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the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
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Kenya's Crisis
by Tavia Nyong'o Imagine that George W. Bush had himself sworn in on day three of the 2000 Florida recount in a White House ceremony so hastily thrown together they forgot to play the national anthem. Then imagine he declared an immediate ban on any further political rallies or live television broadcasts contesting his coronation.
This scene should give Americans an approximation of what has happened in Kenya since December 29 and a sense of why the situation is so explosive. The roots of violence and chaos lie not in tribalism but in a bold power grab by a tight clique around the president.
[Republished at PFP with express Agence Global permission.]
The way to end Kenya's electoral violence is to demand a speedy return to full democracy, transparency and power-sharing.
Opposition leader Raila Odinga, candidate of the Orange
Democratic Movement (ODM), clearly ran ahead in all major polls leading
up to the election. According to figures published on an official
government website, he won four of Kenya's eight regions outright and
ran a dead heat in two others. President Mwai Kibaki led in only two:
his stronghold Central Province and the Eastern Province. One by one,
officials have broken down and recanted their certification of the
election results, and the attorney general has promised an inquiry. The
EU, France and now the United States have declared the vote rigged.
Hardliners
in the government have apparently decided that if they can polarize the
country enough, the opposition coalition around Odinga will splinter
and Kenyans will be left with a bare-knuckled brawl between the Gikuyu
and Luo tribes (with perhaps another fight brewing between Gikuyus and
Kalenjins). They seem prepared to weather this tragic outcome, since
they know that they have always prevailed in the past in this kind of
ethnic one-on-one. In a further sign of intransigence, Kibaki has now
named his Cabinet, in defiance of the expectation that ministers be
sitting members of Parliament, which has not yet convened. The
"losers," if the hardliners get their way, will be the Kenyan people,
whose hopes for democracy and a rising standard of living now lie in
tatters as many flee for their lives, abandoning homes and livelihoods.
Brave Kenyans and their international allies, such as those working
with the NGO Common Hope for Health in the western region of the
country, are delivering aid across ethnic lines, at the risk of their
lives and in hopes of calming tensions. But Kenya cannot move forward
without a political solution that pushes the hardliners aside.
The
Western penchant for "disaster porn" coverage doesn't shed much light
on the situation, as horrifying images of mayhem and murder inevitably
have led to ill-informed speculations regarding long-suppressed hatreds
boiling to the surface. CNN, for example, described the crisis as
taking shape between "majority" and "minority" tribes. In fact, Kenya
is a polyglot nation of more than thirty ethnicities, none of which are
a demographic majority. Tribal violence is an effect of the crisis
provoked by the rigged election, not its cause.
The way to
end the violence is to demand a speedy return to full democracy,
transparency and accountability. This should include, at a minimum,
some interim power-sharing beyond the fig leaf of "national unity," and
new presidential elections, conducted under auspices other than those
of the now-discredited Electoral Commission. Key voices in civil
society, such as the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, the Law
Society of Kenya and the clergy, are struggling to remind Kenyans that
this breakdown need not be permanent.
Kenyans once looked to
Kibaki as a deliverer. In the 2002 elections, he carried Odinga's
stronghold province of Nyanza by the same commanding majority Odinga
enjoyed this time around. Ironically, Odinga helped bring Kibaki to
power by brokering a coalition of regional leaders to unseat longtime
Kenyan strongman Daniel arap Moi. Kibaki, however, chose to abandon the
coalition that put him in the presidency and to take advantage of the
very executive powers he had vowed to curtail. (Full disclosure: My
uncle was part of Kibaki's government and is now Secretary General of
the ODM.) Odinga and others rebelled against the president's
hand-tailored constitutional revisions. Out of the 2005 referendum that
rejected Kibaki's Constitution was born the ODM, which split last year
to field two presidential candidates, only one of whom managed to break
out of his ethnic enclave to command significant support across the
country. That man, Raila Odinga, is also the only one who can now hold
Kenya together democratically.
The way forward for Kenyans,
to quote Alice Walker, is with a broken heart such as I face when
hearing that Luos have been chased out of Limuru, the town where I
spent my salad days. We know this ugly violence is not Kenya, but the
sooner we admit that it has happened to us anyway, the quicker we will
wrest this process from the hands of unscrupulous politicians and build
a new, multicultural and more egalitarian society.
Tavia Nyong'o, a professor of performance studies at New York University, recently returned from Nairobi.
Agence
Global is the exclusive syndication agency for The Nation, Le Monde
diplomatique, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Mona
Eltahawy, Rami G. Khouri, Peter Kwong, Patrick Seale and Immanuel
Wallerstein.
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Released: 11 January 2008
Word Count: 799
Rights & Permissions Contact: Agence Global, 1.336.686.9002, rights@agenceglobal.com
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