Julian Hattem
This time last year, Kenya was recovering from a bitter presidential election that descended into a constitutional crisis between two longtime political adversaries. After an initial ballot was annulled by the Supreme Court for irregularities, incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta won a repeat election that opposition leader and perennial presidential candidate Raila Odinga boycotted. Amid rising tensions, Odinga rejected the outcome and subsequently proclaimed himself the “people’s president” in an unofficial swearing-in ceremony.
But with memories still fresh of violence that followed Kenya’s contested 2007 election, when more than 1,000 people died, Kenyatta and Odinga abruptly shifted course. In a meeting at Harambee House, the president’s office in Nairobi, the two shook hands and agreed to a truce that watchers anxiously hoped would lead to a new political realignment for East Africa’s largest economy.
One year later, the agreement has continued to hold. A rebalancing of politics seems to be underway as the country already begins to look toward the next election in 2022. “I don’t think Kenya actually had any breathing space between the previous protracted, confusing and violent electoral cycle and the upcoming one, which may be even more decisive and more hotly contested than the previous two or three electoral cycles,” says Robert Besseling, executive director of the risk analysis firm Exx Africa.
But as Kenyatta forges tighter bonds with Odinga, a new split has emerged between the president and his onetime heir apparent, Deputy President William Ruto. Now fearing he’s being shoved aside, Ruto has begun anxiously casting about for a new political path. The changing political fault lines could lead to a new era for Kenyan democracy—but it’s unclear whether it will be any less acrimonious than the last.
Last March’s handshake between Kenyatta and Odinga was greeted with hope around East Africa, but also skepticism that it would put an end to the protracted strain that defined the 2017 presidential election. Odinga justified his boycott of the election rerun by claiming that the electoral system hadn’t been sufficiently reformed, and then rejected the result, in which Kenyatta won 98 percent of the vote. In the turbulent aftermath, security forces were accused of killing dozens of people. When they finally came together, the two men called each other “brothers” and seemed to put it all behind them.
It’s not unusual in Kenya for electoral hostilities to transform into political alliances of convenience. After the electoral violence of 2007 and 2008, Odinga served as prime minister in a power-sharing coalition government under then-President Mwai Kibaki. Individual politicians have a tendency of striking deals that help their careers in the short term, while doing nothing to change the winner-take-all politics and ethnically defined political blocs that are the basis for much of Kenya’s political tensions.
This time around, the benefits of a truce for both men seem clear. Odinga, now a special envoy to the African Union, gets a chance to maintain political relevance despite having repeatedly failed to win the presidency outright. Kenyatta, meanwhile, has forestalled any criticism from one of his most powerful opponents, while burnishing his image as a unifying peacemaker. That’s no small feat for a man who was indicted by the International Criminal Court for playing a role in the 2007-08 election violence. Charges were later dropped due to the difficulties of mounting a case against him, in part because the Kenyan government refused to hand over evidence about Kenyatta, who had in the meantime become president.
Kenyatta and Odinga have now joined forces to rally behind what has been dubbed the Building Bridges Initiative, which created a task force charged with surveying the country and compiling recommendations for improving Kenya’s democracy. Odinga has pushed for it to result in a national referendum creating a parliamentary system with a prime minister and two deputy prime ministers. The process would lead to a less powerful executive and might also give Kenyatta a new place to land in government after his final term ends in three years.
Changing political fault lines could lead to a new era for Kenyan democracy, but it’s unclear whether it will be any less acrimonious than the last.
In the process, Kenyatta is pushing aside his deputy, Ruto, who was similarly indicted by the ICC over his role in stoking post-election violence in 2007-08, with charges subsequently dropped for the same reasons. Ruto, who was once seen as Kenyatta’s eventual successor, seems to be falling out of favor and has watched as others have been elevated to encroach on his position. The two men’s decision to team up was a political maneuver designed to win office by consolidating voters from the president’s Kikuyu ethnic group, Kenya’s largest, and Ruto’s Kalenjin. Now, Kenyatta may be sensing that Ruto’s usefulness has run its course.
In response, Ruto has harshly criticized another of Kenyatta’s signature initiatives, an anti-corruption campaign that Ruto claims is actually a politically motivated purge of his own supporters. “There has been an attempt to hijack the war on corruption and turn it into a war against specific individuals,” Ruto said in Mombasa late last month. Kenyatta’s camp, meanwhile, has accused Ruto of undermining the campaign, with some calling for him to resign.
Kenyatta’s fight against corruption is a key pillar of his legacy, along with his “Big Four” agenda focusing on food security, affordable housing, manufacturing and universal health care. In a single week earlier this year, six Cabinet secretaries were implicated in a range of different graft and kickback scandals. The president has placed particular political emphasis on catching what he calls “big fish,” and he seemed to subtly threaten Ruto in recent weeks by pledging to take on his “closest political ally, brother or sister” in the effort.
Absent amid all the maneuvering are any real efforts to move beyond the ethnic- and elite-driven political system that has long defined Kenyan politics. Jeffrey Smith, the executive director of the pro-democracy group Vanguard Africa, calls the developments “concerning” for Kenyan democracy and the ripple effects it sends around East Africa. “Once again, Kenya’s ruling class seem intent on prioritizing short-term political gain and self-interest over the long-term development of the country, and at the expense of Kenya’s democratic foundations,” he says.
There’s a chance that governmental reforms could lead to a truly more inclusive political system that avoids the pitfalls of the past. The past year has shown that Kenya’s government works best when all major players have some stake in it. “Since the handshake, the economy and politics of the country have changed for the better,” Joseph Nduati, a lawmaker from the ruling Jubilee Party, told a Kenyan newspaper last month.
But if it’s poorly managed, the split between Kenyatta and Ruto threatens to define Kenya’s politics as much as the Kenyatta-Odinga fight did. Kenyatta, Odinga and Ruto have all demonstrated their willingness to quickly abandon the political allegiances that previously suited them to improve their position for the next round of campaigning. The 2018 handshake agreement between Kenyatta and Odinga has paid dividends for Kenya, but it could soon be overshadowed by new rifts and new realignments that better suit either side’s interests.
No comments:
Post a Comment