President Uhuru Kenyatta addressing journalists at State House on
October 17, 2017. His inauguration comes ahead after Kenya's Supreme
Court last Monday validated his poll victory, although the country's
political crisis is not over. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
Uhuru Kenyatta will be sworn in for a second term as Kenya's
president on Tuesday, the final act of an electoral saga that exposed
deep and lasting divisions in the country.
His
inauguration comes ahead after Kenya's Supreme Court last Monday
validated his poll victory, although the country's political crisis is
not over.
Protests sparked by the court decision left
two dead, the latest casualties in a four-month period of unrest in
which 56 people have died, according to an AFP tally. Most victims were
killed at the hands of police, rights groups say.
The
election chaos goes back to an August 8 poll that was annulled in
September by Chief Justice David Maraga over "irregularities and
illegalities" — a decision hailed across the globe as an opportunity to
boost Kenyan democracy.
The most recent violence
erupted after Maraga's Supreme Court dismissed two petitions seeking to
overturn 56-year-old Kenyatta's victory in the election re-run on
October 26.
Kenyatta's rival Raila Odinga boycotted the
vote saying the electoral commission had not made fundamental reforms
to make the contest fair. Kenyatta went on to receive 98 per cent of the
vote — but on turnout of only 39 per cent.
The decision to validate the October result now leaves the
country deeply split — even if violence has not reached the scale of
that which followed a 2007 poll when 1,100 were killed.
Fanfare
No
amount of military fanfare or the presence of around 20 heads of state
for the swearing-in ceremony in a Nairobi stadium can mask the palpable
unease hanging over the occasion, according to Rashid Abdi, analyst with
the International Crisis Group (ICG).
"Kenyatta comes
to office saddled with a deeply divided country, polarised along ethnic
and regional lines, and unless he changes tack the likelihood is we will
see serious crisis," said Abdi.
"He has to reach out
to Odinga and discuss the way forward", with the opposition leader's
supporters railing at what they term a "dictatorship" which must be met
with civil disobedience.
"This crisis has highlighted the growing gulf between the elite and the ordinary people," said Abdi.
Odinga,
72, denied the presidency for a third time, has vowed to see the
installation of a "third republic" — following independence from Britain
in 1963 and a new constitution adopted in 2010.
Turn the page
Some
observers maintain the current political crisis has only deepened
existing social, ethnic and geographic divisions in the country of
around 48 million people.
In areas loyal to Odinga, an
ethnic Luo, the country's fourth-largest grouping, there is a sense of
having been ground down and discriminated against since independence,
not least in relation to Kenyatta's Kikuyu group, the largest and which
has given Kenya three of its four presidents.
Abdi warns a gulf has clearly emerged and it widening between the political elite and normal citizens.
"People
are completely fed up with the drawn-out war of attrition of our
electoral politics and they want to see the country turn a page," said
Abdi.
"It is a sentiment I recognise and I hear every
day. The government and opposition are increasingly disconnected from
the people's reality."
That reality, for many, is deep
political disconnection and, in the slums, a life which involves
surviving on barely a dollar a day.
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