Tuesday, February 26, 2008
How to Implement Power Sharing Deal Between the President and Raila.
Wachira Maina
It is not hard to see what will happen to Kenya if a settlement is not reached between the Government and the Opposition in the ongoing political negotiations mediated by Dr Kofi Annan. Violence in the Rift Valley and Nyanza will resume and intensify; Uganda, Southern Sudan and Rwanda will be blockaded; transport, in recent years a major hard currency earner, will collapse; the current food shortages in parts of the country will deepen and urban food prices will spike. The region will be destabilised and the current economic crisis compounded. Most worrying, and as the International Crisis Group warns, militias are arming. This should give pause to all. There are between 1.9 to 3.2 million small arms in private hands in the Southern Sudan and probably twice that number in Somalia. Kenya’s borders with both countries are open spillways, allowing easy inflow of these weapons.
A deal must be reached if Kenya’s descent into what the Economist calls ‘hell’ is to be arrested. Happily, the key elements of an outline deal are on the table: power-sharing between the president and a prime-minister within a government of national unity, constitutional reform within a year, a re-run of the presidential election in two to three years and long-term measures to deal with poverty and inter-ethnic inequalities. But none of these proposals has been fully thought through and how to implement will be difficult and controversial.
Consider the power-sharing proposal first. The details are not agreed but the arguments on both sides are clear and entrenched. The Government says that any power-sharing between the president and the proposed prime-minister must be within the current Constitution.
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