Kenyan MPs agreed yesterday to recommend the elimination of the role of prime minister in a draft constitution being drawn up as part of a power-sharing deal. If the recommendation is followed parliament would have more power to check on the executive. Read more…
The police chief in Kenya, Mohamed Hussein Ali, has been removed from his position and is now the head of the national post office, according to an announcement made yesterday by President Mwai Kibaki. The official statement said this was a potential first step in a larger reform plan for the security forces in Kenya. International human rights organisations have pointed the police as responsible for most of the 1,500 deaths that happened in a surge of violence after the 2007 Kenyan elections. Calls for a deep reform of the local security forces had accompanied a United Nations report released in January 2009, which described systematic killings committed by the police with total impunity.
The Philippine-flagged Stolt Strength, managed by a Panama company, was seized on Monday, said Andrew Mwangura who runs the Kenya chapter of the Seafarers Assistance Programme.
“The ship was seized on Monday afternoon, but we are now tracking its whereabouts,” he told AFP.
“We are yet to establish where the ship was heading and what it was carrying,” he added.
Stolt Strength, with 21 Filipino crew, was seized nearly two months after its sister freighter, Stolt Valor, was taken in the same region.
Barely 44 hours after vowing he would rather die than resign, Finance minister Amos Kimunya finally bowed to pressure and stepped aside Tuesday to allow for investigations into the controversial sale of the Grand Regency Hotel.
Mr Kimunya said he made the decision after consulting President Kibaki, his own family and colleagues.
A Cabinet minister is among four people who have died in a plane crash near Enosupukia in Narok District.
Roads minister Kipkalya Kones and Home Affairs assistant minister Lorna Laboso were travelling in a light aircraft to Kones’ Bomet constituency in Kericho when the plane went down.
AllAfrica: Said Mr Odinga: “I will not use this occasion to campaign for the party. I am a Prime Minister and that is why you can see the DC, police officers and a red carpet before me. [when he dies will he go to house negroe heaven?]
“You can also see that Mr Asman Kamama and Mr Adan Keynan of PNU have accompanied us,” he added.
The commander of the Kenyan army, Lieutenant General Augostino Njoroge, has dismissed charges of human rights abuses in the Mount Elgon region of Kenya as “imaginary.”
Kenya’s Grand Coalition Cabinet has been sworn into office, seeing Raila Odinga take office as the second Prime Minister in the country’s history.
The Cabinet, with a total of 41 ministers in addition to the President and the PM, is also the largest ever in Kenya’s history.
He said: “We have a huge task ahead of us and we must ensure that it is fulfilled to the letter… this will only be achieved when we speak with one voice at all times.”
President Kibaki has named ODM leader Raila Odinga the Prime Minister in a 40-member grand coalition Cabinet.
The announcement has come after weeks of tense negotiations between the two leaders.
President Kibaki, accompanied by Mr Odinga and Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka, announced the new Cabinet in a live address to the nation from State House, Nairobi.
“We have resolved that negotiations… be suspended until [Kibaki's party] fully recognises the 50/50 power-sharing arrangement and the principle of portfolio balance,” ODM secretary general Anyang’ Nyong’o told a news conference.
this 14 year old boy was set on fire by the Guyana Police Force
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