What it takes to unify the country goes beyond mega development projects

Voters queue to cast ballot at Nyamira Primary School in Nyamira County. PHOTO | BENSON MOMANYI | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Justice Kriegler pointed out that elections are a matter of perception.

  • Public confidence and trust in institutions is highly ethnicised.

  • Support for institutions is dependent on the views of at least the main five ethnic elites in this country.

Recently, Justice Johann Christiaan Kriegler, a retired judge of the constitutional court of South Africa, visited Kenya yet again.

Justice Kriegler is now a familiar name in Kenya. He chaired a Commission that inquired into all aspects of Kenya’s 2007 elections. The dispute over the presidential election results in particular led to unprecedented violence. This Commission was meant to inquire into these results among other aspects of that election.

Justice Kriegler’s Commission concluded that the presidential electoral process and the final result were so polluted that it was difficult to know who won the election.

The Commission made this conclusion amidst data analyses that led to different conclusions. The Commission recommended comprehensive reforms. The recommendations have continued to guide different aspects of Kenya’s elections.

In his recent visit, Justice Kriegler made one remark that escaped the attention of many. He pointed out that elections in Kenya are not about substance. They are about perceptions.

SUSPICIONS

And perceptions evolve through suspicions. The suspicions have an ethnic character too. Because of ethnic divisions, each ethnic group has suspicions about what the other could be doing about the electoral process. The perceptions on elections are built on what people perceive as happening.

He underlined that unless Kenyans evolve a culture of trust in each other and trust in institutions, elections will continue to be a cause of divisions and violence.

Justice Kriegler pointed out that elections are a matter of perception. How people perceive the electoral process and specifically what contributes to their thinking that the election is free or fair is important.

He gave the example of South Africa’s 1994 elections. He pointed at numerous administrative gaps and failures by presiding officers. He noted that had the public known about some of the gaps and failures evident in some of the statutory vote declaration forms, the country would have gone up in flames.

MESSED UP

But as the manager of those elections, he understood that the presiding officers in the first election in South Africa messed up in many ways. They messed up not because many wanted to, but because of a number of challenges including fatigue.

Although the process was messy, he authorised the continuing of vote count. He was confident that the public was behind him. The public had confidence in the electoral commission.

When he announced the results, the country believed him. They did not bother about the gaps and failures or the mess in the process. They had confidence in public institutions and specifically the electoral commission. And when the first government was formed, the government was highly inclusive.

It had whites, black Africans, Indians, and people of colour. And there was no reference to the flaws in the electoral process even though everyone knew that the whites in the National Party were keen to manipulate the system to their favour.

What happened in South Africa cannot happen in Kenya. It is doubtful whether anyone in Kenya can agree that an electoral process can be messy and with errors that are not the result of inadvertent actions. It is difficult to imagine a situation like that in South Africa where presiding officers inadvertently messed up the process but the commission proceeded on with counting of votes.

ERROR

This cannot happen at all in Kenya because there is a culture of suspecting actions by institutions. There is no error that is not deliberate. It is often suspected that human error is the result of deliberate act by individuals – that someone is keen to gain from the errors.

This happens because people lose confidence in public institutions at election time. It also happens because there is a history of fraud in elections.

Institutions are suspect. Public confidence and trust in institutions is highly ethnicised. Support for institutions is dependent on the views of at least the main five ethnic elites in this country. This is a small number of leaders but they, unfortunately, determine the pace of politics in many ways. And because they are divided and mobilise their support on ethnic basis, their divisions and what they individually say becomes the view of their respective communities. This is how low we have sunk.

DIVISIONS

Simply put, the ethnic divisions spill over to colour people’s perceptions even about basic processes. If a senior politician in one ethnic region denounces an institution, those in the opposite of the political divide – opposing elites and their supporters – will celebrate that very same institution. They will say that the institution is very good. This will happen because people’s interpretations of performance of institutions is coloured by ethnic viewpoints and more importantly what the ethnic leaders say.

All these observations imply that Kenya has deeper problems than what is shown in elections. And this problem is lack of trust among elites especially from the five communities whose numbers matter during a presidential election.

 These observations also suggest that elections are as good as perceptions about those elections. In other words, it does not matter how technically competent and objective the electoral commission is. What matters is the perceptions that emerge, more so, the views by ethnic leaders about the electoral process. It simply means that unless there is a level of trust and consensus among the main elites, the country will continue to hurt during election.

WHAT BRINGS DIVISIONS?

These suspicions emerge because of history. Electoral fraud dates back to the 1960s following the little General Election of the mid 1960s. KANU elections of the 1960s and early 1970s as well as parliamentary elections also added to help firm up the belief that you cannot win against a candidate that the government is supporting. The language of fraud thus began to shape people’s views about elections quite early in Kenya’s independent life.

There is an additional reason for these divisions. Those who lost – whether fairly or through fraud in elections – would be excluded from power at both the local and the national level. Ethnic elites who had assumed the leadership of their respective groups would lose and be excluded from power. This exclusion would then translate into exclusion of an ethnic group from power. Leaders and their ethnic communities would fail to access state resources for development. This is what contributed the narrative of marginalisation.

 INCLUSIVE GOVERNMENTS

Many countries have used ‘inclusive governments’ to address the differences arising from the electoral process. They form cabinets comprising players who represent different interests.

This is usually done to unify the nation and to help build a sense of cohesion. Cabinets and attendant public posts to which people are appointed immediately after election serve to unify the nation.

In many instances, those who win get out of their way even to consult their opponents on important national issues simply to help create a sense of a unified nation.

The first government that President Mwai Kibaki formed in January 2003 serves as a good example in this regard.

He was mindful of creating a strong foundation of a cohesive and non-ethnic Kenya. First, there was a Summit.

This was the “house of tribes” in which all tribes were represented through tribal leaders.

In fact, some of the leaders behaved like warlords during the campaigns that led to the defeat of KANU in the December 2002 elections. But Kenyans did not mind them.

SUMMIT

All communities saw themselves as included in the government because their leaders were in the Summit. Although Kibaki’s political alliance was dominated by the big four ethnic groups – the Kikuyu, Kamba, Luyha and Luo – he included several Kalenjin elites in his government. Although the Kalenjin were largely in KANU, he ensured their inclusion in government.

They were in the Summit too. This led to the perception of Kibaki’s first government as a “unified Kenyan” government. Things changed of course after the collapse of the Summit.

But it matters who is included in government to represent community interests. There are those who can be appointed but lack the required impact.

The elites that are appointed to represent communities in government are those who have large political constituencies.

One may be appointed to cabinet but the appointment would lack impact and value.

TRIBAL KINGS

The person appointed may be a someone of no relevance to the community because the community does not see him as best placed to promote their interests. Those who have come up and grown up to be “tribal kings” suit this purpose. They are preferred as leaders compared to those who think “Kenyan”. This may sound contradictory. It is another silly viewpoint on Kenyan politics. All the same, once these type of individuals are appointed into government, they help in creating an impression of a unified society. Once they walk out or are excluded, the divisions that they cause spill over to affect everyday events.

National cohesion, therefore, is built not by “brick and mortar” or mega development projects in every village. National cohesion, like elections, is about perceptions. It is about how people see themselves in government.

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