Let Uhuru address claims against security agencies
What you need to know:
Security forces are unlikely to step out of line and descend into party politics without the knowledge or encouragement of the President.
Like happened at least in the disastrous 2007 General Election, security forces may be priming for a role on who should be the next president, something that is outside their mandate.
The President must publicly and convincingly address claims that security agencies are prepared to act illegally, in order to confer an electoral benefit on him.
The deployment of administration police officers as agents for a political party during the fateful 2007 General Election ended tragically and had to be called off, after some of the officers were killed and others injured by local citizens in Nyanza.
According to the Waki commission, a few days before polling day, 1,600 police officers were assembled at the Administration Police Training College at Embakasi for training as agents for the Party of National Unity under which President Kibaki was seeking re-election. Government officials, including the leadership of the administration police, conducted the training, after which the officers were deployed to Luo-Nyanza, the political base of Raila Odinga, the main challenger to President Kibaki. Their role was to disrupt polling and, where possible, ensure that PNU supporters amongst the candidates and voters prevailed.
Each had received advance payment for their duties. Although disguised in plainclothes, the officers were easily identified as they were not from the local community. Also, travelling in a convoy of more than 30 chartered buses was a giveaway, as angry villagers descended on them.
There never followed an official inquiry into this incident that put police officers in harm’s way in pursuit of a patently illegal objective. When the Waki commission tried to investigate this issue, the establishment came down heavily on Oku Kaunya, a senior member of the AP who appeared willing to talk. He eventually went into exile in 2008, claiming his life was in danger.
A month before the AP incident, the four occupants of a motor vehicle that was travelling along the Iten-Kabarnet road were arrested after local residents called the police. The four were distributing leaflets that had hate messages against Odinga. Two of those arrested were administration police officers based at Harambee House, Nairobi. Each had an officially-issued pistol. The third was a businessman based in Nairobi, and the fourth occupant was never clearly identified.
According to the Waki commission, the police recovered from the vehicle several bundles of posters carrying hate literature. The “posters showed drawings of Hon Raila armed with a pistol and hanging retired President Daniel Toroitich arap Moi. Next on the hanging line were Ruto, Philip, Cheserem, Kosgei, Gideon, Sumbeiywo, Biwott and Mark Too. The posters had also the following information written on them in both Kalenjin and English languages.”
Further information on the posters was to the effect that two months earlier, Odinga had said during a meeting with the FBI in the US that he would “finish former President Moi, Ruto and other Kalenjins who had ruined Kenya as soon as he became president.”
The notoriety of these arrests created anxiety, and local police then escalated the matter to the provincial headquarters in Nakuru. When the Waki commission sought further information from the administration police headquarters regarding this occurrence, they said they had no knowledge of the incident, even though the Rift Valley police had informed the commission that they had escalated the matter to Nairobi at the time it happened.
The country is confronted with what have become familiar claims by Odinga about illegal attempts to interfere with the elections. In 2007, Odinga alleged that “a clique of people around Kibaki,” including members of the security services, sought to rig the elections, allegations that were denied when first made. In 2013, the Cord coalition made a written complaint to the Electoral and Boundaries Commission alleging the involvement of the head of the public service and also the permanent secretary for Internal Security, in partisan politics in support of the Jubilee coalition, their rival in the election. The letter provided dates and venues, the names of those allegedly involved in the meetings, and what was discussed.
NO EVIDENCE
While the head of the public service denied the allegations, the Director of Public Prosecutions later announced that no evidence had been found that would support the claims made by the Opposition.
The Waki and Kriegler commissions, necessitated by the crisis of 2007, both carried out independent investigations into the role of security agencies in the elections. Both commissions established several incidents of serious wrongdoing on the part of security agencies, thus contradicting previous official denials, with the Waki commission concluding that “a number of examples of activities undertaken by the NSIS [constitute] extraordinarily poor judgement, constitute partisanship on the part of a state security organ, and are examples of activities that clearly fall outside the mandate of the agency.”
The reckless conduct by the AP in 2007 communicated that the elections had degenerated from a democratic contest into a sectarian power struggle, in which whatever means necessary were allowed. The resulting tensions exploded into the violence that followed the announcement of the presidential results. Another show of brinkmanship occurred in 2013 when, as the country awaited the presidential election petitions challenging the declaration of Uhuru Kenyatta as president, the military emerged with a display of prominent indications that a Kenyatta presidency was a fait accompli notwithstanding the election petitions.
THE INVESTIGATORS
The difficulty in addressing Odinga’s claims is that they are made against the very organs of State that would ordinarily be responsible for investigating those claims. The one occasion where an independent investigation of similar claims became possible was able to demonstrate that there was substance to the complaints by the Opposition on that occasion.
President Kenyatta has publicly pledged that he will accept the results of the elections and, twice now, has challenged Odinga to make a similar pledge, implying that a failure to do so means that Odinga is prepared to cause chaos if the results do not favour him.
Security forces are unlikely to step out of line and descend into party politics without the knowledge or encouragement of the President. Like happened at least in the disastrous 2007 elections, security forces may be priming for a role on who should be the next president, something that is outside their mandate. The President must publicly and convincingly address claims that security agencies are prepared to act illegally, in order to confer an electoral benefit on him.
