This month’s poll will come down to the wire

By Charles A Ray

This month, Kenyans will cast their ballots for president, members of parliament, and members of the Kenyan senate. Incumbent ruling Jubilee Party President Uhuru Kenyatta has thrown his support behind opposition challenger, Raila Odinga, the prime minister who is a member of the Orange Democratic Movement, over his own deputy president, William Ruto.

Given the history of election violence in Kenya, this has many worried. While ethnic conflicts have often been the engine of conflict in the past, economic inequities caused by official corruption and the destabilizing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to be the main contentious issues in this year’s election, with the divide along class (rather than tribal) lines.

Odinga has focused on reviving Kenya’s flagging economy. Kenyatta has also spoken out on reviving an economy battered by the pandemic. What impact either man will have on the economy is unknown at this point, but Africa and the world will be watching the process to see whether there will be truly positive change or more of the same old story of disputed outcomes and post-election violence.

A chequered election record 

Kenya’s first general election after it gained independence in 1963 was held on December 6, 1969. Kenya’s first post-independence president, Jomo Kenyatta, of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), which had won the pre-independence elections in May 1963, had established, in effect, a one-party state when he banned the Kenya Peoples Union (KPU) on October 30, 1969.

Kenya remained a de facto one-party state under the control of KANU until 1991, with Kenyatta serving from 1964 until ins death in 1978, and Daniel Arap Moi holding the presidency from 1978 until he retired in 2002.

On October 28, 1992, five months before the end of his term, Moi dissolved Parliament in response to domestic protests and international pressure, causing a need for elections to fill all seats, and the first multiparty elections since independence and the first time that Kenyans had been able to vote directly for the president. Though there were claims of voter fraud, Moi won the elections in 1992 and 1997.

In the general elections of 2002, Mwai Kibaki of the National Rainbow Coalition defeated Uhuru Kenyatta of KANU for the presidency, marking the first time that KANU did not hold the presidency. This first multiparty election, however, occurred along ethnic/tribal lines and set a tone that has persisted in Kenyan politics to the present time.

There are 40 ethnic groups in Kenya, with the Kikuyu of the country’s central region being the largest, accounting for over 17 percent of the country’s population. The Kikuyu have long dominated Kenya’s economy and politics and make up the largest single voting bloc. The Luhya, Luo, Kalenjin, and Kamba rank second to fifth, each with populations of over four million. Since 1992, politicians have played on tribal affiliation and resentments against economic inequities to fan inter-tribal conflict and all elections have been marred by violence.

Uhuru Kenyatta is the son of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta. He had been anointed by Moi in 2002 as his successor but lost out to Mwai Kibaki of the National Rainbow Coalition. In 2019, Kenyatta, who is barred by the constitution from seeking a third term, launched what he called his Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) in cooperation with the opposition leader, Raila Odinga. BBI grew out of a March 2018 handshake agreement between the two men that ended several months of post-election violence in which dozens of Kenyans were killed
by police.

The agreement, however, ran into immediate opposition from minority parties and opposition figures who held that it permanently disadvantaged them by concentrating power in the hands of a small political elite. Five justices of the Kenyan Court of Appeals agreed with those opposing the law and struck it down in 2021 as unconstitutional. Kenyatta’s government appealed the decision but on March 31, 2022, the Kenyan Supreme Court upheld that portion of the lower court ruling blocking BBI. The Supreme Court did, however, overturn the lower court’s ruling that Kenyatta could be prosecuted as an individual for his actions in pushing BBI forward.

Too close to call

This election marks the first time that a Kikuyu has not been the front runner in Kenya’s presidential elections. Both candidates, however, have chosen a Kikuyu running mate in order to appeal to the Kikuyu, the largest voting bloc in the nation, accounting for over 17 percent of the country’s population. Ruto’s running mate, Rigathi Gachagua, a wealthy businessman, is a first-term parliamentarian and veteran political campaigner, while Odinga chose Martha Karua, a former justice minister who served in parliament for two decades. If Odinga is elected, Karua would become the first woman elected to the office of deputy president.

The outcome of the August election is still uncertain, with Odinga ahead in some polls while Ruto leads in others.

In addition to the general expectation of election-related violence that has plagued Kenyan elections for decades, both candidates face an array of challenges. Ruto, who opposed Kenyatta in 2007 and 2008 before becoming his deputy president in 2013, once again finds himself on the opposite side of the fence. 

Ruto now portrays himself as a leader out to end the domination of political dynasties such as the Kenyatta and the Odinga families which have dominated Kenyan politics since the country’s independence. This state of affairs could very well lead to rifts within the Jubilee Party if some of its members decide not to follow Kenyatta’s lead and could lead to dissension within Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement with some in his party unhappy with his rapprochement with his former arch-rival.

Ruto, along with Kenyatta, was indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity for their alleged roles in orchestrating post-election violence in 2007 that resulted in more than 1,000 people killed. The cases against the two collapsed, according to former chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, due to unrelenting victim and witness intimidation, which made a trial impossible.

The elections are plagued with the amplification of disinformation and hate speech on platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter. In the 2013 and 2017 elections, the current president used the services of Cambridge Analytica to rebrand his campaign, do public opinion polling, and even craft some of his campaign speeches, which some of his critics have described as divisive and contributing to ethnic conflict. Cambridge Analytica was criticized for its abuse of Facebook data in the 2016 US elections.

While the prospect of ethnic-related violence still looms large over the upcoming elections, analysts predict that the main issue will be economic reforms. Ethnic violence and corruption remain important issues because they negatively affect economic performance, but corruption is not likely to arise in campaigns because both of the top candidates are tainted by allegations of corruption. 

Political analyst Bobby Mkangi told the BBC that “corruption is no longer an issue. It seems to be our way of life and it has become hard to show a strong leader who is not tainted by corruption.”  Odinga’s selection of Martha Karua as his running mate, given her record as a consistent public voice against corruption, could make it at least a minor issue, but Mkangi’s pessimistic view seems to be shared by many in the country. (