Kenya Stockholm Blog

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1. http://www.economist.com/node/21556601

   Still too tribal
   Kenyans have the jitters as they start gearing up for next year’s elections
   Jun 9th 2012

   WHEN a group of idealists calling themselves “patriots” and “nationalists” tried to hold a political rally in Limuru, half an hour’s drive north of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, they ended up being chased into the forest by police firing live rounds and tear gas. The police labelled them “dangerous” and “criminal”. The organisers’ grave error was to tell the crowd that they were not obliged to vote for someone from their own ethnic group.

   Among the speakers was Ngunjiri Wambugu, a businessman involved in politics for the first time because he reckoned that Kenya’s business climate has been soured by tribal squabbles. It was time, he said, to nudge people along the road from “tribe thinking to Kenya thinking”.

   If only. The last time Kenyans went to the polls to elect a president, the ensuing dispute left 1,500 people dead and 300,000 displaced. The chaos, much of it orchestrated by leading politicians, tore the seams of Kenya’s patchwork of more than 40 tribes, with violence erupting largely along tribal lines. Tribalism, plainly, was still the bane of Kenyan politics.

   The International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague wants to try the alleged ringleaders for crimes against humanity. A trial date is expected to be set on June 12th. The coming presidential election, due in March next year, may well clash with it. Two of Kenya’s leading candidates may find themselves in a Dutch dock just when they would rather be on Kenya’s hustings.

   The most prominent is Uhuru Kenyatta, a son of the country’s founding president. Many think he is also the country’s richest man. The ICC has recently jailed a former head of state, Liberia’s Charles Taylor, and in 2008 indicted Sudan’s incumbent, Omar al-Bashir. Kenyans could set an unfortunate precedent by electing a head of state while he is actually on trial at the ICC.

   Nairobi’s political elite reckons it has learned the “Bashir lesson”: the African Union, it seems, will defend one of its own if he is still in office. Witness the fate of Jean-Pierre Bemba: once he had lost the presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2006, he ended up at the ICC. The fear is that Mr Kenyatta will see the coming election as his get-out-of-jail card and play it for all it is worth. President Mwai Kibaki, who is to stand down after two terms in office, may be persuaded to withdraw co-operation from the ICC to protect Mr Kenyatta if it insists on summoning him; they are both members of the Kikuyu tribe, the largest and richest in Kenya. But if that happened, it could lead to turmoil at home, international sanctions imposed from abroad, and a loss of confidence in Kenya’s economy.

   Kenya is governed by a ramshackle coalition that includes prominent people from every main tribe, with power determined by complex alliances of the main groups, most of them rent by internal rivalries. Most political parties still act as vehicles for tribal champions. “Tribal politics is alive and well,” said Murithi Mutiga, a commentator. “It’s a numbers game which makes elections more like a census.”

   Mr Kenyatta’s new grouping, the National Alliance, is energetically shoring up support in Central Province, heartland of the Kikuyu and the closely related Meru and Embu, most of whom tend to vote in a block. Some of his supporters gave a taste of the coming campaign when they told voters they should “elect a dog” as long as it was wearing the new party’s colours.

   Mr Kenyatta has teamed up with another tribal champion, William Ruto, a Kalenjin, who is also facing trial at the ICC. They have formed an alliance known as the G7, which embraces seven supposed champions, whose main aim, it seems, is to stop the prime minister, Raila Odinga, from becoming president. In case Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto are both prevented from running by the ICC, they have poached Musalia Mudavadi, a lesser light in Mr Odinga’s party, to lead their alliance instead.

   Most observers think Mr Odinga narrowly won the last presidential contest but had to settle for the lesser job of prime minister in a coalition following the disputed election. He has tried hardest to build a coalition across the tribal spectrum. But his base is the Luo people of western Kenya, who have long felt done down by the Kikuyu and Kalenjin. Though his performance as prime minister is widely regarded as chaotic, he broadly retains Western governments’ backing, which he may use in an effort to persuade the UN Security Council to defer his rivals’ ICC trial until after the election. That would rob Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto of one of their main campaign issues.

   Kenya’s messy politics has hurt its economy. A recent Harvard study suggested it should be growing at 7% rather than 4%, the latest figure. The government is belatedly trying to improve the country’s shoddy infrastructure, for instance by building a series of multi-lane roads around Nairobi. But the political instability still puts off investors and corruption remains rife. The finance ministry’s top civil servant recently told Parliament that as much as a third of the budget was lost to graft.

   Comment by kakazi | August 8, 2012

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