We have more electoral problems than told

For some time now, the country has been treated to an interesting drama regarding the 2017 General Election.

The Opposition, Cord, wants the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) out of office, on argument that the commission is not neutral and that the Commission has been involved in acts of impropriety.

On the other hand, the Commission has insisted that its members will only leave office if the opposition presents evidence of their impropriety and lack of neutrality.

This kind of drama takes place only where institutions are weak, and vulnerable. It takes place only where leaders both in government and in the opposition worry only about their self-interests.

They place public interests at a distance. And indeed one can see images of self-interest reflecting in all these arguments by both Cord and the IEBC.

If their national values and principles were firmly in place, both Cord and IEBC would have abandoned their positions for greater public good. But they can’t.

Some of the commissioners would have stepped down by now given the allegations of impropriety that have been raised in the recent past.

ELECTORAL RULES

Some Cord leaders are not exempt from such allegations too. All the same, they have a point.

The electoral environment requires some important reforms before the polls in 2017.

But the kind of reforms required is what Cord is failing to present. Removing an electoral body and replacing it with another group of Kenyans does not help.

There is ample evidence on this. Kenyans vote out their Members of Parliament in big numbers every year but the internal behaviour of Parliament – and MPs – does not change. In fact it gets worse every year.

If Cord were serious with electoral reforms, the party would begin by addressing the key issues that make electoral politics is Kenya a really bad game.

They would begin by raising concerns with the following issues.

First is party hopping.

It is widely recognised that an important feature of Kenya is the absence of well-functioning political parties among other institutions.

The parties are just “matatus” to move politicians from one place to another during election time. Related to this is the fact that the parties “have owners”.

The owners know who to keep in and who to keep out. With such personalised parties, individuals find it easy to move from one gate to another depending on circumstances.

PARTY HOPPING

This party hoping is common today as was before the passing of the Constitution of Kenya in 2010.

Cord should be insisting on strengthening parties and introduce a bill preventing anyone from changing parties a year before an election.

Or even bar someone from running for election if they have shown signs of changing parties one year to an election.

The second issue concerns the failure of our elections to give space to numerically small groups. The system we have today is highly ethnicised.

The tribe or sub-tribe or even the clan are the running themes in competition for votes.

The tribe or tribes are the main fulcrum around which presidential competition revolves at the national level.

Ethnic alliances and coalitions of ethnic groups form to promote the self-interests of their leaders.

In the name of tribe, leaders compete by mobilising their tribe in numbers.

The bad behaviour at the national level has now found its way into the counties with regard to the post of governors. Big clans are fighting it out with other clans.

Sub-groups are waging war against sub-groups.

The conflicts that play out at the presidential election between “tribal leaders” are now evident among sub-ethnic groups at the county.

Each group feels that “it is their turn to eat” on the governor’s seat.

At the constituency and ward level, the story is the same. Clans are fighting clans.

Villages are planning to stand their own candidates to outcompete the other villages. This is the story of Kenya’s politics and competition.

There is no sympathy with the Kenya as a public good. And there is no sense of guilt among leaders who do so.

In these constraints, women candidates cannot win an election.

We are a patriarchal society where some men, out of ignorance and chauvinism, cannot tolerate women leaders.

TRIBAL CHAUVINISM

The tribal chauvinism that is characteristic of ethnic based politics, also finds itself expressed in gender terms.

This is how our society marginalises women, and other politically weaker groups too.

This is what Cord should be focusing on: amend the Constitution to change the electoral system to enable effective representation of all people and especially women, politically weaker groups or those from numerically small tribes.

The third issue concerns effective enforcement of electoral laws plus passing other laws that are critical for democratic elections.

We know that leaders bribe voters during elections.

And voters actually do not call this a “bribe”.

It is their “right” because they know well that these leaders have no money of their own to give to people.

They steal or just plunder the public coffers and then run for elections to get political cover.

Voters very well know that their leaders are not accountable to them.

And because in voting leaders who are never accountable to them disillusions them, they demand “the bribe” because this is also the last contact they will have with the leaders between then and the next election.

Voters are also rational. They know money used in campaigns is either plundered from the public or from illicit activities.

To eat, is a rational choice made out of difficult circumstances of disillusionment with leaders.

PUBLIC DEBATE

If Cord were serious, they would put into public platform a clear message about leadership and integrity or qualities that should be presented for public debate.

They would lead in presenting Bills in parliament emphasising that the IEBC should bar anyone with a criminal record, or anyone with a criminal case on going in the courts, from running for public office.

Only an opposition that has an interest in pursuing politics as a public good can tell this kind of story.

And only a governing political party that has an interest in advancing the good of the nation can demand this high level moral conduct.

But at the present, both the opposition and the Jubilee Alliance cannot run on these issues because they drive their members away.

In fact, if any of them were to mention and insist on running on a moral and integrity platform, they would have no one running on their party tickets.

Leaders will drift away because to Kenyan leaders, integrity and morality is a plague; it is a public disease that leaders run away from.

Of course politics has no moral values; but there is depth below which no politician would like to sink. Or if they sink, they prefer to sink many.

Therefore, there is no “clever” politician who will dare run on a platform of integrity. That will be like frying oneself in own oil.

The point here is that Cord should be mobilising support to amend the Constitution to allow for a new electoral system that would promote representation of women and numerically smaller groups at the county and the national level.

A focus on IEBC will not change Kenya’s electoral environment, behaviour of political leaders, and the ethnic nature of the vehicles we call political parties.

This is where the focus should be but a focus on this will disintegrate the party – it will have no followers. Who then will bell the cat?

Prof Karuti Kanyinga is based at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS), University of Nairobi, [email protected]