We’re on rough patch but resilient Kenya must rise from the ashes

Kenyans have never experienced anything like the last 60 days that culminates in today’s repeat presidential elections. In those days, emotions see-sawed from pride and confidence in our budding democracy, to despair and trepidation with the political class.

The Jubilee Party and National Super Alliance, the main contenders in the election, tried so much to outwit each other disrupting our normal way of doing things.

Matters were not helped either because the chattering classes fell over themselves as they gave varying interpretations of what the nullification of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s win in the August 8 election meant or what the belated withdrawal of Raila Odinga (the petitioner) signify.

Truly, Kenya’s politics had entered unchartered waters and there was no telling how it would all end. Thankfully, the outbreak of violence that was feared did not happen. But what is sure is that those events have changed the way we view our politics and our institutions. It has also put us on a path of an uncertain future, with the likelihood we have come out a more divided nation.

In many ways, today’s election is a win as much as it is a loss of sorts. It is a win for the rule of law and respect for the separation of powers - a key pillar of the 2010 Constitution. It is a loss because the withdrawal of Mr Odinga who has thrice come second in equally hotly contested elections means Kenyans will be denied a real alternative; it also means those Kenyans who are unhappy with Jubilee’s shortcomings will have to wait another five years unless something drastic happens after this election, especially at the Supreme Court level. It is doubtful that both parties have engaged in a good campaign. Perhaps realising that it was foolhardy to make the repeat elections a referendum on the Judiciary for giving an unfavourable ruling, Jubilee changed tack midstream.

But just like NASA, they waged a campaign that was heavy in propaganda and calumny and thin on substance. Quite ironically, the Jubilee Party chose not to go after those who were fingered as having messed the vote- the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. That gave the NASA brigade all the reason to believe that the ruling coalition was party to the mischief. The elections have also highlighted the false hopes in the international community-particularly the West- to force the hand of politicians to put the country first before self. That they couldn’t get Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga to sit down and talk is quite disappointing. This newspaper has insisted that the problem was never legal, but rather political. Western diplomats’ outrage at the blatant human rights abuse and the open incitement to violence has been hedged with too much caution smacking of cowardice. Indeed, it is unconscionable that the forces that have propped up democracy across the world seemed weak and unwilling about the Kenya situation.

The country is poorer for all that because Kenyans deserve better.

Because to many, today’s act is a democratic charade with Mr Kenyatta certainly poised to win. What matters next is what the president-elect will do with his new (some would say flawed) mandate. But it could also be a ghastly harbinger of things to come as NASA will suddenly sustain protests, demand a fresh election and (or) go back to the Supreme Court.

Needless to say, the elections have brought out the worst in our society. In the final analysis, the hallmarks of the 2017 elections will be primitive prejudice, victimhood, intolerance, hypocrisy and mendacity never seen before. The lack of moral indignation in the death or misfortune of a fellow compatriot marked the lowest we have sunk. Indeed, many Kenyans have wearied of politics and politicians and would love to see the end of electioneering.

But then the hard questions never go away: What does an election in which a contender who got more than 6 million votes stays away, portend for our democracy and the state of our union as a country? And what about the increasingly repressive, intolerant and iron-fisted security machinery firing volleys at unharmed protestors?

Kenya’s resilience has been tested before. No doubt, we came out stronger. This election will not break it.

Hopefully in the fullness of time, broken relationships will be repaired; dashed hopes, calmed, our hapless politics will become cleaner and most importantly; the belief in one another as a people with one shared destiny firmly restored.