From: Ouko joachim omolo
Voices of Justice for Peace
Regional News
BY FR JOACHIM OMOLO OUKO, AJ
NAIROBI-KENYA
TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2012
President Mwai Kibaki yesterday opened a key conference on peaceful elections. The conference which was held at the Bomas of Kenya seeks to deliberate on issues to avert a repeat of 2007 post election. Top leaders including Prime Minister Raila Odinga attended the conference.
In his speech Raila said in order to have peaceful elections in Kenya all our institutions that are involved in the electoral process must work over time to win the confidence of the people: The Police, the Judiciary, the media, the provincial administration must assure our citizens that they will be competent and non partisan. So far, the Judiciary is doing all the right things in this direction.
In the end, it will all be up to the Electoral and Boundaries Commission he said. The IEBC must convince the voters that it is non partisan and that it has the competence to manage this election.
The speech which was also posted into his Facebook Wall said it is the IEBC that will be responsible for the printing and distribution of ballot papers. This has to be foolproof and transparent.
At this juncture it will be up to IEBC to ensure there are no ghost voters and that the voters’ roll is not doctored. All voters who have registered must find their names in the roll on voting day.
IEBC will have to ensure the accreditation of credible international observer teams and media in a credible and transparent manner and grant them the access they need to monitor the process.
The Commission will have to ensure that there is no use of state resources to finance the party campaigns; that there is no bribery and coercion during the campaigns and on voting day.
Kenyans look up to the IEBC to ensure credible vote counting and tallying. So much is at stake for our country. We cannot afford to fail again. I believe that if we take all these steps, Kenyans will have free, fair and peaceful polls. And we shall walk with our heads high again.
Raila highlighted the following: 1. Until 2008, the idea that this country can hold peaceful polls whose results reflected the wishes of Kenyans was taken as a given. 2. Yes there was violence in the run up to and after the 1992, 1997 and 2002 elections. But they were nothing compared to what we witnessed in 2007-2008.
3. The cost of botched elections is extremely high: Thousands dead. Thousands displaced. Thousands wounded- Many living with the aftermath of rape and other abuses. 4. There are other costs. As a nation, we have been on the defensive for the last five years.
At every turn, we have sought to assure all and sundry that we are back on track; that we have learnt from our mistakes; and that we are marching on, sadder but wiser, determined that the past does not recur.
5. It is not just the international community and the foreign investors who have sought this assurance. Our own citizens have their doubts too. 6. As a country, we have made great strides towards peaceful polls. We have a new constitution. It has energized a number of institutions that are critical for credible polls if only its provisions can be respected.
7. I say credible polls because that was the source of the problem in 2007.
8. The 2007 election would have passed as the most peaceful in our history had the vote counting and tallying been efficient and credible.
Some of his Facebook funs challenged him that even in his own party there are no credible people handling elections. The recent by-election nominations in Ndihwa is a reflection that we still don’t have serious people handling ODM nominations, and that will continue to cost the party dearly. That Rials should see to it that he has people on integrity to handle the nominations so that he does not loose valuable members.
Other funs argued that peace is an epitaph in Kenya as long the Policemen are loyalist of a cluster of politicians. If Kenyans today were given an opportunity not to undertake elections the funs believe the significance level would hit 99 percent owing to fear of repeated violence experienced.
According to former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as long as politicians continue watering down sections of laws central to the implementation of the Constitution chaos are still to be expected in coming elections.
In a statement dispatched on Sunday, the eve of the second anniversary of the promulgation of the Constitution, Dr Annan said that concerns were being raised about the extent to which some laws being enacted adhered to the letter and spirit of the Law.
The new Constitution which was promulgated on August 27 two years ago was one of the prescriptions for a peaceful election. One of the chapters that politicians have altered is chapter six.
There is fear that if the President assents to the Bill as passed, then the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission will have no powers to disqualify individuals with questionable character from running for various electoral offices.
Last year, Parliament also watered down a key anti-corruption legislation that would have boosted the war on graft in the country. That is why there is fear that should politicians compromise current Electoral Commission, the same way violence erupted in 2007/2008 it will do the same in 2013.
In the aftermath of the 2008 electoral violence, a range of reform measures were agreed to pave the way for national reconciliation. These included the adoption of a new constitution which included an enhanced Bill of Rights, greater limitations on presidential powers, fundamental reform of police and judicial institutions, and the devolution of many government functions to new county level governments.
The same politicians will use the government functions to new county level governments to pave way for dominant clans to take control of county politics, locking out people they consider outsiders.’
That is why while there is widespread support for the new constitution and related reforms- many Kenyans remain sceptical of political leaders and their commitment to reconciliation and reform.
This is because Kenyan politics has become increasingly ethnically divisive and many people express concern about political dominance by some groups over others, particularly in relation to the new county level governments.
While Kenyans would want police institutions that are subject to the constitution and serve the people, politicians want the police loyal to them. Already last month some Members of Parliament who are for the reform rejected President Mwai Kibaki’s nominees to the National Police Service Commission and instead advised that the principals should submit fresh names for vetting.
Budalangi MP Ababu Namwamba and Joint Government Chief Whip Jakoyo Midiwo led the push to reject the names, by standing in solidarity with Prime Minister Raila Odinga who argued that President Kibaki, through his permanent secretary, Francis Kimemia, altered the agreed list just before it was presented to Parliament.
Kibaki and his PNU party politicians are said not to be comfortable with the reform that is why they push for the downfall of the new constitution.
The National Police Service Act, one of the laws guiding police reforms, does not recognise some of the existing ranks in the police service. It scrapped five ranks like Commissioner of Police, Deputy Commissioner of Police I and II, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Senior Assistant Commissioner of Police and Assistant Commissioner of Police of both regular and Administration Police. About 200 officers are affected meaning they will be in office illegally.
The Act introduced new structure with Inspector General at the top, Deputy Inspector General, Assistant Inspector General, Senior Superintendent, Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent, Chief Inspector, Inspector, Senior Sergeant, Sergeant, Corporal and Constable.
Of particular concern is the lack of progress in reforming the police, who have been accused of extra-judicial killings. The lack of change in both key personnel and in police behaviour concerns many Kenyans and, coupled with the threat of militia and gangs, undermines people’s sense of security in their communities.
For Kenya to have peaceful election the Government must make sure that there is justice for the victims. This cannot take place because widespread support to bring the perpetrators of the 2008 violence to justice has been thwarted.
Majority of the perpetrators are said to be from PNU that is why the effort to have a national judicial process to prosecute all remaining perpetrators who do not fall under the ICC’s remit is tactful.
Yet, failure to make progress on this emotive issue will increase the possibility of further outbreaks of violent conflict in retaliation for the events of 2008. Constitutional Minister, Eugene Wamalwa won’t do much to push for the implementation of the constitution given that he is in that docket with the blessings of PNU.
A BBC reporter saw 40 bodies with gunshot wounds in a mortuary in Kisumu, which was the opposition’s main base. A witness also told them that armed police shot protesters at a rally. The local KTN television station said that 124 people died nationwide in the first two days of unrest.
On December 31, 2007, police reported that 40 people were killed in Nairobi and 53 in Kisumu, a major support base for Odinga. Four bodies were discovered in Mathare, in Nairobi, seven people were killed in Nakuru, and four people found dead in a village near Kapsabet.
To understand the Kenyan crisis in the context of its national, regional and global situation, it is necessary to examine the regime which followed independence in 1963. Jomo Kenyatta was a Kikuyu (or Gikuyu) and the enigmatic Mau Mau movement had largely been a Kikuyu phenomenon (most of the 12,000 rebels or “suspects” killed by colonial forces in a brutal campaign were Kikuyu).
On becoming president Kenyatta – head of the Kenya African National Union (Kanu) in an effectively one-party state – embraced extreme tribalistic politics and packed the new “Kenyan” bourgeoisie he promoted with Kikuyu and members of related tribes such as the Embu and the Meru.
At the time of his death in 1978 most of the country’s wealth and power was in the hands of the organisation which grouped these three tribes: the Gikuyu-Embu-Meru Association (GEMA).
Even though the GEMA tribes during Kenyatta’s time (1963-78) composed perhaps 30 percent of Kenyans, almost all concentrated in the highlands of the central province. These figures meant that in order to square the ethno-political circle in Kenya, power-brokers had to forge deals between the three big groups and somehow relate to the shifting gaggle occupying the fourth corner.
In Kenyatta’s time the deal was simple: the Kikuyu and their smaller relatives, after making an agreement with the minority tribes, ran everything. The Luo, who eventually tried to challenge this ordering, were forcefully marginalised as the prudent Luhyia looked on.
After Kenyatta died in 1978, his vice-president Daniel arap Moi – who was from the Kalenjin minority tribe – inherited the mantle of power on the understanding that he would not upset the arrangement designed to keep the two other large tribes (and particularly the Luo) out of power.
But Daniel arap Moi proceeded to use his new status to cleverly divide his Kikuyu allies (amongst them the man who would be his successor as president, Mwai Kibaki), so as progressively to sideline them. By 1986, Moi had concentrated all the power – and most of its attendant economic benefits – into the hands of his Kalenjin tribe and of a handful of allies from minority groups.
Under Jomo Kenyatta, the Kikuyu – claiming martyr status for their sufferings during the Mau-Mau “emergency”, and relying on tacit government support – had spread beyond their traditional territorial homelands and “repossessed lands stolen by the whites” – even when these had previously belonged to other tribes. Thus Kikuyu “colonists” had fanned out all over Kenya, often creating strong rural antagonisms.
Moi used a consummate juggler’s skill to keep the ethno-political balance working in his favour. It explains why the first two multy-party elections after other movements emerged to challenge Kanu (in 1992 and 1997) were occasions for carefully state-managed ethnic violence designed to achieve two objectives: keep the dangerous Kikuyu underfoot, and pit the Kalenjin’s minority allies against each other in order better to control them.
During Kibaki when John Githongo, the man appointed to fight corruption, blew the whistle in January 2005, he had to flee to Britain in fear of his life. This is because most of the corrupt leaders and looters were from Kibaki side.
It is also why, even though Githongo is himself a Kikuyu, and his denunciation of a massive series of financial scandals in which hundreds of millions of dollars had vanished was seen as a betrayal of his tribe as well as of the government he served.
Since where all forms of violence are said to relate to power, political violence has been defined as ‘the commission of violent acts motivated by a desire, conscious or unconscious, to obtain or maintain political power’, is why there is fear that whoever will succeed Kibaki the violence will still continue.
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
People for Peace in Africa
Tel +254-7350-14559/+254-722-623-578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
Peaceful world is the greatest heritage
That this generation can give to the generations
To come- All of us have a role.