'How can dead people be taught a lesson?'
February 04 2009 at 10:16AM
Related Articles
* Kenya mourns, frets over disasters
* Kenyan petrol blaze claims scores of lives
* Kenya tanker explosion kills 91
* Nairobi fire: death toll keep rising
* Bodies found in Nairobi fire wreckage
By Andrew Cawthorne
Nairobi - Kenya's president and first lady have disagreed in public over who is to blame for two fire disasters killing at least 145 people.
Their unprecedented spat has added to public dismay over the way authorities have reacted to a supermarket fire that killed 26 people and a petrol truck blaze with 119 fatalities.
During a week of national mourning for the east African nation's worst accident toll of recent times, First Lady Lucy Kibaki raised the political stakes when she lambasted one of her husband's ministers during a visit to victims.
The volatile Lucy Kibaki, who has in the past been accused of slapping a journalist and a politician, was angry at Security Minister George Saitoti's comments that poor Kenyans contributed to the oil disaster by scrabbling for fuel in the road.
"How can dead people be taught a lesson?" she said, in a passionate speech at a Nairobi hospital on Monday.
"If it was a woman in the ministry of internal security, she would have stopped these accidents."
Abandoning his traditional low public profile at moments of national passion, President Mwai Kibaki stood by Saitoti in a speech outside his Nairobi office.
"I wish to assure my Minister for Security, Honourable George Saitoti, that I have full confidence in him," Kibaki, 77 said in comments published by local media on Wednesday.
"I appreciate the good work he is doing in my office," Kibaki added, flanked by Saitoti and other ministers.
Kenyan authorities have faced a torrent of criticism for poor safety standards and a slow response to the accidents.
Some survivors have said fire-escapes in the Nairobi supermarket were locked, while some witnesses of the truck blaze near Molo town accused police of taking bribes to allow people to start scooping up oil in the road before it caught fire.
The disasters have compounded a mood of national gloom in Kenya, where new graft scandals have come to light in the maize and oil sectors, and the economy has taken a dive due to the global crisis and the impact of last year's election violence.
East Africa's biggest economy is also facing a food shortage, with 10 million people - or more than a quarter of the population - suffering from hunger.
Trying to chart a way forward, Kibaki was to preside a three-day conference in Nairobi from Wednesday, titled "The Kenya We Want" and intended to debate national policies.
Many Kenyans, however, were sceptical that their leaders were the ones to take them forward.
"The problems we face were caused by the ruling class," said Morris Odhiambo, of the National Civil Society Congress.
"The current leadership, characterised by oligarchic claims to power and privilege, patronage and corruption, cannot deliver on the transformation Kenyans desire," added Odhiambo, who was organising an alternative conference in Nairobi.
Kibaki presides a coalition government set up in April, 2008, after a disputed presidential election touched off the worst violence in Kenya's post-independence history. More than 1 300 people died, and agriculture and tourism took a big hit.
# Editing by Katie Nguyen
