President Uhuru Kenyatta's directive that title deeds be revoked in Lamu is unlawful and unconstitutional. The new constitution does not confer any authority on the President to grant title deeds or revoke them.
The Lands Secretary has no such authority either. Constitutional authority on land is vested in the National Land Commission headed by Muhamad Swazuri.
The commission is constitutional and independent and does not work under the authority, direction or orders of any office or individual, the President and presidency included.
I read mischief in the misguided, unlawful and unconstitutional directive by the President. It is nothing but a cheap publicity stunt with the hope that it will sweep the emotive land issue under the carpet and hoodwink Kenyans into thinking that the Jubilee administration can deal with the land problem.
For a start, if I may ask the President, why has the Jubilee government refused to publish and implement to the letter the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission report whose chapter on land is explicit in both narrative and detail and lists names of the usual suspects on land issues?
If indeed the President wants to deal with land issues in Lamu, as we must in the whole country, we have legal and constitutional structures to do so. Roadside pronouncements will not help.
The President's advisors should remind him of Article 135 of the constitution, which requires presidential decisions to be signed and sealed in order to have legal effect. We have enough evidence and data that can be used to address the land question.
The illegal settlements in Lamu, starting with Mpeketoni, the forceful grabbing of thousands of acres of land in Taita Taveta, Tana River, Olenguruoni, Kwale and in many parts of the Rift Valley and almost everywhere else in the country must be addressed.
One wonders why the President is only singling out 2011-12. To me, the land grabber of 1963 and that of 2010 and 2014 is still a land grabber. Longevity of time and history will not absolve people from criminal responsibility and civil liability.
In the Bible, Jesus Christ challenged the holier than thou Pharisees to cast the first stone at a woman they had frog-marched to Him on claims that she had committed adultery. Conscious of their own dirty hands, none of them could pick a stone and instead walked away one by one.
Today, we see people whose history with land needs no reciting. People who have even been found culpable in court for grabbing other people's land and forcefully evicting them are now shouting from the rooftop and calling others names.
Would anybody believe Charity Ngilu when immediately after unlawfully closing down the lands registry and doing what she did behind closed doors, emerges to make an unsolicited statement that Uhuru doesn't own any land.
Why did the President visit her at the closed registry during the period? Equally, would anybody, even a fool, believe Deputy President William Ruto when he purports to denounce land grabbers?
The Bible says remove the log in your own eye before removing the spec in your brother's eye.
Kenyans are no fools, they can see,hear, read and understand. If the intention of the Jubilee government, and I suspect, is to use Lamu as a guinea pig to fight the popular call for referendum, then they are doomed to fail. The issues in this country, and more particular land, will not be resolved through myopic and selective acts such as we are seeing on Lamu.
We need a holistic approach that will smash the bastions of impunity that Jubilee is busy erecting.
When the Lamu issue came up, they were falling over themselves calling we in Cord names, alleging that we are responsible for what had happened in Mpeketoni. Today, they are reading from a different script and are diverting it to the land issue, which Cord has all along said is part of the historical problem.
Curiously, I have gone through the list published by Jubilee of companies and individuals allegedly connected with the Lamu land issue, none of them is associated with Cord or its leadership. Some are even persons perceived to be closely associated with powerful individuals in Jubilee.
President Uhuru, do you want to solve the land question or resort to knee jerk reactions and gimmicks whose end result is a zero-sum game?
Your government says 500,000 acres in Lamu was grabbed, yet we all know that only the government issues title deeds.
A few questions need answers; who allocated the land? Are the names of individuals and companies being generously issued to the media those of original allottees or are these mere buyers for value without notice? And indeed if they are allottees, who had the authority to allocate land? Did any money corruptly change hands? And who takes responsibility for this wrong doing?
I hope that you are not taking us back to the pronouncement of a minister in the last government who equated title deeds to mere pieces of paper, a statement that sends shivers in the banking sector.
I honestly hope and believe that the dispossession of ownership of property, even in most glaring situations, will follow due process.
Moses Wetangula.
The author is a Coalition for Reforms and Democracy co-principal and the Senate minority leader.
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