Referendum in Kenya: Pre-requisites

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tana
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Joined: Tue Jun 04, 2019 1:00 am

Referendum in Kenya: Pre-requisites

Post by tana » Thu Jul 18, 2019 6:06 am

There is no doubt that Kenya constitution needs to be amended as soon as possible. The problem is that voters have different ideas about the changes needed. The solution is to have draft changes, then go to a referendum.

The last time Kenya had a referendum in 2005, the country emerged more divided than before. How can Kenya emerge without major divisions if a referendum will be held soon? By making sure that enemies of Kenya are not allowed to dominate how information is transmitted among Kenyans.

Some time back, the-people-who-control-the-internet-globally started a rumour online that certain people - who they believe could (or their close allies could) be a hindrance to their interests in Kenya - have engaged in corruption. They have used their search engine and social media platforms monopoly to push that rumour.

Currently, that rumour is taken as fact by many Kenyans.

When the government charges people in court over corruption, there are usually people who claim it is all politics, because so-and-so (from the rumour above) has not yet been charged with corruption, yet has also stolen.

These rumours are carefully packaged in such a way as to introduce an ethnic angle to the fight against corruption. Kenya has been here before, in 2007/2008.

BTW there are many people who say that the violence of 2007/2008 happened because elections were stolen and PNU declared the winner. It never ceases to amaze me how anyone can be so naive as to believe that.

PNU candidate was declared the presidential winner, and the violence that followed killed 1000+ Kenyans. If ODM candidate had been declared the winner, 1000+ Kenyans would still have been killed in the ensuing violence.

After the violence of 2007/2008, certain steps were taken to make sure such violence never happens again. The major one was that incitement was to be handled seriously, especially ethnic-based incitement by politicians and the media.

To a large extent, political/media incitement has been controlled. I know of only 2 media companies in Kenya where the-people-who-control-the-internet-globally have significant control, and use that control to very, very subtly push ethnic hate once in a while. All in all, this threat is quite minimal, because there are many media houses in Kenya, and the majority are patriotic.

However, many Kenyans go online/use social media daily. A lot of Kenyans get/share a lot of stories about Kenya online. If I were to make a wild guess, I would say that about 90% of the content Kenyans access online is created or sanctioned by the-people-who-control-the-internet-globally.

Where is the problem?

The problem is that the-people-who-control-the-internet: 1. Want to conquer Kenya, and 2. They don’t wish Kenya well.

Therefore, you have people who do not wish you well controlling 90% of the information you are receiving.

If a referendum were to be held now, unless all the big political players are in agreement about the proposed changes, Kenya could be in deep trouble.

Therefore, either propose constitutional changes that all big political players agree on (unlikely), or lower the control the-people-who-control-the-internet-globally have on Kenya from 90% to less than 50%, by doing the following.

Search Engine

Kenya ICT ministry should create a Kenyan search engine asap. If a company with 59 employees can have a search engine, there is no reason why Kenya ICT ministry cannot make one, if it is critically needed.

“DuckDuckGo generates results from over 400 individual sources, including crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia, and other search engines like Bing, Yahoo!, and Yandex… it has 59 employees.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo

There is no error above. DuckDuckGo has 59 employees, not 59 thousand. Okay, I know it is not a search engine, per se.

If a Kenyan team working under ICT ministry had something similar, all they would need is to concentrate on adding unique Kenyan data to the search engine, so that, if someone searches, for, say, “Kenya news”, he will get results from the Kenyan servers (from algorithms written by Kenyans), and if someone searches for “Uganda news”, he would get results called from the “crowdsourced sites”.

It is like 2 search engines in 1, with the Kenyan part being under 100% control of Kenyan ICT engineers. This will ensure that Kenyans, and other people interested in Kenyan affairs, have access to search results that have zero political bias/foreign influence.

Furthermore, websites promoting FAKE NEWS and hate speech, even if subtly, will not appear at the top of Kenyan search results, as is the current situation with the search engines.

Of course, Kenyans will use the search engines they want, even with the Kenyan search engine being online. But, I know there are many Kenyans, myself included, who would be delighted to use a search engine that gives unbiased results about Kenya.

NOTE:

1. This project can only succeed if done by the Kenyan government, not a private company. The government has 2 advantages over a private company (even if wholly owned by Kenyans): (a) The government would be able to promote it much more easily, so many Kenyans would get to know about it quickly, (b) A private company can - and will - be bought, by the same people who made us want a Kenyan search engine in the first place. It will then not be any different from the other biased search engines that produce rigged results regarding Kenya.

2. There are more than 190 countries in the world. What is so unique about Kenya that it requires its own search engine, while others don’t?

Actually, there are many countries with search engines, it is only that they are not owned by the government. However, I am not aware of any African based search engine.

Kenya is unique in that the-people-who-control-the-internet-globally have identified Kenya as a top priority country that they must conquer as soon as possible. Not only that, they are actively working towards conquering Kenya, and are using the search engines that Kenyans currently use, to do that.

3. If the government creates this search engine, won’t it antagonise these very powerful people?

If someone wants to kill you, will you say that you won’t reinforce your door because he might note that you are doing that to prevent him from killing you?

The Kenyan search engine will make it possible for Kenyans to access positive stories about the country, easily access music, folktales, poetry, and many other Kenyan material that is online but difficult, or impossible, to access currently.

4. You must be joking. The so-called Kenyan search engine is not a priority. Priorities in Kenya are food, jobs…

The search engine will create jobs. About food, security etc. Corruption has brought problems in these areas. The search engine will aid corruption fight because Kenyans who use it will support the fight against corruption because they will no longer be brainwashed by fake news and hate speech that make it difficult to fight corruption.

5. Kenya can go ahead and have a referendum to change the constitution so that it serves the country better. Without the Kenyan search engine, this is extremely difficult.

6. With the Kenyan search engine, Kenyans will get to know about other social media sites that are not controlled by the-people-who-control-the-internet-globally. Furthermore, Kenyans would have their sites/apps, that are currently hidden, become indexed.

7. Creating the Kenya search engine poses zero risk to the country. If powerful entities complain about a certain indexed url, the engineers managing the Kenyan search engine will simply remove it from the results.

8. The Kenyan search engine might eventually grow to become a local giant. If the Kenyan unbiased search engine becomes popular locally, they can add a Ugandan, Rwandan engines etc.

9. Currently, the popular search engines favour “Kenyan” websites that are used to slander patriotic Kenyans (who the-people-who-control-the-internet-globally see as a threat to their plans to conquer and destroy Kenya).

On the other hand, they promote shadowy characters as Kenyan heroes. This shadowy characters, will, of course, be on the anti-Kenya side of the referendum, and since they have the backing of the-people-who-control-the-internet-globally, Kenya would be in trouble.

A Kenyan search engine would pre-empt, or ameliorate, this problem.

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