This never ending political circus is all about inclusion

Campaign guru James Carville, the man credited with crafting then Governor Bill Clinton’s winning presidential campaign in 1992, left us with a memorable phrase.

Pointing out the pivot of that year’s race, Mr Carville coined the term, “[I]t’s the economy, stupid!”  It was that message which sent President George Herbert Walker Bush – known as 41st – into unexpected retirement. That’s how a kid from humble roots in Hope, Arkansas, floored an out-of-touch American aristocrat.

For Kenya, the equivalent phrase would be, “[I]t’s inclusion, stupid!”  That’s what ails Kenya – exclusion and ethnic contempt. My point is that insisting on an inflexible election calendar, as if the date was ordained by God, is pointless. That date – Anno Domini October 26, 2017 – could be Armageddon.

Let me make one point very clear. Kenya is a political experiment to which all of us have agreed to give a chance. Kenya isn’t a prison camp, or a slave society. The people we call Kenyans are not subjects, but citizens. In 1964, when we kicked out the British, we thought we could live together in peace and prosperity.

That assumption has proven to be wildly off the mark. There are those among us who believe Kenya belongs to them and the rest of us are nothing but peons. These “owners” – like the slave owners of yore – think of the rest of us as their property. They believe in a divine right to rule us. We must do as they say.

Unfortunately for our “owners” there is the little problem of democratic legitimacy. By our sweat, blood, and tears, we brought about the 2010 constitution. That seminal document, which our “owners” fought against and have never embraced, stands between the people and state tyranny. It’s a work of both black letter law and the spirit of that law. That document only handcuffs the state, not the people. That’s why it’s the people – not the state – who can change it. It’s a living charter. That’s why planting a flag on a date certain for elections misses the point about the purpose of the constitution. Elections only renew and reaffirm our consent to continue using Kenya as an experiment. We can consent, or dissent.

Let’s understand that elections are not an end in themselves. They are a means to an end. That end is democratic legitimacy. Any leader who thinks elections are meant to reconfirm them in office hasn’t read the first page of democratic theory. Elections aren’t about the coronation of a leader. They are about citizens, not leaders. Where, as in Egypt under Hosni Mubarak, the elections become about the leader, a volcanic explosion has been the result in history.

Think of Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, Romania Nikolai Ceausescu, or any of the tin-pot dictators in Latin America. Their stories didn’t have a happy ending. In history, the people always prevail – every time.

Two actors in the current electoral screw-up in Kenya don’t seem to understand basic truths and facts about citizenship and the state. The IEBC and Jubilee are drunk with power or paralysed by intellectual, moral, and political impotence. The IEBC, especially Chair Wafula Chebukati, has abdicated and is totally irrelevant.  He can’t even a chair an IEBC meeting.

How can he then organise a competent national election?  At least his predecessors Issack Hassan and Samuel Kivuitu had cojones.  As for Jubilee – well, what can one say?  Its leaders are the most myopic and unreflective bunch anywhere south of the Mediterranean, let alone south of Sahara.  They threaten to take Kenya back 30 years, if not to the Dark Ages. Citizens who feel excluded and marginalised – especially in Kenya where we are highly polarised – can completely refuse to go along.  If you read history closely, you will see that the root causes of all human privation and war are exclusion and contempt. That’s Kenya’s key problem.  That’s why we haven’t cohered into a nation.

In fact, we are more farther apart today than we have ever been in our short history as an experimental state. Our ethnic hatreds for each other are calcifying and being cemented. I hear language reminiscent of the Tutsi-Hutu divides in Rwanda and Burundi. Things are falling apart, but the rulers are busy in a celebratory orgy. How does one spell the Titanic?

I end where I started. A number of states in Africa have collapsed. There’s nothing that can prevent Kenya from following suit unless a thunderclap strikes. Don’t insist on a silly clock for the electoral cycle. There may be no country to rule over if the election is forced on the people. Kenya can only work – and avoid catastrophe – if we all feel included, even if we aren’t.

Democratic legitimacy is about form, substance, process, appearance, and feeling – belonging.

- The writer is SUNY Distinguished Professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School and Chair of KHRC.

@makaumutua.