The hidden rich, poor battle in the August 8 polls

The August 8 General Election is technically a contest between political parties or candidates cleared by the electoral commission to run for various posts.

The presidential election, for instance, is widely seen as a two-horse race between the incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta of Jubilee Party and Raila Odinga, the Nasa coalition candidate and former prime minister.

ELITE
This narrow view reduces the election to a single-day event involving a voter walking into the polling booth to make a simple choice between two individuals or political formations.

Yet the bigger picture clearly shows the involvement of many more players and battlefronts in the election nine days away.

One particularly key battle that is being overlooked is the one featuring the elite fighting to preserve itself against the poor.

PEACE
One only needs to watch the peace messaging on national television or read through the security briefs around the polls to spot the hidden battle.

In the TV ads, rich businessmen or company executives in suits pop up on the screen saying all the nice things about economic growth and jobs, while Sheng-speaking dreadlocked music celebrities urge their fans in the slums to keep the peace.

The security updates by the police have the major Nairobi slums such as Kibera and Mathare as the election violence hotspots.

KDF
Even the military’s controversial Utulivu election operation plan exposed by Mr Odinga last Friday identifies these informal settlements where a majority of Kenya’s urban poor live as a target.

The Opposition has linked the security forces to an alleged plot by President Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party to rig the August 8 polls.

But the familiar operation patterns suggested in the reports are also consistent with a trend where State security is increasingly being deployed to protect the propertied class from the supposedly destructive poor people in the city.

PROTESTS

A past incident of political unrest saw the Kibera slums blockaded by anti-riot police to stop demonstrators from passing through the rich neighbourhoods or accessing the central business district.

There is something not quite right about marshalling so much force to manage a country’s election, as if it were a war.

It does take something away from the legitimacy of whoever gets to be declared the winner.

CRIME
Still, the fact that the Kibera-type blockade is being looked at as a template for security operations in this year’s election suggests that the State somehow considered it a massive success.

But it also signals that the State is indifferent to the human rights abuses associated with the operations.

Rights groups linked police officers in the Kibera operation to cases of rape, indiscriminate shooting and tear-gassing of families inside their shacks.

A people subjected to such indignity simply because of which part of the city they live in or their low income are certainly up against more forces than their candidate’s or political party’s rival in an election.

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