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Kenya, Personal

Initial thoughts on Nairobi and Kenya

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After a weekend off-grid at Amboseli National Park hanging out with giraffes and elephants, I’m back in Nairobi.kenya

I’ll have some thoughts soon on Bosnian protests, the latest turn with Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill and Lebanon’s new government — and I’m watching closely to see how Italy’s new prime minister-designate Matteo Renzi will roll out his new government.

In the meanwhile, what to make of Kenya?

In December, Kenya celebrated the 50th anniversary of its independence from the United Kingdom.  There’s a distinctly British imprint to just about everything here — more so than in other former British colonies I’ve visited.  Kenya feels more ‘British’ than English-speaking Canada in some ways.  There’s a slavishness to form-over-substance rules here that unintentionally facilitates bribery and corruption.

The best food isn’t in the ‘best’ restaurants, which prioritize ambience over food quality.  Seek out Indian food — in small stalls on the street or in shopping centers, not in restaurants.  The best traditions of Kenyan food involve fusion with Indian or Arab influences along the Swahili coast.  In Nairobi, it’s easy to find food like chapati (thin, doughy flatbreads), and all sorts of other Indian-influence treats, like masala chips, samosas and spiced chai.  Ugali, a blanched cornmeal paste that often serves as the main carbohydrate/starch component in Kenyan meals, makes Caribbean food staples seem flavorful by contrast.

There’s not a lot of investment in public goods, and much of Nairobi is hidden away behind walls and barbed wire — more so than in places like Caracas and Tegucigalpa in Latin America.  Public parks do exist, but the high incidence of petty crime means that virtually no one goes there.  Nonetheless, there’s more vibrancy in the city’s center than I expected, and the city isn’t without its charms — its year-round spring-like climate is one of the world’s most pleasant.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been reading One Day I Will Write About This Place, which has taught me as much about post-independence Kenya as any non-fiction books I’ve read about the county (Daniel Branch’s 2011 book is a great place to start, though).  That Binyavanga Wainaina, its author, recently came out as an openly gay man adds a new level of depth to his work.  But One Day is less an LGBT memoir than a period look at Daniel arap Moi’s increasingly authoritarian Kenya of the 1970s and 1980s.  There’s something interesting on just about every page — for instance, the decrepit state of Kenya’s once-strong railways, is explained through ethnic politics.  Kikuyu businessmen close to former president Jomo Kenyatta won preferential treatment for trucking contracts; railways, where the competing Luo ethnic group controlled access to jobs, were left to languish. Continue reading Initial thoughts on Nairobi and Kenya →

14 in 14, Australia, CAR (Centrafrique), Catalonia, DRC / Congo, Eritrea, European Union, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Spain, United States, Venezuela, Vietnam

14 potential game-changers for world politics in 2014

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Though I rang in the new year with a list of 14 world elections to watch in the coming year (and 14 more honorable mentions to keep an eye on), I wanted to showcase a few more thoughts about what to watch for in world politics and foreign affairs in 2014.

Accordingly, here are 14 possible game-changers — they’re not predictions per se, but neither are they as far-fetched as they might seem.  No one can say with certainty that they will come to pass in 2014.  Instead, consider these something between rote predictions (e.g., that violence in Iraq is getting worse) and outrageous fat-tail risks (e.g., the impending breakup of the United States).

There’s an old album of small pieces conducted by the late English conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, a delightfully playful album entitled Lollipops that contains some of the old master’s favorite, most lively short pieces.

Think of these as Suffragio‘s 14 world politics lollipops to watch in 2014.

We start in France… Continue reading 14 potential game-changers for world politics in 2014 →

Jubaland, Kenya, Somalia

Westgate Mall siege the first test of Uhuru Kenyatta’s mettle as Kenya’s new president

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UPDATE:  Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta has made a statement about today’s assault on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, which has killed 39 people.  Declaring terrorism a ‘philosophy of cowards,’ and declaring Kenya will respond in a manner ‘as brave and invincible as the lions on our coats of arms,’ Kenyatta responded with grace, strength and compassion, rallying the unity of the Kenyan people.

The despicable perpetrators of this cowardly act hoped to intimidate, divide and cause despondency among Kenyans.  They would like us to retreat into a closed, fearful and fractured society where trust, unity and enterprise are difficult to muster.  An open and united country is a threat to evildoers everywhere.

It’s worth watching in full:

* * * * *

Today’s attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall — perhaps the deadliest terrorist attack in Kenya since the 1998 assault on the US embassy in Nairobi — is the first crisis of the nascent presidency of Uhuru Kenyatta.Jubaland_flagsomaliakenya

Al-Shabab, the Somali militant group, has taken responsibility for the attack.  The assailants, who attacked the mall with a combination of machine guns and grenades, may have killed over 30 people and injured many more.  It’s not the first time the radical Somali group has threatened Kenya — and it follows an al-Shabab attack in July 2010 in Kampala, Uganda, that killed 74 people within a peaceful crowd that had gathered to watch the 2010 World Cup finals.

Al-Shabab’s rationale lies in the Kenyan invasion of Jubaland, the semi-autonomous tract of southern Somalia, in October 2011 and its subsequent role as part of an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia.  But the sudden attack on a shopping mall full of civilians — including expatriates, women and children — is a senseless and asymmetrical act of terrorism.

Even as we remember the victims of today’s tragedy and even as our thoughts remain with Nairobi police, Kenya Defense Force officials and hospital and health care workers carrying out rescue and recovery efforts, Kenyan policymakers face some weighty and difficult days ahead.

Kenyatta (pictured above, left) wasn’t president at the time of Kenya’s initial invasion, and he didn’t ask for this conflict when he was elected in March 2013 as Kenya’s fourth post-independence president.

But the challenge is his first serious crisis as president.  That’s not to say that the challenges of boosting Kenya’s economy or maintaining the calm and orderly process of sorting out land reform in Kenya.  But Kenyatta’s response to the Westgate killings places the Somali question at the heart of his administration, even amid signs that Somalia’s central government based in Mogadishu, with strong support from the African Union and Western governments, is making tentative strides (at least compared to more than two decades of civil war and state failure following the fall of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991).

It’s not an enviable position for Kenyatta.

If Kenyatta withdraws into what has been the traditional comfort zone of Kenya’s military and civilian leadership, it will mean that the most powerful (and still, even after today, by far the most stable) east African country is backing away from its vital role in solving east Africa’s most pressing regional security challenge.  But if Kenyatta launches a hasty, retributive wave into southern Somalia in the weeks or months ahead, he could also risk drawing Kenyans further into a quagmire — with the possibility of future al-Shabab terrorist attacks within Kenya.  Striking the right balance will be crucial.

somalia Continue reading Westgate Mall siege the first test of Uhuru Kenyatta’s mettle as Kenya’s new president →

Kenya

Why the ICC should drop its case against Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta

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Uhuru Kenyatta, after winning a seven-point victory in the March 4 presidential election, will be sworn in later this month as Kenya’s fourth post-independence president.kenya

But he’ll do so with a significant cloud hanging over his head — an indictment from the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity stemming from the last election in 2007, which precipitated two months of post-election violence that followed allegations of fraud in the narrow victory of incumbent Mwai Kibaki over challenger Raila Odinga.

What’s more, Kenyatta’s running mate, the next vice president of Kenya, William Ruto, is also a defendant on similar charges.

But Kenyatta, who comes from the Kikuyu ethnic group, and Ruto, who comes from the Kalenjin ethnic group, were on opposing sides five years ago, with Kenyatta backing Kibaki and with Ruto backing Odinga.

Those differences weren’t enough to stop Kenyatta and Ruto from joining forces this time around. Their partnership led to yet another defeat for Odinga and, this time around, the election result met with none of the civil turmoil that followed the previous election.

Nearly everyone in Kenya want to move beyond the 2007-08 violence.

Moreover, the ICC’s case against Kenyatta remains an evidentiary weak case by the standard of other ICC efforts. The ICC’s prosecution has already intruded bluntly into Kenya’s domestic politics and governance in a way that the entire Kenyan political elite opposes and that risks the court’s own legitimacy in sub-Saharan Africa, and the Kenyan people — in a free and fair vote — have elected Kenyatta their president, ICC charges or not.

The ICC indictments threaten to transform Kenya into somewhat of a pariah state — the European Union has pompously declared before the election that it would only engage in ‘essential conduct’ with Kenyatta in the event of his presidential victory, and U.S. secretary of state for African affairs Johnnie Carson was widely criticized for trying to subtly ‘warn’ Kenyans to make its choice carefully because it would have ‘global consequences.’

Kenya remains a key regional ally in the otherwise tough neighborhood east Africa, so Western governments will need to walk a tight diplomatic line, notwithstanding the ICC’s role:

A diplomatic fumble in dealing with Kenyatta could damage ties with a nation that has helped quell militant Islamists in the region and push a traditionally pro-Western state closer to China and other emerging powers hungry for openings in Africa.

Kenya’s supreme court earlier this year pointedly cleared Kenyatta, the son of Kenya’s first president Jomo Kenyatta, and Ruto to run in the election despite the ICC charges.

If that weren’t enough, the ICC may have already warped Kenyan politics by boosting Kenyatta’s bid through a sort of rallying effect — giving Kenyans a nationalist cri de coeur in a country where politics are still largely fought and won on ethnic lines.   Continue reading Why the ICC should drop its case against Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta →

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Uhuru Kenyatta is the next president of Kenya

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With all constituencies now in, Uhuru Kenyatta has been elected the fourth president of Kenya with 50.03% of the vote, triumphing over prime minister Raila Odinga, who won 43.28%, avoiding an April runoff by just 4,099 votes.

Kenyatta is the son of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, and is the candidate of the Jubilee coalition, an alliance of parties featuring mostly Kenyans of Kenyatta’s own Kikuyu ethnic group and the Kalenjin ethnic group of his running mate, William Ruto, who will now become vice president.  Kenyatta ran for president — and lost by a wide margin — in 2002 to the outgoing president, Mwai Kibaki.  He served briefly in the current government as finance minister from 2009 to 2012.

Odinga, the son of Kenya’s first vice president, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, was the runner-up in the 2007 presidential election that was widely believed to have been fraudulent.  Following the post-election tumult, Odinga was appointed prime minister in 2008 in a power-sharing agreement with Kibaki.  He was the candidate of the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) alliance, comprise of Odinga’s Luo ethnic group and other ethnic groups.

What comes next?

The International Elections and Boundaries Commission is set to meet early Saturday morning, Nairobi time, to audit the results and announce an official winner.

First off, provided that this count stands (and it’s the final count, not the provisional count, so it should, pending a court challenge from Odinga), Kenyatta needs to strike a tone of unity to avoid any chance of a repeat of the violence that followed the previous election.  There’s not much of a hint that violence will erupt, but 50.03% is an incredibly narrow margin, Odinga’s Luo ethnic group will be unhappy to have been shut out once again from power, and it’s clear that Kenya remains very much split on ethnic lines in terms of governance.  Nonetheless, there are a lot of reasons why, this time around, Kenya is unlikely to repeat anything like what happened in 2007-08.

Secondly, it appears that Kenya will avoid anything similar to the power-sharing of the last five years, with the Jubilee coalition set to take control of both houses of Kenya’s parliament.  Under a new constitution adopted in 2010, Kenya will have for the first time a bicameral parliament, with both a National Assembly and a Senate, each of which has allotted a set number of seats particularly for women.

Thirdly, there’s the matter of an indictment of each of Kenyatta and Ruto for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court and the awkward position of Kenya’s head of state accused of atrocities pending trial in The Hague.  Governments in Europe and the United States will need to find a way to work with Kenyetta, though, because Kenya, with 40 million people, and a relatively stable nation, is a key regional partner for all sorts of strategic, humanitarian and economic purposes.  The next hearing for Kenyatta, however, was postponed until June, and given the relative weakness of the case, there’s a chance prosecutors may simply drop the case altogether.

Finally, of course, there’s the matter of governing Kenya — Kenya faces sluggish growth and high unemployment, especially among its explosively robust young population, and that will (or should) certainly be at the top of Kenyatta’s governing agenda.  Corruption should come a close second, and the joke is that Kenyatta, thought to be the richest man in Kenya, is so wealthy that he’s particularly immune to corruption.

Kenyatta will also oversee the continuation of reforms that began under Kenya’s new 2010 constitution, including the coordination of the Independent Land Commission and its recommendations for sorting out the mess of land ownership in Kenya and determining the best economic use for land with no titles — or too many titles.  He will also sort out the minor issues that arise from devolution — under the 2010 constitution, Monday’s elections also saw each of Kenya’s newly drawn 47 counties elect their own governors and county-wide assemblies.

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The latest on Kenya’s election results: IEBC targets Friday finale

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Issack Hassan, the chairman of Kenya’s Independent Boundaries and Elections Commission (pictured above) has now given a briefing on the state of Kenya’s less-than-optimal vote-counting process.kenya

The IEBC’s automatic electronic updates had slowed to a crawl on the second full day after Monday’s election, and Hassan admitted that the results have not been announced as rapidly as Kenyans have expected amid multiple technical glitches.

Hassan stated that the IEBC would abandon the electronic process in favor of manual counting, and rather defensively called on all of the parties and candidates to be patient, to allow the IEBC to do its work and not to escalate tensions.

“We want to plead with the political parties… and the presidential candidates and their agents to remember the code of conduct and allow the Commission to do its work.”

Earlier in the day, the IEBC announced final results from Kenyans abroad — Raila Odinga won 1224 votes to 951 for Uhuru Kenyatta.

By law, the IEBC must announce results within seven days, so a Friday announcement is not necessarily a failure under Kenya’s election law.

But given that the 2007 elections were followed by delays — especially, like this time, by an initial partial release of results from Mount Kenya and Kikuyu strongholds, to the exclusion of the coastal and western provinces where Odinga ran strongest in 2007 — and is expected to run in 2013 — have only made the past 48 hours even more tense.

In addition, the presence of a high amount of spoiled votes (up to 7% of the total previously announced in the electronic tally), and the IEBC’s decision that such votes will ‘count’ toward whether a candidate has won a 50% ‘absolute majority’ has been met with jeers from Kenyatta’s Jubilee alliance.

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What we know so far about the Kenyan election results

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It’s been over 24 hours since polls closed in Kenya’s general election, and vote counting has progressed very slowly — at this point, with midnight approaching in Nairobi, the chief elections commission has announced that because of counting delays, a preliminary announcement will not be made until tomorrow. kenya

What do we know so far?

We don’t know who will be the next president of Kenya, unfortunately, because we don’t have enough results yet — just 13,559 districts out of 31,982 have been counted, and that’s just under 42% of all districts, according to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.

Uhuru Kenyatta, former finance minister and the candidate of the Kikuyu-strong Jubilee alliance, currently leads the provisional result with 53%, with prime minister Raila Odinga, the runner-up of the controversial 2007 presidential election and the candidate of the Luo-strong Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) alliance winning 42%.  The margin for Kenyatta has gone done significantly over the past few hours, though, and there’s a general understanding that the results do not include as many of Odinga’s strongholds in the west and along the coast.

Musalia Mudavadi, deputy prime minister and the candidate of the candidate of the Amani coalition, which includes many supporters from the Luhya people and the once-dominant Kenya African National Union (KANU), was far behind in third place with just 3%.

One troubling issue is the high number of rejected votes — running at 330,000, that’s more than half the votes that Mudavadi is currently winning and about 7% of the vote.  That could mean up to half a million voters or more when the final results are in — perhaps even the margin of victory — will be rejected.  As a winning presidential candidate must take a 50% absolute majority, that means that Kenyatta or Odinga will need to win closer to 53% of the non-rejected ballots in order to avoid a runoff.

CORD leaders, such as vice presidential candidate Kalonzo Musyoka, cautioned that the results are incomplete and that Kenyatta’s lead is not a reliable gauge of where the race stands:

“It is important that we await the outcome of the remaining two thirds of the polling stations in order to make any conclusion about the results of this election,” Kalonzo said.

While urging for calm, the VP said in any case, results from Cord strongholds were yet to trickle in adding that results from their stronghold stood at about 10 percent while those of Jubilee were average of 40 percent.

Kalonzo taunted the Jubilee rivals for what he termed as premature celebrations while exuding confidence that their coalition will pull a comeback and stage their rivals lead once results from their strongholds are recorded.

Peter Kenneth, who was leading the Eagle coalition, has conceded defeat having received just 1% of the vote, but cautioned that the independent numbers being reports do not currently match what the IEBC is reporting:

Kenneth urged the electoral body to clear presidential results saying results they were getting from their field agents were different from what IEBC has.

“The country cannot get out of anxiety mood we are heading to.  We are getting real time results that differ with IEBC”, said Kenneth.

Due to the fact that there are high regional differences, however, it seems likely that the IEBC’s numbers will ultimately tighten, which would be consistent with pre-election polls and any divergent alternative tallies.

Currently, Odinga leads in 26 counties and Kenyatta leads in 21 counties. (I don’t know what that means for parliamentary results, necessarily, even though results for both the National Assembly and the newly formed Senate are coming in as well).

What else do the results tell us?

Continue reading What we know so far about the Kenyan election results →

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Could Kenya enter another period of power-sharing after its general election?

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Much of the attention on today’s Kenyan election has focused on the presidential race — and that’s as it should be, given that Kenya’s president wields much power, and the race is essentially even between Jubilee coalition candidate Uhuru Kenyatta and the Coalition of Reform and Democracy (CORD) alliance candidate Raila Odinga.kenya

But Kenya is also holding parliamentary and local elections for the first time after adopting its new 2010 constitution, which changes much about the way that Kenya is governed, and those elections are as historic as the presidential election is frenzied.

The heart of the new electoral system is the country’s organization into 47 sub-national counties, which have been given new powers for local governance.  Indeed, today’s election will select not only new national legislators, but also a governor and county assemblies.

The electoral reforms make Kenya’s presidency less powerful, but to the benefit of the counties, not to the benefit of the parliament.

Nonetheless, the new constitution also expands the national parliament and changes the way legislators are elected, based again on the newly delineated 47 counties.

The National Assembly — what used to be Kenya’s unicameral parliament — is now just the lower house of a bicameral parliament, which will also include an upper house, the Senate, after today’s election.

The novelty of the 2010 constitutional reforms makes it even trickier to forecast what the result will be, and the nature of Kenyan politics doesn’t make it any easier.  Given that Kenyan politics is largely based on ethnic identity, the Jubilee and CORD camps are patchwork alliances of various ethnic groups throughout Kenya.  Although the alliances are technically comprised of parties, many of those parties are also ethnicity-based or even just transitory vehicles that exist to boost the career of one particular politician.

Accordingly, Kenya lacks political parties rooted on the traditional left/right ideological spectrum, unless you count the Kenya African National Union (KANU), the governing party in Kenya until 2002 — because it was the dominant party in a one-party state for much of the 1960s, through the 1990s, its predominant ideology was perpetuating its hold on power.

That means since 2002, Kenyan politics has been dominated by temporary alliances instead of enduring political parties — the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) emerged to support the candidacy of Mwai Kibaki in 2002, and it likewise won a large majority of seats in the National Assembly.

In the aftermath of the 2007 election — widely believed to have been marred by fraud — Kibaki controversially held onto power in the presidential race, though Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) essentially won the parliamentary elections.  Accordingly, in early 2008, Kibaki and Odinga agreed to a power-sharing truce whereby Kibaki remained as president and Odinga would become prime minister, making Kenya one of the rare countries in Africa to feature divided government.

One of the fascinating questions this time around, given the closeness of the presidential race, is whether Kenya could see another term of split government — and what that would mean for Kenya’s governance.

If Kenyatta wins the presidency and Odinga ultimately becomes prime minister because his allies control Kenya’s parliament, it will mirror the positions each candidate’s father held exactly 50 years ago in the aftermath of independence — Jomo Kenyatta was Kenya’s first president and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga was Kenya’s first vice president.  The conserve scenario — an Odinga presidency and a Kenyatta-controlled parliament — would be perhaps an even more ironic result. Continue reading Could Kenya enter another period of power-sharing after its general election? →

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Mudavadi likely to become kingmaker in Kenya presidential runoff

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Mudavadi

In a field of eight candidates, and with the two frontrunners — Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga — currently in a dead heat by most objective measures in the race to become Kenya’s fourth post-independence president, it seems more unlikely than ever that a candidate will win the 50%-plus majority necessary to win the presidency outright on March 4.kenya

That means that the man likely to place third in Monday’s presidential election, Musalia Mudavadi (pictured above), could well emerge as the kingmaker in a runoff.

Mudavadi, though he’s only making his first run for president, is certainly no stranger to the elite of Kenyan politics, and he is one of the half-dozen or so top politicians that have emerged following the quarter-center rule of former president Daniel arap Moi.  Mudavadi has allied in the past with both Kenyatta and Odinga, however, which makes it unclear who he would back in the event of a runoff.  Furthermore, his ethnic group (Luhya), a Bantu group that comprises around 14% of Kenya’s population, mostly concentrated in Western Province north of Lake Victoria in Kenya’s southwest, is somewhat of a ‘swing’ group as well.

Mudavadi served as finance minister in the mid-1990s under arap Moi and as Kenya’s vice president for less than two months in the final days of the arap Moi administration, and his father, Moses Mudavadi, was until his death in 1989 a key minister in the arap Moi administration.  He has arap Moi’s support in the 2013 presidential election, and he is sometimes viewed pejoratively as arap Moi’s ‘project’ — in other words, a bit of a dupe that arap Moi is using to regain power behind the scenes.  Continue reading Mudavadi likely to become kingmaker in Kenya presidential runoff →

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In Depth: Kenya

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Kenya — a country of 41 million people in east Africa  — widely seen as a relatively stable hub for international actors in the east African region will go to the polls on March 4, 2013, to select a new president and the members of Kenya’s newly redesigned parliament.

The most high-profile race is the one to replace Kenya’s third president since independence, Mwai Kibaki, who is stepping down after his election in 2002 and his controversial reelection in 2007, widely seen as a fraudulent victory and a catalyst for political violence that lasted for two months following the 2007 election.

The two leading candidates are Uhuru Kenyatta, a former finance minister and the son of Jomo Kenyatta, the country’s first president, and Raila Odinga, the son of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kenya’s first prime minister. Odinga (the son) narrowly lost — officially, at least — the 2007 election to Kibaki, and since a 2008 power-sharing deal with Kibaki, has served as prime minister.

Kenyatta leads an alliance of parties known as the Jubilee alliance, which is dominated by members of Kenyatta’s own Kikuyu ethnic group, the largest in Kenya (17%) and the Kalenjin people.  Odinga leads the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) alliance, comprised in turn of Odinga’s own Luo people, as well as the Kamba people.

The key issues in the race have involved corruption, Kenya’s somewhat lackluster economic growth and unemployment, the indictment of Kenyatta (and his running mate, William Ruto) for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court springing from the 2007-08 political violence, the ongoing devolution of power from the central government to Kenya’s eight provinces and 47 counties, and the progress of land reform resulting from the Independent Land Commission established by the 2010 constitution.

Six other candidates are contesting the race, although none of them receive more than single digits in polls.  They include:

  • Musalia Mudavadi, deputy prime minister, a former vice president, former running mate of Kenyatta in 2002 and a former running mate of Odinga in 2007, who is running as the candidate of the Amani coalition, which includes many supporters from the Luhya people and the once-dominant Kenya African National Union (KANU), and Mudavadi has the support of former president Daniel arap Moi, who served from 1978 to 2002.
  • Peter Kenneth, an MP who is running as the candidate of the Eagle Alliance, and is running on an explicitly national basis (i.e., not on the basis of a particular ethnic group).
  • Martha Karua, an anti-corruption MP and a former minister of justice.
  • Mohammed Abdula Dida, a high school teacher known mostly for his folksy one-liners in Kenya’s two presidential debates.
  • James ole Kiyiapi,  a former permanent secretary in the ministries of education and local government.
  • Paul Muite, a former MP.

Under new election rules resulting from a new constitution promulgated in 2010, a presidential candidate must win in excess of 50% of the vote and win 25% of the vote in at least 24 of Kenya’s 47 counties.  If neither condition is met, the two candidates will face off in a runoff to be held on April 11.

Kenya’s parliament is also gaining a house after the 2010 constitutional reforms — the formerly unicameral National Assembly will remain as the lower house, while the new Senate will become the parliament’s upper house.

The National Assembly, formerly consisting of 224 members, will now have 350 members, 290 of which are directly elected in single-member districts and 47 of which must be women (one in each Kenyan county).

Kenyans will elect members of the Senate for the first time ever on March 4 as well — it’s expected that there will be 68 senators, one elected in each of the 47 counties, with 16 additional special representatives for women, two representatives for youth and two representatives for persons with disabilities.

Currently, the largest bloc in the National Assembly is the Odinga-led Orange Democratic Movement (100 seats), followed by Kibaki’s Party of National Unity (43 seats), though because of the transient nature of many Kenyan political parties and movements, it’s uncertain whether pro-Kenyatta or pro-Odinga forces will actually win the new elections for the National Assembly and the Senate.

See below Suffragio‘s coverage of the Kenyan races:

Kenyan Supreme Court upholds Kenyatta victory
March 30, 2013

Uhuru Kenyatta is the next president of Kenya
March 8, 2013

Tense Thursday finds both Uhuru, Raila under 50% in Kenya election results
March 7, 2013

The latest on Kenya’s election results: IEBC targets Friday finale
March 6, 2013

What we know so far about the Kenyan election results
March 5, 2013

Could Kenya enter another period of power-sharing after its general election?
March 4, 2013

Mudavadi likely to become kingmaker in Kenya’s presidential runoff
March 3, 2013

Five reasons why Kenya is unlikely to repeat 2007’s post-election violence
March 1, 2013

Live-blogging the final Kenyan presidential debate
February 25, 2013

Making sense of Kenya’s ethnopolitical alliances
February 19, 2013

Kenyatta, Ruto cleared to run in Kenyan election despite ICC woes
February 18, 2013

Kenya

Five reasons why Kenya is unlikely to repeat 2007’s post-election violence

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peaceconcert

Everywhere you look, especially in the U.S. and European media, coverage of Monday’s Kenyan election is superseded by one central question.kenya

Will Kenya resort to the kind of ethnic-based political violence that occurred after the last election in 2007?

Of course, the presidential race is tight — the candidate of the ‘Jubilee’ alliance, Uhuru Kenyatta (the son of Kenya’s first president), is essentially tied with the candidate of the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) alliance, Raila Odinga (Kenya’s prime minister and the son of Kenya’s first vice president, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga).

Furthermore, the two major coalitions — Jubilee and CORD — are loose patchwork alliances of Kenyan ethnic groups, some of whom were allied in 2007 and some of whom were not, and they pit Kenyatta’s Kikuyu ethnic group against Odinga’s Luo ethnic group.

But it’s still unlikely that Kenya will repeat anything like the 2007-08 violence, which led to the deaths of over 1,000 Kenyans and displaced nearly 200,000 more after incumbent Mwai Kibaki was widely seen to have used vote-buying, vote-tampering and, ultimately, fraudulent vote counting, to retain the presidency against the challenge from Odinga.  Two months of harrowing fighting followed before Kibaki agreed to share power with Odinga, who subsequently became prime minister.

Kenya remains on alert, of course, but scenes like those pictured above — a peace concert last week in Nairobi designed to promote Kenyan unity throughout the campaign and its aftermath — tell us more about the narrative of this year’s Kenyan election.

There’s really no reason to believe that there’s a likelier chance of violence today than there was after the August 2010 constitutional referendum, which came and went without significant tumult.

So while the world (especially Western policymakers and media) holds its collective breath waiting for more turmoil, here are five reasons why it’s a smarter bet that Kenya won’t repeat its 2007-08 experience.  Continue reading Five reasons why Kenya is unlikely to repeat 2007’s post-election violence →

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Live-blogging: the final Kenyan presidential debate

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While we monitor Italian election results, Kenya is hosting its second and final presidential debate in advance of the March 4 general election. kenya

The debate, which will feature all eight candidates (despite a last-minute threat by Uhuru Kenyatta not to join the debate), is set to focus on land policy, the economy and foreign policy.

Kenyatta and his chief rival, prime minister Raila Odinga, currently lead polls, with the other six candidates far behind.  Read my background on the Kenyan election here.

UPDATE: The debate is now over, and it was a fascinating three hours of debate.  The tenacity of the moderators, especially by Uduak Amimo in the first half of the debate, was particularly noteworthy, especially as she went down the row of candidates, challenging each one specifically on allegations of personal corruption and scandal in their own careers.  I’ve never quite seen anything like it, certainly not in a U.S. presidential debate.

That Kenya has hosted now, not one, but two, lengthy and robust presidential debates is a tribute to how far Kenyan democracy has come from the days of Daniel arap Moi.  Indeed, every sign indicates that all of Kenya’s political leaders have a very keen and active interest in avoiding the kind of ethnic-based political violence that followed the 2007 presidential election. If Kenya manages to make it through the election to a peaceful transfer of power, it will certainly be quite an improvement for not just Kenya, but for east Africa regionally.

It’s also a tribute to the vitality of Kenyan democracy that Kenyans were able to force Kenyatta to join this second debate after he claimed he would not participate late last week.  Although Kenyatta took plenty of heat during this debate over how much land he and his family own, there were no mentions, unlike in the first debate, of the International Criminal Court case against Kenyatta.

Ultimately, Kenyatta was viewed as having won the first debate against Odinga, and I think that he won today’s debate as well, so he was well served to show up after all, and I can understand why he’s done such a good job catching up with Odinga in the polls.

He’s a much more forceful debater and even when he’s on defense, his clarity and forceful manner stand quite in contrast to Odinga’s more defensive style.  Odinga, for whatever reason, refused on several occasions to go on the offensive against Kenyatta, most notably by excusing his land ownership by arguing Kenyatta is merely an ‘inheritor’ of the ‘original sins’ of land inequality begat at Kenya’s independence.

Speaking of land, the lengthy segment on land reform demonstrated how difficult the issue is and how difficult adjudicating land disputes will be for Kenya’s next president, even as the work of the independent National Land Commission promulgated in 2012, will continue.  Although the Commission gave the candidates an easy option to remain vague about land reform, it’s clear that no domestic issue will be more important in the next five years.

The race remains largely an Odinga-Kenyetta showdown, and polls show the race essentially tied between the two, with a runoff increasingly likely.

Among the other candidates, however, notably Mohammed Abduba Dida, Martha Karua, Peter Kenneth and James Ole Kiyiapi, it’s clear there’s a second tier of presidential aspirants who are well-informed and thoughtful on the issues of the day, who are willing to challenge both Odinga and Kenyatta, and who may well serve ably in the future in the governments of either an Odinga or Kenyatta presidency.

Continue reading Live-blogging: the final Kenyan presidential debate →

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Making sense of Kenya’s ethnopolitical alliances

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To understand what’s going on in Kenya’s politics and to understand the nature of its upcoming March 4 presidential election, you have to understand that Kenyan politics are based on ethnic identity, not ideology.kenya

Due to the nature of Kenyan election rules, a presidential candidate has to build an electoral coalition larger than any single ethnic group in the country — a candidate must win not only a 50% majority of the votes, but 25% of the vote in at least 24 of Kenya’s 47 counties.

So it’s not enough for deputy prime minister and former finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta to win a plurality of the vote based largely on the support of his Kikuyu ethnic group, Kenya’s largest.  Nor would it be enough for Kenyan prime minister Raila Odinga to win a plurality on the strength of his own Luo ethnic group.

That means the winning candidate will have to craft a coalition based on many different ethnic groups, and Kenyatta and Odinga have both named running mates of differing ethnic groups.  In light of the aftermath of the 2007 election, when incumbent Mwai Kibaki won narrow reelection against Odinga amid charges of rigging the vote count, political riots quickly descended into ethnic violence.  But the 2013 elections will also largely be determined on the basis of ethnicity-based coalitions, which only underscores the fear that Kenya could undergo another round of destabilizing political violence.

Identifying Kenya’s ethnic groups

In the broadest terms, Kenya’s ethnic groups can be divided into the Bantu and the Nilotic peoples.

The Bantu comprise by far the largest group of Kenyans, roughly two-thirds of Kenya’s 43 million people.  The Bantu ethnic groups derive from people who originally came to Kenya from western and central Africa 2,000 years ago during the so-called Bantu expansion.  The Bantu languages are derived from the Niger-Congo language family — you are likely to be most familiar with Swahili, a Bantu language that, along with English, is one of Kenya’s two official languages.

The Nilotic peoples are the second-largest group, comprising about one-third of Kenyans.  Unlike the Bantu, they originally came to Kenya from what is today South Sudan, and they are somewhat more rural than their Bantu counterparts.  They speak languages derived from the Nilo-Saharan language family, which includes the Dholuo language of Kenya, but also Nubian and other languages throughout Sudan and north-central Africa.

But that only explains so much about Kenya’s incredibly complex range of ethnic groups, which are divided even further on the basis of regional, linguistic and other cultural and historical criteria.  Notably, as the useful map below shows, much of Kenya’s population resides in the highlands that stretch from the Rift Valley and along the western border through the central heartland of Kenya.

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Accordingly, there are five major ethnic groups and countless others that form a mosaic of politically mobilized chess pieces, any of which can come together to form a political and governing alliance.  Alliances are not based on Bantu / Nilotic lines, and from one election to the next, one ethnic group may support a candidate that it virulently opposed in the prior election, making Kenyan politics incredibly unique — and also difficult to understand.

As recently as 2005, Odinga and Kenyatta found themselves on the same side, politically, in opposition to a constitutional referendum

The five largest groups are as follows:

  • The Kikuyu, a Bantu group, comprise 17% of the population (according to the 2009 census) that, as the map shows, reside largely in the central highlands of Kenya around Mount Kenya north of Nairobi.
  • The Luhya, also a Bantu group, comprise 14% of the population and reside in the highlands of Western Province, along the Ugandan border just north of Lake Victoria.
  • The Kalenjin, a Nilotic group, comprise 13% of the population and reside in the Rift Valley highlands and are perhaps best known for producing some of the Kenya’s best runners, who routinely rank among the fastest in the world.
  • The Luo, a Nilotic group, comprise 10% of the population and reside in the highlands of Nyanza province, adjacent to Lake Victoria, bordering both Uganda and Tanzania — Barack Obama, Sr., the father of the current U.S. president, was from the Luo ethnic group.
  • The Kamba, another Bantu group, comprise 10% of the population and reside in the area east of Nairobi, where the highlands begin to level off into Kenya’s lowlands.

Continue reading Making sense of Kenya’s ethnopolitical alliances →

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Kenyatta, Ruto cleared to run in Kenyan election despite ICC woes

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Friday’s ruling from the Kenyan High Court has — for now, at least, and through the duration of the presidential campaign, barring any last-minute intervention from Kenya’s supreme court — cleared the legal obstacles for Uhuru Kenyatta to run for president in the March 4 election.kenya

Kenyatta’s legal issues stem from Kenyatta’s indictment for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, on the basis of orchestrating ethnic violence following the previous presidential election in 2007 when over 1,000 Kenyans were killed during tumult that upturned hundreds of thousands more from their homes, pummeled the reputation Kenya’s political system and damaged its economy.

Kenyatta’s running mate, William Ruto (pictured above right, with Kenyatta at left), is one of five other Kenyan officials also charged for crimes against humanity, and the High Court’s ruling also clears him.  Kenyatta and Ruto were actually on opposite political sides in 2007, though they’ve now found common cause through, among other things, the pariah status that’s come from ICC indictment.

It’s more accurate, however, to say that the court refused to intervene — the basis of the case was whether Kenyatta and Ruto had demonstrated sufficient ‘personal integrity, competence and suitability’ for the presidency, as stated under Kenya’s constitution.  The court claimed it lacked the jurisdiction to disqualify the candidates, though it noted that the Supreme Court holds jurisdiction to make such a determination.

Kenyatta and Ruto head the Jubilee alliance, a merger of various parties, but really an alliance that binds together members from Kenyatta’s Kikuyu ethnic group (Kenya’s largest, comprising around 22% of the population) and Ruto’s Kalenjin ethnic group.

Kenyatta’s main opponent, Raila Odinga, heads the CORD (Coalition for Reforms and Democracy) alliance, which binds together Odinga’s Luo ethnic group and the Kamba ethnic group of Odinga’s running mate, Kalonzo Musyoka.

Kenyatta, currently a deputy prime minister since 2008 and minister of finance from 2008 to 2012 under Kenya’s outgoing, term-limited president Mwai Kibaki, is the son of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta.

Odinga, currently Kenya’s prime minister following the power-sharing agreement that resulted in the wake of the 2007 presidential election, is the son of Kenya’s first vice president, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, whose falling out with Jomo Kenyatta in the 1960s serves as prologue to much of this year’s presidential election.  In 2007, Odinga only narrowly lost the presidency to Kibaki, and he’s held a narrow lead throughout much of the 2013 campaign, though Kenyatta has waged a spirited campaign and was generally seen as the winner of Kenya’s first presidential debate on February 11.

Within Kenya, the ICC charges themselves matter little to voters — though Odinga is more to the left and Kenyatta is more to the right, Kenya’s election has been polarized into tribal ethnic lines, not on standard ideological lines.  So Kenyatta’s supporters could care less about international charges they believe are unfair, though Odinga has used the ICC charges to taunt Kenyatta, most recently during their presidential debate when Odinga scoffed that it would be impractical to run a government from the Hague using Skype.

Even Odinga, nonetheless, has called for the Kenyan courts to validate Kenyatta’s presidential candidacy, and he’s even called for any trials over the 2007-08 violence to be settled in Nairobi, not through the ICC.

In a sense, while the ICC charges themselves are a fringe issue, they are also at the heart of the campaign, given the ethnic tensions involved in the current campaign and the desire among all of Kenya’s leaders to avoid a devastating replay of the 2007 and 2008 political violence that followed the last election.

Continue reading Kenyatta, Ruto cleared to run in Kenyan election despite ICC woes →

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13 in ’13: Thirteen up-and-coming world politicians to watch in 2013

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Earlier today, Suffragio kicked off its 2013 coverage of world politics with a look at 13 key elections to watch in 2013.

While we’ll watch as new leaders, from Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi to French president François Hollande to South Korean president Park Geun-hye begin their first full years of power, we’ll also watch for comebacks by former presidents — former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will make a decision about running for a third term in the 2014 Brazilian presidential election and former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet is the odds-on frontrunner to win a new term in Chile’s December 2013 election.

In addition, however, here are 13 up-and-coming politicians and other public figures who will figure prominently in the next 12 months — either because they are likely to come to power themselves in 2013 or because this year will will likely be a make-or-break year for them to achieve power beyond 2013. Continue reading 13 in ’13: Thirteen up-and-coming world politicians to watch in 2013 →