living in demands. He observed that the brutality Kenyans have gone through will not produce the desired results because people are not going to sit in their houses and wait to starve to death because they have heard there is a virus. What is the State doing about their food crisis? he posed?
As a strong believer in the rule of law, the ANC boss said, the curfew has paralyzed public transport and that caused some people to wait at bus stops for as many as four hours, without transport. How then do policemen look at their watch, see that it is now 7.00 pm and suddenly descend on stranded commuters with brutality?
He pointed out that the government must seek to win over Kenyans in the effort to arrest Covid-19, noting that the country is not at war with another country, or with rebels from within so why would the police use such force? We are fighting against a deadly virus. We need each other. We all need to embrace some tolerable levels of empathy in our circumstances, he said in the press statement.
Throughout the press statement the ANC leader stressed that the government must recognize that people need basics because in other countries where partial or complete shutdowns have been effected, those countries have shown considerate thought about the welfare of the people.
They have avenues for those who want to go to hospital or to pharmacies to buy medicines. They have created room for those who want to exercise, or to take a safe walk, without jeopardizing the efforts to fight Covid-19. He regretted the Kenyan case where security agents have thrown a huge blind blanket over everyone that they find outside, they think he is an enemy to beat and brutalize. He said, this is wrong and must stop.
He wondered while some services have been classified as essential, it is embarrassing that those who provide those services have been caught up in this crass brutality. According to him, the Likoni incident did not, for example, show any mechanisms to identify health workers reporting to duty, or going home after duty. The police did not identify or spare journalists at work, or security guards reporting for work, or going back home after work. Everything else notwithstanding he has called on the government to admit failure in this regard and apologize to Kenyans.
The former deputy prime minister noted a yawning gap between policy formulation and policy implementation and going by the brutality that we have seen – especially in Likoni –he said, this is a reflection of failure to plan for the curfew. The ANC leader thought, curfews are not just imposed and implemented, unless you are dealing with a hostile population in a sudden and violently disruptive situation. Based on his knowledge, curfews must be methodically planned for, and all contingent considerations thought through and mitigated. In this case, there is clear failure on the part of the government. As citizens, we call upon them to get back to the drawing boards.
As he concluded, he thanked, and hailed all Kenyans who are abiding by the guidelines that have been provided in the war against Covid-19. He called on us to do our very best to meet these requirements for our own good and for the good of everybody else. The government, for its part, must remember that it needs our support in this war. Stop brutalising Kenyans Mudavadi said
