Kenya's Biggest Electoral Problem? Not Solving Electoral Problems.

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth famously declared 1992 an “annus horribilis”, one which, she said, she wouldn’t look back with undiluted pleasure. For many around the world, 2016 has similarly turned out to be a horrible year. From the deaths of several pop culture icons; to the millions forced to flee senseless killing and destruction in the middle east; to the political earthquakes that were the Brexit vote in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the UK, 2016 has been one for the books.

For Kenyans, the year is ending largely as it begun: in uncertainty, fear and with a sense of foreboding.

We were barely through the second week of January when reports begun filtering through of an attack on Kenyan forces serving in an obscure centre somewhere in south western Somalia. El Adde would soon become one of the most familiar Somali place names in the country as the true scale of the tragedy unfolded, despite the government’s best efforts to hide it. With between 140 and 200 Kenyan soldiers slaughtered by the Al Shabaab terror group and another dozen taken prisoner, it was Kenya’s largest military defeat and made a mockery of the claim to being one of the continent’s most effective armies. Following the incompetence and malfeasance on show during the Westgate Mall attack in 2013 and in Mpeketoni and Garissa University thereafter, El Adde was the final nail in the coffin of the Kenya Defence Forces vaunted reputation.

In the final weeks of the year, the air has been thick with more fears, this time of a distinctly homegrown variety. The long-simmering dispute between ruling party politicians and their counterparts in the opposition coalition over the ground rules for next year’s general election has once again burst out into the open. The ugly scenes and reports of fisticuffs in the National Assembly that accompanied the passage of the amendments to the Elections Act as well as the opposition threat to renew their campaign of street protest have raised temperatures and the potential for politically-instigated violence across the country in 2017.

On the face of it, these two situations couldn’t be more different. However, a deeper examination reveals that they spring from the same root: namely the Kenyan penchant for ignoring and postponing problems rather than confronting and resolving them.

At least since Westgate, it had been clear that there was something seriously wrong with how the Kenya Defence Forces conducted operations. And every year since has brought more cause for concern. Yet, whether it is accusations of being engaged in the smuggling sugar into Kenya and charcoal out of Somalia or allegations of indiscriminate shelling of civilian villages both inside and outside Kenya, or of bungled responses to terror attacks, the response has been either denial or a deafening silence. There have been no attempts to hold the military top brass to account for the many failures or, at least publicly, to understand and eliminate the reasons for them. What a senior police officer told the Nation is probably true of the military: “The police service has basically learnt nothing from Westgate, Garissa, Mpeketoni and others.”

Similarly, it has been clear, since the 2013 general election, that there were many serious flaws in the country’s electoral system. From the fact that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission did not know how many voters it had registered, to the preponderance of voter registers, the frozen screens at national tallying centres and the admission by one Justice that the Supreme Court might have ruled differently given more time, the signs of systemic failure were clear.

Yet for nearly three years there were no demands for a comprehensive and independent audit of the system to identify and fix the problems. Instead, as the current furore over the electoral law demonstrates, we have allowed the politicians to hijack the discourse of reform, just as they did in 1997. That, unfortunately, did not turn out well a decade later.

The amendments to the Elections Act passed earlier this year following the street demonstrations initiated by the opposition, mandated that the elections be run on an integrated electronic system, defined as "including “biometric voter registration, biometric voter identification and electronic result transmission system”, which the IEBC was meant to have put in place by December. That has not happened. And so even the current standoff over whether there should be a back up to the electronic system is somewhat moot as there is nothing to back up. 

Yet all parties keep declaring their commitment and fidelity to the electronic system. Even the Jubilee cohorts pushing for a manual back up, keep saying that it would only be needed in case the (non-existent) electronic system breaks down. The truth is, it is all theatre. It is all for show. Instead of dealing with the real issues, the furore is about obscuring them. It is about keeping us focused on the problems of our politicians, not our own.

Nine years ago, Kenya was nearly dissolved in an orgy of killing and destruction that followed a bungled election. The stage for that catastrophe was set a decade earlier when we allowed the push for comprehensive electoral reform to be hijacked by the political class under the banner of the Inter Parties Parliamentary Group. In the end, the IPPG only put a band aid on our gaping electoral wound which was callously ripped off by Mwai Kibaki when he tore up its “gentleman’s agreement” in 2007.

Not fixing our problems is what has landed us in the trouble we are currently in. And if we hope to ensure 2017 is more annus mirabilis than annus horribilis, then that is a habit we must break.

What We Must Make Uhuru Kenyatta Do

“What do you want me to do?”

With that statement, two weeks ago President Uhuru Kenyatta seemed to throw his hands up in resignation. The most powerful man in the land claiming to be powerless in the face of the rampant stealing of public resources that has now become the hallmark of his administration.

It surely does seem that everything the Jubilee administration touches turns to loot. Few of the projects it has initiated over the last 43 months -from laptops for schoolkids to the Standard Gauge Railway to the free maternity programme- have escaped the reek of corruption. Anti-corruption crusader, John Githongo, says it is “by far the most corrupt government in our history”.

And he should know. As head of the Office of Governance and Ethics. he famously blew the lid off the Angloleasing scandal, which annihilated the Mwai Kibaki regime’s anti-graft credentials and earned him death threats and exile. Few will have forgotten how in 2004 the then British High Commissioner, Edward Clay, described the gluttonous Kibaki acolytes as “vomit[ing] all over our shoes”.

It is all so very different from the euphoria that accompanied Kibaki’s electoral triumph and assumption of office a year earlier. Then, it seemed, Kenya was well on the way to slaying the proverbial corruption dragon. Kibaki and his National Rainbow Coalition allies, including Raila Odinga, had built their campaign on an unabashedly anti-corruption platform, promising to end the plunder the country had experienced under his predecessors, Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi.

Their campaign against Moi’s “project” to install Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor, brought together many of the leading lights of the decades-long agitation against the KANU dictatorship (and not a few opportunistic politicians). Their sweeping victory raised expectations for change to stratospheric levels. Imbued with the belief that all was possible, that they were “unbwogable”, Kenyans were arresting corrupt policemen on the street and expecting their new government to start doing the same to corrupt politicians.

However, the revelations of continuing theft in high place coupled with the de facto immunity afforded to Nyayo era thieves, would bring such hope crashing down to earth. And there seems no end to the hangover from those euphoric days, each election has bought a government more corrupt than the last.

How did we come to this?

In their insightful book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson identify the nature of a country’s institutions, whether extractive or inclusive, as the primary determinant of its success. But unlike Kenya, where we equate institutions to an alphabet soup of organisations, Acemoglu and Robinson describe institutions as simply the rules, written and unwritten, that influence how systems work. Countries where such rules encourage participation by the masses, distribute political power broadly and subject it to constraint will tend to be successful whereas, as Kenyans can attest to from experience, those where the distribution of power is narrow and unconstrained will end up with systems geared to enrich a powerful few at the expense of the rest.

The primary reason why Kenya’s war against corruption remains little more than words on paper is because we are focused on changing personalities and organisations rather than the rules, or institutions, that underpin the system we inherited from the British colonials. In 1963 it was all about getting rid of the “colonial masters”. Half a century later, it was all about “Moi must go”. As the report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission demonstrated, the rules of the game remained mostly unchanged. The government still functioned as a vehicle of plunder, with the only difference being that in place of white oppressors, we had black ones.

The inauguration of a new constitution in 2010 was the first real effort to address this system but here again, form is triumphing over substance. The fact of its passage continues to be hailed as a success (and it is) even as its spirit is crushed. Nominally independent institutions, such as the police and the Director of Public Prosecutions, remain, for all intents and purposes, subservient to the Presidential whim. Parliament, too, is little more than a lackey for the executive. The political sphere still largely excludes participation by most citizens in everyday governance while continuing to be the dominant influence over their lives. Impunity for wielders of political power is still the norm.

Passing the new constitution was just a necessary first step. As at independence, the real work lies in its implementation and in overthrowing the authoritarian substructure of the state to fit the aspirations the document espouses. This is where we are failing. The exclusive focus on prosecutions and convictions (which are necessary) sadly elides this.

It is true that the constitution limits the role of the President in punishing offenders. But this is not the problem. Where the President has been largely absent is in articulating and leading the necessary reform to ensure that the state delivers the system that the constitution he swore to uphold envisages. 

That, Mr President, is what we want you to do.

In the end, however, it is up to the people to insist that their politicians respect the rules and values espoused by the constitution. It is up to us to insist that accountability and transparency rather than secrecy and impunity become the hallmarks of how the public business is conducted. It is up to us to change the political calculus that the Uhuru administration makes.

John Githongo is wrong when he says “the era of fighting graft using public policy reform and technical fixes has ended.” We still need to think through how we make the system work for the masses of the people, and not just for a small elite. But he is right when he says it requires political will. Only what matters is not political will on the part of Uhuru Kenyatta but rather the political will of the Kenyan citizenry to hold him to account.

No More Partying At State House

Earlier this week, President Uhuru Kenyatta summoned the press corps to State House to relay a message to the nation. However, he was addressing Kenyans, not in his capacity as the country’s CEO, but as a leader of one of 14 political parties affiliated with the Jubilee coalition.  The big news was, of course, that the parties had agreed to merge.

The choice of State House, the seat of the Presidency, as venue for what is plainly a partisan event was alarming. The constitution describes the President as “a symbol of national unity” but Kenyatta appears to be stretching the limits of this beyond what is acceptable. Party unity, even within the governing coalition, is clearly not national unity.

On the contrary, what the event highlighted is the creeping capture of the state by the party and the blurring of the lines between the two. And this is just the latest episode. The frequent and unseemly exchanges between the opposition Coalition for Reform and Democracy on the one hand and the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit on the other are legendary. They aptly demonstrate the latter's propensity to see themselves as more than just as civil servants working within the Presidency, but also as partisan agents of the Jubilee coalition.

One could also point to the curious case of Interior Secretary, Gen (RT) Joseph Nkaissery. I8 months ago, he was an opposition MP, having been elected on an Orange Democratic Movement ticket in 2013. Yet following his appointment to the Cabinet, he has been traipsing around his former constituency, pretending to be a member of the Jubilee coalition. So far, it seems, no one has asked whether he resigned his membership of ODM. It is almost taken for granted that going into cabinet automatically translates into joining Jubilee.

But why should this be of concern? Some on social media have suggested that the raging questions over the use of state assets were little more than just a storm in a teacup, a petty fuss over the use of microphones and presidential daises.  However, such thinking is dangerously ignorant of the lessons of Kenyan history. One of the reasons why the State House event left a bad taste in the mouth is the memory of the consequences of the fusion of the party and the state during the KANU era. That merger, which begun in the 60s under Uhuru Kenyatta's father and was completed under his successor, Daniel Arap Moi, was the foundation for a half century of abuses. As loyalties within government were steered away from serving the people and towards the party and its leadership, the state itself and the goods it held in trust for the people of Kenya were transformed into the personal property of the President.

In a very real sense, the cult of personality and the concentration of power in the person of the President that was engendered by Jomo Kenyatta, Moi and to a lesser extent, Mwai Kibaki, was essentially built on this fusion of party and state. Its legacy lives in the present day, when even nominally independent officials are loathe to go against the governing party line. The clearly partisan behavior of the police is a good example.

Further, as they say, the fish rots from the head. Other public officials will take their cue from the President. During the Al Shabaab attack on Garissa University, in which 148 people were killed, the elite GSU Recce Company was delayed in Nairobi as the police plane had apparently gone to Mombasa to fetch relatives of the Airwing commandant.

Separating the President’s personal and party affairs from that of the people is therefore no fickle matter. When asked about the appropriateness of hosting partisan political functions at State House, the President’s men are wont to point at US President Barack Obama's similar use of the White House. But while true, they neglect to mention that his party actually pays the US Treasury for the privilege, just as Obama pays for the daily meals, groceries and toiletries that he and his family get and use at the White House. Further, federal law prohibits federal employees and even elected representatives, admittedly excluding the President and Vice President, from conducting partisan business such as making fundraising phone calls, inside government buildings.

The Americans are certainly clear about the privileges their potentates are entitled to and go to great lengths to ensure public resources are not expended on party business. It is time we in Kenya followed suit.

Kenya's Politics Of Crises and Forgetting

Earlier this week, on the eve of Madaraka Day, history paid Kenya another visit. Online photos of CORD principals, Raila Odinga and Moses Wetangula in a jovial meeting with President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy, William Ruto, at State House, Nairobi caused a bit of a stir. But it shouldn’t have. As I explained last week, we have been here before.

Political crises have been a near-constant feature of Kenya’s post-colonial history, and especially since the agitation for electoral and constitutional reform began in the 1980s. Politicians have perfected the art of taking the country to the brink of the abyss of violence and anarchy and pulling back at the last minute.  It is a callous calculation, where violence and death are used as negotiating tools. If, as Carl von Clausewitz asserted, “war is the continuation of politics by other means” in Kenya, crises and bloodshed signal not a breakdown of the political process, but how it is inaugurated.

The script is always the same: Opposition demands talks on reform or a redress of grievance. The government refuses. Demagogues on both sides polarize public opinion, mostly along ethnic lines. With few options, the opposition appeals to the street to force the government to give in. The street demonstrations are met with police violence and after enough Kenyans have bled and died, the government gives in and agrees to talks.

This is politics reduced to a staring contest, where the goal is not to avoid crises but to ignite them. It is a politics that is managed via crisis, in which Kenyan citizens are not the end, but as the means of contestation. It is a politics obsessed with the problems and welfare of politicians, not so much those of the people who are reduced to pawns in a game of elites.

There is no true animosity between the main protagonists, despite the hateful rhetoric employed to galvanize their supporters. In the end, the politicians remain friends and business colleagues and country club mates. The politics they have created and perfected eschews permanence and commitment, whether to principles, policies, friends or enemies. The only defining characteristic is ambition.

Of necessity, in rejecting permanence, it also rejects history. Who, after all, wants to be reminded of their hypocrisies? Or that their current BFF was the declared mortal enemy of all Kenyans in the last election cycle? In kowtowing to the politicians, Kenyan media also reflects much of this aversion to history and context. Political events and crises thus seem to spring out of nowhere, without history or context, and just as quickly disappear into nothingness without actual resolution once the politicians have gotten together to rearrange their seats at the table.

This is what is happening with the current dispute over the fate of the IEBC commissioners. Despite the fiasco witnessed in the 2013 election, there has been little discussion about it in the last three years. Neither the opposition nor the government have shown much interest in addressing the failures witnessed during the election or the problems highlighted by the subsequent petitions filed against the 2013 results, especially the petitions against the Presidential poll. Now, with just over a year to the election, precipitating a crisis appears the only means our politicians can imagine to address the issue.

Historical amnesia is apparent in the way they have proposed to drive the talks forward. Apparently, a deal has been reached in which each side will nominate five people to a 10-member committee, composed solely of Parliamentarians, to conduct the talks. This would be little more than a resurrection of the 1997 Inter Parties Parliamentary Group process which, as I discussed last week, then President Daniel Arap Moi used to blunt the push for reform by excluding all other interested players, especially those from civil society.

So today, as the country breathes a sigh of relief, the politicians have put yet another one over us. Once again they have successfully gotten us to bleed over their problems and ignore our own. No wonder they seemed so giddy at their State House get-together.

Why This Is Not An IPPG Moment

Kenya today finds itself in the throes of a crisis. In the run up to next year’s scheduled general election, weekly opposition protests and the subsequent brutal crackdown, have deeply polarized the country and left at least three people dead and many others, including police officers, wounded. Though now suspended, a threat to restart the demonstrations if dialogue doesn’t happen still hangs in the air. But beyond the rhetoric, the teargas and the scenes of bloody confrontation, this is above all a crisis of memory and imagination.

We have been here before.  Almost every election in the multiparty era has been preceded by protests and demands for reform. The contestation has mainly been about two questions: the rules governing elections; and who sets and administers them. The latter question is the immediate spark for the current weekly demonstrations with demands for the reconstitution of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. However, in the background, and sadly barely mentioned, lurks the even more critical issue of wider reforms to the electoral system.

Nearly two decades ago, as the country prepared for another election, near identical scenes of protest over the composition of the then Electoral Commission of Kenya elicited a vicious response from the Nyayo government led to the deaths of 13 protesters on Saba Saba day in 1997 and the formation of the Inter Parties Parliamentary Group which negotiated a raft of reforms. These allowed the country to proceed to the polls later that year.

In our collective memory, the IPPG process was as a seminal moment during which the autocratic President Daniel Arap Moi was forced to accede to the people’s demand for change. George Kegoro, in March described it as “an elite platform that Kenyan political actors and civil society crafted in 1997 to save the country from the disaster that might have resulted from a threatened opposition boycott of the General Election of that year”. 

There are many parallels with today’s impasse including the threat by the opposition Coalition for Reforms and Democracy to boycott the 2017 elections if the IEBC is not replaced. Given that, many are citing the IPPG as a model for resolution. “It is time for another IPPG-like moment in Kenya,” as Mr Kegoro presciently wrote. The insistence by the governing Jubilee coalition and its supporters that Parliament is the appropriate forum for resolving the dispute can also be seen in this light.

However, this telling ignores a few inconvenient facts of history. The IPPG was not crafted by the opposition ad civil society to save Kenya. On the contrary, it was, as Rok Ajulu described in the New England Journal of Public Policy, “a KANU platform … designed to blunt the impact of the reform agenda of the opposition and its allies in the National Convention Executive Council [the civil society coalition that had spearheaded demands for change].” The NCEC correctly saw the IPPG as a tool “to cool the fire raised by the … the demands of the country for electoral reform, and in the process to legitimise the Moi re-election machine," and opposed it.

While the IPPG achieved some reforms, including allowing the opposition a role in appointing ECK commissioners, it was ultimately betrayed and many of the negotiated reforms were not enacted into law following the early dissolution of Parliament. Moi’s successor as President, Mwai Kibaki, would a decade later rubbish the very agreement he had had a hand in negotiating as a non-binding “gentleman’s agreement” and ignore it when appointing ECK commissioners, fatally undermining the ECK’s credibility and setting the country on the path to the 2008 post-election crisis.

Many of the arguments we hear from government types today in favour of a Parliamentary process are a rehash of Moi’s justification for using Parliament, the “legitimate representative of the people” as a means to exclude the citizenry. They highlight the question at the heart of the push for constitutional transformation which, despite the 2010 constitution, we have failed to resolve: Is reform to be a people-driven or state-driven process?

 This is evident in the continuing delegitimization of the street as a proper avenue for political participation and the idea that state institutions are the only acceptable forums for political negotiations. We see it when Boniface Mwangi’s peaceful demonstrations are violently dispersed and hear it when the government attempts to arrogate to itself the power to determine where and when protests can happen.

It is this collective failure to imagine alternative spaces where national questions can be debated and resolved by inclusive collections of wananchi, and not just by politicians or public officials, that is at the root of many of the state’s current legitimacy problems. Sadly, our political processes continue to be more concerned with solving the problems of politicians rather than those of the people.

Going forward, we must insist that any talks on fixing the electoral system not be sequestered in Parliament or participation limited to politicians. This is Kenya’s problem, not Raila Odinga’s or Uhuru Kenyatta’s. We must demand an inclusive national dialogue involving a wide array of stakeholders, including organized civil society and academics. These groups were major drivers for the 1997 “No Reforms, No Election” movement that was locked out of Moi’s IPPG talks. It is time they helped us finish what they started.

The Past Is Never Dead

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” William Faulkner famously wrote in Requiem for a Nun. Over the last week, the truth of that phrase has been reconfirmed in Kenya. Six years ago, the country was almost dissolved in an orgy of bloodletting. Two years later, we inaugurated a new constitution meant to ensure that never happened again. Today, however, the ruling elite is busy recreating the very conditions that led to the violence and making a mockery of the aspirations of millions of our citizens.

It seemed oh so different just over a decade ago, when we thought we were “Unbwogable” and “Yote yawezekana bila Moi”. At the time, as we approached the 2002 general election, everything truly seemed possible and the future was full of promise, not fear. In a very real sense, we were leaving the humiliation, self-doubt, failure, corruption and violence in the past where it belonged, and moving on. 

Sadly though, the past was not through with us. It refused to die. Within months, the politics of ethnicity and corruption would resurface and in five years, we would be at each others’ throat. By 2013, we were most definitely a “bwogable” nation, scared of the thoughts in our own heads and terrified of the future; seeking solace and safety in the very people responsible for taking us to the brink in 2008. 

The past is still not through with us. Last week, we heard the same grumblings about the ethnic preferences characterising presidential appointments that heralded the unravelling of the NARC coalition a decade ago. The same ghost of corruption that haunted NARC from early on is rarely far from nearly every policy proposal made by the Jubilee government. The traditional victimisation and collective punishment of the Somali and Muslim communities is today presented as counter-terrorism policy. 

The imperial presidency has also made a comeback, not only with the unilateral move by President Uhuru Kenyatta to increase the powers of county commissioners but also, apparently, his own to agree security deals worth nearly Kshs. 15 billion to increase its surveillance of Kenyans without seeking Parliamentary approval. He as well chose to ignore the protestations of Parliament and the advice of the Auditor-General and unilaterally authorize the payment of over Kshs. 1 billion to briefcase companies in deals he himself, as leader of the opposition in 2006, had declared to be illegal. 

The past isn’t dead. It refuses to be buried under constitutions that exist on paper but not in hearts. It will not be drowned out by the statements of a government that prefers rhetoric to action. It is not even past but expressed when those close to power can openly discuss the murder of an inconvenient blogger and incite violence against certain communities without fear of prosecution. When the President promises yet more investigations into the AngloLeasing scams while ignoring the Kroll report, which details where the country’s thieving elite has stashed away its ill-gotten gains, and that of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission which offers us a way to begin addressing the decades of state persecution of the citizenry. When his administration presents a budget which allocates more money for his wife’s “hospitality” than to the entire Anti-Terrorism Police Unit and when it refuses to prosecute the poaching kingpins behind the devastation being wrought on our wildlife today. 

We have spent over a decade trying to outrun the past, to ignore it, to hide from it or to hide it. None of that has worked, nor was it ever likely to. The past is something we must acknowledge as being the stuff of the present. “What’s past is prologue,” wrote Shakespeare and if we do not begin to confront it, it will also be the stuff of our future. It should be clear that as the very conditions of ethnic polarization, concentration of power, inequality and impoverishment that led to the violence in 2008 are re-established they can only bring about similar results. If we are to get off the cycle of polarization, corruption, poverty and violence, we must learn to do things differently. 

Face up to the past instead of trying to escape it. Perhaps instead of ignoring corruption, we decide to do something about it. Instead of victimising innocents, we try to understand our vulnerabilities to terrorism and to improve the capabilities of our security forces to investigate and prosecute the real attackers. Maybe we try to implement the reports that we commission, to enforce the laws that we pass and to implement, not just the letter, but more importantly, the spirit of our constitution. 

A major theme of Faulkner's, according to Gene Andrew Jarrett, Professor and Chair of the English Department at Boston University, is that “the life of the past in the present and in the future has often been a curse, often too difficult to defeat in one blow." A single act, such as passing a constitution or voting out (or in) a particular leader, is thus unlikely to exorcise our demons. However, if we consistently choose to learn from the past instead of running from it, and resist the temptation to indulge our elites in return for the promise of a temporary safety, we can then have a realistic chance of not repeating it.

From Russia With Love: Lessons For Kenya From The Ukraine Crisis

This week, Kenya will mark the first anniversary of the controversial elections that brought the Jubilee government into power. To many, those elections, and the manner  in which the country's affairs have been managed since, left a bitter taste in the mouth, and were a betrayal of the 2010 constitution and the more than two-decade long fight for political and economic justice.

On the other side of the world, in the Ukraine, a thieving tyrant has just been been deposed and a mobilization for war is under way. The events happening thousands of kilometers away in a part of the world few of us know about and even fewer have actually visited, carry important consequences and lessons for us here.

A very brief outline of events: Ukraine has seen off and on political crises and revolutions for close to a decade with the main sticking point being whether it will remain in Russia's sphere of influence or move westward.The country is ethnically divided and split down the middle on the issue. The current crisis was sparked by President Viktor Yanukovich's decision to abandon a trade agreement with the EU, and seek closer ties with Moscow. This precipitated three months of demonstrations in the capital, draconian anti-protest laws, occupation of government buildings and street clashes in which over a hundred demonstrators died. At the end of it all, Yanukovich had been stripped of the Presidency and had fled to Russian, a new pro-Western government had been formed and Russian troops had invaded the province of Crimea amid talk of, and mobilization for, war.

Predictably, the West has reacted with howls of outrage at Moscow's actions, cancelled a meeting with Moscow and done little else. If it came to a fight with Russia, it is abundantly clear that the Ukraine would be on its own. There may be talk of economic sanctions, perhaps asset freezes and visa bans, but the  fact is Russia will probably escape with little more than a pat of the hand courtesy of it's nukes and the West's hypocritical "morality of the hedge-fund."

What does this mean for us? The main lesson that our elites will undoubtedly draw is one of Western hypocrisy and weakness. This will reinforce the idea that despite its rhetoric, the West is not much more than a paper tiger and, when push comes to shove, will quickly abandon hifalutin principles and allies. Above all, realpolitik rules.

It has not been a good year for Western prestige, having been forced to swallow its words on the consequences of Kenyans electing indictees of the International Criminal Court to the highest office in the land as well as having to back down on the issue of presidential impunity. A crackdown on homosexual rights across the continent is also being painted as a thumbing of the nose to the Occidentals.

On the other hand, the Easterners, particularly the Russians and the Chinese, are increasingly being seen as viable patrons, powerful, flush with cash, if not exactly moneyed populations, and who will not ask too many uncomfortable questions about the uses to which their money is actually put. Since no one really believes in communism anymore, least of all the self proclaimed communists, there's little danger of ideology intruding into relations.

For the rest of  us, a resurgence of East-West rivalry will also mean that they all once again needs allies. As was the case with the war on terrorism, countries that were on the brink of becoming irrelevant are once again becoming "strategic." That was the designation craved by elites but that meant doom for many African countries during the Cold War, that turned them into arenas of perpetual misery and conflict as unaccountable elites essentially were let loose to loot, murder and maim in the service of either side. Words like transparency and accountability and democracy were emptied of all meaning. Today's do-gooder West was not only providing safe havens for ill-gotten wealth but financing coups against legitimately elected governments, propping up genocidal dictatorships and kleptocracies.

Thus the stage is set for a return to the heady days of independence when African rulers faced few international constraints in their dealings with their populations. In Kenya, we have already seen moves towards consolidation of state power and silencing of dissent. Laws clamping down on media independence and threatening the viability of civil society organisations have already been mooted and the former actually passed. Government propaganda rules the airwaves, courts are routinely ignored and corruption and the theft of public resources are once again a way of life.

As in the 60s, we are today urged to sing the praises of our government and its leaders; to stay silent; to keep the rot hidden; that dissent is somehow unpatriotic; to forget how the dreams of "development" and social justice floundered on the rocks of sycophancy and a wilful ignorance. We are being lulled into a false sense of security.

Yet,, as we cast our eyes at Ukraine,  it is important we realize that no one will come riding to our rescue. Like them, we will ultimately be alone in the fight against the oppressions and predations of the big brother in State House. And, therefore, we need to mobilize. We need to form alliances and create platforms and forums where the dangers can be articulated to the society.

Like the Ukraine, Kenya has seen a political revolution betrayed by greedy elites. If we do not stand up to them today, if we do not insist on accountability, then their promises of "development" tomorrow will be so much ash in our mouths. We've rid ourselves of a thieving tyrant once before and we can do it again. The question we really need to ask ourselves is whether we are truly ready to play our part in demanding that Kenya is run for the benefit of all Kenyans, not just for those who can afford to steal elections.

Chasing Shadows

It's a one horse race to the finish!

Irregular Delivery

Who needs brains?

Knots Landing?

The Dim Team