One year later, the handshake is still shrouded in mystery
What you need to know:
- The one thing Uhuru and Raila needed to know that cutting a personal deal and giving the country an authentic process of consensus building towards a rebirth are not mutually exclusive.
They could have had their private deal, but instead of forcing it down the public’s throat, they should have brought in a larger number of representatives from a cross-section of the Kenyan society.
Saturday marked exactly one year since the March 9 2018 handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga. Sealed on the steps of Harambee House, the surprise change of tune from one of antagonism to a conciliatory one left the country shocked but not surprised. Given the deal-making nature of Kenyan politics, it wasn’t completely farfetched.
PRIVATE DEAL
In a tersely worded statement, Uhuru and Raila seemed to be seeking a rebirth, for both themselves and for Kenya. But then in their hurry to do so, the duo made the cardinal mistake of shrouding the whole affair in secrecy, by presenting the country with a final product whose finer details were only known to the two principals. As such, the whole initiative set forth in an environment of suspicion and mistrust, their secrecy having left room for public speculation as to what the hidden agenda behind the handshake was.
The most obvious hypothesis was that Uhuru and Raila had negotiated a private political deal, where Raila would step down from leading the electoral justice movement and support Uhuru in his last term in office. In return, Uhuru would offer Raila an irresistible political package, his appointment as the African Union Special Representative for Infrastructure Development. However, Raila’s actual reward, it appears, has something to do with either a position after the much-hyped referendum, or recommending his loyalists for such positions, or both.
This suspicion poisoned the handshake from the word go, despite the political stability dividend that resulted from the ceasefire. The one thing Uhuru and Raila needed to understand, and which should make them rectify the environment within which the Building Bridges Initiative – an offshoot of the handshake – is operating, is to know that cutting a personal deal and giving the country an authentic process of consensus building towards a rebirth are not mutually exclusive.
FLAWED AND OPAQUE
They could have had their private deal, but instead of forcing it down the public’s throat, they should have brought in a larger number of representatives from a cross-section of the Kenyan society, so that the process is owned by Kenyans from the beginning as opposed to the prevailing state of affairs, where it appears to be a secret project co-owned by Uhuru and Raila, working towards fulfilling their private political arrangement.
At the height of the clamour for constitutional change, at a time when Parliament was proposing to appoint Professor Yash Pal Ghai to chair the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission, a section of leading civil society actors gathered to steer a parallel process housed at Ufungamano House, dubbed the Ufungamano Initiative, under the chairmanship of Dr Oki Ooko-Ombaka.
The divide had arisen because the Ufungamano Initiative viewed the Parliament-led process as flawed and opaque, and in understanding that his job wouldn’t be a success without inclusivity, especially of the important civil society stalwarts who had risked life and limb for years in agitating for reforms, Prof Ghai insisted he wouldn’t take up his new position unless the Ufungamano group was brought on board.
As a result, in a merger of sorts, Dr. Ooko-Ombaka was appointed as deputy chairperson of the Commission, to deputise Professor Ghai. From that point on, the constitution review process gained new impetus, culminating in the Bomas of Kenya constitution convention, which had delegates from across the country representing different sectors and interest groups. It is after this process that the group produced the infamous Bomas Draft, which was later mutilated in retreats in Kilifi and Naivasha, by sections of the political class.
LACK OF FAITH
It now appears that the calls for a referendum by Uhuru and Raila, which all indicators suggest will be the end goal of the Building Bridges Initiative, are geared towards revisiting the original Bomas Draft, going by the various propositions put forth especially by Raila, including the introduction of regional governments.
However, Raila and Uhuru have refused to appreciate the deep levels of suspicion in which their project is shrouded, forgetting to learn from how Prof Ghai handled the lack of faith in the political process he was being asked to spearhead.
It is not too late for Uhuru and Raila to salvage the Building Bridges Initiative and make it a more inclusive and transparent process and not one where they appear to be puppet masters.
Failure to do so, the initiative’s joint conveners, lawyer Paul Mwangi and Ambassador Martin Kimani, will be left with an impossible task of selling to the country an end product crafted by select technocrats and politicians.
