A hollow, hate-filled election this

The Eastafrican

By L MUTHONI WANYEKI

The mood in the country cannot be compared to that five years ago. Then, we were elated — the general election seemed pregnant with possibilities. Today, we seem resigned to go through the exercise with greatly reduced expectations.

Accusations of electoral rigging abound, but no one seems to be paying them much attention. The usual slew of electoral monitors and observers are dutifully noting and reporting on violations — but the only things that have truly caught our attention are the virulence of the hate speech being communicated not so much through the formal media as through more interpersonal communications, the violence against female aspirants and the recurrence of politically instigated clashes in Kuresoi and Mount Elgon.

With the exception of the alarm created by the above, however, in many ways it is business as usual.

What happened? Where did the euphoria go? Why is it that, in a profound way, the upcoming elections do not seem to matter?

We can blame our cynicism (even depression) to the eventual outcomes of the 2002 election. As Prof Makau Mutua put it, in 2002, “We got the National Rainbow Coalition dream, soon to become the NARC nightmare. The problem was our political class, its myopia, its inability to conceive the national interest? The Constitution became a political football.”

Speaking at the annual International Human Rights Day lecture convened by the Kenya Human Rights Commission last week, Prof Mutua said these elections are “already lost for reformers. Across the political divide, [there are nothing but] human-rights violators, economic criminals and malignant individuals.”

DR LUDEKI CHWEYA, A LECTURER AT the University of Nairobi, had a slightly more optimistic view. In his opinion, Africa has been in search of genuine transition since the colonial period. It is a perpetual search because its two aims have never been achieved. True, freedom is growing as political space continues to expand. But prosperity for all remains elusive as economic space grows in skewed and unacknowledged ways.

Both have a point. There is no real choice on the economic front, as political parties operate within the same ideological framework. Political representation excludes half of the population (women) viewed in one way and a majority of the population (the youth) viewed in another way.

Thus ethnicity predominates as a mobilising factor during electoral periods.

As Mutua put it, “Kenya is an experiment in trying to live together. Kenya is not a nation. Kenya as a state has not reached a state of irreversibility.” Clearly, the only way to reach irreversibility is for Kenyans to agree on the basics — about who we are, what we believe in and how we want to be governed, which is something only a constitutional process can achieve.

Which, of course, brings us back to the current electoral process and why it seems not to matter. All promises being made on the Constitution are as vague and, ultimately, unbelievable as those being now made with respect to anti-corruption.

What this means is that we have to simply get through this electoral process, ensuring the damage done is as minimal as possible. This will not be a small task, given the extent to which the hate speech flying around has made all of us retreat, question erstwhile friendships with political and professional colleagues who have made us, suddenly, all too aware of what ethnicity we are supposedly aligned to.

We can be grateful for small mercies. We can vote, which those prior to Independence couldn’t.

We can vote for different political parties, which those prior to 1991 couldn’t (even if that choice means nothing yet). And we can continue to think through how best to insist on a conscious settling of the past so as to move on to the future yet to come.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission