By Patrick Ochieng
Kenya is on its knees. A long simmering political crisis has engulfed the country in a fierce and unrelenting embrace that threatens to blow to smithereens what Kenyans have built over the years. The electoral fraud meted out on the ODM who had an early lead in the just concluded 2007 elections has tumbled the country into an abyss. Kenyans had hoped that this election would enable the nation to collect its pieces together instead the country has fallen off. The frenzy that greeted the development of the orange movement since the 2005 constitutional referendum to a full fledged political party was spectacular, if anything the ODM became a powerful machine that captured the imagination and admiration of most Kenyan voters. It is ODM’s promise for change that resonated with the youth of Kenya to spur the huge voter turn out witnessed in all parts of the country.
Following the declaration by ECK Chairman Samuel Kivuitu that President Mwai Kibaki was the ‘winner’ of the 2007 elections, the resilience of political dispensation in Kenya is facing one of the most severe tests in recent times. Hundreds have lost their lives, thousands have been displaced and property worth billions torched or looted. Kenya has burst into flames, gun powder has rendered the skies, blood and death has visited our nation with unparalleled impetuosity. Does Kenya deserve this bloodbath? The issues surrounding the 2007 elections revolve mainly around the serious questions raised about the conduct of the count; vote tallying that was riddled with anomalies, and the intransigence of the electoral commission officials.
It has always been a palpable fact for those who are keen enough to know that Kenya’s state has always been a police state at least ever since it was founded forty years ago. Only in a police state can para-military troops barricade an election tallying center, bully everybody out, eject all observers and free press then escort the chairman to a secluded room with the state broadcaster to announce the winner of a democratic election after three days of waiting for results. Then an hour later a hastily convened swearing in ceremony is televised from state house without even the pomp of a national anthem or the bother of prayers to legalize an illegitimate president. The military might can be discerned when one looks at the conduct of the ceremony all the chiefs of staff are present as is the police commissioner, the attorney general, the chief justice and his high court registrar, internal security minister and his defense counterpart in what one is supposed to understand as a show of loyalty.
The public outrage that greets this fraud is immediate but what is spectacular is the speed with which the police is dispatched to mow down protesters in what some have admitted is a shoot to kill order.
The events after December 27 only help to underpin the philosophy that instructs our state and its politics. What are the facts of Kenya’s political ‘stability’ and where is the center of gravity of political power today? What factors have contributed to the hot peace for which everyone is envious? Does Kibaki’s GNU or Moi’s KANU before him possess a structural and social basis? What is its institutional framework? Too much energy is being spent discussing Kibaki rather than the presidency, the president rather than the elaborate power structure built up around him. Power in Kenya is synonymous with the state structure and this explains why any potential foci of organized opposition bear immediate and focused wrath of the state.
I have come to terms with the fact that power and politics in Kenya are purely about interests. Philosophically Kibaki’s Government of National Unity and now the PNU all stem from the historical organization of politics in Kenya around the fact of tribe. Lets recall that the first President of Kenya himself a Kikuyu led Kenya for over a decade with an iron fist that tacitly made his community feel that they were the only pebbles in the beach, that they were best endowed with qualities to lead Kenya and this endowment was perhaps ordained by god if one viewed it against the backdrop of their sheer numbers.
It is for these reasons among others that the Kikuyus led by Dr. Njoroge Mungai attempted without success to block Vice President Moi from succeeding Kenyatta in 1978. This very same greed saw the community scuttle the original FORD in 1991 to block Jaramogi from making a go for the presidency. This Kikuyu hegemony during Kenyatta’s reign is what led other tribes to organize themselves to oppose the government and its policies which were skewed in favor of the former. Indeed many attempts at alliance building have mainly survived in as long as the interests of the Kikuyu are favored. This changed only slightly when Raila Odinga decided to work with Moi after the 1997 general elections at a time when Kibaki was wooing him (Raila) to have them jointly reject Moi’s victory.
It will be remembered that the late VP Michael Wamalwa and Charity Ngilu joined forces with Kibaki to form the National Alliance Party of Kenya but this worked only when the two accepted to play second fiddle to Kibaki. When Moi on his part imposed Uhuru Kenyatta as his preferred successor Raila rebelled against him and joined the NAK to form the NARC which also worked only because they all declared Kibaki as the best candidate to contest the presidency.
In a situation where the constitutional framework is that of a winner take all electoral system, one in which a minority government is possible the revelations above make for very worrying trends. So that sometimes it is true to say that in Kenya the people are not quite the source of power. The locale of power here that many commentators fear to mention is in the security forces and its ubiquitous presence, which has overwhelmed the people, one can say sadly to servitude. It is the group that controls the machinery of the ruling party, the provincial administration, the para-military GSU, the Special Branch, the CID, the NSIS all of which are crucial assets in Kenya, a country of band wagon politics that determines which way Kenya goes. The role of these forces in the 1978 succession is quite vivid in our memories just as the 2007 events discussed above.
It is in these forces that Moi always found the confidence to dismiss his critics. It is also within their possibilities that one can quickly locate the bravado and confidence with which the PNU jingoists have been associated even when the whole of Kenya was overwhelmingly pro-ODM. What I mean here is that Kenya’s political stability and the peace that is being touted by just about anybody now is a function of the police apparatus not a constitutional order of any description. Although over the years the tribe in Kenya has suffered a decline as a base for political opposition not so many in leadership realize this. It is this crippling blind-spot that delivered the referendum victory to the orange side just as it did rob Moi’s protégé Uhuru Kenyatta of victory in 2002 and that this too was Kibaki’s undoing.
Transition of power in Kenya has always been smooth and uneventful, both Moi and Kenyatta never named heirs but both allowed an unofficial struggle to succeed them to precede their departure. It is this struggle that contributed significantly towards the future of Kenya. For Kenyatta death came in between and so the unofficial struggle took its own life as it later turned out the struggle was about the balance of power between two main factions, the pro-kikuyu and the non-kikuyu ruling classes. As for Moi his dalliance with Raila was only the political game while his plan was to have Uhuru the son of the first president succeed him in order to protect their collective interests as ruling elites.
Like in 1978 when the Moi/Njonjo alliance pushed the view that it is in the best interest of Kenya to have a second president who is non-Kikuyu against the Kikuyu group which regarded the presidency as their legitimate inheritance and a guarantee to their privileged position, the Moi/Raila cooperation invited for the first time the possibility of political partnership in Kenya where power can be shared and where politicians are astute enough to discuss with both friend and foe. This theory informed the NARC dream even after Moi and Raila fell out. This effort between Moi and Raila represented the first real consolidation of support and assertion of political maneuvering and stratagem Kenya has ever witnessed. Indeed it is that cooperation that changed the face of Kenyan politics. So many believed that Kenya was on its first course of carthasis and that we would not go back to the same old rut and rot.
The constitutional provision that requires the President to retire after the expiry of his two five year terms was extremely useful in delivering a new Kenya. So was the rue that counting of votes would take place at the polling centers. What Kibaki failed to do on becoming president was to build on the gains by completing the constitutional review process. So the locale of power remained in the hands of the security system that is why PNU went to this election without the luxury of its own internal elections just like KANU did in 1978. With their control of the law enforcement machinery PNU chose to effectively undermine the strength and confidence of its opponents. So the election rigging was well planned, well rehearsed and creatively orchestrated. The succession was long settled only the formal swearing in was awaited following the ritual of elections. PNU politicians said this many times and Raila and ODM warned several times of plans and plots to rig the poll.
The Kibaki group hopes to make full use of the state apparatus to increase their influence among politicians and the public. This is their pop corn theory which assumed that the public will burn out after a few days. They interpreted this as a disenchantment of only one community, the Luo. To their dismay the violence and its execution has defied all comprehension countrywide. If there is one thing this impasse has brought out then it is that the nation-building project which was launched by Kenyatta Kenya’s first president did not go beyond mere words, it left all our communities as disparate sub nationalities as the centralized police state was milked by elite around the president. The state facilitated the accumulation of private wealth and any opposition was brutally subdued, free press was muzzled; torture was employed against critics as popular resistance was grossly curtailed.
What we are witnessing is therefore part of a suspended debate, the transition which did not happen at independence; it has nothing to do with tribalism, it is about dealing with historical injustices, land grab, political assassinations, bigotry and autocracy.
Kibaki stole elections and must step aside. International community must not recognize this illegitimate government, the evidence is there, and international as well as local observers have cast aspersions on the tallying process which clearly was flawed. Only fresh elections can save Kenya and this must be done in the net three months. If the government fails to annul the results the rest of the world should suspend aid to Kenya and impose a travel ban on Kibaki’s officials. The corruption in Kibaki’s tenure has been so brazen that another five years of such impunity will spell doom for Kenyans. Kibaki must be held responsible for the crimes against humanity committed against Kenyans following the disputed elections.
Kenya is on its knees. A long simmering political crisis has engulfed the country in a fierce and unrelenting embrace that threatens to blow to smithereens what Kenyans have built over the years. The electoral fraud meted out on the ODM who had an early lead in the just concluded 2007 elections has tumbled the country into an abyss. Kenyans had hoped that this election would enable the nation to collect its pieces together instead the country has fallen off. The frenzy that greeted the development of the orange movement since the 2005 constitutional referendum to a full fledged political party was spectacular, if anything the ODM became a powerful machine that captured the imagination and admiration of most Kenyan voters. It is ODM’s promise for change that resonated with the youth of Kenya to spur the huge voter turn out witnessed in all parts of the country.
Following the declaration by ECK Chairman Samuel Kivuitu that President Mwai Kibaki was the ‘winner’ of the 2007 elections, the resilience of political dispensation in Kenya is facing one of the most severe tests in recent times. Hundreds have lost their lives, thousands have been displaced and property worth billions torched or looted. Kenya has burst into flames, gun powder has rendered the skies, blood and death has visited our nation with unparalleled impetuosity. Does Kenya deserve this bloodbath? The issues surrounding the 2007 elections revolve mainly around the serious questions raised about the conduct of the count; vote tallying that was riddled with anomalies, and the intransigence of the electoral commission officials.
It has always been a palpable fact for those who are keen enough to know that Kenya’s state has always been a police state at least ever since it was founded forty years ago. Only in a police state can para-military troops barricade an election tallying center, bully everybody out, eject all observers and free press then escort the chairman to a secluded room with the state broadcaster to announce the winner of a democratic election after three days of waiting for results. Then an hour later a hastily convened swearing in ceremony is televised from state house without even the pomp of a national anthem or the bother of prayers to legalize an illegitimate president. The military might can be discerned when one looks at the conduct of the ceremony all the chiefs of staff are present as is the police commissioner, the attorney general, the chief justice and his high court registrar, internal security minister and his defense counterpart in what one is supposed to understand as a show of loyalty.
The public outrage that greets this fraud is immediate but what is spectacular is the speed with which the police is dispatched to mow down protesters in what some have admitted is a shoot to kill order.
The events after December 27 only help to underpin the philosophy that instructs our state and its politics. What are the facts of Kenya’s political ‘stability’ and where is the center of gravity of political power today? What factors have contributed to the hot peace for which everyone is envious? Does Kibaki’s GNU or Moi’s KANU before him possess a structural and social basis? What is its institutional framework? Too much energy is being spent discussing Kibaki rather than the presidency, the president rather than the elaborate power structure built up around him. Power in Kenya is synonymous with the state structure and this explains why any potential foci of organized opposition bear immediate and focused wrath of the state.
I have come to terms with the fact that power and politics in Kenya are purely about interests. Philosophically Kibaki’s Government of National Unity and now the PNU all stem from the historical organization of politics in Kenya around the fact of tribe. Lets recall that the first President of Kenya himself a Kikuyu led Kenya for over a decade with an iron fist that tacitly made his community feel that they were the only pebbles in the beach, that they were best endowed with qualities to lead Kenya and this endowment was perhaps ordained by god if one viewed it against the backdrop of their sheer numbers.
It is for these reasons among others that the Kikuyus led by Dr. Njoroge Mungai attempted without success to block Vice President Moi from succeeding Kenyatta in 1978. This very same greed saw the community scuttle the original FORD in 1991 to block Jaramogi from making a go for the presidency. This Kikuyu hegemony during Kenyatta’s reign is what led other tribes to organize themselves to oppose the government and its policies which were skewed in favor of the former. Indeed many attempts at alliance building have mainly survived in as long as the interests of the Kikuyu are favored. This changed only slightly when Raila Odinga decided to work with Moi after the 1997 general elections at a time when Kibaki was wooing him (Raila) to have them jointly reject Moi’s victory.
It will be remembered that the late VP Michael Wamalwa and Charity Ngilu joined forces with Kibaki to form the National Alliance Party of Kenya but this worked only when the two accepted to play second fiddle to Kibaki. When Moi on his part imposed Uhuru Kenyatta as his preferred successor Raila rebelled against him and joined the NAK to form the NARC which also worked only because they all declared Kibaki as the best candidate to contest the presidency.
In a situation where the constitutional framework is that of a winner take all electoral system, one in which a minority government is possible the revelations above make for very worrying trends. So that sometimes it is true to say that in Kenya the people are not quite the source of power. The locale of power here that many commentators fear to mention is in the security forces and its ubiquitous presence, which has overwhelmed the people, one can say sadly to servitude. It is the group that controls the machinery of the ruling party, the provincial administration, the para-military GSU, the Special Branch, the CID, the NSIS all of which are crucial assets in Kenya, a country of band wagon politics that determines which way Kenya goes. The role of these forces in the 1978 succession is quite vivid in our memories just as the 2007 events discussed above.
It is in these forces that Moi always found the confidence to dismiss his critics. It is also within their possibilities that one can quickly locate the bravado and confidence with which the PNU jingoists have been associated even when the whole of Kenya was overwhelmingly pro-ODM. What I mean here is that Kenya’s political stability and the peace that is being touted by just about anybody now is a function of the police apparatus not a constitutional order of any description. Although over the years the tribe in Kenya has suffered a decline as a base for political opposition not so many in leadership realize this. It is this crippling blind-spot that delivered the referendum victory to the orange side just as it did rob Moi’s protégé Uhuru Kenyatta of victory in 2002 and that this too was Kibaki’s undoing.
Transition of power in Kenya has always been smooth and uneventful, both Moi and Kenyatta never named heirs but both allowed an unofficial struggle to succeed them to precede their departure. It is this struggle that contributed significantly towards the future of Kenya. For Kenyatta death came in between and so the unofficial struggle took its own life as it later turned out the struggle was about the balance of power between two main factions, the pro-kikuyu and the non-kikuyu ruling classes. As for Moi his dalliance with Raila was only the political game while his plan was to have Uhuru the son of the first president succeed him in order to protect their collective interests as ruling elites.
Like in 1978 when the Moi/Njonjo alliance pushed the view that it is in the best interest of Kenya to have a second president who is non-Kikuyu against the Kikuyu group which regarded the presidency as their legitimate inheritance and a guarantee to their privileged position, the Moi/Raila cooperation invited for the first time the possibility of political partnership in Kenya where power can be shared and where politicians are astute enough to discuss with both friend and foe. This theory informed the NARC dream even after Moi and Raila fell out. This effort between Moi and Raila represented the first real consolidation of support and assertion of political maneuvering and stratagem Kenya has ever witnessed. Indeed it is that cooperation that changed the face of Kenyan politics. So many believed that Kenya was on its first course of carthasis and that we would not go back to the same old rut and rot.
The constitutional provision that requires the President to retire after the expiry of his two five year terms was extremely useful in delivering a new Kenya. So was the rue that counting of votes would take place at the polling centers. What Kibaki failed to do on becoming president was to build on the gains by completing the constitutional review process. So the locale of power remained in the hands of the security system that is why PNU went to this election without the luxury of its own internal elections just like KANU did in 1978. With their control of the law enforcement machinery PNU chose to effectively undermine the strength and confidence of its opponents. So the election rigging was well planned, well rehearsed and creatively orchestrated. The succession was long settled only the formal swearing in was awaited following the ritual of elections. PNU politicians said this many times and Raila and ODM warned several times of plans and plots to rig the poll.
The Kibaki group hopes to make full use of the state apparatus to increase their influence among politicians and the public. This is their pop corn theory which assumed that the public will burn out after a few days. They interpreted this as a disenchantment of only one community, the Luo. To their dismay the violence and its execution has defied all comprehension countrywide. If there is one thing this impasse has brought out then it is that the nation-building project which was launched by Kenyatta Kenya’s first president did not go beyond mere words, it left all our communities as disparate sub nationalities as the centralized police state was milked by elite around the president. The state facilitated the accumulation of private wealth and any opposition was brutally subdued, free press was muzzled; torture was employed against critics as popular resistance was grossly curtailed.
What we are witnessing is therefore part of a suspended debate, the transition which did not happen at independence; it has nothing to do with tribalism, it is about dealing with historical injustices, land grab, political assassinations, bigotry and autocracy.
Kibaki stole elections and must step aside. International community must not recognize this illegitimate government, the evidence is there, and international as well as local observers have cast aspersions on the tallying process which clearly was flawed. Only fresh elections can save Kenya and this must be done in the net three months. If the government fails to annul the results the rest of the world should suspend aid to Kenya and impose a travel ban on Kibaki’s officials. The corruption in Kibaki’s tenure has been so brazen that another five years of such impunity will spell doom for Kenyans. Kibaki must be held responsible for the crimes against humanity committed against Kenyans following the disputed elections.
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