The referendum for the Constitution of Kenya held in 2005 was yet another farce performed for unsuspecting Kenyans. The government barely campaigned for a “yes” vote, for the simple reason that it did not want its own powers to be curtailed. Meanwhile, the opposition successfully campaigned for a “no” vote, not because of the merits or demerits of the proposed constitution, but simply to make political capital in anticipation of the upcoming elections.

The tragedy of the rejection of the proposed constitution becomes clear in the wake of the current crisis. The current constitution allows a president to win on a simple majority as long as he or she garners 25% of the vote in at least 5 provinces. In a field of three or four candidates of equal popularity, a president does not need to be popularly elected to win. He or she can win with less than 25% of the total votes cast nationwide as long as he or she acquires the provincial quotas required. By contrast, under the proposed constitution, the president had to garner over 50% of the vote, failure of which there would be a run-off election. Under that constitution, the current crisis may not have emerged, because even with the current results that lack credibility, the law would have required a run-off between Odinga and Kibaki only, which may have been easily won by Odinga.

Soon after the 2002 elections, Kenyan citizens thus endured finding out that they had been bamboozled and had become the reluctant spectators of petty squabbles and scramble for power that characterized the whole five years of the last Kenyan Parliament. In the meantime, politicians pretended that the soap opera of Kenyan politics was an issue of great national significance. By the beginning of 2007, some citizens began to long for elections in order to finally get rid of the fatigue instigated by the saturation of daily Kenyan life with childish games by political soap stars who went home with a huge pay check at the end of each month.

By December 2007, many Kenyans went to the polls having forgotten that there are only two “tribes” in Kenya: the powerful and the powerless. They minimized the reality brilliantly described by a friend of mine from Kenyatta University who said that in Kenya, there is only one tribe: “kujuana” (having acquaintances). He argued that deals are almost always cut between people who know each other from the same school, clubs or other social places, more than on the basis of one's ethnic group. Thus we find that in public, politicians spew hatred against members of another ethnic group, but in private, they and their children are married across ethnic lines. Worse, in the evenings, they drink at posh bars with the politicians of the ethnic groups whom they attacked earlier that afternoon. And while the purported political enemies cynically enjoy their evening drinks and weekend golf games, the average Kenyan who takes them seriously or who is on their payroll fights and kills his neighbor with whom he or she has interacted for years.

Nevertheless, on December 27 2007, Kenyans turned up at polling stations in record numbers. They lined up for hours in good faith to vote the leader of their choice. In most cases, they defied the attempts to ethnically polarize them and to impose the three-piece-suit voting. Kenyans chose their leaders based on the leaders’ capabilities and commitment, often rejecting arrogant and corrupt leaders who had not served them well.

Little did the voters know that politicians saw them as mere numbers that could be would used as trump cards in case of a political stalemate that the politicians had probably predicted. To these leaders, the voters do not matter as much as their numbers. Thus Kibaki and Odinga are both using numbers with a margin of about 200,000 votes, give or take, to maintain the standoff. In the meantime, the number of bodies that pile on both sides of the political divide continues to increase, a situation which both sides seem intent on exploiting in order to force their opponent into submission. Kenyans must therefore impress upon the leader they support to please, please, please get to the negotiation table before more lives are meaninglessly lost. It is unfair for peasant farmers and slum dwellers to lose their loved ones and their extremely limited property while our two leaders are glaring at each other, each waiting to see who will blink first.

Some may counter that the tensions and loss of life and property result from the fact that the elections were improperly handled rather than the simple fact that Kibaki had won, implying that had the elections been properly carried out and Kibaki still won, there would be no conflict and loss of life. However, I suspect that the discontent with the inefficiency and corruption in the Electoral Commission of Kenya are simply a convenient excuse for the current massacres and destruction of property. Former president Moi won two elections in 1992 and 1997 which many people believed and publicly claimed were rigged, but Kenya was not subjected to the bloodshed that we are now witnessing.



Instead, the opposition comfortably took their seats in parliament where they began business by increasing their salaries, and this tradition continued into the 2003 parliament. Through defections and other such charades, opposition MP’s cut deals with the government so that Moi’s KANU party remained solidly in power even though most Kenyan voters had voted for the opposition. If members of Moi’s ethnic group were not attacked after the 1992 and 1997 elections, it is doubtful that anger at electoral injustice is the sole reason for which Kenyans, particularly of Kikuyu origin, are being specifically targeted and indiscriminately raped and killed in their own country.

The other insinuation that a vote recount and a predicted win for Odinga as president would resolve the current conflicts is largely wishful thinking. Even if Odinga were to swap places with Kibaki, the ethnic tensions may not necessarily dissipate. Kenya would still have a president who will not have been elected by almost two thirds of the voters, and that two thirds may be as bitter as the current two thirds is right now. Moreover, the suffering that members of the Kikuyu, Kisii, Luhya and other ethnic groups are now enduring because of suspicion of their political sympathies did not start on December 29 when election results were announced. Scores had already been killed by the time Kenyans went to the polls. In addition, an exchange of power without addressing the injustices already going on would send the message the ethnic massacres are a legitimate ticket to the presidency.



In other words, the blame for the current conflict falls on the personality and political decisions of Kibaki and Odinga who appear to be on different sides of the political divide, when in reality they represent two sides of the same coin. Their respective political parties - which they have both changed since 2002 - were amicable as they signed their MOU and awarded themselves hefty salaries once they got to Parliament. Both their parties colluded in different ways in defeating a constitution that may have successfully averted the mishandling of the election results or the political ambiguity of a winner-take-all presidential election.

It is therefore too late for ODM to be righteous about not meeting with Kibaki unless Kibaki resigns. Suspicion sown by ODM members during campaigns and the current organized violence has left many of Kibaki’s supporters feeling that they are caught between suffering under an unpopular Kibaki regime and facing extermination under an Odinga presidency. The reason that Odinga must come to the table with Kibaki is not because Kibaki is a righteous god who won a squeaky clean election; it is in order to allay those justified fears among Kibaki’s supporters who are already suffering. That ODM is reluctant to consider this line of action raises suspicions that it is simply disputing who exercises the excessive presidential powers that Kibaki has abused, rather than the very existence of those excessive powers in the first place. Similarly, Kibaki must come to the table with Odinga because Kibaki’s perceived and actual supporters are being indiscriminately killed, and the least he must do is to show that he is willing to put aside his pride for their sake. Moreover, hundreds of lives have already been lost in the Luo strongholds of Kibera and Kisumu, and the fact that they were lost at the hands of the police in the name of keeping order, may appear to the communities concerned as evidence of the camouflaged Kikuyu hegemony that Odinga promised to eliminate if elected president.

It is evident that the dispute between Odinga and Kibaki is not about justice but about who should benefit from the current injustice of Kenya’s political system, a system that should be replaced by a constitution that diminishes the powers of the president. It is unfair that average Kenyan citizens are losing their lives and property because of a private deal gone sour. I urge Kenyans, Africans and the international community to pressure Odinga and Kibaki to lay aside their injured pride and talk with each other, instead of letting Kenyans die while they organize pristine press conferences to woo the international community to their side.

And the international community should not be duped. The rhetoric from both sides about maintaining law and order or about prayers and million man marches are aimed at moralizing the stubbornness of both leaders. These slogans are simply convenient excuses concocted for the United States and the European Union that like to consider themselves the final judge of democracy in the world.

And the appeal to the international community – particularly Europe and America – is another worrying element in the current mess. Euro-America is hardly an objective observer as far as Kenya is concerned. The British have a grudge with the Kikuyu for the Mau Mau war, a grudge which was strengthened when the Kibaki government cancelled the decades’ long contract to supply the Kenya government with the fuel guzzling and expensive Land Rover vehicles. Kibaki’s schmoozing with China may also have caused concern in both Europe and America, hence America’s hasty congratulatory message to Kibaki to endear him to their side.

The US message was hastily withdrawn, probably thanks to the EU representative in Kenya who gets more air time on Kenyan television than the commendable offer by respected diplomat Bethuel Kiplagat and peace negotiator Gen. Lazarus Sumbeiywo to broker talks between Kenya’s two main political parties. That the EU is harping on about the flawed election process but paying significantly less attention to the loss of life about which Kenyans are more concerned is predictable. In every African conflict, Euro-America has always articulated petty concerns about minute details of the democratic process which are usually irrelevant in the face of the bigger issue about loss of life, with the French government's decisions in Rwanda in 1994 providing a relevant illustration.

Euro-America is motivated by its ideological interest in confirming that African conflicts are motivated by primitive “tribalism” rather than political and historical events, and in using the crisis in an illustration of that African states are ungovernable without its intervention as the supposed democratic model of the world. Their concern is selfish and hypocritical, since the current crisis is a direct result of the draconian constitution manufactured by Britain and handed over to Kenya at Lancaster just before independence in order to protect white settler farmers who remained in the country.

Any intervention of Europe or America will set Kenya back by at least ten years. With the Kibaki government having reduced donor borrowing, the Western world is likely to peg imposing debt on Kenya to its support of either side. In the meantime, our struggle to raise a generation of Kenyans proud of their identity and convinced that Kenyans and Africans are capable of solving their own problems will be seriously compromised. However, at this stage, losing the gains of the last ten years seems preferable to the increasing loss of life and ethnic hatred.

The international neighbors closer to home are also expected to take interest in this crisis. The fact that the port of Mombasa serves countries such as Uganda and Rwanda makes the restoration of peace in Kenya more urgent. These countries are already feeling the crunch of Kenya’s crisis through limited fuel supplies. It is possible that both PNU and ODM are hoping that the political weight of such countries will compel the opposing side to cave in.

Once again, I urge, plead with and beg Kenyans of all political persuasions and ethnic origins to prevail on their favorite leader to sit at the negotiating table. And when that is done, we must continue to be vigilant in forcing politicians to reduce executive power and in putting in place structures that are make leaders more accountable to the citizens. Never again must we surrender our dignity and intelligence to leaders who reduce us to mere numbers, which they then use to bargain for power and do not suffer the negative consequences.

In the meantime, the Kenyan public needs to repent its proportion of responsibility in the current crisis. Except in bars or in other private forums, few citizens were willing to publicly articulate the real and weighty issues that politicians covered with a veneer of propaganda, slogans and promises of material goods. When the ODM proposed majimbo in public, Kenyans privately knew that the real issue was not about a system of government but about how to deal with Kenyans living in the provinces furthest from the perceived province of origin, and in particular with the Kikuyu. We minimized the fact that the politicians who supported the majimbo system contradicted themselves by calling for a "national" distribution of resources, since the strict application of the majimbo system countrywide would mean that the national coffers would have limited access to the wealth of Central Province, and that the status of Nairobi Province as a jimbo would become a source of conflict.

Similarly, Kenyans were unwilling to publicly accept that they privately understood the change of guard promised by Raila to mean a reduction, if not removal of Kikuyus from visibility in public life. Kenyans seem reluctant to honestly address the polarization of Kenya into the dichotomy of the Kikuyu vs. the rest of Kenya. We must delve into our history in order to identify the source and consequences of this illusion that leads us to ignore concrete realities that defy ethnic identities such as the Kenya elite, stifling capitalism, poverty and the dominance of politicians in the public sphere to the exclusion of achievers in other fields such as academia, science, arts, sports and peace reconciliation.

It is this antagonistic obsession with the Kikuyu that ironically led to Kibaki to become president in 2002 in the first place. Moi made a radical shift from his alienation of the Kikuyu to his appointment of Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor while Odinga threw his weight behind Kibaki in order to beat Uhuru. As a result both KANU and the Odinga-led LDP shied away from leading an independent and spirited campaign as Kalonzo Musyoka of ODM-K did this year despite his limited prospect of winning the election. The principle protagonists in the entrenchment of the Kibaki's henchmen since 2002 were not Kikuyu voters, but Kenya's political class that in 2002 reduced the Kikuyu population from human beings into a swing-vote in the greedy scramble for the presidency.

Kenyans became vulnerable to the deadly foolishness of Kenyan politicians by allowing the latter to usurp our religious, cultural and intellectual life. Parliament has replaced Western countries as the primary source of Kenya's brain drain. Every time we have voted for professors, activists and other leaders, we abandoned morality, discipline, pride and knowledge for triviality and materialism. We endorsed church pastors, professors, eminent thinkers, prominent artists and our only Nobel laureate when they compromised vision, creativity and great achievements for a seat in a petty hell hole called Parliament. Thank God Prof Wangari Maathai lost her seat which she should not have lowered herself to contesting for in the first place. I hope that Kenyans abandon their obsession with politics and instead make heroes of our sportsmen and women, soldiers, thinkers, artists and other important Kenyan achievers so as to deny the presidency and parliamentary posts their current messianic appeal.

To conclude, here’s an inspiring and hopeful anecdote. At a press conference two days ago, Bethuel Kiplagat intimated that he offered to mediate in the crisis because he was inspired by a young man who telephoned to ask what Kiplagat would do to help Kenya get back on its feet. Kiplagat said that the call from this young man was proof that anyone can make a contribution, however small, to restoring peace in Kenya. Wherever we are and whoever we are, we can do something for Kenya. Kiplagat’s story is the reason is why I have written this piece with such passion and urgency. In the meantime, I express my faith in the Kenyans from all walks of life who continue to insist that peace is more important than who is president and who reiterate the increasingly popular slogan that "Kenya is bigger than any one of us."  - ***

Excerpts from Wandia Njoya's blog

Read more on Kenya at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenya