By Sekou Owino
In Summary
Kenyans have had their collective attention ensnared by the
news of what the political parties in the country claimed were
nominations for candidates to contest the various elective posts in the
General Election constitutionally scheduled for August 8, 2017.
The disorder in the primary elections leaves one wondering
whether the August elections are what would be called a snap election —
that is, an election triggered by a previously unforeseen occurrence. In
Britain, for instance, the date of the General Election is not fixed by
law.
The prime minister may at any time trigger a General Election by
announcing a date and with the approval of the House of Commons get an
election held within eight weeks. This is why Britain will hold a snap
General Election on June 8, 2017, following an announcement by Prime
Minister Theresa May after Easter, with approval by the House of
Commons.
In other words, other than the premier, all other politicians
(bar members of her Cabinet and a few close associates), the parties had
a lead time of only eight weeks before the next General Election. Yet,
this ambush, if you choose to see it that way, will not be a source of
anxiety or dysfunction in Britain.
Lack of institutional muscle
On the other hand, Kenya has a Constitution that fixes the date
of elections. It states that elections shall be held on the second
Tuesday of each fifth year from the last elections. From the date of the
last elections of March 2013, anyone could plot the dates of elections
for the rest of this century, if the Constitution remains unchanged.
Yet, the confusion seen in the party nominations that we have witnessed
over the past fortnight gives the impression that the election dates
were a surprise for the parties.
In most parts of Kenya, even the scheduled party primaries
failed to take off within the timelines that the parties had set
themselves. Voters had been told that polling stations would be open at
6am but there is hardly anywhere that voting began on time, with the
media reporting instances where voting began six hours late.
In some cases, voting had to be postponed and rescheduled — even
in constituencies hardly 10km outside the capital and parties’
headquarters. Some of the reasons cited were delays in delivery of
ballot papers to polling stations, coupled the inability by parties to
decide whether voters should use party membership cards or national
identity cards.
This level of confusion has some poignant lessons for the
honest: that while the associations we call parties in Kenya are
required by the Constitution to be national outfits, they really are
just clubs of ethnic elites in Nairobi. They have no institutional
muscle to undertake any serious business outside the party headquarters,
bar political rallies.
The institutional failure of these “clubs” shows itself in the
fact that they cannot hold credible nominations and that even top party
officials ditch them after losing at the primaries and seek to run as
independents citing election rigging. This issue of defections also
exposes the political parties for the shallow vehicles they are.
There is a persistent claim in Kenya’s discourses of political
parties as being bedrocks of certain ideologies that analysts
perpetually cite. Yet no one talks of ideologies when national party
officials abandon their own.
The reason for this is all too obvious. It is the pervasive
belief in Machiavellian thinking. The ethnic supermen who have control
of the outfits we call political parties have been somehow persuaded,
and this is a belief shared by most of the voters, that institutional
and social change is a top-down endeavour.
The thinking goes that you need this all-knowing philosopher
king or prince to direct things from wherever he is and everyone will
fall in line and accomplish his wishes. Well, the past fortnight told a
different story in that it is good for the party owner since he gets his
desired candidates but less so for the party’s claim to being
democratic.
The other observation about this is that the central if not
outright centrepiece of the elections strategy for most parties, is the
so-called strategic communications stance. That one should be ready to
explain away everything from a podium in Nairobi, and that will be the
salve to all the problems created by fraudulent contestants in a village
20km away.
The second disturbing observation is that Kenyans learn nothing
from the past. It is clear to all that the party primaries have been
getting more raucous and disorganised with each election season.
However, there seems to be consensus in the national psyche that
politics being a dirty game, it is alright, and that the election season
is a time for all or nothing and some lives must be lost and property
destroyed just to determine who should represent the respective parties
in the general election.
This should lead to the emerging phenomenon of the
independent candidates. The rise in the number of persons who are
seeking elective offices as independents is the ultimate proof of to the
fact that parties are just talking shops for politicians in the
capital.
Sekou Owino is Nation Media Group’s head of legal services.
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