By-elections lay bare troubling signals ahead of 2027 polls

Seth Panyako of Malava wept. He broke down and wailed frantically at a police station, in the forenoon of voting day, in the constituency where he had been billed the foremost runner. Voting had only begun, yet Panyako howled because, he said, someone wanted to take his life; and that the vote had already been stolen.

Elsewhere, in Nyanza, Homa Bay Town MP, Peter Kaluma, addressed the media in a blood-drenched shirt that he refrained from changing all day long. He was the victim of electoral violence, right in the polling centre where he was an accredited agent. Someone violently opened up his head with a stone or some other crude object. The lessons are stark. Kaluma is a systems man, a State siren. Where was his security detail?

Are these happenings the harbingers of things to come? Are Kenyans witnessing test cases ahead of the 2027 elections? If they are, has the country picked up any useful lessons from previous elections? Indeed, is Kenya moving towards 2027, or is it regressing to 2007? Is it re-enacting its history during the period 2005–2008?

In Lugari, which is next to Malava, a motor vehicle believed to belong to Eugene Wamalwa of the Democratic Action Party (DAP) Kenya, went up in flames in broad daylight, courtesy of arsonists. No authority raised a finger. Separately, gangsters forcefully broke into a hotel on the eve of the election. They were seemingly looking for Panyako. Not having found him, they destroyed motor cars and other property of unknown value. They then went out on the prowl for Panyako. 

In Kasipul, life was a daily drama of violence, even after the main actors had paid fines of Sh1 million each to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).

In Narok, former Deputy President, Rigathi Gachagua, addressed the public under a hailstorm of rocks.

And in Mbeere North, it was stones, fisticuffs, fire, and pandemonium every day.

Theatres of crime

With few exceptions, the 24 electoral areas in the by-elections were veritable theatres of crime. Bribery, violence, battery and affray, arson and murder, is an astute summary of the life-scale experience in these places in recent times.    

Some newspaper headlines have described these happenings as dress rehearsals for 2027. Whether Chairman Erastus Ethekon and his team on Monrovia Street know it or not, the just-concluded by-election was a pilot for the IEBC team, ahead of the 2027 general elections. The commission is holding Kenya’s volatile electoral tiger by the tail. And the giant wild cat is threatening to go gaga. One way or the other, IEBC is the one entity expected to tame this beast that could maul everybody. 

 The lessons from the by-election are not good at all. IEBC remains as fragile as it ever was; the State as powerful as always, with the National Government prancing about menacingly. And the competitive political landscape is hugely diminished, suffocated by a State that pays lip service to democracy. If the elections were a stress test, especially for IEBC and for the country’s security apparatus, the signals are worrying. 

At the heart of the stress test were the twin questions of the independence and efficiency of IEBC, and the Kenya Police. Can Kenyans look up to IEBC and the country’s security apparatus to deliver credible, free, fair and trouble-free general election in 2027, going by the standards that the by-elections have set? Can Ethekon and Inspector general of police Douglas Kanja, and their people, deliver Kenya’s competitive politics from evil, even as the State consciously steers the country towards temptation? 

On the face of it, the issue of winners in the ended by-elections is simple and easy to set aside, for now. President William Ruto’s United Democratic Alliance (UDA) and his new found friends, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), apparently did very well, regardless that it was by hook or crook. They strung together a number of key victories, essentially sweeping the boards clean in the six National Assembly seats, and the Baringo Senate seat. They also took away most of the county assembly seats. They, accordingly, stamped authority on the right to brag. They will no doubt be crowing loudly in the march to 2027. 

To give the devil his due, IEBC managed to announce the results within 24 hours, or thereabouts, at any rate. This is always a nightmare in much of Africa, where it sometimes takes weeks, even months, to be told the outcome of an election. Africans have set for themselves lower bars in everything in the global space of standards. They must believe themselves to be the children of a lesser god. We could say, therefore, that IEBC delivered the results on a credible scale. 

Yet, did IEBC fail in many other ways? Did it turn a blind eye to voter bribery, intimidation, and outright violence, for example? Did it give a slap on the wrist to offenders in Kasipul, while also doing absolutely nothing about illegalities and irregularities elsewhere? Did it ignore inflammatory speech and violent activities in Malava, Mbeere North, and in Magarini?

In all of these constituencies, the law took a back seat, with what can only be described as full acquiescence by IEBC. Cabinet Secretaries, with their Principal Secretaries and other top State operatives, gallivanted across the country, dabbling in active partisan politics, contrary to the Constitution. IEBC did not call them out, nor better still, restrain them as it ought to have done. They campaigned blatantly, and often menacingly, for UDA, ODM and Ford Kenya candidates. Prime CS, Musalia Mudavadi, received defectors in Malava. Cabinet Secretaries Hassan Joho, Wycliffe Oparanya, John Mbadi, Opiyo Wandayi, and Geoffrey Ruku, loomed large. The Speakers of Parliament, Moses Wetang’ula (National Assembly) and Amason Kingi (Senate) cast off etiquette, to embark on base partisan campaigns. To safeguard Kenya from contempt for the law, and from Armageddon, IEBC will learn to bite; even to bite the big boys.  

The commission may need to learn not only how to reprimand reprobates, but also how to pre-empt future breaches through punitive examples. When arsonists go scot-free, and killers roam the countryside unabated, the country moves closer to ruin. IEBC will learn to demonstrate that it has the necessary diamonds to deal with lawbreakers, no matter who they may be. The burning of election materials and a polling centre could, for example, lead to cancellation of elections in the offending constituency. And when the offence is traced to a particular candidate, they should be excluded from the poll, and further appropriate action commenced against them. 

Yet, all this is easier said than done, for IEBC continued to behave like an entity that was reading the lips of the National Executive. Mbeere North was under military-like deployments, complete with armoured personnel carriers. Sinister vehicles, without number plates, roved about the place with abandon. That kind of environment does not make for free and fair elections. It, instead, generates fear and resentment. Bottled up over time,  fear and resentment gave way to the 2007/2008 post-election violence, when some regions in the country perceived the presidential poll as having been rigged. 

Has the by-election revealed political thirst for a replay of the country’s tragic electoral past? Throughout the campaigns, President Ruto returned to his favourite refrain of tribalism. His petitions to voters to shun tribalists rang with the echo of 2007. He sounded exactly the same as he did in 2007, ahead of the tragic elections and their aftermath. Occasionally, the self-same words of “so many tribes against so many” were replayed by some of the less subtle politicos in Kenya Kwanza. 

The sense of déjà vu was overwhelming. It is the sorry kind of message that other authorities, besides IEBC, need to nip in the bud. Arm-in-arm with IEBC here, is the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), whose distinction to fame is mostly sleeping on the job. This commission will only wake up from its slumbers to bully the political Opposition, before returning to sleep. It is especially in deep sleep when the State and its agents are the offending parties. A lot of inflammatory remarks came from UDA legislators, but went completely unnoticed by both IEBC and the sleepy NCIC. 

Same old

It is instructive that the casts in the 2007 drama have largely been reconstituted, complete with the mutual hostility that informed relations between the two competing camps. And some of the actors remain the same. While they are almost two decades older, they have not seemed to become any wiser. Nor has Kenya appeared to have taken any lessons from its ugly brush with the International Criminal Court (ICC)  nearly two decades ago. There has been little growth, little development.

Once Raila Odinga’s chief mobilizer, President Ruto is today the glorious star before whom the rest bow in obeisance and oblation. Inflammatory remarks are made in public, largely with the intent to grab the attention of Ruto; the one man who now holds the carrot and the knife.

Raila Odinga, although no longer around, left his loyal political networks flowing toward Ruto, through negotiations whose details remain largely unclear. That centre is holding, however, as Kenya slouches backwards to 2007, to be reborn. 

President Ruto is evocative of  the pivotal all–powerful being in W.B. Yeats’ famous poem, “The Second Coming”.  As he slowly moves his limbs and the nation towards Bethlehem for his desired second coming, familiar  “shadows of indignant desert birds circle him.” Musalia Mudavadi was Raila’s sidekick in 2007. 

Today, he still occupies a crucial position as he did in the electoral drama eighteen years ago. The only difference is the different commander to whom he reports. Other elite players from that troubled past are in the Ruto Cabinet, courtesy of the broad-based accord that the President entered into with the late Raila Odinga, last year. While the recycling of this political elite is not necessarily synonymous with the destabilizing drama of 2007/2008, the reproduction of the same political logic of 2007 as its campaign clarion call is unnerving. 

Equally unnerving are its methods. The recycled Ruto-Mudavadi-Raila Axis has personalized loyalties around President Ruto, instead of the Kenyan nation and its institutions. Accordingly, the law and the Constitution are the foremost institutions to take a beating from the Axis. State resources have been mobilized for election campaigns, against the law. The UDA campaigns were mounted under the guise of “launching” and “inspecting” Kenya Kwanza government projects. This was a perverted cleverness that slapped the Constitution squarely in the face. 

Bragging rights

Equally important, as violence went unpunished, the Axis even bragged about it. Apart from vandalism, arson, and beating up of opponents, the State also exercised structural violence against Opposition chiefs, by withdrawing their security.

Interior CS, Kipchumba Murkomen, explained that the recalled officers had “participated in criminal activities,” hence their being recalled. The law would usually have such persons not recalled, but rather arrested and arraigned in court.

The Opposition chiefs, for their part, would have security replacements. Walking towards 2027, the State will probably want to resist the temptation to blackmail the Opposition through withdrawal of their security personnel. Such blackmail has in the past encouraged the Opposition to look for lethal private alternatives that have not always boded well for public security. 

In 2007, Social media was a fledgling, looking for wings to fly. Yet, according to the Philip Waki Commission Report on the post-election violence, it did a lot of harm. Today it has come of age. It is a ubiquitous full-fledged entity. It has huge speed and massive capacity for deep fakes and unbridled propaganda. Both sides of the political divide have demonstrated just how devilishly social media could be employed in politics. While Kenya is not necessarily doomed to repeat 2007, she is not immune either. Her derailment in 2007/2008 began not with guns, but with words. The temperature of rhetoric through social media is going to matter a great deal, once again, going forward. The political elite, beginning with the topmost politician in the country, will especially need to be measured in its words and deeds. 

One key question remains in this Digital Age. How could social media be employed in a healthy manner, to advance democracy, rather than to curtail, or even defeat it? While pondering this challenge, the State will, especially, want to resist the temptation to limit the availability of social media platforms. Examples from elsewhere in Africa demonstrate that this can be completely untidy, and counterproductive. 

As the winners in the ended by-elections make merry and the  losers lick their wounds, Kenya will do well to reflect on whether she is marching forward to 2027, or whether she has engaged the reverse gear, for a 2007 rematch. For the centre to hold, IEBC, NCIC and the Kenya Police must wake up to the true constitutional call of duty. The ended by-election ranks them poorly. If the pass mark was 4 out of 10, they did not make the grade. It is an indication that they don’t know whom they serve. The Kenyan nation, or a partisan National Executive. And for this, they could roll the nation backwards to 2007, rather than help us towards a propitious 2027. They will need to step up to the plate.