Wrong peace messengers fanning anxiety over elections

With the elections only one month away, public conversations in Kenya this past week were dominated by calls for peace.

Speakers at an inter-denominational prayer held at Nairobi’s Uhuru Park last Friday, attended by President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto, preached little else.

The National Cohesion and Integration Commission announced its enhanced operational strategy to police the social media for hate speech.

VIOLENCE HOT SPOTS

Social media’s peace warrior Julie Gichuru has been engaging her haters in a one-woman battle.

The Nairobi police commander released his map of violence hot spots in the city.

And the heads of national security agencies, donning their uniforms, emerged from their meeting at Vigilance House – the police headquarters – to declare their readiness to deal with would-be rioters.

TENSION
What is scary is that this combination of frenzied peace evangelism and show of might could actually be fanning the tension and anxiety building up to the August 8 elections.

Bombarding a population with messages of the potential occurrence of violence every other minute can be self-prophesising.

In a politically-polarised society such as ours, where social institutions like the Church and media celebrities are linked to this or other party, it also matters a lot who the bearer of the peace message is.

NASA LEADERS
If, for instance, photos of you hobnobbing with billionaires at Jubilee’s fundraising party are all over the place, you may need to show some restraint lecturing younger under-privileged Nasa fans about peace and election rigging claims.

The absence of major opposition leaders at the Uhuru Park prayer rally – despite the organisers having gone round the city announcing Nasa presidential candidate Raila Odinga’s attendance – was quite telling as well.

The latent message to their supporters is that this was a Jubilee affair.

ELECTION DISPUTE
After the exit of the independence party Kanu from power in 2002, the leadership of the mainstream church was widely seen to side with the political status quo.

The partisanship tag memorably lost it the legitimacy to mediate the bloody 2007 election dispute.

To its credit, the clergy has lately sought to reclaim its moral authority on political issues, most recently stepping forward to arbitrate the conflict over Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) reforms.

CHURCH'S ROLE
But the Friday prayers snub by the opposition suggests that the religious leaders still got work to do to shed the establishment tag.

It does not help the peaceful elections campaign that it is being conducted against the backdrop of an intimidating security atmosphere and deepening political suspicions.

Reports of multi-agency security trainings in certain places have not been explained well to the public.

INAPPROPRIATE MESSENGERS

Claims by the opposition that security agents are being assigned non-security roles in the elections and that their support base is being targeted for massive deployment will make many Kenyans tense.

The country has never had a longer list of wrong peace messengers ahead of an election!

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