Kenya has never had a Single Credible Election
I was privileged to be
part of a conversation where Kenya's elections and peace were subjects of
discussion. As usual we shall be having this conversation a lot this year. What
annoys most is that Kenyans pretend to love peace so much and even pray for it a
lot but they never work for it. I must say that I do not like some of the things
that people talk about regarding elections and peace. There is justice and
there is peace. If you want peace, simply go out and work for justice for
indeed peace is a product of justice. Peace is an end. This is not conjecture
nor is it hypothetical. You can question conjecture and debate on hypothesis but
never can you do this to proved theories with evidence.
I had the courage to
tell the gathering that strictly speaking peace is not one of the known benchmarks
of credible elections but credible elections can greatly contribute to peace
during election. Of course elections and peace are correlated but such
correlation is that that if you hold a credible elections chances of peace are
very high and the vice versa is true.
Kenyans and other peoples
of the world often talk about 2007-8 as a point of reference of scenarios of
elections went wrong. But we never want to tell our descendants that in 1992
and 1997 we had even terrible violence related to elections. Those who were in places
like Molo know what happened. I know that we lost many more lives in 1992 and
even in 1997 than we did in 2007 but the thanks to new media 2007 is all the
world knows and talks about. We also know very well that in 2002 Kenya never
had credible elections and that the only reason we never experienced such
election related violence is that people were tired of Moi and news of the
defeat of Moi (through his project Uhuru Kenyatta), his acceptance of defeat
and the fact that the opposition had ganged against Moi made Kenyans to assume that
the elections were credible. They were not. In fact, in 2002 we had one of the
most shambolic elections in Kenya. Come 2007 and we had yet another shambolic
election in which even the man in charge of elections said he did not think
whosever he declared winner was the winner. Commission reports are here with us
and every other human being on earth can satisfy their curiosity by perusing
through those reports. It is very clear that Mwai Kibaki never won elections in
2007. The reason for the violence that we keep talking about is not that some
Kenyans love violence or that some people do not accept defeat or any of those claims
that people love to peddle on the streets of our cities and paths of our
villages. The reason 2007-8 happened the way it did is that we had an election
that was not credible and that those who felt cheated refused to accept defeat.
Thank God we managed to navigate through a negotiated power-sharing deal between
the declared winner and the undeclared winner of that that un-credible
election. In 2013 Kenya never had credible elections yet again. Evidence is
around for those who want to entertain their minds. Peace expedience through
campaigns such as "we need peace alive" blurred the demand for
credibility in electoral process. Dangling the ugly images of 2007-8 and with
the ICC looming many Kenyans did not have the appetite to yet again go back to
that circle of violence. We never broke the circle, we only keep avoiding it.
Until we have the courage to break it, that same old urge shall catch up with
us and we, for sure, know too well its cost. One way to do this is by investing
in credible elections.
Since the return of
multi-party democracy in 1992, Kenya has never had a single credible election.
And that is exactly where the problem of Kenya lies. Why do we waste time
talking about peace at such a critical moment when we should invest our time
and energies in putting in place systems and creating and environment, through
which Kenya can, for once, hold a credible election? If we think the cost of a
credible election is too high, wait until we get the bill for the cost of
peace!
Kenya has never had a Single Credible Election
Reviewed by Ibrahim Magara
on
January 19, 2017
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