Uhuru bears a greater responsibility to end this stalemate

That NASA’s call to boycott the October 26 presidential election was a success is not in dispute.

Only 38 per cent of registered voters cast their ballots to re-elect President Uhuru Kenyatta with Turkmenistan-style 98 per cent of the votes cast. The IEBC then added salt to injury through its gross incompetence. Multiple statutory forms appeared online from the same polling stations. About 1.6 million Kenyans lost their ability to be identified through their fingerprints. And KIEMS was cast aside.

According to the law, Kenyatta was duly re-elected for a second term. But the manner in which this happened stinks to high heaven. Which is odd, given that he probably would have won clean on August 8, albeit with a razor-thin margin.

To be fair, this was not all because of Kenyatta’s doing. As a candidate, he is entitled to do all in his power (within the law) to win elections. The onus was on the IEBC to be a neutral umpire. History will judge Kenyatta harshly for not showing leadership over the last several months. Yes, it is true that he faced few options given the fast-changing hardball tactics of his competitor, Raila Odinga. Raila did not shy away from stretching the limits of the law, and repeatedly signaled a willingness to engage in extra-constitutional tactics. But Raila is not the President of of Kenya. Kenyatta is. This confers on the latter a greater responsibility than the former. The presidency is a symbol of national unity. Unfortunately, throughout his presidency, and especially during the current election cycle, Kenyatta has done precious little to meet these demands of the office he holds.

This is a tragedy. There is an alternate universe in which after winning in 2013, Kenyatta set about unifying the country, and reaching out to supporters of Raila. This ought to have included both rhetorical and material investments. The anger in Bungoma, Kawangware and Kondele comes from a deep sense of neglect by the state. In case it is not obvious, it bears repeating that over the last five years, it seemed like Kenyatta went out of his way to signal preferential concern for specific sections of the country. Areas where his core supporters live seemed to be inundated with investments in roads, loan forgiveness, land title deeds, et cetera; while other parts of the country remained completely untouched. Whether this is empirically true is immaterial. Politics is about perception, and to ignore the need to signal inclusivity in every possible way is to add petrol to the blazing fire of negative ethnicity. I still remain hopeful that Uhuru can unite Kenya and unleash our collective productivity. To do so, he has to make a deliberate effort to reach out and disabuse the belief that he is an ethnic chauvinist in thrall to people like Moses Kuria.

By reaching out, I mean alleviating the suffering of average Kenyans whose life experience is a constant reminder that the President does not care when police storm into their houses and shoot or tear gas their babies; or kill their neighbours in cold blood.