Instability’s ominous call
Kenya’s slide into political disarray following its disputed presidential election has plunged the east African nation into a near humanitarian crisis and anarchy, beginning with the wanton killing and mass displacement of pro-government supporters in the country’s west. The 27 December presidential election, which it was hoped would solidify political stability in Kenya, instead heralded a disturbing new era. President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner of the poll by only a slim margin against his opposition challenger, Raila Odinga - results that have led to events threatening the delicate balance of the country’s various ethnic groups, severely impacting the economy and laying the groundwork for national instability.
Though Kenya has enjoyed a veneer of security for the majority of its independence and has become a headquarters for aid, humanitarian and peacekeeping operations throughout East Africa, the country is plagued by many of the same issues for which it offers assistance.
The humanitarian crisis worsened with the series of mass rallies called by the main opposition party, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), which the government promptly declared as illegal, setting the stage for street battles.
Police have shot dead more than 800 people in the countrywide opposition protests as the humanitarian crisis in the opposition strongholds - which covers two-thirds of the country’s landscape - has left hundreds of thousands with limited access to basic commodities.
European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid Louis Michel visited Kenya on a fact-finding tour last week, delivering a warning to the Kenyan political leadership.
“We are not in a position of business as usual. There are certain things we can accept in our relations,” Michel told journalists in Nairobi after meeting with the warring parties.
Kenya sneezes
It has been said that when Kenya sneezes the rest of the region catches a cold.
The political standoff has left major highways blocked by angry youth in opposition strongholds who have often taken control of traffic at key transit points, in some instances confiscating ignition keys from the drivers of commercial vehicles.
Armed convoys evacuating mostly besieged supporters of Kibaki in the Rift Valley region acted as a reminder of the gravity of the pending humanitarian crisis, with the UN seeking US$42 million in emergency aid for Kenya.
The fuel and basic commodity shortages that hit landlocked countries neighboring the Kenya have eased, but traders are hoarding supplies and prices have risen sharply.
Kenya is the gateway to several other eastern African nations such as Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Southern Sudan. Police have had to escort convoys of fuel tankers through dangerous sections of the Mombasa-Kisumu highway, the main supply artery into the neighboring countries. Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continue to suffer scarcity of fuel although tankers are now arriving in Kampala.
UN officials in Nairobi say humanitarian operations targeting refugees in the region have been affected due to fuel shortages, which has also contributed to a delay in sending Burundi peacekeepers to Somalia to help the fledgling interim government stamp its authority the ground there.
“Our operations for the refugees living in Kenya have been affected and some of the food supplies meant for refugees have to be diverted to assist the displaced Kenyans,” Elizabeth Lwanga, director-general of UN office in Nairobi, told ISN Security Watch.
Kenyan demonstrators have also destroyed part of the Uganda-Kenya railway in a bid to halt transport of cargo goods to Kampala in protest against the alleged presence of Ugandan troops in Kenya. Suspicions stemmed partly from Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s perceived close friendship with Kibaki. Museveni remains the only African leader to have congratulated Kibaki since his tenuous re-election.
“We are cutting this railway link connecting Uganda and Kenya to cut the supply chain to Uganda to put pressure on Uganda to withdraw its troops from Kenya,” Stephen Anyang, one demonstrator, told ISN Security Watch.
However, Ugandan army spokesman Captain Paddy Ankunda said that regardless of the friendly ties between the two governments, no Ugandan soldiers had been sent to Kenya in a bid to boost Kibaki’s power. “That is a [...] lie. […] Our forces are not anywhere near the Kenyan border and we have no intention whatsoever of sending troops to Kenya,” Ankunda told ISN Security Watch.
Generational revolution
Many predicted that the Kenyan presidential election would a close race, but few predicted that the events that followed would herald what many are calling “generational revolution” in one of Africa’s most stable states.
“Kenya is considered a solid democracy with a democratic-minded political class, playing a key role in the region. In a certain sense, what happened after elections was of concern to Europe,” Michel said.
“It’s about resources, it’s about land, it’s about tribe, it’s about so many issues that successive governments have not addressed,” Gladwell Otieno, former head of Transparency International-Kenya told ISN Security Watch.
Political analysts predict Kibaki’s lax reaction to the crisis reflects his hope that the tensions would simply fizzle out and the country return to normalcy. However, the brutal lessons from neighboring Somalia are many and tough. Uncompromising leadership and democracy do not go hand-in-hand, local political analysts have warned.
Members of Kibaki’s own Kikuyu community have also expressed frustration that political space is being hogged by an ageing elite.
“Right now we are having a serious generational revolt being carried out by professionals in civil society and young men,” Mutahi Ngunyi, a political scientist and former Kibaki political strategist, told ISN Security Watch.
Democratic vote-rigging
The violence obscures the root cause of the conflict, which is not ethnic unrest, social inequality, paramilitary gangs, youth unemployment or land distribution in the Rift Valley (the region hardest hit by violence). These are symptoms, but the disease itself is a vote-rigging threat to democracy.
Politics in Kenya is often litigious, but no one expected the violence to reach the levels it did after the 2007 elections.
Tribal rivalries shape the political landscape. The president’s Kikuyu ethnic group, is seen by others to have disproportionately benefited from resources since independence in 1963.
As soon as the election results were announced, handing a suspiciously thin margin of victory to Kibaki - whose policies of favoring his own ethnic group have marginalized about half the country - all the elements lined up for the violence to explode.
Kibaki is losing his image of a gentleman surrounded by hardliners, and instead, looks more like a hardliner who refuses to confront reality. He has dug in and initially spurned offers of international mediators, packing his cabinet with the same discredited clique that voters tried to kick out of office.
The first president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, was a Kikuyu. Kibaki was vice president for a 10-year period under former president Daniel Arap Moi. Many Kenyans rallied behind long-time politician Odinga, a Luo, seeing him as representing a possibility for change. When election results unfolded last month in a questionable manner, many Kenyans felt cheated.
“Many Kenyans feel that they have endured one dictator after another since independence and aren’t going to take it anymore,” David Kiragu, a political analyst, told ISN Security Watch. The world now watches closely as Kenya struggles with one of the deadliest periods of political strife in decades sparked by disputed elections, which observers say were flawed.
Electoral Commission Chairman Samuel Kivuitu told journalists soon after announcing the disputed results that he “did not know” whether Kibaki won the elections, stating that he was “under pressure” to announce a result quickly despite appeals by election monitors and western diplomats to delay until apparent irregularities were investigated.
Casualty, trust
The Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), which observed the elections, said besides the death and destruction, a major casualty of the elections has been loss of public confidence in the process.
“It will only contribute to people having doubts about the possibility to affect change, if that is what they want, through the ballot, KHRC Executive Director Muthoni Wanyeki told ISN Security Watch.
“That is very dangerous. It will open the possibility for violent means of accessing power or even keeping power.”
Election observers reported widespread evidence of irregularities during vote tabulations, which gave Kibaki - who had been trailing in the early stages of the counting process by as much as one million votes - a very slim margin of victory at the 11th hour. Odinga has been pushing for an outside mediator to broker negotiations because he says he does not trust the government. Government officials initially refused, saying that the crisis was a Kenyan problem, which they could handle themselves.
Political scientist Peter Wanyande said Kenya was particularly vulnerable because its leaders had not completed electoral reforms that began following successful elections in 2002.
“Unresolved constitutional reform processes, leaving them at the mercy of a very weak and contested constitution, means that when the crisis happens they have got nothing to fall back on,” Wanyande told ISN Security Watch.
Opposition calls for sanctions
Odinga’s ODM party has called on western nations to impose sanctions against the government to force Kibaki to make concessions. Odinga has also appealed to the African Union not to recognize Kibaki’s re-election during its 31 January - 2 February summit in Addis Ababa, warning that doing so would set a bad precedent in Africa.
“Sanctions would show Kenyans that there is a lot of international solidarity and that the regime is isolated,” said Odinga.
Donors have threatened to withhold direct aid to the Kenyan government if the current negotiations being led by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan failed. World leaders have not recognized the new government and have warned Kenyan leaders of the risk of forfeiting international support if a compromise was not made.
The EU and the US, Kenya’s biggest donors, warned Kibaki last week that the present circumstances could harm relations. Many had assumed that Washington’s gratitude for Kibaki’s co-operation in the “war on terror” would win him an easy ride.
In the meantime, the opposition has plans of its own: to boycott business sectors - including tourism and transport - linked to the government hardliners in a bid to force Kibaki to step down.
“I think [this] new tactic announced by ODM has caused some shivers among the hardliners as it would hit where it hurts most,” said Haroub Ndubi, a political analyst, told ISN Security Watch and a group of other reporters. The two political rivals have vowed to take complaints of crimes committed during the post-election period to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
Political fatigue among ordinary Kenyans may see their anger dissipate and allow for the return of some semblance of normality. But if the two sides in this political standoff fail to give any ground and rallies planned for later next month do go ahead, some fear a period of financial, if not political, instability lies ahead.
ISN
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