We must avert tendency of ending up with battered economy after every election

Some stalls at Burma Market Market up in flames after being torched by rowdy youth escorting Nasa leader Raila Odinga after his arrival in the country from a trip to the US on November 17, 2017. PHOTO | DENNIS ONSONGO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • How we conduct politics affect people’s businesses.
  • Violence affects how such countries commit to implementation of policies.

Sometimes last week, a good friend called me to ask one question: “where are things going?”

I did not seem to get him clearly and I asked him what he meant. He again asked “where are things going?” He clarified that he has never seen such a long drawn political conflict in Kenya in his life.

He was worried because he has a business but his daily sales have gone down drastically.

BUSINESS

When I asked what type of business it was, he said it is a hardware shop. Cement topped the list of fast moving items. But the number of customers has reduced significantly.

My friend does not have even many people taking items on credit. To him, “business is down.”

He was convinced that this is the case because even his neighbours were complaining. The neighbours were complaining of poor sales.

Interestingly, his is not a big business. It is not a big corporation. It is just an ordinary small-sized enterprise.

He said he was doing very well until “this thing” about elections started. He was quite bitter with elections. I could see bitterness on his face. It was as if an election is a person who had aggrieved him.

He was worried whether to close shop to “wait and see” or look for something else to do.

POLITICS

I simply told him to hold on. I told him that how we practice politics and how we vote affects what we do too.

I told him that our politics and elections end up impacting on the economy every election year.

I also told him that the negative impact does not take long before recovery. I told him not to give up but wait for a little longer because once things “settle” there will be room to pick up pieces.

Recovery will take place but will take longer.

How we conduct politics affect people’s businesses

This friend is not alone in asking what to do because elections have affected his business.

There are other people similarly affected by the elections. But I must correct this. It is not the election that is “affecting things.”

It is how we conduct our elections that affect what we do. It is how we practice our politics that leads to these questions. Many other countries conduct their elections.

They do not end up with a battered economy.
COLLAPSE

What I did not tell my friend is that our elections also negatively affect our institutions. I did not bother to mention to him that elections have a habit of “bringing down” institutions that take time and resources to build.

Institutions like the judiciary, police, elections management bodies come out of an election year in worse form than before. In many instances, we end up rebuilding them only to collapse them again at an election time.

I did not give this picture to my friend. All I told him is that he is not the only one affected.

I was not very confident to reassure him that recovery will take place the moment elites strike a compromise after elections. I thought I would distress him further because he would ask when this will happen.

I did not want to get into details of how our elites fight and then sit to settle things on their own using self interest as the basis for negotiation.

This story of bitterness with elections is common now. People are discussing how this election has affected them in different ways irrespective of their occupation.

People in all occupations have something to say about how the election is negatively turning their lives.

ELECTORAL VIOLENCE

Why elections affect the economy

Why do we experience violent conflicts during an election year? And why do the elections affect the economy? In fact the question to ask is why is sustained growth elusive in our case.

Countries that are mired in violence, without exception, always experience sharp declines in economic growth because violence interrupts what they do.
Also countries that experience electoral violence have high levels of inequalities – both income inequalities and imbalances in their development.

Such countries cannot grow on sustainable basis because electoral violence does not enable them to commit to policies that can lead to development.

Violence affects how such countries commit to implementation of policies. And because violence in its very nature is disruptive, it ends up disrupting commitment to policies.

A second point is that violence leads to destruction of properties and leads to lack of trust among people. And where lack of trust flows along ethnic and other lines, then the entire society is filled with anxieties.

People begin to withhold or even draw their planned programmes because they sense deep seated tensions in the society. Investment plans and resources are withheld as investors begin to “wait and see” the direction the anxiety will take.

REVENUE TARGETS

Third of course is that conditions of violence make it difficult for governments to generate revenue to support development plans.

Rarely do governments in such conditions meet revenue targets. And without revenue, they cannot commit to development policies in place.
One can go on and on about the relationship between violence and the economy. It is so direct that one can see it with naked eyes.

But what is the cause of the violence in the first place? Or why is it that elections are so hotly contested that they lead to conflict?

The type of politics that leads to winners winning everything and leaving the losers without anything is to blame. Above everything else, Kenya’s voting pattern is ethnic. The results are usually a reflection of how different ethnic groups are settled.

By knowing which group is located where, you can predict how the group will vote.

If you have a good knowledge of whom the group’s prominent leader is and whom the leader is aligned to you will predict the results with comfort. Those who win therefore exclude those who were not with them in the struggle to get votes.

POLICIES

Those excluded tend to make it difficult for the winners to govern. Those excluded make the society ungovernable. They do this by continually disrupting the plans of the winner inside and outside Parliament.

This is typical of many political systems. In fact one may add that there is no where the losers wait for another election without showing their relevance at all times.

The intensity with which they do this can affect implementation of planned programmes and may even cause anxieties in the general economy.

A small group captures power, politics and policies.

But what makes things bad also is that among the winners, it is possible for a small group of people to capture politics, policies and power.

They can capture politics and policies to serve narrow interests.

Once they do this, their behaviour begins to undermine reforms put in place to improve the state of things.

They also begin concentrating power and ensuring that they are the beneficiaries, as individuals, of government policies.

HOSTAGE

This results in increased income inequalities. They do not direct their actions and the policies towards benefiting the broader society.

They select policies that can give quick and direct benefits to themselves and allies.

One may ask whether such leaders are not accountable to their voters.

They are not accountable to voters because the voters are held hostage by the arguments that “this is our own”.
During elections, “tribal arguments and view points” hold the voters and politicians together. They see everything from the view point of a tribe.

Voters will not demand better services under these circumstances. All they want is to have their people in office.

After elections, these politicians will not bother about commitment to policies.

POLITICIANS

They will not bother about honouring any agreement they make with voters because it is not the agreements that won the vote.
It is the “feel good” effect of being in the tribe that wins.

The voters also feel good they have their own in office. Politicians therefore do not bother to do anything outside of elections.

There will come another elections. They will use the emotion of the tribe to capture votes.
Good policies that can produce good economic results are therefore difficult to produce under conditions of unending anxieties.

Worries about elections and more so worries about violence related to elections prevent steady and sustainable growth.
But important is that these anxieties and even violence are the result of how politics is practiced and how power is gained and used.

The time to rethink practice of politics and use of political power is now.

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