If there is a dispute after elections, who will play the role of mediator?

Dr Kofi Annan addresses a press conference in Nairobi on October 11, 2012. Kofi Annan would not even remotely be acceptable as a mediator today. PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Let’s hope 2017 will be more like 2013, when forecasts of violence proved off the mark than 2007 when no one saw disaster coming.
  • Kenyan elections are peculiar because people generally tend to stock up on food before voting day fearing the worst.
  • Kenyan elections are peculiar because people generally tend to stock up on food before voting day fearing the worst.

There seems to be an emerging consensus among analysts that the 2017 election will be a difficult one for Kenya. 

The politicians have been engaged in heated rhetoric for years now, creating two highly motivated and seemingly deeply polarised voter constituencies.

The stakes are also very high for the contestants on both sides. 

Devolution will add an extra layer of complication.

People now know the power – and resources – governors enjoy and the 47 races around the country will be bitterly contested. 

This all looks ominous but the predictions of doom may still be off the mark.

Perhaps nothing contributed to the mass violence in 2007 than the element of surprise. 

Kenya was seen as an “island of peace” and an African exemplar after the landmark 2002 elections that brought a peaceful end to Kanu’s 40-year reign.

Nobody expected violence. Nobody prepared for it.

The initial killings caught everyone by surprise and spread in ways that were completely unforeseen.

By contrast, in 2013, every analyst predicted trouble and none occurred. 

Let’s hope 2017 will be more like 2013, when forecasts of violence proved off the mark than 2007 when no one saw disaster coming.

RELIGIOUS LEADERS
But if there is a mass breakdown of law and order, one question should be asked in advance.

Will there be any credible mediator that can bring the sides together?   

There are big changes that have occurred on the political scene since 2007.

For one, the Jubilee side, more than any other in Kenyan history, has adopted an identity of extreme rhetorical hostility to Western powers. 

Kofi Annan would not even remotely be acceptable as a mediator today.

While the mediation effort he led, which possibly helped to save thousands of lives in 2007/8, was nominally an African Union effort, it was in fact financed and heavily backed by the US and European powers and that would never work for Jubilee today. 

Jubilee has also branded civil society as an arm of the opposition. 

Cord, on the other hand, is heavily suspicious of the business community which has been trying to position itself as a middle-ground player.

The top leadership of the opposition boycotted talks on the election that were called by the Kenya Private Sector Alliance recently.

The opposition has also adopted the Donald Trump playbook of telling their supporters they can only lose if the election is rigged. 

Religious leaders in Kenya do not command the influence and authority that they do elsewhere. 

In places like Burundi and the DRC and in others such as several Latin American countries, the dominant Catholic church is the single most important institution outside the state and its leadership can force the politicians to abandon hardline positions. 

The Catholics, for example, defused the tensions in the DRC recently when they got the opposition and Joseph Kabila to agree to a deal which will see Kabila stop playing games and step down later in 2017.

Kabila is very reluctant to sign but if he rejects it, he will lose all moral authority and will be very vulnerable. 

MEDIATOR
There is no such institution in Kenya. Religious leaders play a peripheral role and there is, of course, no meaningful council of elders.

So, without being a doom-monger or alarmist, it is fair to ask: if there is major trouble following an election dispute in August, who will play the role of mediator?

There is no “middle ground” in Kenyan politics with virtually every major player tagged, fairly or unfairly, as belonging to one or other groups. 

Perhaps Kenya needs to learn from other countries such as Ghana which have resisted the temptation to have their constitutions copied and pasted entirely from the West. 

In Ghana, they have what they call a Council of State, essentially modelled around the old councils of elders in African communities. 

The body is made up of eminent Ghanaians including former Chief Justices, former military heads and members of a body called the National House of Chiefs. 

The House of Chiefs, a body also found in countries including Zambia, Somaliland, Botswana and Fiji, involves community leaders picked from various ethnic groups who enjoy pre-colonial authority and the respect of their people.

Kenya doesn’t have to go in this exact direction because settler colonialism destroyed all traces of these pre-colonial bodies but it can still learn and adapt its own version.

It is notable that a lot of the African countries in which such bodies exist are largely peaceful. 

Kenyan elections are peculiar because people generally tend to stock up on food before voting day fearing the worst.

It is to be hoped that nothing goes wrong. But if it does, it might make sense to have a mediator or council of them waiting in the wings.