Rigged results

Violence rocks Kenya after President Kibaki is elected winner in a disputed election and sworn in hastily.

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KENYA, which has a reputation for being among the most stable countries in Africa, suddenly finds itself in a deep political crisis. Kenyans voted in presidential and parliamentary elections in the last week of December, and widespread violence, the worst since the Mau Mau uprising against the British in the 1950s, erupted after Mwai Kibaki, the incumbent President, was hastily sworn in for a second term.

Raila Odinga, Kibakis main rival, was tipped to win by most pollsters. In fact, until the eleventh hour, Odinga was leading in the vote count. The opposition won most of the seats in Parliament, with Odingas Orange Democratic Movement getting 95 of the total 210 seats. Eighty per cent of Kibakis Cabinet colleagues lost their seats in the elections. In the presidential poll, Kibaki could get a majority in only two of the eight provinces in the country. Odinga led comfortably in the rest.

The writing on the wall seemed to be clear for Kibaki. But in a dramatic last-minute development, it was officially announced that Kibaki had reversed the counting trend and won the election narrowly. The official result claims that Kibaki beat Odinga by a margin of 231,728 votes.

International election observers were quick to cast doubts on the validity of Kibakis re-election. Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, head of the European Union observer mission, said that there were big question marks over the tallying of results. According to the E.U. official, election observers were turned away from many counting centres without being provided the final results. Samuel Kivuitu, Chairman of the Electoral Commission of Kenya, also admitted that there were many problems. In one constituency, voter turnout added up to 115 per cent. In another polling centre, according to the Electoral Commission, Kibaki received 105,000 votes though there were only 70,000 registered voters.

President Mwai Kibaki.

In the first week of January, Kivuitu told the media that he was pressured into declaring Kibaki the victor. He now says that he is not sure whether Kibaki won. In another setback for Kibaki, Amos Wako, the countrys Attorney General, called for an independent review of the results. He warned that the country was degenerating into a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions and said that a proper tally should be undertaken immediately by an independent body. The United States and the United Kingdom, which were quick to congratulate Kibaki after he claimed victory, reversed their stance within 24 hours. A U.S. State Department official stated that there were serious doubts about the credibility of the elections.

The George Bush administration is quick to endorse election results in countries ruled by its favourites. There were serious complaints about the last elections in Ethiopia and Uganda. But with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi being the U.S. closest allies in the region, the oppositions claims about fraud were overlooked. Interestingly, Museveni was among the handful of leaders who congratulated Kibaki on his re-election. Kenya, along with Ethiopia and Uganda, is a strong ally of the U.S. in the war against terror.

Kibakis government has ridden roughshod over Kenyas Muslim minority at the behest of Washington. Human rights groups in Kenya have accused the government of assisting the U.S. in the clandestine rendition programme under which suspects are taken to secret locations outside their countries to be tortured and interrogated. This is one important reason Kenyan Muslims cast their lot with Odinga in the recent elections. On the campaign trail, Odinga pledged that if elected he would guarantee their constitutional rights.

The capital, Nairobi, was among the cities worst hit in the four days of rioting and mayhem that followed Kibakis swearing-in ceremony. More than 350 people were killed and widespread damage to property was reported. According to estimates by international agencies, more than 250,000 people were displaced and another 500,000 were in desperate need of emergency food aid. The chaos in Kenya has had an impact on landlocked countries in the neighbourhood, such as Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, which import food and other essentials through Kenyan ports such as Mombassa. The United Nations World Food Programme has said that the crisis in Kenya is affecting the supply of emergency food aid to war-torn areas in the region.

Ominously, the political crisis has started taking on an ethnic hue. The dominant Kikuyu group, to which Kibaki belongs, was targeted in areas where it is in a minority. Fifty Kikuyus, who had taken refuge in a church in the Rift Valley city of Eldoret, were killed by a rampaging mob. Kikuyus on their part are retaliating in kind in many parts of Kenya.

Refugee children from

Odinga has alleged that the government is using banned terrorist organisations, owing allegiance to a particular ethnic group, to foment violence. Human rights groups have accused the government of sanctioning extra-judicial killings and the excessive use of force by the security forces. The security forces used live bullets to quell protests in opposition strongholds such as the Kibera slum in Nairobi and the city of Kisumu.

Some members of the opposition are threatening civil war if the result of the election is not cancelled. The horrific events triggered by ethnic rivalry in Rwanda and Burundi are still fresh in the collective memory of the continent. Rigged elections have led to civil wars in many African countries in the past 50 years. The most recent example is that of the Ivory Coast, which plunged into fratricidal strife following farcical elections in 2000. Kenya has more than 40 ethnic groups, each with a strong identity. The main groups are Kikuyu (22 per cent), Luhya (14 per cent), Luo (13 per cent), Kalenjin (12 per cent) and Kamba (11 per cent). The coalition that Odinga cobbled up has the support of all the major ethnic groups barring Kikuyus.

Kibaki initially tried to brazen his way out of the crisis by using the security forces. The Kenyan government did not allow the African Union Chairman and the President of Ghana, John Kufuor, to land in Nairobi on January 3 as originally scheduled to mediate between the government and the opposition. The government had conveyed to the A.U. and the international community that it would brook no outside interference. But after U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazier was despatched to Nairobi, Kibakis stance noticeably softened. He offered to put in place a government of national unity and promised to abide by the decision of the courts regarding the validity of the presidential poll. Both the U.S. and the U.K. now back the efforts of the A.U. to broker a deal between the government and the opposition.

The A.U.s new charter on election and governance, ratified by all its members except Egypt, allows for fact-finding missions to be sent to member-countries. Experts feel that the A.U. mission should be allowed to recommend whether there should be a recount or whether new elections should be held.

Odinga on his part said that he was also for a negotiated settlement to the crisis but insisted that Kibaki should first step down. He emphasised that Kibaki was in the Presidents office illegally and that he could not share power with a thief. He also said that he had no faith in Kenyan courts as they were stacked with the supporters of the ruling party.

In the 2002 elections, which most Kenyans consider as the only genuinely free elections the country has witnessed so far, Odinga played an important role in putting Kibaki in the highest office by patching together a rainbow coalition to defeat the Kenyan African National Union (KANU), which had a monopoly on power since independence in 1963. A government of national unity was duly formed, but Kibaki soon reneged on his commitments. Odinga and many other important politicians, deprived of a meaningful role in government, once again joined the opposition benches. As part of the pre-poll agreement, Kibaki had promised to create the post of a Prime Minister specifically tailored for Odinga.

Raila odinga, The

In 2005, Odinga and other key Kenyan political figures campaigned against a constitutional referendum that would have given the presidency even more powers. It was the victory of the opposition in the referendum that gave birth to the Orange Democratic Movement. In his first term, Kibaki did not fulfil his pledge of investigating the serious charges of corruption against Daniel arap Moi, Kenyas second President. His own government got embroiled in corruption scandals. In the Anglo Leasing Case of 2004, huge government contracts were given to fictitious companies connected to people close to the President. The Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki families are among the richest in Kenya today. (Jomo Kenyatta was the first Prime Minister and then the first President of Kenya.) Odinga himself is an industrialist but he has managed to retain his image as a populist politician. He has promised more welfare programmes for the poor and devolution of power to the provinces.

Odinga seems to be in no mood to be short-changed this time. After all, the Odinga name carries a lot of historical baggage. His father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, was among the tallest leaders of Kenyas struggle for independence. The charismatic senior Odinga, fondly called Double-O, was a popular politician with strong links to Kenyas underprivileged. He served as Vice-President under Kenyatta after independence for a short period but was sidelined by the powerful Mount Kenya mafia, as the Kikuyu-dominated cabal round the presidency is called in the local media.

In those days when the Cold War was being fought with ferocity on the African continent, Oginga Odinga never hid his partiality towards the East Bloc and was therefore viewed with suspicion by the West. His supporters were viciously targeted by the authoritarian one-party state under Kenyatta. One of his chief lieutenants, Pio Gama Pinto (of Indian origin), a radical trade union leader, was assassinated in 1965. Another challenger to Kenyatta, Tom Mboya, was also assassinated. The Kenyan state was reportedly involved in both the killings. The killing of Mboya led to serious riots, with Indian businesses being specially targeted.

Odinga was sent to East Germany to study engineering. He returned to Kenya to take up a teaching job but soon became immersed in politics. He failed to wrest the leadership of the opposition party, the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD), after his fathers demise. In 1982, Odinga was accused of plotting a military coup against the corrupt and authoritarian government of Moi and was incarcerated for six years without trial. He later went into exile and returned in the early 1990s. It may now only be a question of time before he steps into the highest office of the land.