Why Matiang'i must stop breathing fire, embrace openness on security matters

Acting Cabinet Secretary for Interior, Fred Matiang’i, has been abruptly thrown into the deep end of national security. And he has arrived screaming and threatening all and sundry, especially the Opposition. Dr Matiang’i will do well to realise he is swimming in uncharted waters.

The Education CS is dealing with a different and volatile constituency. He is not involved with the captive public school teachers and pupils whom he is used to ambushing, bullying and threatening with retribution. Nor is he dealing with Kenya Airports Authority sentinels, whom he can ask his transport counterpart to dismiss, for making him queue at airports. His guest constituents are unlikely to be moved by verbal fire and bluster.

Matiang’i sits at the nerve centre of peace, national cohesion and integration. After the demise of Interior CS Joseph Nkaissery, he is managing a delicate and potentially explosive situation. Kenya’s General Election, is now only nine days away. The CS has now come face to face with the treacherous waters of an African General Election.

These waters need delicacy, persuasiveness and trust. There is no room for brawn, bullying and bluster. Above all, the CS will need to know – as he ought to – that, universally, peace is a factor of freedom, openness and justice. With specific regard to elections, peace is predicated upon free, fair and open elections. Screaming at people like an approved primary school headmaster only places them on the war alert.

Matiang’i wrongly imagines that he will secure peace by parading and brandishing before the electorate the contents of the state’s war chest. War psychologists tell us that unbridled state hubris, driven by overconfidence in state instruments of violence, does not secure public peace.

Targeted against a specific constituency, it will instead breed counter violence. Matiang’i reports that state arsenal has already been moved to counties considered to be flashpoints. If not handled with restraint, this can only throw the target population into a state of mass hysteria.

In this electoral season, such people are prone to becoming irrational. If they think that their election has been stolen, they will run into gunfire with stones and sundry crude objects, or even with empty hands. Strangely, such masses have always won. As a teacher of literature, Matiang’i will, perhaps, be familiar with Margaret Dickinson’s anthology, When Bullets Begin to Flower.

He will recall that public perceptions about injustice and state violence can transform mild people into wild lions. He may, therefore, want to keep his guns and bullets away and try, instead, to encourage openness and understanding.

Indeed, openness is the key word in these elections. Our people say that it does not matter how much food you give a visually challenged friend. If you give him little, he will believe it is because you kept a lot for yourself. If you give him a lot, he will wonder how much more you have served yourself.

The gateway to peaceful elections, therefore, is openness and fairness. The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) in particular must build confidence with voters.

So far, IEBC has hemmed and hawed. Sometimes you don’t even understand what they are saying. It is not even clear that they understand, themselves. The CEO, Ezra Chiloba, has said that there will be no periodic updates on presidential vote tallies. The Chairman, Wafula Chebukati, says the information will be in the open.

In one moment they outlaw parallel vote tallying (PVT). The next moment they say PVT is allowed. The next day they condemn it again. IEBC cannot afford to look confused, thoughtless, or mischievous. If they do, it will not matter how much state violence Matiang’i has at his disposal. There is no substitute for well-organised, transparent, free and fair elections as a predicate to peace.

Meanwhile, Raila Odinga has alleged that Jubilee and IEBC are deploying elements of the military “to steal the election.” This is worrying. You don’t drag the military into dirty politics. If this allegation is untrue, then Raila is making a massive mistake. A person who aspires to become the Commander-in-Chief in a matter of days cannot afford to mess up with the reputation of the military. This is unless he strictly knows what he is talking about.

Official response to Raila has not been very helpful, either. It seems to be government policy that you don’t soberly and logically counter the things Raila says. You ridicule and insult him, instead. Unfortunately, this only convinces his supporters that he is right. Let me go back where I began.

First, we should not even be having this conversation. It is extremely primitive that elections make us afraid and that the military even comes into the equation. History has taught us that the military will eat up every civilian leader who invites it into politics. It will next eat up the country. For, soon, the divisions in the civilian politics will find hostile competition in the military, too. The rest is the apocalypse.

So why are we not able to have elections that are clearly open, free and fair? If those losing cannot see that they have lost, surely IEBC commissioners and their secretariat are squarely responsible? It cannot be anybody else. It cannot be the president, or even Matiang’i – despite his gung-ho approach to security – and not Raila, either.

In the end, Chebukati, Chiloba and Company should know that Kenya is in their hands. If the country bleeds or burns, they will be solely responsible. Nobody else. I wish them well. I wish them the wisdom and courage to openly do what is right, just and fair. As they say in Christendom, if Kenya’s soil and waters drink the blood of Abel, the IEBC must claim its share in the fate of Cain.

- Mr Muluka is a publishing editor, special consultant and advisor on public and media relations [email protected]