The review team, whose powers are quasi-judicial, found that Olive was
not an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) - a requirement for the
award of the contract - and did not meet the requirement that the
bidders be companies with a turnover of Sh8 billion.
It also emerged that senior government officials inflated prices for
the controversial laptops tender by as much as Sh1.4 billion after the
final bids were made.
"The requests for review of the tender by the first and second
applicant (HP and Haier) are hereby allowed," the review board ruled,
even as it directed the Ministry of Education's tender committee to do
due diligence on the two petitioners according to the provisions of
the procurement act.
Conclusions
If I might make two further observations. Last week I spoke about how
execution is everything. 18th February 2004http://www.rich.co.ke/rctools/wrapup.php?dt=MjAxNC0wMi0xOA%3D%3D#B34243Therefore, I, for one, would be keener on having a stronger partner
implementing my overarching campaign promise than appears to be the
case.
I would point at president Obama's recent travails and insist this is
a seriously sub optimal trade.
Hardline Kenya cleric, the face of homegrown radical Islamhttp://www.nation.co.ke/news/Hardline-Kenya-cleric-the-face-of-homegrown-radical-Islam/-/1056/2238968/-/wylo2kz/-/index.htmlWhen Islamist gunmen stormed 's Westgate shopping mall on a busy
Saturday in September, the ensuing carnage also intensified fears that
Kenya's homegrown Islamists were on the rise.
Although the attackers were from Somalia's Al-Qaeda-inspired
al-shabaab rebels, the group's ability to infiltrate and operate in
Kenya, as well as find a stream of willing recruits, has focussed
attention on radical Islamists based down the coast in the Kenyan port
city of Mombasa.
At the heart of the steamy port hub sits the Musa mosque, seen by
Kenyan authorities as the epicentre of a new terrorist threat. Its key
figure, Abubaker Shariff Ahmed, better known as Makaburi, does little
to hide his firebrand leanings.
"It's our innocents for your innocents. It was justified. As per the
Koran, as per the religion of Islam, Westgate was 100 percent
justified," the Muslim cleric said of the attack that left at least 67
dead, among them women and children cut down by machine gun fire or
grenades.
"Are the ones being killed and raped in Somalia not innocent?"
Makaburi said in an interview with AFP in his austere Mombasa office,
seizing on Al-shabaab's justification for the mall attack -- Kenya's
military presence in southern Somalia.
"The KDF (Kenyan army) is doing the same thing and worse in Somalia
than what happened at Westgate. So as per the Islamic religion, they
had every right to avenge whatever the KDF is doing in Somalia."
Makaburi asserted that no real Muslims died in the upmarket,
part-Israeli-owned mall.
"How come a Muslim is at a shopping mall instead of being at a
mosque?" he said, adding that the "Americans and the Western
governments are killing innocent people all over the world everyday,
they're bombing weddings, funerals."
The real "terrorists", Makaburi argued, were the military personnel
operating drones.
"How come the pilots of the drones are not labelled as terrorists? How
come when we Muslims are being killed by the Americans using drones,
by the British, by whoever, by the West, it's nothing, but when you
have a single non-Muslim killed by a Muslim, it's terrorism?"
In August 2012, the Musa mosque's radical preacher, Aboud Rogo
Mohammed, was gunned down, and in October last year his successor,
Sheikh Ibrahim Ismail, met the same fate on a road near Mombasa, again
sparking riots. Most believe the Kenyan authorities were behind the
killings.
Last month the mosque was yet again the scene of violence when armed
police launched a massive raid to put an end to what officials said
was a "jihadist convention" and a al-shabaab recruitment exercise
taking place inside.
Makaburi, who is in his 50s, is currently subject to UN sanctions -- a
travel ban, assets freeze and targeted arms embargo -- for being a
"leading facilitator and recruiter of young Kenyan Muslims for violent
militant activity in Somalia", and for having "strong ties with senior
Al-Shabaab members."
"I do not support Al-Shabaab, I do not know Al-Shabaab. I support the
implementation of Sharia Law anywhere in the world," Makaburi insisted
in the interview.
"These are just accusations. Where is the proof that I have recruited
anybody? Who have I recruited? When, how, where? These are just
accusations."
He also said that "the highest motivator for the youth to go into
Somalia to fight Jihad is the Kenyan government doing injustice to the
Muslim youth here in Kenya. How do you think the youth feel after they
were sitting peacefully in a mosque and they were invaded, shot at,
killed, meant to disappear?"
Instead, Makaburi presents himself as a simple man promoting "true
Islam", and not the kind practiced in Saudi Arabia, which he dismisses
as "a Christian country ruled by somebody who pretends to be a
Muslim".
In his view the best examples of Islam are found in parts of Fallujah
in Iraq, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and Shebab-held areas of
Somalia.
"Radical Islam is a creation of people who do not believe in Islam. We
don't have radical Islam, we don't have moderates, we don't have
extremists. Islam is one religion following the Koran and the Sunnah,"
said Makaburi.
But he also seems resigned to his fate as Kenya's crackdown, which has
been stepped up post-Westgate, continues: "My life is in danger. They
will eventually kill me. They do that."
Westgate 169 days agohttp://www.twitpic.com/deneco
Kenya Shilling versus The Dollar Live ForexProshttp://j.mp/5jDOot
Nairobi All Share Bloomberg +3.97% 2014http://www.BLOOMBERG.COM/quote/NSEASI:IND
Nairobi ^NSE20 Bloomberg -0.20% 2014http://j.mp/ajuMHJ
Every Listed Share can be interrogated herehttp://www.rich.co.ke/rcdata/nsestocks.php
