Among the many extravagant promises the William Ruto-led alliance made on the campaign trail was to reform the police force and make it more professional and more responsive to citizens’ needs. On assuming power, Ruto promptly sent home both DCI Kinoti and the Inspector General of Police, Hilary Mutyambai (who was reported as having resigned).
In place of Mutyambai came Japheth Koome. Ordinarily, one would have considered Koome a reformer and an inspired appointment. The most memorable images of an earlier version of Koome were TV clips years ago, when he was the OCPD of Nairobi Central, contending with regular student protests along University Way. Koome was routinely shown trying to calm down marauding students, while stopping his baton-wielding police officers from smashing their heads. In words and actions, he was then the fresh face of modern policing: friendly, interactive, sensitive and responsive. But that was many years ago.
I follow national security matters closely, and in my free time, I sometimes analyse the legacies of both former police bosses and military generals. I often wonder whom I could pick as the best police boss since Independence. Nearly all of them, while in office, had to contend with at least one national security issue.
Bernard Hinga was Commissioner of Police when the assassinations of both Tom Mboya and JM Kariuki took place. It must have been difficult to navigate those periods.
Ben Gethi as police boss had to contend with the aftermath of the 1982 attempted coup. Phillip Kilonzo fumbled with, and bungled, the investigations into the murder of Dr Robert Ouko in 1990.
Major General Hussein Ali grappled with the post-election violence of 2008. And so forth and so on.
Which of them could have made the cut as the best, I wonder. I am an admirer of Kenya’s military generals, so I would pick Ali, not for any particular reason beyond the fact that as a military man trained to stand on principle, he did not, at least publicly, place himself in a position to be used to run political errands. And this is an important lesson that most in Kenya take for granted.
I do not know where the training curricula at the Police College in Kiganjo and the military academy in Lanet differ, but a typical Kenyan military general comes out as suave, confident, polished, principled and forthright. In contrast, the sort of police boss that Kenyans are used to seeing on TV is one who lies liberally, routinely takes sides based on prevailing political circumstances and quite often, appears alarmingly out of touch with reality.
A few weeks ago, I was gob smacked when IG Koome claimed the Azimio brigade wanted him tried at The Hague because he is a Meru, and this was part of their plot to target his ethnic community. It made me wonder which semi-literate Moi-era politician had just risen from the dead, for this was the sort of thing we were used to hearing under the Moi dictatorship. I should have known the worst was yet to come.
Last week, I was stunned when the Inspector General of Police alleged the Azimio coalition had rented dead bodies from morgues to parade them in an attempt to demonstrate police brutality, arising from the anti-tax protests in June and July. I am not exaggerating when I say it is possible that even hardcore members of the regime may have been shocked by how low the police boss had sunk
There have been some really foul-mouthed individuals on the Kenyan political scene over the decades, some of them truly rabid tribalists. And yet, in their vulgar slur-fests, none of them, absolutely none, has gone so far as to accuse opponents and opposing political formations, of grabbing bodies from mortuaries to use for politics.
