This unchecked competition for power is a sure recipe for chaos
A Turkish army armed vehicle drives in Istanbul on July 16, 2016. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan battled to regain control over Turkey on July 16, 2016 after a coup that claimed more than 250 lives, bid by discontented soldiers, as signs grew that the most serious challenge to his 13 years of dominant rule was faltering. PHOTO | AFP
What you need to know:
- We are witnessing Turkey reeling from the after-effects of a failed military coup.
- Mr Moi was cracking down in the aftermath of an attempted coup that was of his own making.
- Informers were everywhere, and no one dared think, let alone voice, uncharitable thoughts about the regime.
- Those who fell foul of the system were subjected to unspeakable atrocities at the Nyayo House torture chambers.
- Unless the titans on both sides are tamed, forced to abide by democratic rules, and to put Kenya before self, we could be headed for the abyss.
I woke up on Monday morning to a rather unexpected post on a WhatsApp group of former high school classmates. It was an audio recording of the August 1, 1982 Voice of Kenya radio broadcasts on the short-lived military coup by elements of the Kenya Air Force.
Listening now to the hesitant voice of a soldier pronouncing the overthrow of President Daniel arap Moi’s dictatorial regime, it seems laughable that such a confused rabble could have made it that far before loyal soldiers crushed the amateurish coup bid.
Yet it serves as a stark reminder even today that unless representative democracy is firmly entrenched, many of the fragile states we live in are vulnerable to such misadventures.
What is presumed to be a disciplined and a political military can easily seize a situation and put on display all its repressed brutality. Where it is not a military putsch, it could be civil strife wrought by long-simmering ethnic or religious conflicts that invariably define political competition.
That has been very much the story of Africa, South America, Asia and parts of Eastern Europe, where the democratic culture has not fully taken root.
Right now we are witnessing Turkey, a country that aspires to establish itself as a modern democracy and economic power, reeling from the after-effects of a failed military coup.
And true to form, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is exploiting the situation to cement his grip on power, moving brutally to take away all the democratic freedoms that remained. That could have been the story of Kenya 34 years ago in the wake of Senior Private Hezekiah Ochuka’s bungled coup.
UNLEASHING REIGN OF TERROR
President Moi did exactly what the Turkish leader is doing today: Unleashing a reign of terror, jailing lawyers, academics, politicians and others who dared challenge his one-man rule.
What many failed to see, however, was that Mr Moi was cracking down in the aftermath of an attempted coup that was of his own making. This is not to say that he planned the coup, but that he created the conditions though the increasing totalitarianism that preceded it.
I was a student at the University of Nairobi at the time, and recall as we went out into the streets after the dawn radio announcement, one student commenting that Kenya had moved from a multi-party state, to a one-party state, to a no-party state.
That was lucid analysis of the problem. Only two months before the attempted coup, President Moi had presided over the reversal from a de facto to a de jure one-party state, with Kanu as the sole legal political party.
He had brought back detention without trial and thrown into the dungeons, the politicians and academics who had dared imagine that the Kanu monolith could be challenged.
He even jailed the lawyers who challenged the detentions in court. The dreaded Kenya Police Special Branch, precursor, of the National Intelligence Service, had meanwhile been activated to preside over a reign of terror on the populace.
NYAYO TORTURE CHAMBERS
Informers were everywhere, and no one dared think, let alone voice, uncharitable thoughts about the regime. Those who fell foul of the system were subjected to unspeakable atrocities at the Nyayo House torture chambers, before being brought before compliant judges to plead guilty to trumped-up sedition charges.
This might all seem like ancient history, and maybe irrelevant to the younger ones who never experienced the terror and horror of existence in a dictatorial regime.
But it holds lessons we must never forget, because as long as our democratic experiment is so fragile, a time could come when everything goes wrong.
We still recall the violent meltdown in the aftermath of the disputed 2007 elections. We only just stepped back from the precipice, but seem determined to hurl ourselves headlong into another because we care little about fixing our Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) tendencies heading towards another pivotal election.
The destructive competition for power within a damaged electoral mechanism provides the platform for disaster.
The contenders are going for broke, and care little about who or what they destroy in the process.
Unless the titans on both sides are tamed, forced to abide by democratic rules, and to put Kenya before self, we could be headed for the abyss.
[email protected]; @MachariaGaitho
