The 4 fundamentals;

1. When the Media fraternity suggested the bill be rejected in-toto, ICT sector players felt this was akin to pouring the birth water together with the baby. Personally I am happy the ICT issues did not go down the drain. And I think that was what many of us were asking for.

2. The Media has genuine concerns as Haron Ndubi articulated in his legal opinion on the probibity of the bill. However, the Media completely blacked out ICT sector concerns during our campaign to have the bill signed. We even went out of the way to show the remedies to the issues through the miscelleneous amendment bill as suggested in the very fast legal opinion whose author requested we keep his/her identity anonymous.

3. ICT players and especially Kictanet ought to prove it's the bigger wo/man by showing solidarity in the front-line with our cousins in the Media looking for a way out of the quagmire. We do not have to ignore them simply because they refused to side with us in our campaign.

4. We are extremely careless in handling crisis. If you are familiar with Newton's method of factoring variable change and the Monty Hall Paradox, then we can analyse the options the President had mathematically.
4a) Sign Bill
4b) Don't Sign Bill
4c) Do nothing and hold Kenyans in suspense.

Each option had a 33% probability of being the 'right' decision. So, assuming he had not seen the bill earlier since he was not the author and had decided not to sign the bill following the Media owners petition, was it wise to change his decision from 'Don't Sign' to 'Sign'??
Monty Hall proves that changing the decision increases the probability of getting it 'right' to 66.6%. And that is proven by the fact that we [in ICT] feel content and support ways of also making our brothers in the media achieve 'State of Nirvana'. This bill will also give the Minister of Finance some head-up before he dismisses innovations such as M-Pesa without prior knowledge.

Conclusion;
For Makali, Openda, Kaikai and other leading Media personalities who I know are on this list, why don't you invite ICT stakeholders in to your media stations to engage Kenyans on what is good and what is bad in the ICT [not Media] bill so that we can fight together against what we feel is not good?? This has nothing to do with whether the grand coalition will hold or not, since neither the Right Honourable nor His Excellency drafted this bill. We did and the buck should stop with us!!!

--
Bildad Kagai
MD - MediaCorp Limited
Nairobi Stock Exchange Authorised Information Vendor
Suite B2, Tetu Court, State House Avenue
P. O. Box 20311 - 00200
Nairobi, Kenya
Tel. 254 20 272 8332
Fax. Rendered Obsolete
S - 1°17'13.8"
E - 36°48'22.7"
www.mediacorp.co.ke
---


On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 6:21 PM, alice <alice@apc.org> wrote:
Thank you Wainaina. Happy 2009.
Now that the bill has been signed, what does the ICT industry think about this whole debate? especially those who have worked for such a long time with government to introduce legislation for the sector?

best
alice

Happy New Year for ICT development in Kenya.

We can now look at the Media's concerns on the Kenya Communications
Act and support whatever  amendments may be justified.

Wainaina

 



_______________________________________________
kictanet mailing list
kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke
http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet

This message was sent to: billkagai@gmail.com
Unsubscribe or change your options at http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/billkagai%40gmail.com