Mars Group Blog

The Power of Whispers and Suggestion: Did influential aspects of the Kenyan media help blunt the effect of findings of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the sale of the Grand Regency? This is unforgivable. A wrong the media must surely correct in the Public Interest.

Friday, 29 January 2010

The Cockar Commission Report on the Sale of the Grand Regency Hotel which President Mwai Kibaki received thirteen months ago and is today suppressing makes sad reading about the conduct of a Minister and two Central Bank of Kenya officials who were under scrutiny for a scandalous transaction in which the Central Bank of Kenya speedily transferred ownership of the Grand Regency Hotel to a LAICO (the Libya Africa Investment Company) ostensibly a Libyan/Kenyan corporation in April 2008. But you would never have known this if your sole source of information was the Kenyan media in November 2008.

The media coverage on the day President Kibaki received the Judicial Commission of Inquiry report late November 2008 was unusually certain as to the contents of the report. Review of the contemporaneous coverage of the handover of the Grand Regency Hotel Inquiry Report shows Kenyan audiences and readers were repeatedly told that the key political figure at the heart of the inquiry Amos Kimunya ex-Finance Minister had been or would be exonerated and returned to cabinet. The speculative reporting was couched as being based on insider information and sources.

Now that copies of the Cockar Commission Report are available it is clear that the Cockar Commission far from absolving Mr. Kimunya actually found that “the Hon Amos Kimunya was not directly involved in the sale of the Hotel. However, he was briefed about what CBK was doing towards the disposal of the Hotel to LAICO. On 29thApril 2008, he did not give Parliament and the people of Kenya the true picture on the impending sale of the Hotel to LAICO. As the Minister responsible for the affairs of the CBK) he must take responsibility for the questionable disposal of the Hotel.”

Spin trumped journalism in the handling of the Cockar Commission’s findings regarding Amos Kimunya’s, Prof Ndungu’s and Kennedy Abuga’s conduct. The latter two gentlemen it is now clear were the prime movers in this transaction which was tainted by misrepresentation and deception. But in November 2008, influential aspects of the Kenyan media helped blunt the effect of findings by a Judicial Commission of Inquiry chaired by a respected former Chief Justice of Kenya, and that is something unforgiveable. A wrong the media must surely correct.

The media aided the return to Cabinet of a Minister who had misled Parliament and gotten himself sanctioned by his Parliamentary peers; and ensured the continued tenure of a Governor and Director of the Central Bank of Kenya who might otherwise have had to resign or be sacked from their jobs.

In those late November 2008 days the press let Kenyans down. Across the board from the right to left of the media spectrum reporters fell over themselves to suggest imminent exoneration even before the Cockar Commission Report had been presented. So for example the Kenya Times ran a story that claimed it had interviewed a source who was able to inform the reporter that “The commission found out that Kimunya is not guilty because he did not play any pertinent role in disposing off the hotel to the Libyan investors despite the fact that he was the Finance minister. Apart from Orengo’s baseless claims there was no other witness who implicated Kimunya of any offence.”

This was carried the morning the President was due to receive the report. But the Kenya Times went further to fix public opinion stating as a matter of fact that the Cockar Report would find that the sale of the Grand Regency Hotel was a completely legit Kenya government-to-Libya government deal. Quite the opposite of what the Cockar Commission actually found; which was that the Central Bank Governor conjured up a “non-existent and unbelievable excuse that the sale was a Government to Government transaction. This excuse enabled him to execute the sale and, with such alacrity and secrecy, get the transfer registered within less than three working days.”

After reading what Ex- Chief Justice Cockar said on the government-to-government transaction excuse, one is left to wonder what motivated the Kenya Times Reporter on November 24th 2008 to write “The report says the sale of the hotel was a ‘government project’ which was sanctioned by all relevant State authorities adding that Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) was obliged to fast track the sale since it was a government-to-government deal. According to a confidential brief the Governor produced before the commission as evidence, Kibaki sanctioned the sale of the hotel to LAICO during his visit to Libya” in June 2007.

More media houses including Citizen TV and NTV jumped in with breathless accounts of the same kind. Thus a Citizen TV Reporter would narrate on the 9 o’clock news about the just handed over Cockar Report “those who have seen it claim it has cleared former Finance Minister.” An ordinarily respected Nation TV reporter’s piece that day gave the impression that Hon. Kimunya was off the hook by citing sources who said Hon. Kimunya played no role in the sale, but omitting the Cockar Report finding that Kimunya mislead Parliament and the public, and on that basis must take responsibility for the transactions undertaken by the Central Bank Governor and Secretary which transferred the Grand Regency in a three day period to LAICO. Another TV station KTN ran its first story of the evening along the lines of “speculation is rife that Kimunya may find his way back to Cabinet with observers expecting a not guilty verdict.” Print press pursued the matter, and by the day after the report handing over ceremony the Daily Nation was reporting that “though the Cockar Commission, which was appointed to investigate the sale of the Grand Regency Hotel, absolved Mr. Kimunya of any wrongdoing, it accused Treasury of failing to issue proper policy guidelines during the sale of the hotel.” No such conclusion could possibly be reached after reading the Cockar Report or receiving an honest brief from a credible source. Unfortunately, the entire Commission remained silent as its report was being discredited; but perhaps they believed that shortly their report would be made public and all would be cleared up.

Were some media houses involved in an unwitting cover-up? Were professional standards met? Who briefed them to tell Kenyans that the Cockar Commission had exculpated Amos Kimunya the hapless former Finance Minister now Minister for Trade; and accepted the government-to-government transaction red herring created by the Central Bank Governor? Who stood to gain by manipulating the press and why did the press go for it? What effect did the inaccurate coverage have on the required investigation into the bona fides of the LAICO ‘purchaser’ and all aspects of the Grand Regency sale transaction? Such is the stuff that a Media Council Investigation would (in a decent society) be made of. To the Kenyan Media Council; can we have an investigation?

Postscript: The day after the Cockar Report was presented to President Kibaki, Permanent Secretary for Finance Joseph Kinyua told NTV station that Commissions of Inquiry were a financial burden to the Treasury. The irony being that the Permanent Secretary had avoided appearing before the Cockar Commission to explain what if any explanation there could be for the misleading statements made by the Minister for Finance to Parliament in April 2008.

In January 2009, two months after receiving the damning report of an inquiry into the conduct of his former Minister of Finance, Amos Kimunya, President Mwai Kibaki reappointed Mr. Kimunya to the key Ministry of Trade and Investment. There was a brief moment of outrage in Parliament which subsided after a Speaker’s Ruling which reaffirmed the Executive’s right to appoint its members from amongst Members of Parliament particularly in the absence of an incriminating report on which Parliament could stand against a Minister. The irony is that the former Finance Minister was not exonerated by the time of his reappointment as many had been led to believe was the import of the Cockar Report. A report which was being suppressed by the Minister’s appointing authority, the President. By the power of whispers and suggestion, Kenyans were led to believe that that former Chief Justice Cockar had delivered an exculpation of Amos Kimunya and that the transaction he was investigating was a government transaction and contrary to assertions completely transparent and economical. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

In February 2009, the Nation (see links below) and East African Standard ran stories interrogating the content of the Cockar Report. This time around their sources were true but nothing could be done to shake the wider public’s opinion created by their own coverage in November 2008 that after all the hullabaloo about the Grand Regency Hotel sale, nothing amiss had happened. And that dear Kenyans is why Amos Kimunya is still a Cabinet Minister and Prof Ndungu and Kennedy Abuga remain at the Central Bank of Kenya working for you.

Mwalimu Mati
Mars Group Kenya

further links to stories run in 2009 by the Nation
MPs’ fury over Kimunya return
Grand regency sale was ‘secret and hasty’
Kimunya didn’t give Kenyans the full picture: report
Cockar report: Grand Regency transaction was not transparent

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