The country is headed to a general election in August next year and the political tempo has already gathered momentum.
The main contenders have emerged and negotiations for positions are on top gear.
As it stands, ODM leader Raila Odinga will be squaring it out with Deputy President William Ruto. In a strange twist of fate, the opposition leader will most likely be the government’s preferred candidate, while the Deputy President will be rallying the opposition forces to his ranks.
At stake is the rich vote Mt Kenya region. While DP Ruto had hoped to gain the Central Kenya political support through inheritance, the handshake gave Raila an important access. It is, therefore, a race against time between the two on who will clinch at least half of the vote slice.
Unfortunately, the competition for the Gema votes has led to some ugly campaign scenes in recent times. Already, violence has been witnessed in more than one event involving the two leading candidates.
In Githurai, Kenol and Kieni, youths unleashed violence against each other as they pitched tent for their preferred candidates. At Kenol, two lives were lost in October last.
These events were preceded by inflammatory remarks from a section of politicians from the two sides of the protagonist Jubilee Party divide at a time the relationship between the President and his deputy has reached an all-time low.
The environment within the ruling party is so toxic that pictures of the dynamic UhuRuto duo of yesteryears would easily pass as photoshop. Unfortunately, the undeclared dispute between the President and his deputy appear to assume ethnic dimensions.
One the one hand, Uhuru’s men accuse DP Ruto of sabotaging the government development agenda for his personal presidential ambition. On the other, Ruto’s handlers accuse Uhuru of betrayal by reneging on the 2013 agreement to support his deputy as his preferred successor.
The intra-fighting among the ruling party leaders has led to inflammatory language flying about with wanton abandon. Choice expletives are thrown around with such recklessness that demonstrates our collective amnesia as a nation.
Some of the leaders have been cited for incitement by the National Cohesion and Integration Commission, while others have been charged for the same. The NCIC seems weak and helpless as the country hurtles towards political lawlessness.
The ground is being prepared inadvertently for grand scale violence, or could it be a deliberate plan? The country cannot afford a repeat of 2007-08 experience. It was such a costly mistake that we can only drive ourselves into again, if we belong to the pagan generations.
The efforts to bring back the nation to normalcy were straining emotionally and economically. The stability of the state was shaken to the core and the scars are still visible on the faces of the citizens and nation to date.
Leaders must, therefore be called out when they cause chaos. They must employ civility in search of leadership mandates.
Nations slide into anarchy through such sentiments carelessly doled out at every rally. When power is pursued through the narrow lenses of ethnic balkanisation, the consequences are horrific.
Kenya has had its fair share of the fruits of tribal conflicts. Lest we forget, the country has experienced such turbulence in 1992, 1997, 2007/8 and 2017 in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and the Rift Valley.
Analysts have identified similar pattern and causes in Kisumu and Nairobi.
The Rift Valley remains the most challenging and volatile of all. The 2007-08 murders in Uasin Gishu and environs have been attributed to long standing ethnic tensions.
The killings in Naivasha and Nakuru were seen as reactionary and as well linked the ethnic retaliation. The utterances of these leaders will surely lead to ethnic cleansing if not tamed in time.
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, often with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous.
Along with direct removal, such as extermination, deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction. It constitutes a crime against humanity and may also fall under the Genocide Convention, even as ethnic cleansing has no legal definition under international criminal law.
Many instances of ethnic cleansing have occurred throughout history and the term was first used by the perpetrators as a euphemism during the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s.
Since then, it has gained widespread acceptance due to journalism and the media's heightened use of the term in its generic meaning. During the 16th session of the Bosnian Serb Assembly on May 12, 1992, Karadžić, who was by then the leader of the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska proto-state, presented his six strategic goals, which included the separation from the other two national communities and the separation of states.
He further called for the creation of a corridor in the Drina Valley thus eliminating the River Drina as a border between Serbian states. Republika Srpska General Ratko Mladić identified Muslims and Croat hordes as the enemy and suggested to the Assembly it must decide whether to throw them out by political means or through force. Religion was used to establish distinction and create a sense of superior belonging to one ethnic community over the other.
The events leading to the Rwanda Genocide experience is of similar pattern and well known. When the RPF invaded the country in October 1990, Juvénal Habyarimana and the hardliners exploited the fear of the population to advance an anti-Tutsi agenda, which became known as Hutu Power.
Tutsis were increasingly viewed with suspicion. A pogramme was organised on October 11, 1990 in a commune in Gisenyi province, killing 383 Tutsi.
The genocide was sparked by the death of President Habyarimana, a Hutu, when his plane was shot down above Kigali airport on April 6, 1994.
Ethnic tension in Rwanda was not new then. There had always been disagreements between the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsis, but the animosity between them grew substantially since the colonial period.
The two ethnic groups are actually very similar - they speak the same language, inhabit the same areas and follow the same traditions. However, Tutsis are often taller and thinner than Hutus, with some saying their origins lie in Ethiopia.
During the genocide, the bodies of Tutsis were thrown into rivers, with their killers saying they were being sent back to Ethiopia. Therefore, it was clearly not the difference in language or culture that built the foundations for the genocide, but inciting sentiments of domination and exploitation.
The incitement is done by politicians of the respective ethnic communities. In both cases of Yugoslavia and Rwanda the Kenyan common political parlance of Madoadoa is apt.
Some segments of a population within a shared territory believe they own the territory more than the other. To them, the capitalist philosophy of liberty, equal opportunities and property rights remain alien.
Conveniently they disregard the transactional processes of property acquisition and revert to historical migratory lines. They also employ historical happenstances to disadvantage individuals regardless of their respective personal investment in leadership processes.
The country is facing increasing risks of repeat of the 2007-08 occurrences considering that the Jubilee government was shared in equal portions between the then two principals.
One shudders to imagine what would happen if the sharing of the government could have been cascaded to the security forces.
Political leaders should avoid transferring their personal challenges to be the burden of their respective ethnic communities. Doing so amounts to incitement and a threat national stability and development.
They should instead focus on their manifestoes and treat all Kenyans as equal citizens of the state. Otherwise their regular pledges to uphold the tenets of our constitution remain hollow and skin deep.
