Once more Uhuru

Once more Uhuru

Elections in Kenya have the frills of a simulated war. They are hugely expensive undertakings, and so, it fits the billing that the just-concluded 2017 general election was reported to have depleted that country’s treasury by 49.9billion Kenyan shillings, KSh, (about $480million) in public spending. That is not counting private expenditures by political actors that saw the cumulative cost line topping $1billion – making the poll reputedly Africa’s most expensive on cost-per-voter basis.

Kenyan elections are also typically not without collateral costs in lives and limbs. And the 2017 poll did not by any stretch come short of that profile. Barely two weeks to the August 8 voting day, the head of Information, Communication and Technology at the country’s poll regulator known as the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), Christopher Msando, went missing. Few days later, the mutilated body of Msando, who was the mastermind of the country’s new electronic voting system, was discovered on the outskirts of the capital city, Nairobi, alongside that of an equally mutilated 21-year-old female: a condition which left no one in doubt that they were both tortured and murdered. Those deaths are ostensibly being investigated presently by relevant Kenyan agencies, with the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Britain’s Scotland Yard having offered help with the probe.

Among other cases of pre-election violence was the July 29 siege on Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto’s house by a local man armed with a machete. Although Ruto and his family were said to be away at the time, the assailant laid siege on the house for some 18hours, holding hostage and eventually killing the guard on duty. Kenyan Police special forces subsequently showed up and shot the attacker dead. But it rankled with some members of the public that a single assailant armed with mere machete could sustain his siege for all of that time before being neutralised by security agents. Also, there were reports that a couple of days before the poll, a dressed coffin was dumped at night in the middle of main carriageway in Nairobi’s central business district, inducing mortal dread in city residents.

Election Day and post-election skirmishes were all but predictable. Besides isolated disruptions of the voting process, there was the case of a politician said to be kidnapped by unknown persons on his way to report alleged irregularities that he witnessed at a vote-tallying centre. Also, a Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) student was reported killed by some knife-wielding marauders during an attack on a constituency tallying centre. And in the course of results collation, Al Jazeera broadcast network, among others, reported at least five persons killed in wildcat protests that trailed a post-facto claim by Opposition contender Raila Odinga that the IEBC’s database was hacked and emerging results manipulated to favour incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta. The poll regulator, in response, admitted an unsuccessful attempt to hack its IT system. “Hacking was attempted but it did not succeed,” IEBC chair, Wafula Chebukati, told journalists in the capital city.

But with those sticking points in the elections last week by which Kenyan voters returned Kenyatta to a second, and by law his final term of five years, there were bright spots showing the country as embedding its electoral system in democracy’s global best practice. The East African nation, to begin with, seems resolutely down the road away from ethnicity-stoked tailspin of post-election violence: the kind that trailed its December 2007 poll and in which more than 1,000 people died, with hundreds of thousands more getting displaced from their homes. And then, all the foreign observer missions to the 2017 Kenyan elections adjudged the poll remarkably fair and the outcomes credible. 

Fears that the historically tribal disposition of Kenyan politics potentiated the country for another flare-up of violence had moved former US President Barack Obama, fathered by a Kenyan, to make a resonant appeal for calm ahead of the August 8 poll whose presidential ticket pitted 55-year-old Uhuru, from the Kikuyu ethnic stock, against 72-year-old Raila from arch-rival Luo stock. But other than spot outbursts of rage in Nairobi and the port city of Kisumu, Raila’s hometown, where supporters momentarily hit the streets to protest alleged tampering of the election outcome; and in the market city of Garissa, north-east Kenya, where loyalists of rival county (equivalent of Nigerian state) governorship contenders faced off over their candidates, Kenyans for most part buckled down on not going the route of the 2007-2008 carnage anymore.

There were other exemplary features of the latest Kenyan elections. Citizens of the country have always seem typically zestful about exercising their franchise, and the voter turnout in last week’s poll made the cut as uniquely high in comparison to other countries. Official statistics posted a turnout of some 15.2million voters, representing 76.8 percent of the registered 19.7million electorate. In percentage terms, this turnout contrasted luminously with Nigeria’s 43.6 percent in the 2015 presidential poll, and the 54 percent that was recorded in 2011. Actually, voter turnout has stayed shy of 60 percent in all elections in this Fourth Republic of Nigerian democracy. In sheer quantum terms though, Nigerian voter turnout is higher, given an electorate population that is officially indicated as lately topping 71million.

Also exemplary in the Kenyan poll is the case of a one-time bodyguard to parliamentarians who himself has now won a seat in the Parliament. According to reports by Kenya’s The Daily Nation, the former police officer trounced the incumbent candidate for Kitui East constituency seat, and will now join the man whom he used to guard as an equal after they were both elected members of the new National Assembly.

Also, a 23-year-old university student emerged the country’s youngest MP after beating veteran politicians to win the parliamentary seat for Igembe South. He was reported to have achieved the feat despite running a modest campaign by walking from door to door in his constituency. “My joy is that the people of the constituency realised that even the young generation can lead. I would like to confess that I did not use even a single coin, everything came from people here,” John Paul Mwirigi was reported saying, adding that his win was a lesson to young people they don’t need a fat bank account to win political office. He is utterly right – where the people’s will invariably prevails.

And there were reports of a woman who fought off a stiff call from her first-born son to regain her parliamentary seat for Bomet East constituency in south-west Kenya. Beatrice Kones had lost the seat in the 2013 election, and her return bid was challenged by her son, Kalya Kones, whom she alleged to have been sponsored by the region‘s former governor for selfish gains. “I wonder how the governor would feel if somebody sponsored his son to run against him,” she was reported saying. But her son, who came fourth in the poll, said his mother had promised in 2013 to support his bid this year, and that it was time to pursue his dreams. “I have no personal differences with her. We have not quarrelled and there are no disputes away from politics. She remains my good mother,” Kalya told the media ahead of voting.

It was also reported that up to three female candidates crossed the finishing line ahead of other contenders in the county governorship races. In particular, Charity Ngilu won the Kitui governorship and celebrated her victory by throwing a feast for residents where she personally served the tables.

Whatever may be its downsides, the 2017 Kenyan poll holds out positive templates for other countries to emulate, Nigeria inclusive.