Democracy needs to be defended, but let reason prevail

Scanning the horizons, Kenya’s body politic is evidently awash with a new wave of rhetoric and populist bravado, heralding a return to the polarising politics of mass protest.

Discernibly, there is a creeping sense of deja vu in the air that the nation is fast sliding back to the acute elite polarisation that preceded the catastrophic 2007 election and its violent aftermath – and nearly pushed the country down the cliff.

The new bout of elite schism between the ruling Jubilee and the rival Cord opposition is revolving around three developments.

Tension has mounted following the government’s unveiling of enhanced powers of a restructured system of local administration, which Cord stalwarts interpret as an assault on their last bastion of power in counties.

Although Cord has not generated an alternative blueprint to tackle Kenya’s runaway insecurity, it is mobilising public opinion around resurgent crimes involving local, criminal militants and escalating terrorist attacks that are now pushing the economy to the ropes.

Additionally, there is a blame game between opposition and government pundits over who was responsible for the feeble defence of the country in international courts against claims lodged by international companies linked to the controversial Anglo Leasing scam, leading to huge financial losses that saw the country pay Sh1.4 billion.

Moreover, even as the political class publicly pays lip-service to Kenya’s new republican Constitution, cynicism abounds that the new supreme law is not serving their immediate interests.

Also feeding this cynicism is the failure by the power elite to get a firm grip on Kenya’s new bi-polar state, comprising 47 counties and a national government as its two centres of power.

This has posed the classic dilemma of power relations between the two levels of government. Kenya’s elite has to come to terms with devolution as “work in progress” and as a power issue that is poised to shape the country’s politics for generations to come.

In the 21st century, over 200 years after America went federal, it is still debating “the new federalism” started by Ronald Reagan’s “devolution revolution” that allowed more powers to the states vis-a-vis the federal government, especially in regard to resources.

Despite this, Kenya is still stuck in the politics of interregnum where the old order is clearly dying, but the new democratic order refusing to be born.

Faced with the dilemma of power in the country’s new bi-polar order, both Jubilee and Cord are air-brushing out-of-date models of power to advance their positions and, in the process, imperilling democracy.

On the one extreme, Jubilee is decrying what it views as a “hanging state power”, suspended and confined to the centre with no roots in counties and, therefore, unable to steer its development agenda in devolved structures.

To nip this problem, wonks in both the Kibaki and Uhuru administrations have invoked the Weberian model of bureaucratic power to enhance their power in the counties through a restructured system of county administration existing alongside elected county governments.

The county administration has been met with resistance, which initially took a legal dimension when the High Court declared the newly appointed 47 county commissioners unconstitutional. On June 14, 2013, the ruling was overturned by the Appeal Court.

But it has taken on a political slant, even within Jubilee. “Some of us have had ideological issues in regard to the existence of the office of the county commissioners,” said the chairman of the Governors’ Council and Bomet Governor, Mr Isaac Ruto.

The President has reassured governors that county commissioners will not undermine devolution or their powers. But a new law is needed to define the power relations, safeguard democratic governance and avoid the risk of two centres of power in counties.

At the other extreme end of the continuum, Cord has come out guns blazing against the enhanced powers of county commissioners, accusing Jubilee of resurrecting the all-powerful provincial administration that was the nerve centre of the “imperial presidency” of the Kenyatta and Moi “patrimonial state” where the government was an extension of the ruler.

Cord raised the stakes by calling for President Kenyatta’s ouster. The simmering confrontation has thrown up three conflicting visions of power likely to define the future of power.

One is a Weberian vision of power that seeks more power for bureaucrats as a silver bullet to resolve the problem of development, security and public law and order in counties.

Bureaucratic power draws a line between development (as good) and politics (as evil), thus casting the county administration as a depoliticised space replacing party-based democracy as a space of political mobilisation for development, law and order.

The other is an “anarchic” vision of power that seems to give a pride of place to mass protest over legal-rational approaches as an instrument of regime change, and a pathway to state power.

This week, Cord announced an elaborate plan to hold public rallies across the country to “provide the nation with a message of hope” and sell the idea of Uhuru’s ouster, likely to fuel more intra-elite confrontation.

This carries the unmistakable echoes of the 2013 Egyptian Script: the civilian-led ouster of democratically elected President Mohammed Morsy that followed three well-calibrated steps: (1) paint the regime as tyrannical and steering the country to economic and political failure; (2) opposition groups and individuals to make the country ungovernable by mobilising tens of thousands of anti-regime protesters and massing them into the streets of all major cities, demanding the president’s resignation; (3) civilian-backed military putsch removes the incumbent and installs a transitional technocratic government (in Egypt’s case, headed by the Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour).

The train seems to have already left the station. A Cord report released on May 21 and sensationally titled: “The Lies that Jubilee Tells,” accused Jubilee of putting the country in political failure. A culture of protest has already returned to the streets signified by riots by sections of university students, in mainly opposition strongholds.

Kenya must return to reason and embrace a democratic vision of the future of power based on the new Constitution.

Prof Kagwanja is the Chief Executive of the Africa Policy Institute. [email protected]