Controversy
In the early 1990s, Muriithi declined a job offer as a newscaster on the government run Kenya Broadcasting Corporation on principle. In a Newspaper interview carried by The Standard, a leading Kenyan Daily, on September 5, 1995, the journalist said he could not take up the job as a Swahili News anchor owing to his opposition in the way the media house was carrying out its business. "It is a mouth piece for President Daniel Arap Moi and his cronies and much as I would love to serve my country in that respect, my conscience does not allow me," he was quoted as saying. And in opinion pieces carried by the local dailies in the mid-1990s, he lodged a scathing attack on President Moi's administration terming the second president of Kenya as "one of the worst dictators the world has seen in recent times". Observers have often wondered whether the journalist has any particular political leaning since he is equally critical of the current Kenyan President, Mwai Kibaki. In a recent radio interview on VOA which broadcasts from Washington DC, he quipped; "Kibaki's legacy is indelibly tainted by his association with the Moi administration. How does he explain his total silence as Moi's administration killed and tortured Kenyans with impunity while he (Kibaki) comfortably sat in the same government, holding powerful positions, including that of the Vice President of the republic of Kenya?
In an interview on VOA on September 26, 2010, Muriithi criticized president Kibaki for what he termed "open nepotism" saying almost all the key positions in his wing of the coalition were held by his tribesmen, save for a few held by his close cousins, the Ameru. He was equally critical of Prime minister, Raila Amolo Odinga. "Why is his sister the Consul General in Los Angeles yet she is a PHD in Chemistry? Don't you think he should try to at least conceal the open nepotism?" he asked the VOA interviewer.
Asked what he thought of the founding president of Kenya as the country marked its 48th birthday, Muriithi said that Kenyatta laid the foundation for the official corruption which is so rampant in Kenya today. "He perfected tribalism and amassed great wealth (including vast tracts of land) while ignoring the real heroes, the freedom fighters some of who lost their lives, property and dignity as they fought for independence," he said.
Read more about this topic: Ben Mutua Jonathan Muriithi
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)