Stop this descent into hell

The Economist

President Mwai Kibaki must be persuaded to compromise or he may lose a country

SIX weeks after Mwai Kibaki stole an election, the bloodshed and ethnic cleansing in swathes of Kenya are getting frighteningly worse. Parts of the country are in danger of sealing themselves off (see article). Areas where a medley of ethnic groups once lived together are being ripped apart in tribal mayhem. The economy is rapidly deteriorating. The export of tea, coffee and flowers, big foreign-currency earners, has slowed drastically. Tourism is plummeting. Whole towns have been paralysed, as ethnic cleansing has spread, with Mr Kibaki's fellow Kikuyus, who run thousands of businesses outside their own heartlands, being chased out or even killed. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced.

Mr Kibaki has been hoping that time is on his side, that the violence and anger will burn itself out, that the opposition led by Raila Odinga will gradually be forced to accept a fait accompli, that the African Union and leaders of countries close to Kenya will rally to the incumbent in their usual clubbable manner, and that Kenya's biggest trading partners and aid givers will shrink from penalising him because general sanctions would hurt Kenya's many poor. But this happy (for him) outcome seems a distant prospect. If Mr Kibaki is to save his country, let alone his presidency, he must give ground. Otherwise Kenya will move beyond saving. This would be terrible not just for Kenya; it threatens the well-being of the entire region, for which Kenya and its capital, Nairobi, have long served as a hub of political moderation and economic bustle. Landlocked Uganda and Rwanda are being hurt. Goods are piling up in the region's main port, Mombasa.

The international bodies and countries that might have been expected to squeeze Mr Kibaki into seeing sense have been incoherent. The Americans first endorsed Mr Kibaki's flawed victory, as he has been an ally in their war on terror, then withheld approval, then sent out confusing signals after their State Department's head of African affairs said, rightly, that ethnic cleansing was happening. The British and their European partners have been more united in disapproval but have yet to present a real plan. Next door to Kenya, Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, himself the beneficiary of a constitutional fiddle to give himself a third term, has been alone in granting full support. The Chinese, whom Mr Kibaki is looking to for economic and moral support, have unhelpfully sneered that multi-party democracy is ill-suited to Africa.

This leaves a former UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, as the sole plausible mediator. He has made a little progress. At least Messrs Kibaki and Odinga now have two teams of negotiators grappling with each other under Mr Annan's gaze. But Mr Kibaki still seems loth to share power, let alone contemplate rerunning the election under international supervision.

A rerun would have been the juster solution. But with Kenya burning, the world may have now to settle for second-best, a government of national unity. Mr Kibaki should also promise to reform the electoral commission, perhaps bringing in members from Commonwealth countries in Africa and Asia. Ideally, he should also agree in principle to long-mooted constitutional changes that would provide for a prime minister and a more devolved administration, thus softening the winner-takes-all attitude that is partly responsible for the current intransigence on both sides.

Bringing the entire building down on himself

There is no easily enforceable way for outsiders to impose such sensible conditions on Mr Kibaki. Certainly, the United States and the European Union, if not the African Union, should impose targeted sanctions—with asset freezes and travel bans—against a clutch of the most venal ministers, some of whom Mr Kibaki has even promoted since his fraudulent re-election; they should be named, too. Kenya should be suspended from the Commonwealth and aid reconsidered.

But the most powerful pressure against Mr Kibaki is the sight of his country's economy threatening to implode. Many of his keenest Kikuyu supporters must realise that his refusal to budge is leading all Kenyans, whether supporters of himself or Mr Odinga, into a bloody and bankrupting dead end from which it may soon become impossible to retreat.