Some Numbers
1: Country, Kenya
1: Vote per person. Every vote should count and every vote should be counted
500:850+ Five hundred Over Eight hundred Kenyans, fellow citizens, neighbors, brothers, siblings, mothers, fathers, people killed in the violence.
2,800: 4,760 Family members that (statistically) lost a sibling, father, mother in the violence
255,000: People displaced
60 billion 100+ Billion: shillings lost in the recent violence
The analysis has on the situation has been done by some more knowledgeable about the situation that I. See them here and here. Others more well spoken than I have given their take on what can be done.
What I DON’T know:
- Who won the presidential election
- What the hell Kibaki is thinking
- What the hell is wrong with Kenyans?!!!
What I DO know:
- No Kenyan, while in Kenya, should not walk or hide in fear in the country of their birth. That is unacceptable and we should not condone any acts of violence - heck, any threats of violence!! More to the point, all Kenyans know that it this is wrong. It is also a crime in Kenya last time I checked.
- You cannot and should not subvert democracy even if it seems expedient to do so.
- Wengi Wape: Even if it makes you sick to your stomach to see how moronic (in your view) voting patterns of your fellow Kenyan might be, you must abide with the decision of the majority
- We cannot and should not ever, ever be ruled by fiat
- Democratic, safe countries are wealthier, safer and more prosperous countries
- Democracy is not, like a sweater, something that you put on from time to time. It’s like breathing- you do it all the gaddamn time
- All criminals that participated in the killings of their fellows Kenyans should be brought to justice. They should be tried in a court of law and if found guilty, should have the book thrown at them so that, in the words of Chief Inspector Wariahe “Wawe funzo kwa wengine”
- That Kenyans, we who have been building a country in relative peace, we can rise above this madness, embrace our problems and deal with them rationally.
I don’t believe in the lowest common denominator approach to leadership for Kenya. I believe that Kenyans deserve and are entitled to better. We have known better. We were unbwogable remember?
I believe that the way out of this quagmire has to be approached with a sober, sincere and honest need to craft a lasting solution to this problem as this is not a trifling problem. The lives and sadly deaths of Kenyans affect me profoundly. Any Kenyan’s death diminishes me, because I am Kenyan.
36,913,721: Kenyans that can make a difference. Non violence can and will make a profound difference.
(edits 1/31)
1: Country, Kenya
1: Vote per person. Every vote should count and every vote should be counted
500+: Five hundred too many people that have been killed in the violence.
2,800: Family members that (statistically) lost a sibling, father, mother in the violence
255,000: People displaced
60 Billion: Shillings lost in the recent violence
Setback to Kenya in terms of tribal relations, priceless
- Our wonderful country will never be the same again.
I’m hopeful that the even though we might never the same, that we as a nation emerge from this madness wiser and stronger. That we emerge as a democracy and as a united country. While I read some of the sentiments expressed by some Kenyans and despair, I am however optimistic because there are many, many more who are proudly, indubitably Kenyan. May sanity prevail.
Habari za mwaka mpya Aco?
Comment by acolyte — January 9, 2008 @ 2:23 pm
I might also want to know; What do you expect Kibaki to do? We have to move on and the faster we do it the better. The only thing as you say is we have to get to the root cause of this problem. Kibaki appointing a cabinet is a step towards the future; these are disputed results which can only be sorted in courts.
Democracy, like justice not only has to be done but also has to be seen to be done. Which means that if there are credible doubts that have been cast on the election result, then he has the obligation to ensure that these doubts are addressed (finally answering your question), in a court of law. If indeed, he won the election- he does owe it to the people who voted for him to have their votes acknowledged publicly as having counted (as right now those votes are also being doubted which is just wrong).
It’s irresponsible in my view for Kibaki to declare a cabinet when the legitimacy of his presidency is in question without a word on how and where the electoral results shall be addressed. To also go on with business as usual when the electorate are up in arms (based again on what seems to be credible sources e.g. the AG, the head of the ECK and independent international observers) is, IMO not being responsive to the people (i.e. us Kenyans- PNU supporters, ODM supporters etc.) from whom Kibaki derives his power. So again, I say he should acknowledge that the results are not considered legit and re-tally the votes (if that’s still possible and ballots still comply to the acceptable standards) or agree to another election as soon as humanly and logistically possible.
Comment by Shiroh — January 10, 2008 @ 8:37 am
It is not with surprise that I read the view that Mwai Kibaki is not the legitimate president of Kenya. This view is so pervasive that even many who supported the president have been deceived into taking it up.That it is so widespread is a tribute to the ODM’s knack for lies and its efficiency at pushing them as truth. It is also in no small part a result of the political ineptitude of the PNU and State House.The view is predicated on two strands of thought. The first, published by the ODM and a perpetuation of its hateful and divisive anti-GEMA strategy, declares that President Kibaki won only one of Kenya’s provinces and is therefore not the true president of all Kenya. The second, declares the election stolen by the incumbent, and rather cheekily insists that the extension of his tenancy at State House is a ‘coup’.
National Support
This first argument is only one of the few in the litany of lies the ODM has rammed through a servile, biased media. The facts speak for themselves, Mwai Kibaki won 4 out of Kenya’s provinces and MPs running on pro-Kibaki platforms won more than 100 seats with victories in every single province. None of his rivals even came close to the same level of support. Kibaki also won a sizeable number of votes even in the provinces where he was overall second best, reaching the 25% mark in every province but Nyanza, where he still managed to poll 17% of the vote. The ODM candidate on the other hand posted a measly 2% and 5% in Central and Eastern provinces, and managed 25% in only six of the provinces.
‘But the bulk of the president’s votes were GEMA votes,’ comes the reply. Well, that may be true but the formulation GEMA itself makes into one what are properly a multitude of ethnicities. More importantly however, our democracy as currently fashioned makes no demands on the ethnicity of voters desiring merely that the victorious candidate have the approval of at least 25% from five provinces to underline his nationalist credentials. To reiterate, it is not communities, faiths or regions that vote. It is individuals.
This is no trivial point. The ODM has taken even before the election to making the case that their candidate was the People’s Candidate, Kenya’s candidate. That was all very well for that period when presentation and marketing were more important than truth; but in this the post-election period, the party and its supporters would do well to realise that by any estimation fully 4 million Kenyans declared their support for each of the two leading candidates. So it is that even now,as the party and its supporters persist in saying that the Kenyan people have been robbed, the Kenyan people are angry, they must remember that there are some Kenyans a substantial number, a majority even who actually voted for Kibaki - and who rejected the ODM.
For starters, it is most irresponsible, if typical of the ODM to neglect to take into account the votes of these 4 million, they are after all just GEMA, Gikuyu, Embu, Meru, Mbeere, Tharaka; you know those people, not Kenyans. This diligently crafted Us vs Them dichotomy explains why the ODM’s leaders have not yet seen fit to visit, or even declare peace with the communities that are being victimised by the outbreaks of violence- communities which in the pre-election campaigns they worked very hard to demonise. When it is not demonising them directly, the ODM and its agents continually seek to invite the GEMA to join Kenyans in voting ODM, proposing all the time that to vote differently is unKenyan.
This is part of the reason for the renewal in Kikuyu nationalism, a whole community has been forced to the wall by the invective of three years and two political campaigns. We stand in our millions -along with Kenyans of every ethnic persuasion in rejection of ethnic chauvinism- and declare to the ODM that we are adamant in our support for President Kibaki and that we too retain the inalienable right to the appellation, Kenyan. We respect that there are those, our brothers and sisters from across the country, with different political persuasions, but never in a million years would we think to pretend that those opinions made them less Kenyan than we are. If it is the sheer numbers in Central Kenya that intimidate the opposition into taking this position, also published as the 41 versus 1 strategy, then the ODM have to now get to their grassroots and urge a population boom. Anything else hurts all of us, and the victims of this hatred will not just be the Gikuyu. The economic and social effects of this policy of excluding one group from the whole will be profound, and as many in Western Kenya are finding, life without the other is not exactly a bed of roses.
The end of this hatred is especially urgent for ODM for, in light of the premeditated and barbaric ODM action in the Rift Valley and across the country, it is unlikely that too many Kenyans, even those who had previously aligned themselves with the party will be particularly drawn to it and its divisive politics any more. The consequences of all the strident screeching about Majimbo and the theory that the Gikuyu hogged all the country’s resources have finally manifested themselves.
Election irregularities
I find it most unfair to look merely at one set of election irregularities while turning a blind eye to the other. Such a predisposition is not only unhelpful, but declares a bias that precludes a just assessment of the elections. It is not unlinked to the over-arching theory of Gikuyu hegemony as it dictates that only one side in the election had the wherewithal to interfere with the vote.
The media and observers seem to have focused merely on crimes committed during the final vote tallying while ignoring the fact that there were several irregularities in ODM zones.
For starters, there was no free will in the vote in Nyanza. Long before the election begun, candidates who would have stood against the ODM nominees were compelled to stand down and those who resisted were demonised and accused of perfidy to the tribe. There were prior to the elections, outbreaks of violence against the disloyal, outbreaks which led to the displacement and non-participation of such persons. There are also credible reports that women and those from communities likely predisposed to vote different than the ODM were obstructed from exercising their voting rights by hooligans either inspired by or hired by the ODM. As the ODM candidate demanded at a campaign rally in Eldoret, ‘hatutaki madoadoa’.
Even worse, and as confirmed by KEDOF in their final vote report, agents representing parties allied to Mwai Kibaki and Kalonzo Musyoka were denied entry into vote counting and vote tallying centres, including most famously Nyayo Stadium where what had been widely billed a close race between Raila Odinga and Stanley Livondo was turned into a rout of suspiciously monumental proportions. This as Uhuru Kenyatta complained, came after Livondo and his group were locked out of the stadium.
Some have asked why the government did not then use the police to back up the blocked voters and insist that the opposition agents be allowed entry at these events. The truth is that the tense pre-election atmosphere did not allow for any use of force by the government, indeed any such moves would have been seen as persecution and would have cost the government votes at the election. Those asking this forget that there were already killings in Nyanza of police personnel prior to the election and that it is this state of violence that ensured that Kibaki and Kalonzo affiliated agents were wary of performing their duties there. Importantly also, any such interference would have undermined the independence of the ECK which was the organisation charged with the proper conduct of the elections. The instruments of legal and legitimate use of force are restricted to use in the protection of the polling station and its environs from the vagaries of the contestants and their agents.
Finally, it is most categorically not true that it is impossible to conduct a re-tally of the forms sent to Nairobi by the poll centres around the country. The agents of all the parties contesting the election carry with them copies of the results announced in these centres and should retain copies of the electoral forms. These can be availed for a national re-tallying, which as the Justice Minister Martha Karua told the BBC’s Hard Talk, the government is very willing to facilitate when ordered by a court of law. Karua herself was part of a group of politicians including George Nyamweya, James Orengo and Anyang’ Nyong’o who sat through the night of the 29th of December with ECK officials and went over the vote tallies from across the land. They subtracted the entire element of suspicious added on votes that the ODM had complained about and Kibaki’s total was adjusted accordingly.
When it was found that the vote still indicated a Kibaki victory, the ODM side sought the very next day to reverse their previous urge for the expeditious publication of the result (remember the ODM had on the 28th and 29th been putting pressure on Kivuitu to announce the victor) and instead began a campaign (Raila even stormed Kivuitu’s home at 0700) to have Kivuitu delay the announcement. Commentators seem to have forgotten that Musalia Mudavadi had already announced the election for the ODM or that there were riots in Kisumu that demanded the election result be announced. Now it seems we only focus on the pressure from the PNU and ODM-K, forgetting all the time the even greater pressure from the ODM the previous day.
As the leaked memo from World Bank country director Colin Bruce avers, the facts are clear. The ODM is only too aware that such a re-assessment would make clear that they lost the election, and are as a result wary of appealing to the courts for such a re-tallying. Mwai Kibaki is the legal, but also the legitimate president of Kenya, which fact will soon be proved in a court of law
Comment by uncle joe — January 13, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
Amen mutumia.
Selective democracy is what we have at the moment.
Happy New year! I’ve not had the heart to say that with gusto but I believe once you have hit rock bottom like Kenya has the only way is up , unless there are others who are willing to dig deeper.
Comment by prou — January 24, 2008 @ 8:35 am
I so totally agree with you mami “Democracy is not, like a sweater, something that you put on from time to time. It’s like breathing- you do it all the gaddamn time”. Love it
Comment by Nakeel — January 28, 2008 @ 3:56 am
As I get back to reading this, you have been tagged!! Happy tagging!!
Comment by kipepeo — February 22, 2008 @ 2:25 pm
uhoro waku mutumia! haidhuru..came here for the first time, liked what i saw.
that quote about democracy..so true.
Comment by boyfulani — March 12, 2008 @ 3:36 am
Aki imagine I just wanted to say hi to you. Been ages. Miss your brand of fabulous!! Hope you good.
Comment by Ms K — March 13, 2008 @ 8:04 am