Structured dialogue crucial for unifying the country

President Uhuru Kenyatta (right) and Nasa leader Raila Odinga. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Both the Jubilee Government and the international community do not like the idea of Odinga being sworn in.

  • The opposition has indicated that it can abandon the plan to swear in Odinga as president if Jubilee accedes to its demand for dialogue.

  • While Kenyatta has only recently promised that unifying the country would be his priority henceforth, there is so far no indication of how he proposes to do so.

With the approaching swearing-in of Raila Odinga as “the people’s president”, it is unclear what is going to follow that, beyond a commonly-held view that things are not likely to be good.

Both the Jubilee Government and the international community do not like the idea of Odinga being sworn in, and have discouraged it, managing to delay it to this point. Whether or not the swearing-in happens, the fact that elections have become such a destabilising force in Kenya is an important problem that needs addressing.

The opposition has indicated that it can abandon the plan to swear in Odinga as president if Jubilee accedes to its demand for dialogue. The call for dialogue is not new and has been on the table since the 2013 elections.

Having lost a challenge in the Supreme Court against the declaration of Uhuru Kenyatta as the winner of the 2013 elections, the opposition then demanded dialogue with Jubilee, mainly to address grievances around electoral justice.

With Jubilee unyielding, the opposition then escalated the matter, establishing the Okoa Kenya platform, which was supposed to lead to a referendum on constitutional reforms that would promote electoral justice.

REFERENDUM

However, the planned referendum ultimately floundered because, according to the IEBC, the opposition failed to raise enough signatures to meet the constitutional threshold for invoking a referendum.

As the 2017 elections approached, amid calls for reforms at the IEBC, new opposition demands for a dialogue emerged, and with weekly street protests provoking a political crisis in the country, Jubilee eventually acceded to a parliamentary committee, rather than a dialogue process, to address demanded reforms.

The greatly deteriorated political situation in the country, after the annulment of the first presidential election last year, led to fresh calls for dialogue as an alternative to going into a repeat election which, it had since become evident, would be conducted in a greatly challenging political atmosphere.

However, the opposition having withdrawn its candidate, and with significant security problems around parts of the country which affected voting, the second election somehow went ahead, recording a much lower turnout than the first one.

With signs that the repeat election could trigger horrific violence around the country Jubilee, for the first time since coming to power, indicated that they would be open to dialogue but only after the repeat election.

UNITE THE COUNTRY

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s central promise to the country, during his inauguration speech for the second term, was that he would work to unite the country, a position which would reasonably seem to be in support of the longstanding demands for dialogue.

In the days since the start of Kenyatta’s second term, the opposition NASA has maintained that it does not recognise him as the president, and has alternated between the old demand for dialogue and a promise that it would organise alternative leadership for the country, one that would implicitly supplant Kenyatta’s leadership.

In effect, the country is now hostage to two unilateral pursuits, the first by Jubilee and the second by the opposition, NASA.

While Kenyatta has only recently promised that unifying the country would be his priority henceforth, there is so far no indication of how he proposes to do so.

It is unlikely that the President can succeed in this promise without involving the opposition.

It is reasonable to think that involving the opposition would have to be deliberate, public and structured, as this is the only way in which the President can communicate resolve and purpose for such a programme, as well as making the point that Jubilee respects the place of the opposition in the public affairs of the country.

OLD POLITICS

One of the many rumours emerging, as the country endures delay in the appointment of a Cabinet, is that the President is considering appointing key leaders in the opposition into his government, and that he would do so in a manner that replicates the old politics of denuding the opposition of its numbers by inducing defections to the governing party.

While during previous times, when the country did not face the kind of crisis that has emerged from the 2017 elections, it might have been a tolerable strategy to raid the opposition in this manner, such an approach will simply not work at this time, and will only add to the existing resentment.

If Kenyatta wants to do business with the opposition, he must approach them respectfully, and through the front door. This suggests that the President must call for a structured dialogue if his plans for unifying the country are to work.

By doing nothing on his own promise to unite the country, the President is pursuing a default position, one based on the unilateral view that everything is fine in Kenya and there is no need for extraordinary measures as would stabilise the country.

SWEARING IN

On their part, NASA is also pursuing a unilateral position which seeks to swear in Odinga as president. The only bridge between these two unilateral positions is a structured dialogue.

In the absence of official leadership, there are offers from others to help by setting up an alternative dialogue process.

However, those offers suffer the weakness that, for a number of reasons, they may be unable to bring to the table both Jubilee and NASA.

As we move closer to Odinga’s planned swearing-in, with the likelihood that voices in opposition to his plan will also increase, there should also be voices asking what Kenyatta is doing to move the country into a more responsible position. While others can help, only Kenyatta can lead, because only he is the President.

Rather than offering alternative dialogue platforms, the energy would better be spent in putting pressure on Kenyatta to establish an official dialogue platform.

What Kenyatta needs to do is to free himself from the intransigence of his party, for the sake of the country.

It can be argued that to do so would be taking a political risk in the party, but there can be no parties if there is no country.