Kenya must avoid falling for the seduction of big parties

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s recent visits to South Africa, China, and Cuba seemed routine until a party spokesperson suggested that Jubilee was intent on learning from the ruling parties in these countries.

That is strange. Jubilee is a very different animal from South Africa’s ANC, the Communist Party in Cuba or China.

Each country’s political context is different too.

It is easy to see where the inspiration for a party builder might come from.

These parties have been around for ages. ANC has been around for over 106 years.

The Communist Part of China is 96 years old. Cuba’s Communist Party is the younger, at 52 years.

MILITARY

But if Jubilee is exclusively seeking lessons on longevity, then there are comparable parties closer home such as Tanzania’s CCM, which has been in power since 1962, Uganda’s URM which has been in power since 1986, Ethiopia’s TPLF which has been in power since 1991 and Rwanda’s RPF in power since 1994.

There is, however, a lot more to governing than holding onto power. It is true that some of the big parties have had moments of brilliance. 

The RPF for instance has been exemplary in turning around a failed state, running a clean, effective bureaucracy, driving socio-economic transformation and positioning the country to punch above its weight in international affairs.

But RPF, like NRM and TPLF, was also a military organisation that transformed into a political party on assuming power.

Each has a militaristic strain in its organisational DNA.

GOVERNANCE
Once in power, the default of such parties is to govern in the same way.

In most instances, they have either captured and merged the state with itself or simply operated as a parallel state, becoming the principal site of policy and political agenda setting.

They pursue their own interests and are accountable to none but their own.

The results are consistent — illiberalism, corruption, and ultimately decay.

That is not unfamiliar in Kenya. When he assumed power in 1978, Daniel Moi inherited a captured bureaucracy from Jomo Kenyatta.

His response was to resuscitate a moribund Kanu and use it to drive his political agenda.

DEMOCRACY

Moi’s creature was a remarkable mimicry of the above parties — an illiberal organisation with a command culture, insular world view and decision-making structures that bend only to its interests.

Moi’s number one priority was to survive in a hostile political environment, which meant, capturing the state apparatus, no less its instruments of coercion and disrupting Jomo Kenyatta establishment.

Of course Moi was no socialist, or ideologue of any shade for that matter.

His solution for the ideological deficit was to invent a phantom ‘philosophy’ of peace, love and unity, which was in fact an anti-philosophy whose actual effect was to compress discourse into an impossible three-word chorus.

Grotesque as it was, it eliminated the 'inefficiencies' of democracy.

KANU
Eventually, Kanu’s illiberal DNA doomed it to inevitable failure.

The record of Kanu’s rule and its lessons do not need restatement. Its irony does.

As early as 1990, Kanu was a pirate ship of spineless political mercenaries that were ready to trade their own existence.

Ahead of the 1992 and 2002 elections, there was an exodus of ‘loyalists’ including two former vice-presidents, Mwai Kibaki in 1992 and George Saitoti in 2002.

In fact, the irony is that Moi had to lean on Raila Odinga, his very political antithesis, to survive his last term.

Its unflattering record on democracy and development aside, Kanu’s model had undermined its intentions to stay in power.

ETHNICITY
Kanu’s lesson to Kenya’s would-be party makers is simple: We have tried a dominant party and failed.

There are also important lessons in the post-Kanu era. The experience of this period suggests that big parties do not actually work in Kenya.

The 2007, 2013 and 2017 elections suggest that a two-party system might actually be as dangerous given the specific nature of Kenya’s ethnic divisions.

Each of these elections has been a ‘two-horse race’, forcing contestants to target a majority as close as possible to 50 per cent.

In the 2007 election, the four biggest parties took 173 parliamentary seats out of a possible 210.

ELECTIONS

Given the country’s all-powerful executive, the real race was between the two presidential candidates.

The official result gave Mwai Kibaki a contested 46 per cent majority against Raila Odinga’s 44.

In the 2013 and 2017 elections, a new constitution required the winner to garner a least 50 per cent of the cast vote and a majority in 24 out of 47 counties, officially rigging the system in favour of a two-party system.

The result was remarkably similar. The top two candidates again split 94 per cent of the vote, with Uhuru Kenyatta taking just over half of the vote, while his opponent gained just under 44.

COALITION

The first round of the 2017 elections resulted in an official 54 per cent majority for the incumbent, Uhuru Kenyatta, against 45 per cent for his challenger, Raila Odinga.

The problem here is that in the three elections, a coalition with at least one major community won the election, while the alliance that lost kept largely the same group of ethnic groups.

Hypothetically, this means that the same coalition of ethnic groups can win a series of elections in a row.

In a winner-takes-all context, the risk is obvious.

DOMINANCE

Despite its problems, Kenya’s experience in the 1990s might yet offer the best lessons on how to model its political parties, and the country’s party system.

While Kanu dominated the period, it did so with a modest majority, which was in fact a minority compared to the aggregate vote of a split opposition. Despite being the ruling party, KANU was vulnerable, and was eventually forced out of power.

Eventually, the ideal party system for Kenya has to emerge organically.

However, our experience suggest that whatever its configuration, we should try to pre-empt a situation where one group is unhappy enough for long enough to have no stake in the stability of the country.

A dominant political party does exactly the opposite. It creates the pre-conditions for a majoritarian conspiracy far more frightening than a mere tyranny of numbers.

History suggests that such parties collapse under their own weight. Before it does, however, several other things give in. 

Dr Chesang is a public affairs consultant. Views expressed here are his own. Twitter - @KipronoChesang