Ndii contends that “whatever comes out this [Kenyatta-Odinga handshake] … will not be transformational.” It is merely a “containment.”
Ndii also concedes that it’s impossible to work around ethnicity as the primary basis of organizing Kenyan politics.
The whole thing is worth watching:
I just posted a piece over at ConstitutionNet on the politics of popular constitutional amendment provisions, with Kenya as an illustrative case.
The Kenyan Constitution allows for popular (extra-legislative) amendment initiatives, as long as the petitioner can collect at least one million signatures. The Okoa Kenya campaign is one such initiative, but driven primarily by the main opposition alliance, CORD. In the piece I seek to answer two key questions:
…….. (i) how do constitutional popular amendment provisions impact institutional stability?; And (ii) can such provisions maintain their legitimacy when captured by mainstream political parties already represented in key state institutions?
The answers to the first question speak to the dangers of populism. Democratic stability necessarily requires institutional barriers to regular changes of the basic rules of the game (i.e. constitutions), as well as checks on populism. Therefore, by exposing constitutional changes to “every-day politics”, extra-legislative origination of constitutional amendments (under ordinary circumstances) may pose a risk to the very foundations of democratic stability.
The answers to the second question speak to the original intent of popular amendment provisions. Given their extra-legislative character and the notion that they are supposed to preserve popular sovereignty, it is unclear whether popular amendment provisions maintain their integrity when captured by mainstream political parties that are supposed to operate within the legislature. In other words, the potential exploitation of such provisions to circumvent the outcomes of legislative elections may derogate the electoral process itself. Elections should have consequences for both the ruling and opposition parties.
This is from Kenya’s leading newspaper, the Daily Nation, addressing the president:
We acknowledge the fact that it has been a tough year for leaders across the world — what with global economic upheavals and terrorists wreaking havoc everywhere.
However, we reject the almost criminal resignation and negligence with which your government has responded to our national crises this past year. We need not recount the number of lives lost, the losses incurred by businesses and opportunities wasted for millions of Kenyans due to the incompetence of the Executive.
With the exception of a few family businesses and tenderpreneurs who raked in billions of shillings — thanks largely to political patronage — everyone is losing money in this country.
More on this here. Read the whole thing.
This is pretty direct, and articulates a narrative of the middle class’ general dissatisfaction with President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration.
It will also have very little political impact.
First, the Kenyan middle class (the primary audience of the Nation) is tiny. Second, the same middle class is as much a hostage of identity politics as is the rest of the country (this is true of even for the Nation‘s editorial team) — and on this score Kenya’s demographic profile favors Mr. Kenyatta in the next election scheduled for August next year (All indications suggest that a breakup of the Jubilee Alliance ahead of 2017 is a low probability event). Third, there still exists a wide chasm between the middle and upper middle classes and the vast majority of working class and rural Kenyans (with the former group perpetually wondering why the latter group doesn’t vote for its interests). This is why identity politics continue to dominate even cosmopolitan counties like Nairobi, Kisumu, Nakuru, and Mombasa.
That said, here are some quick thoughts on the Jubilee Administration as it enters its fourth year:
Historically, growth in the Kenyan economy tends to slow down by about 0.5 percentage points during election years. This time is probably not going to be different. That said, I expect the economy to remain on a positive growth trajectory (above 5% growth p.a.) going into 2017.
On the political front, the role of the Governors of Kenya’s 47 counties will the biggest wildcard. Many of these mini-presidents have amassed financial war chests and created networks that will prove consequential in 2017. True to Kenyan form, a number of them are already founding their own parties (the true District Parties are back, with cash). The balancing effects of governors (vis-a-vis established national politicians) creates a reality in which no one is fully “in charge” in the Jamuhuri, a fact that comes with all sorts of frustrations and fears. But sometimes that is a good thing. Especially when Kenyans and their indefatigable biashara habits are involved.
Lastly, expect to see more hard-hitting criticism of Mr. Kenyatta in the Kenyan press in 2016, much of it inspired by Kenya’s deep-seated Tanzania envy. If Tanzanian president John Magufuli maintains his reformist zeal there will be a lot of pressure on Mr. Kenyatta (#WhatWouldMagufuliDo?). Very few Kenyans will care to remember that the two presidents serve under two completely different constitutional and party regimes.
Happy New Year!
Jason Lakin writes in the East African:
… the June 2013/14 bond issues were moved to the 2014/15 opening balances carried forward from 2013/14 at that time, while the November bond issues were recorded as 2014/15 revenues. If so, we would have a balance of Ksh38.5 billion in the bank, and the full Ksh75 billion (what we had estimated at Ksh67.5 billion) coming onto the budget in 2014/15.
There are no further changes in these numbers in the final fourth quarter COB report for 2014/15, suggesting that by the end of that year, all but Ksh38.5 billion of the Eurobond had come onto the budget and been spent.
The Ksh38.5 billion balance was not brought onto the budget for 2015/16 at the beginning of the year. The August 31 Statement of Actual Revenues shows no budgeted carryover from 2014/15 and an actual balance carried forward of only Ksh204 million. There is a budgeted revenue of Ksh72 billion in further commercial loans for the year, and nothing collected as of August.
So… what happened to the Ksh38.5 billion balance? If it was not spent, it is hard to see why the government wouldn’t be using it now to smooth liquidity during an apparent cash crunch. If it was spent, when did it come onto the budget, for what purpose and why isn’t it visible in public reports? Cabinet Secretary for the Treasury Henry Rotich recently claimed that all of the Eurobond money was spent, but I have not found any official documents showing when the final balance came on budget.
Why should basic facts about billions of shillings require us to sift through vague reports and still come up short?
Lakin’s excellent accounting narrative of budget figures from FY2013/14-FY2015/16 is available here.
So where did the money really go? Only Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich can tell us what happened, with certainty. In the meantime Kenyans can only speculate. Which is why it is very odd that CS Rotich so far has barely bothered to explain himself.
How tragic would it be if it emerged that someone (or a group of people) stole Kshs. 38.5b ($385m) of borrowed money?
The confusion over the Eurobond cash has elevated public uproar over corruption in the public sector to new levels. The only problem is that blame has been spread thin, with everyone in government being blamed (and no single officer really feeling the pressure, with the possible exception of CS Waiguru).
In my view the two people that should be forced to explain themselves (regardless of whether they are individually corrupt or not) are CS Henry Rotich at Treasury; and the Chairman of the Parliamentary Budget Committee, Hon. Mutava Musyimi. These two men should shoulder any blame arising from any emergent violations of the Public Finance Management Act.
A focus on specific officers and their specific failures will perhaps give the president political cover to get rid of offending public officials. The fundamental challenge of the anti-corruption drive in Kenya at the moment is that it continues to be blind and deaf to political realities. The president is a politician, with an eye on reelection in 2017. The challenge for reformers is therefore to come up with incentive-compatible means (for the president) of dealing with corruption and incompetence in the public sector before then. (The president himself admitted on record that a significant number of public officials are corrupt). Mere calls for public officials, including the president, to act nice will not work. That is the tragedy of politics.
You can’t make this stuff up:
The show began to air in 2010. This is its description as of February 3rd, 2015.
That said, if you have to visit Africa, the place to go is KENYA!
Because of this:
[youtube.com/watch?v=hPtBnhehPOU#t=54]HT Hayes Brown
Borrowing from Jay Ulfelder here is a list (by total views) of the top ten posts on An Africanist Perspective in 2013. Incidentally, Jay was the inspiration behind four of the top ten posts of the year – he nudged me to stick my neck out and predict the outcome of the Kenyan election. Also, this month the blog turned six. Many thanks to Chris Blattman and other academic bloggers out there for inspiration back in the day when as an undergrad in New Haven I kept writing even though no one was reading the blog.
10. Who is the African child on the cover of William Easterly’s new book? (as I noted in the post below this one was a hit on twitter, and earned a spot on the top ten list even though I only posted it this month).
9. Sloppy reporting on the Kenyan elections (some of you might remember that Kenya had elections earlier in the year in which Kenyans, including yours truly, criticized some of the coverage by the international press).
8. What next for Kenya’s policy on Somalia? (this was a reflection on what Kenya might do in reaction to the Westgate terror attack that killed dozens of Kenyans and foreign nationals).
7. Corruption under apartheid South Africa, 1976-1994 (and its present institutional legacy) (this was my attempt to link present corrupt practices in the government of South Africa to their historical institutional basis – a running theme in my thinking and writing, you may have noticed, is that discontinuities are often a mirage; things only change marginally most of the time. INSTITUTIONS RULE!).
6. Kenyan Elections 2013 Polling Trends (Presidential Race) (Posts on the Kenyan election were a hit earlier in the year).
5. Why Raila Odinga Lost (For many observers the 2013 election was Raila Odinga’s to lose. So why did he lose?)
4. Who will win the Kenyan presidential election? A look at the numbers (Just for the record: (i) I got Kenyatta’s margin of victory right; (ii) I still do not think he got passed the constitutionally required 50%+1 votes; (iii) I was wrong in predicting an Odinga victory in round 2, Kenyatta would have won a round 2 easily because of Odinga’s woeful performance in the Rift Valley and failure to match Kenyatta’s turnout rates – see number 5 above).
3. KCSE results to be released monday (National exams at the end of secondary school are a big deal in Kenya – they determine one’s placement and major in the public universities; notice that the post is from 2011 but got hits from Google searches this year).
2. The Presidential Race in Kenya’s 4th of March 2013 Election (More on the Kenyan election; again I was wrong on the possibility of an Odinga victory in the second round).
1. Uhuru Kenyatta Emerges as 1st Round Favorite in Kenya’s March 4th Poll (Did the outcome of the presidential election reflect the will of the Kenyan people, i.e. the majority of voters? My answer is yes. I still think that there were shady tricks involved in pushing Kenyatta past 50% – he got a mere 9000 votes out of over 12 million votes cast past 50%. But he was on course to win the second round. I still wish the Supreme Court had ordered a runoff in order to give Mr. Kenyatta a cleaner mandate than he presently has and to dampen the feeling among the vast majority of Odinga supporters (and the wider left in Kenya) that the election was stolen by the conservative establishment).
If you ask me, this was my favorite post of the year.
Happy Holidays!
Botswana, Gabon, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe are the only continental sub-Saharan African states to have never experienced military rule. Each country has managed to do so via well orchestrated coup-proofing strategies of ethnic balancing and material payoffs to the men and women with the guns and tanks.
Kenya, in particular, has perfected this art. Because of its fractious ethnic politics, ethnic balancing within the officer corps has been key to Kenya’s coup-proofing. Kenyatta (who spoke Kikuyu) had a bit of a hard time in the beginning with a Kamba and Kalenjin speakers dominated military but eventually succeeded in having his co-ethnics in key positions. But before he did so he ensured Kikuyu dominance over the paramilitary force, the General Service Unit (GSU) to balance the military. Through the 60s and 70s, Kenyatta ensured that the GSU and police could handle their own against the military in case stuff hit the fan. Moi continued along this path, so much so that for a while in the media the typical accent of a security officer – whether police or military – became an accent from the North Rift. Under Moi the Kenyan army became “Kalenjin at the bottom, Kalenjin at the middle, and Kalenjin at the top.”
Beyond the ethnic balancing, Kenya has also coup-proofed by keeping the generals wealthy and OUT OF POLITICS – at least not overtly. The generals in Kenya are probably some of the wealthiest on the Continent. I went to high school with the son of an Air Force Major General whose family was always taking foreign trips to exotic places and always made a big splash on visiting days. The only estimates I could find are from the 1960s when nearly “two thirds of the military budget went to pay and allowances, most of it to officers.” A lot of them also got free land for cash crop farming and lucrative business deals (some illegal) from the Kenyatta and Moi governments. Keenly aware of West Africa’s junior officer problem following 1981 Moi extended land grants to junior officers as well.
But despite their importance as leaders of a key national institution, most Kenyans, yours truly included, do not know much about the top generals in the army. The one chief of staff that I remember hearing a lot about in my childhood days was Gen. Mahmood Mohamed, the man who played a big role in quelling the 1982 coup attempt. For the most part I only saw these guys in the media on national holidays when they rode on the president’s Land Rover.
In other words, I think it is fair to say that, contrary to arguments made by N’Diaye, for the most part the Kenyan military has historically been fairly professionalized and depoliticized relative to other countries in the neighborhood. There is no evidence to suggest that ethnic balancing has severely interfered with the process of professionalization. Kenyan presidents’ preferred agents for dirty political work have always been the intelligence service, the police and paramilitary units, but never (to the best of my knowledge) the military. Indeed the US and British militaries have had very close technical cooperation with the Kenyan military through training, material assistance and more recently joint operations, resulting in a relatively highly trained force that has for the most part stayed clear of politics.
But this consensus appears to be slowly eroding. Before the 2013 General Elections the former Prime Minister Raila Odinga accused the military and the intelligence service of colluding with his opponent, Uhuru Kenyatta, to rig the presidential election. And now the heads of the military and intelligence service are reportedly contemplating suing a former aide to Mr. Odinga for defamation. Increasingly, the military is being dragged down to the level of the marionette-esque GSU and Police, perennial hatchet men for whoever occupies State House.
This cannot end well.
Coup proofing is hard. And the thing with coups is that once the genie is out of the box you can’t take it back. Coups just breed more coups.
This is why the generals must be left fat and happy and in the barracks, or busy keeping the peace (and hopefully not facilitating charcoal exports) in Somalia’s Jubaland State. Do your ethnic balancing and all, but by all means KEEP THEM OUT OF POLITICS (I am glad the current Defense Minister has no political constituency).
The last thing Kenya needs is a Zimbabwe situation in which there is open bad blood between the military and the opposition.
Plus Kenya, based on its per capita income, ethnic politics, and minimal experience with genuine democratic government, is still not beyond the coup trap to be able to safely play politics with the military. If you doubt me, go find out the last time Brazil, Thailand and Turkey had generals in charge.
President Kenyatta has announced 16 of 18 cabinet secretaries in his administration. The list of names has elicited mixed reactions. On the one hand the manner of the announcement – on the steps of State House – was different, and dignified. It was much less pedestrian than what Kenyans had become used to – presidential cabinet appointments via press releases to newsrooms. Six women made the list, including in the powerful Defense and Foreign Affairs dockets. With the exception of Balala and Ngilu, all the nominees so far are not politicians.
But on the other other hand grumblings emerged on the lack of regional (read ethnic) balance in the appointments. Kenya is an ethnically fragmented country, with 11 (out of 42) ethnic groups with populations over 1 million (Kikuyu/GEMA, Luhya, Kalenjin, Luo, Kamba, Somali, Kisii, Meru (part of GEMA), Mijikenda, Turkana, Maasai). For most of the country’s history ethnicity has been a key organizing principle of politics, with people largely voting along ethnic lines for various instrumental reasons.
So what is the ethnic breakdown of Kenyatta’s cabinet so far? Here is my guestimation based on their last names: Kikuyu (3), Kalenjin (4), Somali (3), Luo (1), Meru (1), Kisii (1), Kamba (1), Luhya (1), Arab (1). Two slots remain unoccupied.
Only two groups (Kalenjins and Somalis) are clearly overrepresented in the cabinet appointments in proportion to their relative ethnic group size in the country (Kalenjin 25% vs 13.2%; Somalis 18.75 vs 6.3%). Those groups in the top ten that are underrepresented missed their “objective proportion” of the cabinet by about one slot, on average.
On an aside, historically African presidents have actually been pretty good at ethnic balancing in the appointment of cabinet ministers – as Francois, Rainer and Trebbi show in this paper. They claim to “show that African ruling coalitions are large and that political power is allocated proportionally to population shares across ethnic groups. This holds true even restricting the analysis to the subsample of the most powerful ministerial posts. We argue that the likelihood of revolutions from outsiders and the threat of coups from insiders are major forces explaining such allocations.”
If the ethnic composition of the cabinet is anything to go by, it shows the extent to which deputy president William Ruto is more of an equal than deputy to President Kenyatta. His part of the Jubilee coalition dominates the list of cabinet nominees. Or it might just be a case of Mr. Kenyatta, being president, having opted to have his half of the cabinet “represent the face of Kenya” (Kenyatta and Ruto had a 50-50 pre-election appointments sharing agreement at the formation of the Jubilee coalition).
Despite Kenyans’ relief at the end of Odinga and Kibaki’s coalition government, the era of nusu mkate might still be among us.
In related news, president Kenyatta broke one of his campaign promises by not appointing an ethnic Turkana as secretary in charge of Energy and Petroleum. Kenya’s oil discoveries have been mostly in Turkana County. The Standard reports:
Uhuru [President Kenyatta] repeated he will appoint a Turkana to head the Ministry of Energy portfolio should he take over the next Government.
Kenyatta said his Government would give first priority to locals to manage the oil resources that were discovered in the area.
“Our mandate is to ensure that every Kenyan gets equal share of national cake. But locals where such resources are found should benefit more as a right stipulated in the Constitution,” he said.
Deputy President William Ruto also broke a promise he made yesterday. He said at a presser that the cabinet will not have any politicians, yet Charity Ngilu and Najib Balala have been nominated.
Kenyatta’s Cabinet Nominees:
This is the question – what’s civil society to do if it feels so strongly about the Kenyatta regime? There’s no doubt Mr Kenyatta and his government have the support of a lot of Kenyans. That’s unarguable. But there are many Kenyans who are apathetic.
Take it from me – apathy is strongest in civil society. It’s an “existential moment” for some of the leading lights of civil society.
They feel betrayed by a population they’ve always fought for. In fact, most of the freedoms Kenyans enjoy today were made possible by civil society, including the 2010 Constitution.
Many are questioning the ability of the human rights movement to uproot embedded tribalism and the money corruption of the wealthy.
No one knows whether civil society will survive the Kenyatta regime and, if so, in what shape. We are in uncharted territory. But I can point to some possible routes. I believe Mr Kenyatta understands that his regime suffers from a “legitimacy deficit”.
That’s because of the charges against him at The Hague and the contested nature of the election. He may try to co-opt some civil society leaders into his regime to shore up his credibility.
That is the Chair of the Kenyan Human Rights Commission, Dr. Makau Mutua writing in his Sunday Column on the challenge ahead of civil society under the Kenyatta administration. He goes on to add that:
….others may accept the outcome of the election and “move on,” as has been urged. This cohort would simply go back to the trenches and continue their fight for human rights – much in the same way they did under former President Kibaki.
….there is a group that’s likely to disengage, and “divorce” the human rights movement. This chunk may “resign” from civil society. A number may even “divorce” Kenya. Some may go for further studies, or join the private sector. This group took Mr Kenyatta’s election the hardest, and cannot reconcile itself to the choice of a supposed plurality of Kenyans.
Mr. Mutua is one of the few civil society members who have come out strongly against the election of President Kenyatta. His views represent those of a significant proportion of Kenyans who feel that much of the democratic gains of the last 20 years have been lost with the election of Kenyatta and Ruto, scions of former President Moi.
The progressive forces in Kenya are presently in a state of shock. This was their election to lose. Having managed to get a favorable constitution in 2010, many had banked their hopes in Raila Odinga to implement it. Instead, Mr. Kenyatta captured the State House and control of both houses of Parliament.
Mr. Odinga’s loss has left many disillusioned with the Kenyan political system. Once again, despite valiant attempts to even the playing field, money and entrenched interests triumphed over progressive ideals.
Why did Raila Odinga, the man to beat in the 2013 Kenyan presidential election, end up losing by up to 7 percentage points? Here are some quick answers:
I. Bad campaign management:
Back in 2009 James Orengo, one of Raila’s closest operatives said this about Mr. Odinga:
“Odinga has done nothing to reorganise his office to make it more effective. Odinga is a poor manager who does not follow up, and he is primarily focused on preparing for his presidential run in 2012, Orengo said. Odinga has avoided bold moves because he is hostage to his difficult political constituency”
The constituency mentioned must comprise of politicians and not the residents of Kibera because Mr. Odinga’s ODM/CORD secretariat was run by old/disconnected politicians. Yes he may have had administrators running the back office but the face of the ODM operation was one Franklin Bett, a veteran politician that elicited a lot of distrust from voters and presided over a sham of a nomination process. President Kenyatta’s Jubilee coalition was the polar opposite. Youthful Johnson Sakaja and Onyango Oloo presented a face of professionalism in the management of TNA affairs.
TNA also had a rather chaotic nomination process, but Sakaja and Oloo seemed to be in charge and gave the impression of being fair arbiters. For instance, they allowed Ferdinand Waititu, a stone thrower, to run against Evans Kidero for the governorship of Nairobi when they could have rigged in Jimnah Mbaru, a much better candidate. Over at ODM Raila Odinga’s brother and sister were fighting nasty nominations in Siaya and Kisumu respectively, which gave people the impression that the party wanted to rig in Raila’s relatives.
Mr. Odinga’s lack of managerial abilities was also displayed in the choice of his son (Fidel) as controller of the purse for some campaign operations. An ODM operative in the Kidero campaign intimated to me that some of the money was never used and that t-shirts intended for campaigns were kept in storage in readiness for Raila’s swearing in! Mr. Odinga’s wife also ruffled a few feathers during the campaign period. The heavy visibility of his family made it much harder to avoid seeing Mr. Odinga’s campaign as a family affair.
II. Strategic blunders:
Raila Odinga’s campaign had several strategic blunders, going back a few years.
TNA completely outmaneuvered ODM in registering voters in their strongholds. Local political analyst Mutahi Ngunyi (of the tyranny of numbers fame) was partly right when he said Kenyatta won the election on December 18, the day voter registration closed. Again here Odinga could have done better. Many youth in his strongholds did not register for lack of national identification cards. Yet Mr. Odinga controlled the ministry in charge of issuance of IDs through Otieno Kajwang’. Why didn’t Odinga mobilize his base to register?
My theory is that his lieutenants’ incentives were misaligned with his. While Mr. Odinga needed massive grassroots mobilization, his old and disconnected close associates dreaded this. Many of them were very good at playing politics at the national stage but did very little for their constituents upcountry. Massive voter registration would have undoubtedly meant defeat for this lot (quite a few of them won nominations under dubious circumstances). Mr. Kenyatta on the other hand was less encumbered by old established politicians since he had a brand new popular party (TNA) in which everyone who wanted to be elected in central Kenya had to join.
The same Odinga lieutenants also appeared to be ever too eager to pursue their own interests at the expense of the former Prime Minister. Prof. Anyang’ Nyong’o threatened to fire 3,000 nurses close to the election, and called them zombies. One Jakoyo Midiwo, a vocal MP from Nyanza province and Odinga’s nephew, said that ODM had its owners and that Mr. Odinga’s brother (Oburu Odinga) was the designated nominee for governor of Siaya. He advised those who did not like this idea to look for other parties.
Many analysts concluded following the election that Kenyatta and Ruto won partly because of their strategic use of the cases they face at the ICC. I hold the position that the ICC only made it more likely that Uhuru would team up with Ruto. The advantage here could have gone either way. Late last year opinion polls were still showing at least 50% of Kenyans wanting perpetrators of the 2007-08 violence to be prosecuted at the ICC.
Mr. Odinga could have used this to his advantage by going directly to the voters most likely to be sensitive to international trade restrictions – many of whom were in Kenyatta and Ruto’s strongholds (mostly commodity exporters) – and making the case to them that electing the duo would negatively impact their businesses. Instead he completely gave up on this and allowed Kenyatta to own the issue and set the tone on how the ICC would be talked about in the campaigns. As a result in the first debate Mr. Kenyatta masterfully neutralized the ICC cases as an issue by forcing all serious contenders on stage to denounce the trials and pledge to try the suspects of the 2007-08 violence domestically.
III. Money:
Uhuru Kenyatta is one of the wealthiest people in Africa (probably worth hundreds of millions of dollars). He was therefore able to pour money into his campaign without reserve. Red t-shirts, caps, reflector jackets, lesos, etc were everywhere. ODM on the other hand had the reputation of being stingy throughout the campaign. They had less money to work with and even then managed to mismanage the little they had. Mr. Odinga’s dependence on wealthy party financiers may have also hampered his independence leading to the many strategic blunders he made throughout the campaign.
IV. Demographics:
In the final analysis democratic elections are about numbers. And sometimes a candidate just doesn’t have the numbers. Kenyans vote along ethnic lines. And on this score Mr. Kenyatta had a head start. The two core communities of the Jubilee Alliance (Kikuyu and Kalenjin) make up 36.5% of Kenyans. The two core communities in the CORD Alliance (Luo and Kamba) are only 21.1%. Add this to the fact that Mr. Kenyatta completely out-registered Mr. Odinga and also had a better turnout on voting day (I hinted at this here before the election) and it becomes clear why Mr. Kenyatta’s margin of victory was so big.
Mr. Odinga’s party needs to do a lot of soul searching and be honest in its assessment of the conduct of the last election. They were caught flatfooted, playing the politics of yesteryears – mass rallies and whipping up emotions – instead of meticulously planning and targeting voters for registration, turnout, and with specific messages. Mr. Kenyatta, perhaps because he had a lot more to lose if he lost, or because he had a newer party with immense resources, or both, was able to do these things very well.
Elections in Kenya will forever be different. And a lot more expensive.
Several readers that came to this blog for information on the elections have asked for suggested readings on Kenya’s political history. Here is a short, and so in no way exhaustive, list of books that I think might provide a good introduction. Other suggestions are welcome in the comments section.
Read on.
Dear readers, it has been a while since I did a rant and rave post. Here is one to end the long drought. Today we look at a couple of pieces done by Al-Jazeera and the New Yorker.
First The New Yorker.
I love the New Yorker. Everyone does. Unless you are weird. Or do not like their politics.
But the New Yorker should get a better writer than James Verini on the upcoming Kenyan elections. Reporting on the first presidential debate, Verini made several unforgivable errors. I mean, I know it is hard to find information on countries that you may or may not have visited, or have only visited for a few days.
But Kenya is one of the most studied countries on the Continent. You can wikipedia or google your way to a decent article that passes a laugh test. Sadly, Verini’s does not. Here are the necessary corrections to his (original) piece (and certainly not the only ones):
And then Al-Jazeera:
For a news organization that claims to counter the dominance and supposed orientalist biases of CNN International and the BBC with nuanced on-the-ground reporting, this is unforgivable. Here’s is how Peter Greste opens his report on the Kenyan election:
Political science is an imprecise discipline at the best of times. But in Kenya, it feels more akin to witchcraft.
In most established democracies, astute analysts can have a reasonable stab at predicting the outcome of elections. The regular if well-spaced drum-beat of polls gives anyone who cares to look, a decent set of historical data to work with.
It’s usually possible to check the voting patterns of a particular electorate; assess the impact of demographic changes; and with the help of some intelligent opinion polling, have a good understanding of the way a country might swing.
But in Kenya, this election is stacked with so many unknown factors that a witch throwing newt’s eyes into a bubbling cauldron might have as good a chance at predicting the outcome as the political scientists.
Really Mr. Greste, really?
Witchcraft? Why that term? Why not just say that you do not have a grasp of the political reality and so don’t know how the election will turn out? Are you trying to say something about your readers (that they easily resort to witchcraft to explain things they do not comprehend) or Kenya?
I put it to you that there are three firms that have been polling the Kenyan public on their political preferences since the last election in 2007. These firms accurately predicted the outcome of the messy 2007 election (and pretty much matched the exit polls conducted by UCLA academics) and the 2010 referendum. Kenya has demographic data that politicians make very good use of. For instance, we know the ethnic composition of Nairobi, the most cosmopolitan PROVINCE (hear me, Mr. Verini) in Kenya.
Also, a few political scientists, including yours truly, have done some predictions as to the potential outcomes of the election (see blog posts below).
Why did these two do this?
To me it looks like a bad case of trying to exoticize the Kenyan elections for their audiences – what with the references to witchcraft by Mr. Greste and Mr. Verini’s over-simplification of the election to a Kikuyu-Luo tribal contest.
It is also disrespectful to Kenyans, who they seem to think will not do any fact-checking to correct their sloppiness.
A View From the Cave blogger Tom Murphy is holding the annual Aid Best Blogger Awards (ABBA). I don’t consider my blog to be an “aid blog” per se but I think I fit into the general category that Tom intended to include in his awards.
If I may toot my own horn a little, I even once got a shout out from one of the better know aid bloggers out there, Chris Blattman (Blogger of the Year last year).
So if you like what you read on this blog please go ahead and nominate the blog for this year’s awards here.
Some of my better posts in recent months have been on the topics of the upcoming elections in Kenya and the conflict in eastern DRC.
The race to succeed President Kibaki promises to be an interesting one. All the pointers indicate that it will be a close race between the Raila-Kalonzo-Wetangula and co. faction vs. the Uhuru-Ruto-Mudavadi and co. faction. Prime Minister Raila is expected to be at the top of the ticket under an umbrella special purpose vehicle called CORD (Coalition for Reforms and Democracy). Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta leads his own SPV called the Jubilee Alliance. Below I give a little background information before delving into the state of the race.
Institutions Matter:
The 2011 Kenyan constitution mandates that the winning presidential candidate garner 50% + 1 of the votes cast and at least 25% of the votes in at least half of Kenya’s 47 counties. In addition, presidential candidates and their veep candidates must run on a joint ticket. Previously, the presidential candidate could promise the veep slot to any number of ethnic chiefs. The constitution also limits the president’s ability to buy support by limiting the number of cabinet slots to 22 (necessitating the creation of minimum winning coalitions).
This situation has forced Kenya’s politicians to form alliances that cross ethnic lines, a change from the past when nearly all the major ethnic groups produced their own presidential candidates. The logic of minimum winning coalitions has set in, with two main camps forming ahead of the polls – Mr. Odinga has insisted all year on the stump that this is a two horse race between him and a straw man non-reformer, and that any other candidates are mere donkeys.
In this cycle the big five (Kikuyu, Luhya, Luo, Kamba and Kalenjin, together making over 70%) are all in either CORD or the Jubilee Alliance. Continuing the Luo-Kikuyu feud that has characterized Kenya’s political history since 1966, this election will pit the son of Kenya’s first president (Kenyatta) vs. that of the first vice president (Odinga). CORD’s formateur is Odinga (a Luo) who leads the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). Jubilee’s is Kenyatta (a Kikuyu) who is leader of The National Alliance (TNA).
It is likely that CORD will field Odinga as the presidential candidate and Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka (a Kamba) as his running mate. Jubilee is likely to field Kenyatta as the the presidential candidate and William Ruto (a Kalenjin) as his running mate. This would leave the Luhya as a big five swing group. Such a scenario favors Odinga, who is already widely popular in Western Province (Luhya-land) and sections of Rift Valley Province (Kalenjin-land). This scenario is likely, but not set in stone.
The ICC Question:
Mr. Kenyatta and Mr. Ruto are facing charges at the ICC over the post election violence that rocked Kenya in 2007-08. Back then they were in opposing parties – Mr. Ruto with Odinga in ODM and Mr. Kenyatta with Kibaki in PNU. They are both suspected to have funded gangs of rival ethnic groups (Kalenjin and Kikuyu) that committed heinous crimes including murder, rape, and arson. The international community has sent a strong signal – through Kofi Annan’s statements, threats of sanctions and the EU’s travel ban on the duo – that the two should not run for office.
The Kikuyu business elite (including cash crop farmers and horticulturalists who would be hardest hit by international sanctions) have thus been trying to prevail on Mr. Kenyatta to forgo his presidential run in favor of Mr. Musalia Mudavadi (a Luhya) – evidence suggests that this was the carrot that Uhuru and Ruto used to lure Mr. Mudavadi into their coalition. If Uhuru steps down for Mudavadi then a good chunk of the Luhya vote would depart CORD for Jubilee. But it may create room for the lesser presidential candidates from Kenyatta’s region – Martha Karua and Peter Kenneth – to get a sizable chunk of the Kikuyu vote. Plus it is unclear if Mudavadi can weather the accusations of being Kenyatta’s project on top of campaigning against the formidable Mr. Odinga. Kenyatta’s last presidential bid faltered partly because he was seen as Moi’s project.
The State of the Race:
Ipsos Synovate, a local polling company, just released a poll of adults 18+ on their preferred candidates for president. Mr. Odinga leads the pack with 34% of the respondents saying he is their preferred candidate. Mr. Kenyatta is second with 27%. Mudavadi, the other likely Jubilee candidate polls at 5%. Musyoka and Ruto poll at 3% and 2% respectively. It is important to note that it is only Mr. Odinga and Mr. Kenyatta who are presently outperforming their ethnic group size in the polls (by 21% and 2% respectively). 22% of Kenyans remain undecided. Notice that the number of undecideds is highest in provinces that lack a presidential front-runner, i.e. all except Central (Kenyatta) and Nyanza (Odinga).
click on image to enlarge.
If Odinga eventually faces off with Kenyatta the key swing region that will determine the outcome of the election will be the Rift Valley Province. Mr. Odinga will have Nyanza, North Eastern, Western, Coast and half of Nairobi in the bag. Mr. Kenyatta will have Central, (possibly) the Rift Valley and half of Nairobi locked in. In this scenario (let’s call it scenario 1), for Mr. Kenyatta to win he would have to run the numbers in both the Mt. Kenya region (which as a whole has about 24% of voters, according to the 2009 census) and the Rift Valley Province (with 25% of voters) and get a good showing in Nairobi. For Mr. Odinga to stop him he would need to have a respectable showing in the Rift Valley – something that he can given the fact that he has managed to keep key leaders from the region in his party, ODM. In Scenario 1 Odinga will be the favorite to win.
If Jubilee nominates Mudavadi to face Odinga, then things will get interesting (It would also potentially make for a de-ethnicized presidenital race). Key questions will be:
If the Rift Valley, Mt. Kenya (Central and sections of Eastern) and Western vote go to Mudavadi en masse, it is hard to see how Odinga can make it to State House. In this scenario, turnout would be key. Jubilee would win by a landslide. But while this situation is likely, it’ll still be a huge gamble for Jubilee to nominate Mudavadi.
Mr. Odinga has more national appeal than his former ODM assistant Mudavadi. The latter lacks a strong political base in his home region of Western Province. Add to that the fact that he will leave the gates with the imprint of “project” on his forehead, not to mention the uncertainty over how Mt. Kenya region would vote and the election becomes a real tossup ex ante. Nominating Mudavadi to head the Jubilee ticket would be a high risk gamble for Uhuru and Ruto that would either pay off big come March 4th or hand Odinga victory on a silver platter.
The Jubilee Alliance will nominate its candidate (either Uhuru or Mudavadi) next week. CORD will name its presidential candidate (very likely to be Mr. Odinga) on the 22nd. I expect minor defections and realignments that will have a non-trivial impact on the race before then. All in all right now Odinga is a slight favorite to become the fourth president of Kenya.
A panel of judges at the ICC will issue their ruling tomorrow afternoon on whether or not six accused Kenyans will stand trial. The six include two declared presidential candidates. Either way the ruling will have a non-trivial impact on the pursuit of justice for the victims of the 2007-08 post-election violence (PEV). It will also significantly shape the politics of coalition building in this year’s general elections.
Because of the ICC process, the Kenyan justice system has put on ice its own process of holding the perpetrators of the PEV to account. A non-confirmation of the charges against at least some of the six co-accused will add the 2007-08 PEV to the long list of crimes against Kenyans, many of which have been committed by the high and mighty, that have gone unpunished.
Justice is political. Therefore, there is no doubt that if the process of prosecuting the crimes committed in the PEV returns to Kenya none of the big fish will be held accountable. That is the sad truth.
This is why despite the noisy political environment, a majority of the PEV victims (and other Kenyans) still back the ICC process. At the very minimum they want justice to appear to be served.
At the moment the problem of justice remains a worry largely monopolized by the 300,000 or so Kenyans in IDP camps and the relatives of the over 1,300 who were killed. [The media and the political class are squarely to blame for this shameful situation.] For the rest of the country, focus has shifted to the politics of the general elections due later this year. To this we now turn.
Two of the accused, William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta have declared their interest in the presidency. Mr. Kenyatta is currently the second most preferred presidential candidate after Prime Minister Raila Odinga. Mr. Ruto, while not as popular nationally, still commands a sizeable chunk of the votes in the country’s most populous province – the Rift Valley. The Rift Valley has also been the hotbed of political violence in country’s history, most of it over land.
A confirmation of the charges will seriously dent the presidential ambitions of Messrs Ruto and Kenyatta. It will make it harder for either of them to sell their candidacy outside of their immediate ethnic constituency. It will also give their opponents (and there are plenty) an opportunity to hold themselves as the clean candidates that ought to succeed Kibaki. Needless to say, a non-confirmation would bolster the duo’s campaigns. What will this mean for the general election?
It is common knowledge that the man to beat in the 2012 election will be Mr. Odinga. The two scenarios above will impact the outcome of the election mainly through their influence on the coalition building abilities of the anti-Odinga crowd.
More on this tomorrow in reaction to the ICC ruling.
kenopalo.com 