Be wary of leaders abusing public trust to sow discord

Stated often as a matter of fact and in a seemingly innocuous way, the idea that there is a link between electoral violence and incumbency, is slowly taking root. The idea has been peddled by several observers without explanation. But the statement gained more salience during the recent National Elections Conference at which Raila Odinga included the statement in his speech. This statement was repeated by Dr Ekuru Aukot, the presidential candidate who aspires to become a benevolent dictator, during a panel discussion on electoral security.

If there is one thing that requires to be stated at the very beginning, it is that merely stating that an election in which an incumbent has sought reelection has been violent, is description and not an analysis. They appear to be confusing the two. Such confusion could be ignored if the potential consequences were not so grave.

The attempt to establish ‘the link’ between incumbency and violence carries with it the undertones of causation. The idea here, though not explicitly stated that way, is that electoral violence should be blamed on incumbency, if not the ‘incumbent’. The idea being peddled is akin to an argument that fire engines cause fire because they are often found in places where there is fire. What nonsense!

Misguided and dishonest

Based on an understanding of our own history with political violence, it is clear this view is misguided. My view is that the electoral-related violence of the 1990s (1992 and 1997) differs quite significantly from the 2007/8 post-election violence in terms of perpetrators and objectives. My argument therefore is that taking these clearly different episodes of violence as similar and using them as a frame for predicting the possibility of violence is both misguided and dishonest, serving to distract from the real issues we should be concerned with.

First, the difference between the political violence that rocked Kenya in the 1990s and the 2007/8 episode is one of kind, not of degree. This is a fact borne out of the official State inquiries. In the 1990s, violence was clearly planned and executed by the regime to shape the electoral outcomes by altering the political geography through disenfranchising voters perceived to be sympathetic to the Opposition. Despite whatever debates are still raging, the 2007/8 violence was neither planned nor executed in the same way. Some part of the violence is acknowledged to have been spontaneous.

Secondly, the fact that the 2007/8 violence occurred mainly after - rather than before - the election unlike in the past, underlies an important difference in the objectives. While the political violence of the 1990s was geared towards guaranteeing a political victory, the objective of the 2007/8 was to exacerbate a political crisis leading to a coalition government.

The 2007/8 political violence seriously challenged the view of the Opposition as a ‘helpless victim’ to the machinations of State apparatus. To my mind, it is clear that most of our leaders contributed, by omission or commission, to the escalation of the violence. It is therefore disingenuous for Opposition leaders to attempt to advance the view that they are innocent bystanders, anticipating the inevitable decline to chaos.

Our real issue with violence is not incumbency or the lack thereof, but rather unchecked power that can be used either to employ the instruments of the State to cause violence, or to whip public emotions and incite people to disorder and violence.

Both Joseph Boinnet, the Inspector General of Police, and Boya Molu, Commissioner of the IEBC, got this right in their responses to this issue. We have created many institutions to check the powers of the State that make use of State power to unleash violence to shape political outcomes highly unlikely. From the conference, it was evident that the various security agencies and the IEBC are fully engaged to ensure that no one can plan to visit violence upon Kenyans, either before or after the election, and get away with it.

However, the resurgence of incendiary and inciteful comments by leading politicians shows that our political institutions may not be strong enough to deal with abuse of public trust by the political elite, both inside and outside government. Contrary to what is being suggested, what we should worry about is not the fact that Uhuru Kenyatta is seeking re-election, but rather the fact that leaders are abusing public trust in their hunt for votes to sow seeds of discord.

- The writer is a researcher and analyst in [email protected]