Kenya: Elections and power sharing

After a lost year in Guyana’s politics following the 2011 elections, some politicians and political analysts have revived talk of a ‘coalition government’ representing the major voting blocs in a country. Even though they may not have explicitly used the terms, essentially they are proposing the ‘power-sharing’ option that has been suggested for ‘divided’ societies.
Kenya is one such society, but after independence, it avoided most of the excesses that bedevilled other countries in the same boat. However, after its 2007 elections, ethnic hostilities took 1200 lives and displaced 600,000 citizens, politicians formed a ‘power-sharing coalition government between the major blocs. They also promulgated a new constitution mandating greater devolution of power and other reforms that would sound familiar to Guyanese. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission was also formed.
The experience of the country from 2008 to the present however has been very disappointing and with elections scheduled on March 4th, observers have noticed a repetition of ethnic mobilisation and predict a high probability of post-elections inter-ethnic violence. The National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), a government agency set up to address inter-ethnic conflict, and a section of Kenyan civil society have called for the adoption of a “negotiated democracy” as a way to stem the deep-seated differences between various ethnic groups.
According to its chair, Mzalendo Kibunjia, negotiated democracy – a system in which political power is shared evenly among various ethnic and interest groups – would enhance inclusion among Kenya’s 42 ethnic groups by doing away with Kenya’s current political model where “the winners take all and the losers lose all until the next elections.”
“Kenyan politics is about numbers and you get those numbers, not by selling ideas, but by retreating into your tribal cocoons. This means that small tribes continually feel neglected once the dominant ones win power, and this feeling of seclusion is being replicated in the run-up to this election.”
The opposite argument however was made by Cedric Barnes, Horn of Africa project director at the prestigious International Crisis Group. He argues that Kenya is ripe for democracy in its original sense and a repetition of the 2007 post-election violence was unlikely.
“If (in 2007) Kenya had strong and independent institutions such as a strong judiciary and electoral body that could have instilled confidence among Kenyans, this would have seen people confide in its institutions, reducing the risk of people taking to the streets and against each other to protest election results.” Barnes added that since the country’s new constitution was adopted in 2010, it had strengthened government and institutional frameworks.
Koigi Wamwere, author of the book “Negative Ethnicity: From Bias to Genocide”, and the country’s former deputy Minister of Information agrees with Barnes and slammed calls for power-sharing among minority ethnic groups in the next government, calling it a “dangerous concept” which could threaten the country’s young, multiparty democracy. He accepted that, “Democracy is not easy to implement, but we should not opt for shortcuts, but go by its principles for the long-term good of the country”.
Wamwere pointed out that retired President Daniel Arap Moi, whose regime spanned 24 years from 1978 to 2002 and was widely seen as dictatorial, had also “kept telling Kenyans that they were not ready for multiparty politics and democracy. And that is partly how he maintained his grip on power for more than two decades. Kenyans should be wary of those advocating for negotiated democracy.”
The debate, we are sure, will continue. But we in Guyana should pay close attention to what actually has happened, and will happen, on the ground in Kenya. For one, if as in Guyana, politicians choose their electorate (in their ethnic mobilisation efforts) rather that accepting that the electorate should choose them (as in democratic mobilisation), then it will not be difficult to predict the outcome.