Key issues that define August poll

By Special Correspondent

Kenyans head to the polls this month amid acute intra-elite tensions. President Uhuru Kenyatta has united with opposition leader Raila Odinga against the campaign of Deputy President William Ruto, who is bitterly at odds with Kenyatta. There are huge political and economic interests at stake.

To Deputy President Ruto, the issue lies in the Hustler vs. Dynasty paradigm. Those who belong to the dynasty – Uhuru Kenyatta, Raila Odinga, and Gideon Moi – have regrouped to ensure a Hustler – William Ruto – does not ascend to the highest seat in the land. While this narrative has garnered impressive capital, it does not actually explain the fallout between the president and his deputy. His detractors pin it down to what they see as the deputy president’s – his unchecked ambition, lack of humility, and staking his claim to the presidency on a Faustian bargain between him and his boss.

Why does it all matter? Because Kenyan elections are often high-stakes affairs, with politicians mostly out to protect both their careers and their significant business interests.

With the promise of a bitter fight, calls have been made – by international partners, civil society and religious organizations – for rivalling political elites to commit to accepting election results – and using the courts to arbitrate disputes – and agree that the loser will be treated fairly. To safeguard election integrity, for the first time, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission is allowing for parallel ballot tabulation by media houses, to help avoid a disputed vote and the fallout that could come with it.

Kenya’s electoral institutions, meanwhile, remain weak, in part because of the government’s failure to adopt all the prescriptions of commissions of inquiry that reviewed weeks of election-related mass violence occurring in 2007 and 2008. In particular, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is underfunded and in a state of flux. Commissioners only appointed a full-time executive in March, just five months before the polls. Parliament and the president have ignored expert advice that electoral laws should be in place at least two years before presidential and legislative contests. As late as mid-2022, several pieces of electoral legislation remained in debate within the chamber, leaving the electoral commission guessing about regulations it has to enact ahead of the vote.

The combination of high intra-elite tensions and weak institutions means that the outcome of the vote may well be contested if either of the main candidates rejects official results. While Kenyan institutions and civil society organizations remain optimistic about a peaceful election, it is not lost on observers that the broken relationship between the president and his deputy – as well as Kenyatta’s determination to shape his succession – are significant potential threats to peaceful, credible polls.

Income equality

Bitterness within the electorate about income inequality and Kenya’s deteriorating economy runs deep. The high cost of living consistently ranks as a priority concern for Kenyans, many of whom accuse the government of profligacy during the past decade. Russia’s war in Ukraine has pushed up global commodity and fuel prices, reversing the benefits of Kenya’s tentative recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, which obliterated an estimated two million jobs. These worrying trends come against the backdrop of a high debt burden, with debt service costs consuming about half of projected revenue in Kenya’s 2022-2023 budget. Today, the country is grappling with the consequences of its longest drought in decades, which has devastated crops, decimated cattle herds and left at least 2.8 million people in 23 counties in need of food relief. These factors, and others, potentially make it easier to mobilise frustrated crowds in the streets, creating the risk that unemployed youth could be recruited into gangs to commit violence during electioneering.

The ignominy of BBI

The Kenyatta-Ruto fallout has dominated the Jubilee administration’s second term, with implications for a key goal of the Kenyatta-Odinga alliance that emerged in 2018 – enactment of the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI). BBI was a proposal to introduce constitutional changes through a referendum in order to expand the Kenyan executive and, the proponents claimed, to step away from Kenya’s winner-take-all politics by creating more seats at the table. Among other things, the bill proposed a new post of prime minister and as many as 70 extra seats in parliament.

Kenyatta campaigned for the proposal for months, labelling the BBI the central feature of his second-term legislative agenda and presenting it as an effort to unite the country, but to no avail. Many Kenyans lost interest in the BBI campaign because they found the particulars of the proposal hard to understand, while persistent rumours that Kenyatta hoped to shape his succession through the initiative made it largely unpopular. Ruto staunchly opposed the bill, saying it was little more than a ploy to influence the 2022 election. In March, Kenya’s Supreme Court deemed the bill illegal and unconstitutional, sparking celebrations in the Ruto camp and defiance among Kenyatta-Odinga allies. Overall, rather than bridging divides, the controversial bill led to fragmentation of political coalitions at the national and local levels.

Avoiding another crisis

Regional observers view Kenya’s forthcoming elections with considerable trepidation. Given the country’s position as East Africa’s main transport and commercial hub, violence tends to have a ripple effect across much of the region. Days after elections-related ethnic violence broke out in January 2008, long queues formed at fuel stations in the capitals of landlocked Uganda and Rwanda, which depend on supplies from the Kenyan port of Mombasa. In the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which also relies on imports passing through Kenya, aid agencies reported running out of stock.  Amid civil war in Ethiopia and the entrenched political crisis in Sudan, the region can ill afford another surge of unrest, much less one at the centre of the region’s economic and political life.

Fortunately, Kenya may be well positioned to dodge this bullet. Crisis Group research over the past three years in various parts of the country has found little appetite for intercommunal violence. Society does not seem to be as on edge as it was in the months before the 2007 and 2013 elections. For better or worse, the overall public mood is one of mixed indifference and resignation, particularly among young Kenyans, though the disposition among the latter is understandably sour. 

Moreover, divisive, ethnically laced narratives are not as prevalent as in previous electoral cycles, with a few exceptions. Although national politicians continue to attack one another with barbed comments, they have shown a welcome reticence to use hateful rhetoric as a campaign tool. In January 2022, when Meru Senator and Ruto ally Mithika Linturi made inflammatory remarks that evoked the kind of ethnic slurs politicians used during the 2007-2008 crisis, leaders across the political divide, including Odinga and Ruto, swiftly condemned his choice of words.

That there is no major Kikuyu candidate in the presidential race for the first time since 1992 may also be helping tamp down tensions. Among other things it has helped dampen public perceptions of Kikuyu dominance in Kenyan politics and Kikuyu elite control of the economy, which Kenyatta’s opponents exploited to whip up grievance in prior elections. In a welcome development, rather than appealing to ethnic allegiances, Odinga and Ruto appear to be banking on bagging cross-ethnic support – Odinga by positioning himself as a mellowed father figure who could be a safe pair of hands and Ruto by branding himself as a champion of the downtrodden. Moreover, both candidates have chosen Kikuyu running mates, making it more difficult for either to play the anti-Kikuyu card against the other.

Improving institutions

Kenyan politics is mostly dominated by personalities and money rather than issues. As a result, the country remains vulnerable to episodes of pre- and post-election violence. 

The IEBC, the institution tasked with running our elections, appears weak and insufficiently prepared for the polls. Held back by divisions and foot dragging among commissioners, the electoral body’s is split on operations, with loyalties threatening the credibility of the poll. For example, the IEBC only named a new CEO in March this year, four years after it fell vacant. Funding has also been a problem. The commission said it needed close to Sh41 billion to organise elections; it had received only a quarter of that amount by the end of 2021. In February, the National Assembly made Sh22 billion available for the August polls, with an additional Sh8 billion. In the meantime, resistance to external support has delayed and limited efforts by Kenya’s international partners to give the IEBC direct assistance.

It the midst of all this, a strong performance by state institutions such as the judiciary, the IEBC and security forces will be key in ensuring credible polls and preventing electoral violence. In particular, the judiciary has emerged as one of the most important and trusted safeguards of the constitution. It is staffed by strong, independent judges with a track record of ruling against the executive branch where warranted. Indeed, in 2017, the Supreme Court annulled the results of the presidential election because, the court determined, it was not conducted in full conformity with the constitution and electoral laws. Against this backdrop, candidates who feel aggrieved by the electoral process might seek recourse in the courts with some confidence that they will receive a fair hearing. 

Despite such substantive institutional changes, Kenya remains highly vulnerable to episodes of pre- and post-election violence. The most prominent of this divide is elite polarisation, which births ethnic polarisation. The Kenyatta-Ruto rift has contributed to perceptions that the security services may not play a neutral role during the electoral period. On a number of occasions, officials of the United Democratic Alliance (UDA), the party with Ruto on its ticket, have complained that the security forces tried to influence campaigning during 2021 by-elections in favour of state-backed candidates. There are fears this may be replicated this month, which is dangerous because both camps hold that neither can afford defeat. In the same vein, security forces should maintain strict neutrality and allow all candidates at the national and local levels to campaign unhindered. 

This high-stakes presidential election is likely to be one of Kenya’s most closely contested in recent history. Ensuring that the vote unfolds peacefully will depend heavily not just on the performance of government institutions and civil society but also on the conduct of political elites that have dominated Kenya for decades and hold considerable sway over supporters. (