I will give three short instances and step out for coffee.

A bit oldish now is the starkly astonishing statement by Martha Karua that she knows of former cabinet colleagues who still enjoy the comforts of a State motor vehicle and security even after they left both Parliament and government. She knows. She has publicly declared that they are there, and continue to do so. She made the declaration in the moments after resigning when her pay grade plummeted, shedding a few perks, for which she was aggrieved.

What is the problem? As a former minister for National Cohesion,Justice and Constitutional Affairs, she has admitted that she witnessed gross violation of the Public Officer Ethics Acts in a scenario that fell directly under her remit. In doing nothing about it, she also committed a similar violation, and became an actual accomplice to it; the Ethics Act operates under the Pauline injunction set forth in James4:17: anyone who knows the right thing and doesn't do it, sins. And this is a matter about which Martha has previously fulminated, under the guise of political responsibility, and sometimes under the general cover of impunity. But as shown above, she is an accomplice in the conspiracy who spills the beans only when in tantrum.

Equally hoary, but sporadically rejuvenated as a peeve, is the claim that PNU stole the election from ODM. Granted, the election was stolen, and PNU won the day. But Kriegler said that no winner could legitimately have been declared by the 2007 process. That means that had ODM been declared winner, it would have borne the boulder of the accusation of ‘election thief'. The supposition in the constantly-harped ODM sniffle is that it is not the theft, but the thief, which offends. Balderdash.

Thirdly, the bizarre case of our would-be avenging angel, Gitobu of Imenti. There was a time when Gitobu stood for all things just and right. There was a time when he was as brave as he was good. I recall him penning a plangent, heartrending, yet bold and defiant editorial as Special Branch goons waited outside his office to take him in. He stayed in prison for a long time, and was diagnosed with a brain tumour while there. The Government had him chained to his bed at KNH, and the picture of him in prison garb, chained to the metal bed, was as iconic as that of the manacled Kimathi lying on his back under his captors' gaze. Amnesty International declared him a Prisoner of conscience. He won international accolades and awards, some of which he could not travel to receive, and had to be brought down here. He was idealistic and unwavering, andI believed in him. What has changed? Is he no longer brave? Does he no longer claim the national good as his cause? Doesn't he bring Government to task time and time and again? Not by a long shot. He still does those things, and to the best of his ability.

Something has happened, however, that removed the lustre from Gitobu's name. Before the 2007 elections, Gitobu represented a journalist who had allegedly been assaulted by the First Lady. When criminal charges were not preferred by the state, he sought to prosecute her privately. The Attorney General took over the case and, without offering any explanation, terminated it. Gitobu moved to the constitutional court, seeming to suggest that the nolle prosequi entered by the AG had something to do with the president's constitutional immunity from prosecution while in office. And that is where the wagon rutted itself in a swamp. Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley was not, and is not any president's wife, yet has been a beneficiary of a nolle. So have many others. Regardless, there ensued much back and forth with the First Family, culminating in the early-year post-election fisticuffs at the Governor's Mansion in which, by Gitobu's own account, the First Lady descended upon him and gave him quite a thrashing. She later denied it, saying that Gitobu's bile was because he was denied the position of Deputy Speaker of the House. It does not matter who is telling the truth. What matter is this: there are acres and acres of back story between Gitobu of Imenti and the First Family. They have beef. Real heavy stuff. That, ordinarily, would not matter either.

When the Bill for the Institution of a Special Tribunal to try the organisers, financiers and perpetrators of post-election violence was in Parliament, Gitobu was vocal about the International Criminal court (we forget that The Hague is a metropolis) being the only discussable option. And so the Bill went down the drains. Now Gitobu is back with a similar Bill whose only salient addition is that it seeks to strip the Presidency of its constitutional immunities. Now, aside from being unconstitutional and suggesting that the President of Kenya is probably a murderer, there is something a bit disturbing about it: that on account of previous run-ins with the president's family, which admittedly were singular debacles, Gitobu has a direct interest, previously pursued, in stripping thePresidency of immunity to advance a personal agenda. That is called a conflict of interest. He is quite possibly in this legislative reversal to ensure tha the extracts from Lucy Kibaki, or any of her male relatives, the goat which the Njuri Ncheke adjudged to be his due. Thus, his Bill is compromised.

Finally, I think I am in a position to offer my bit on the constitutional review. I have been hearing noises since my childhood about why a new constitution is a National Emergency. To bring democracy (pre-1992). To expand democratic space (pre-2002). To protect Human Rights (pre-2002). To ensure equitable distribution of national resources (since-1964). To resolve historical injustices (since-1920). To bring about transparency and accountability (pre-2002). To give the small communities a voice and a chance (hush-hush). To improve GDP. To bring down the rate of crime. To expand housing. To resettle squatters. To stop road carnage. To stop tribal clashes. To create administrative units. To create more levels, or less tiers, or more chambers, or unicameral, or other government. To make children pass exams without reading. To convert Jamhuri High School into a university.

Several of the things which were pipe dreams without the sine qua non of constitutional review have come to pass. Others have not. And then I realised that a new constitution is a sacred relic, a creed, an article of our National Faith. It gives us hope and inspiration. It is what Buddhists have in Nirvana. We do not need it at all. We think that a new constitution will make us good and upstanding and sensible. That it will eradicate our greed, virulent envy, xenophobia and kleptomania. We live in the delirium that a new constitution will give us better leaders, faithful spouses, gifted children and docile pets. We inhabit the febrile limbo canopied by visions of a constitution which brings a scrupulous ruling class, CEOs without job-seeking cousins and girlfriends, policemen who earn six-figure salaries, matatu touts who serve refreshments, trains that run on time and rain that falls on a schedule prepared by the Ministries of Planning, Agriculture, Special Programmes and theMet. We have convulsions of pure rapture envisioning a future when all conniving, conspiring, thieving, looting, queue jumping, lane-changing, nose-picking, crotch-scratching, uncivil, uncivic, morally-analgesic Kenyans shall be raised incorruptible and led into a new Constitutional Dispensation in a land of milk and honey, where corruption, nepotism and disobedience of the law are things of the past.

We want a constitution which will make us good; which will transform us into the people we'd like to be. We want to be a great people without moral responsibility -- that is the work of the constitution, to make things like an ethical orientation, moral probity, acknowledgement of consequences and the imperative of hard, painful work go away. We are that outrageous.

In a nation where everything: right and wrong, sanity, reality and justice are entirely negotiable, is it surprising that no resulting compromise is too bizarre to contemplate?

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