If we start with the immediate situation, it seems rather clear
that the opposition party -- the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) led
by Raila Odinga -- swept the parliamentary elections, and the
government party -- the Party of National Unity (PNU) led by outgoing
president Mwai Kibaki -- suffered a major defeat. The Vice-President of
Kenya and over 20 ministers in the outgoing government were defeated in
their parliamentary candidacies. The PNU elected 43 deputies, less than
a fifth of the seats and the ODM won 99.
It seemed
reasonable to assume that Odinga beat Kibaki in the presidential
election. But after three days of counting, the electoral commission
asserted that Kibaki had squeaked in. The immediate reaction in Kenya
was that Kibaki stole the election. His furtive swearing-in on December
30, his refusal to allow any serious outside mediator to review the
situation, the open doubts of international observers all seemed to
point to his attempt to create a fait accompli in the hope that the
turmoil will die down. Will it?
For many years now, but
particularly in the last five years, Kenya was touted in the Western
press and by Western governments as a "stable democracy," unlike so
many other African states. One might remember that the other state that
used to get this accolade was the Ivory Coast, which has descended into
a continuing civil war in recent years. What does it mean to be called
a "stable democracy"? It seems to mean a government that is reliably
pro-Western and wide open to Western investment. Kenya has fit that
bill, as did the Ivory Coast. The Ivory Coast has melted down, and now
it seems that Kenya may be doing the same thing.
A look at
post-1945 history might explain how naive and unuseful is this kind of
assessment. Among the seven states in British East and Central Africa,
the only one to have had a serious guerrilla movement was Kenya. It was
called the Mau Mau and it took the British many years to suppress it.
The Mau Mau were a peasant movement among the largest ethnic group in
Kenya, the Kikuyu. The Kikuyu feel they are owed something in return
for this insurrection. Mwai Kibaki is a Kikuyu.
Shortly
after independence, Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya and a
Kikuyu died. He was succeeded by his Vice-President, Daniel arap Moi, a
Kalenjin, who proceeded to establish a kleptocratic, dictatorial regime
which lasted quite a long time. The Kikuyu were more or less squeezed
out of power. So were the second-largest group, the Luo. The leader of
the Luo was Oginga Odinga (father of Raila Odinga). He had a socialist
program, and his movement was suppressed.
By 2002, the
Kenyan people had enough of arap Moi and his Western supporters thought
it might be time to encourage a facade of democracy. The one-party
regime ceded place to an electoral contest. Kibaki and Raila Odinga
joined together with others to establish a National Rainbow Coalition
(NRC), dedicated, they said, to ending corruption and ending as well
the freeze on distribution of posts and money to only one ethnic group.
Kibaki won the election. The people celebrated.
But 2002 was
also the moment of Bush's war on terrorism. The United States recruited
Kibaki as a key ally. He was rewarded with much outside money, and
endless praise from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The years 2002-2007 were a period of considerable economic growth on
neo-liberal premises. But Kibaki reneged on all his promises. The
economic growth did not filter down to the rural poor and the large
numbers in the urban ghettos. Kibaki fired the man he had appointed to
expose corruption. And he squeezed out Odinga and other allies in the
NRC.
So when there were new elections in 2007, the ODM and
Odinga won handily. The fact that arap Moi now endorsed Kibaki was of
no use. The ODM emphasized the crass inequalities in Kenya. It called
for a renewed war against corruption. And it entered into an
understanding with the Muslim community in Kenya that they would stop
renditions. It was obvious that this program appealed to the voters,
but not to Kibaki. So he stole the election. And the United States and
Great Britain are trying hard to make this electoral theft work.
Of
course, in the face of such blatant behavior, violence broke out. It
took an ethnic form. Somehow the Western press seems to think this is
an African specialty. Have they never heard of race riots in the United
States? Have they never looked at Catholic-Protestant violence in
northern Ireland? What happens in such situations is that the poor in
the urban ghettos and the rural area hit out at each other, while the
upper strata in their gated communities carry on obliviously.
Raila
Odinga is no angel and no revolutionary. But he won the election, and
the reason he did was because he was opposing the neo-liberal
corruption of Kibaki. Odinga is playing a very restrained role, a bit
like that of Al Gore in 2000. And he might be no more successful.
Kibaki says that he'll hold new elections if the courts tell him to,
but Odinga says that the courts are in his pocket.
So much for stable democracies.
Immanuel
Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author
of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New
Press).
Copyright ©2008 Immanuel Wallerstein
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Released: 15 January 2008
Word Count: 959
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Writings 
On December 27, 2007, there were presidential and parliamentary elections in Kenya. The outside world was largely indifferent. Then suddenly the headlines spoke of ethnic violence on a large scale.
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About the skirmishes that were said to be inspired by the quest for justice, what rights will one achieve by killing the defenceless and burning women and children in a church just because they hail from one tribe or another? Malcom X, Martin Luther and the rest did not do that and neither did Al Gore.
They say that lies ran sprints, but the truth does marathons!