Interior Cabinet Security Kipchumba Murkomen, Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja and DIG Eliud Lagat after a meeting. [File, Standard]
It is tempting to think of Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen as cynical, or even sadistic. He is perhaps both. But far worse, he is simply naïve. He has not understood the magnitude of the office he occupies, and its implications for his country, beyond the current regime.
Allow me to speak as a seasoned scholar in armed conflict and peace studies. Let me tell you where Kenya is going under President William Ruto, and the agency of Murkomen.
The CS Interior has told Kenyans, “If you know that someone has organised goons in Homa Bay, and the police have told you that there are goons, why go there? Why don’t you just go home and plan for some other meeting some other day, when there will be no goons?”
Now this is beyond cynicism and sadism. It is pure naivete. The Kenyan State is not just normalising political gangsterism. It is creating an alternative centre in the legitimate exercise of violence.
In both domestic and international law, the State is the only entity that has legitimate exercise of violence. When the State begins sharing that legitimacy with other forces and entities, the country is on the outskirts of State collapse and failure.
This is what has begun happening in Kenya under the current regime. We are collapsing. The State does not fail overnight. It sinks inch by inch. Kenyans are familiar with the story of Haiti; having recently been embroiled in controversy about sending their police to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, to wrestle the Haiti portion of it from marauding gangsters. Haiti remains in the tight grip of hundreds of mobs.