This past Monday, Nov. 20, after Kenya’s Supreme Court issued its short and terse ruling that it had “unanimously” determined that the petition questioning the validity of the October 26th re-election pitting the former crimes-against-humanity suspect Uhuru Kenyatta versus (fill in the blank) “are not merited”, all I could think of were the words from the book of Matthew 16:26.
“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”
In “winning” a 2nd term, Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta has, in my opinion, revealed a side of his being that does not bode well for the country. If ever there was a definition or illustration of a hollow or Pyrrhic victory, the “re-election” of Uhuru Kenyatta on October 26, 2017 AND the way he went about accomplishing said outcome is Exhibit A.
And that Britain, the country that colonized Kenya while waging the murderous war against the Mau Mau and still wields considerable control over vast portions of the country’s econo-political life, along with Uganda, South Sudan and Bangladesh were the first foreign countries to congratulate Uhuru Kenyatta says it all:
- That not much has changed since Kenya obtained its “independence” – from Gt. Britain.
- That the interests of the two country’s are inextricably linked and that Kenya’s 4th president is the former colonial master’s preferred choice to protect said interests – oftentimes at the expense of Kenyans.
- That along with other authoritarian kakistocrats, kleptocrats and despots, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta now joins the likes of Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame, the late Saddam Hussein, Omar Bashir, Syrian Bashar Hafez al-Assad and the just-ousted Robert Mugabe as “presidents” who were re-elected with a greater than 98% majority.
Despite what Uhuru Kenyatta and Wefula Chebukati want Kenyans (and a skeptic world) to believe, the October 26 vote was a sham and Uhuru’s presidency does not reflect the will of the country. It reflects the will of Uhuru’ and Ruto’s primarily ethnic base – approximately 34% of Kenya.
Similarly, approximately sixty-six per cent (66%) of the country rejected this president, his deputy and everything they stand for:
Corruption, authoritarianism, impunity, ethnocracy/tribalism and lack of accountability.
Uhuru Kenyatta “won” the re-election even as his main challenger Raila Odinga chose not to partake in an event whose fairness and transparency were questioned and doubted by the Independent Electoral Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairman Wefula Chebukhati AND were overseen by the same executive – Ezra Chiloba – who oversaw the October 8 voting that was roundly panned and excoriated and rejected by the Supreme Court.
Additionally, Uhuru Kenyatta’s “re-election” was all but assured when the very Supreme Court that voided the October 8, 2017 voting could not sit a quorum of justices to hear the case to delay the re-election because not enough justices were available – in part because the court’s Deputy Chief Justice (DCJ) Philomena Mwilu was dealing with the trauma of the assault on her driver who was shot and wounded two days before the October 26th re-election date.
And days before DCJ Mwilu’s driver was shot at, Roselyn Akombe, one of the commissioners of IEBC fled Kenya for the United States pointedly saying this about the commissioners’ efforts to organize and oversee a free, fair and transparent re-election:
That one would “be suicidal to think that nothing will happen to (them).....that she’d “never felt the kind of fear that (she) felt in my own country".
Ms. Akombe went on to tell the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that “the IEBC was under political "siege", unable to reach consensus or take any decisions”.
Thus a re-election outcome that combined the acknowledged lack of confidence regarding the fairness and transparency of the voting process together with a clear message of fear, intimidation and threats of bodily harm at the justices of Kenya’s Supreme Court, Uhuru Kenyatta’s second term is one shrouded in illegitimacy and open resistance from the other communities and regions that effectively boycotted the October 26 event.
To put it plainly, the legitimacy and viability of the re-election of Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto will be embraced by a markedly divided and angry country, in part because of the patently flawed and rigged and forced electoral process.
Ironically, Mr. Kenyatta and his supporters now find legitimacy in the very judiciary whose members he referred to as “wakora” or “thugs”and repeatedly harassed; the same Supreme Court justices whose mandate Mr. Kenyatta threatened “to revisit” in the wake of the Sept. 1 ruling.
In a bit of poetic justice and fortuitous timing, the recently released World Internal Security and Police Index could not have come at a better time, certainly for Kenyans who have been on the receiving end of a brutal and violent law enforcement apparatus.
The report confirmed what many in the opposition already knew - that Kenya’s law enforcement apparatus is an incompetent and a highly politicized tool of the incumbency.
The index which measures “the ability of the security apparatus within a country to respond to internal security challenges, both now and in the future” ranked Kenya 125th out of 127 countries surveyed - behind the teetering-on-failed-statehood Democratic Republic of Congo and the continent’s premier economy and perennial most-corrupt country Nigeria.
The calls for the losing side to “accept and move on” or for those who have seen family, friends and neighbors brutalized and murdered by a partisan law enforcement apparatus to “unite and re-build the nation” is absolutely disingenuous if not outright callous when uttered by the same man who commands the forces directly responsible for the abuse and brutality the world has seen over the last three months.
It is this foregoing reality that makes Uhuru Kenyatta’s “re-election” hollow and sets the stage for a very tense if not acrimonious 2nd term.
As darkly but generously opined by Macharia Gaitho in subsequent articles in the frequently pro-Jubilee daily Daily Nation, Uhuru Kenyatta has “.....’allowed’ himself to become captive to a bunch of venal, greedy, short-sighted types more attuned to dictatorship than to democracy.” Mr. Gaitho points this out even as he correctly warns Opposition leader Raila Odinga that the “thugs who accompany his processions cannot have the right to rob, plunder and burn with impunity.”
Ultimately and inconveniently to some, the buck stops with Kenya’s Commander-in-Chief and thus far, Uhuru Kenyatta has failed to display the equanimity AND magnanimity the position requires of an executive of the seemingly perpetually-fractured Kenyan society; this to allow said society to heal.
Gaitho goes on to warn that come 2022, Kenya “will implode, and the fire next time.....will be Jubilee in violent internal spasms when one side that retains the threat of an irregular ethnic militia realises it has been conned.”