Tribal alliances will continue to affect electoral process

Elections, whether at the national or local level, always present an opportunity to think about leadership. And these thoughts about leadership present themselves in two ways. It is either about renewal of leadership or re-election of former leadership. The August General Election is no different.

At the national level, the only main question presented to voters is whether to re-elect the Jubilee Party government or kick them out and elect a new leadership under the National Super Alliance. There are a number of other contenders. Some of them are jokers. Others are simply looking for a platform to say some hard things.

Our elections always produce surprising results. The results surprise many because sometime many people assume that they know how each region will voter. There is the assumption that voters are arranged in tangible voting blocs.

This is not necessarily so. Some of the so called “vote blocs” have internal dynamics that always shock the new breed of experts called “political analysts”.

The August election is not very different from the other elections we have had since 2002. From the time President Mwai Kibaki won on a platform of “tribes” and a promise for change, “alliances of tribes” have become a major vehicle for elections. The alliances that form break or hold members together depending on whether they satisfy individual members or whether any of them feel dissatisfied with the other. Thus far, the Jubilee alliance appears to hold together. President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy William Ruto do not appear to have any disagreements. They are proceeding to the election as one. They are proceeding as an alliance of their tribes. But not all is well with their foot soldiers. The party primaries clearly showed those considered loyalists are not with voters. The voters rejected them. This is an injury whose impact will unfold as the campaigns proceed.

Within Nasa, the blocs have also not changed. They remain tribal. They have added even the Western bloc. The only problem is that they started with some disagreements over who should carry the flag. They resolved this and moved on. But how they played this out created the impression of an incoherent team. They appeared not cohesive enough.

The problems we know

The tribal alliances that have formed present a number of problems for the elections. One, the “tribal alliances” are the breeding ground of corruption. When you form an alliance based on tribal groupings, it becomes difficult to put the alliance in order. Every group in the alliance feel they have a right to the alliance. They feel they are equal and may not be answerable even to the leader. Furthermore, each group in the alliance is first answerable to its tribal leader before being answerable to the leader of the alliance. This is what makes it difficult to govern. It is very difficult to put everyone to order. And because everyone feels entitled to some benefits, there is a tendency to get the “top cream” of benefits immediately the government is formed. They cite the election result and the bloc they mobilised to show they have a right to “eat”.

Political parties remain weak

The second problem is a “tribal alliance” tends to weaken institutions and the functioning of government. The alliances, for instances, have resulted in the weakening of the political parties. Because of tribal alliances the parties are taking long to develop as institutions. They are yet to develop an agenda or how they will mobilise support during the elections. Both alliances now think it is enough to mobilise their respective blocs rather than mobilise support across the nation.

By the time they conducted party primaries, none of the main political alliances had not come up with a draft manifesto. And even if they come up with one this month it is doubtful they will develop anything different from what they did in 2013. In fact, it is evident that Jubilee’s slogan is “kazi iendelee” or continuing with development. On this slogan, they will face the problem of audit of achievements. They will have a challenge of demonstrating “per cent” achievement of the promises made in 2013. On the other hand, Nasa is slowly building a narrative of “ending impunity” or “nasa hawa!”. But if this would mean arresting the corrupt individuals, then it will lead to the net spreading to both Jubilee and Nasa. It is therefore doubtful whether Nasa can build a strong anti-corruption slogan. It is not even clear whether it will build on this or whether they will drop this to pick up something else. They have already softened their criticism of some of the mega projects; it is not clear what their mobilisation slogan will be.

Political intrigues are weakening other institutions including the Judiciary and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. Public confidence in these key institutions is relatively lower than what obtained two months to the 2013 elections. Confidence has reduced simply because of how “tribal alliances” have shaped public perception of these institutions.

The Judiciary is worth a mention in this regard. The courts have had an impressive performance since 2010. By end of 2008, public confidence in the courts was as low as 28 per cent. Trust and confidence in courts, including judges and magistrates, remained low (below 35 per cent) until the time we got a new constitution in August 2010. And even then, it’s only the transparent process of recruiting a Chief Justice that saved the Judiciary. The open manner in which Dr Willy Mutunga was recruited and the public interviews of other judges, combined, resulted in increased public trust and confidence in the courts and judges. By January 2013, about 75 per cent of Kenyans had trust and confidence in the Judiciary. But this trust withered after the 2013 elections. The Supreme Court ruling on the presidential petition wounded the courts and the Judiciary. But this wound had a regional dimension. Those regions aligned to the opposition became allergic to the ruling. The regions that supported Jubilee were upbeat. Jubilee areas remain confident about the Judiciary.

‘Judicialising’ our politics is a new problem

But more worrying today is that politicians have a habit of running to courts to sort their political disputes. They are happy to fail to solve their problems because they know the courts will solve the problem for them. This is leading to “judicialisation” of politics. It has the potential of politicising the courts as was the case before we got the new Constitution.

This is precisely because how the courts solve the political disputes, leaves some disputants unhappy. And this is precisely because political disputes cannot be solved in a manner that will satisfy all the disputants. There is always a loser and a winner. It is rare to have a win-win situation. This is punishing the courts as we move to the election. An important insulator, however, is that not all disputes are reaching the Judges and magistrates. The Political Parties Disputes Tribunal is addressing some before those aggrieved reach the High Court. This has prevented a further damage on the image of the Judiciary.

Politicians cannibalised the IEBC

Public confidence in the IEBC considerably declined between 2013 and early 2016. Although confidence and trust in IEBC is on rise, it is yet to reach the high of 80 per cent that preceded the 2013 General Election. At present, about 65 per cent are confident about the IEBC but it is doubtful whether this number will increase to 85 per cent in the remaining two months.

Politicians cannibalised the IEBC in 2016. This led to appointment of new commissioners. The commissioners were appointed but the process of appointing them left many questions unanswered. The process was political as it was “tribal”. While trying to balance tribal interests, the process threw out qualities. Those with experience and expertise in electoral matters lost out. Those who performed exceptionally well at the interviews were left out in the name of balancing interests.

There are new challenges around the IEBC. One is court judgements that seem to affect what the IEBC is doing. “Judicialisation” of the electoral process has grown into a critical challenge with limited solutions. The second challenge is the apparent lack of internal cohesion between the commissioners and the secretariat. This has been a worrying problem among a majority of the Chapter 15 Constitutional Commissions. From 2011, the secretariats and the commissioners in a majority of these bodies appear to quarrel about their functions. The commissioners are yet to accustom themselves to oversight and policy pronouncements. The more they speak the more they create the impression they are the secretariat.

These two problems of tribal alliances and weakening of critical institutions will continue to affect the electoral process. Tribal alliances, irrespective of which bloc of voters win, will lead to exclusion of some and inclusion of others. It is impossible to expect the winners to carry the losers with them. It is impossible to expect the losers to feel upbeat about losing; it means waiting outside in the cold for another five years. All this raises a need to rethink how to build new political parties and alliances so that they are more inclusive than they are today.

Prof Karuti Kanyinga is based at the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Nairobi.

[email protected]