• Maandamano has shadowed elections since multipartyism began
This week, I continue to look back on our successes, failures and other events from the last 60 years that history has yet to place in either column, and wonder what the future holds.
In January 1993, the dust from Kenya’s return to multiparty politics and the December 29, 1992 election, had yet to settle.
A badly divided opposition had allowed Moi and Kanu, with only 36 per cent, to remain in power. The once mighty Forum for the Restoration of Democracy, or Ford, had split into two main parties: Ken Matiba and Martin Shikuku’s Ford-Asili, and Raila Odinga’s Ford-Kenya (Ford-K).
Ford-Asili took 26 per cent of the vote and Ford-K garnered 17 per cent. Had they stuck together and won the same number of votes, they would have had a clear lead over Kanu, with 43 per cent, and had they convinced Mwai Kibaki’s Democratic Party (DP) to support them with its 19 per cent of the votes cast, the last 30 years would have been very different.
Instead of coming together before the election, the three main opposition parties united briefly in January 1993, accusing Moi and Kanu of having rigged the election and demanding a new vote.
During a press conference they called to reject the vote, Matiba said: “We are not going to recognise elections that are so rigged, they are considered worthless. Democracy is now with us, and we are not ready to surrender it under any circumstances. If we don’t reject the results, the people of Kenya will be in the streets.”
If the words sound familiar, it’s because they or versions of them have been repeated after every General Election in Kenya since.
That Kanu engaged in electoral chicanery in the run-up to the election, and government leaders, including Cabinet ministers, would later be found to have been involved in the targeted ethnic violence in the Rift Valley, is not in doubt. However the opposition had done itself no favours either.
Nothing much changed as far as the 1997 election results were concerned, other than the opposition forcing the government to accept reforms that were the brainchild of the Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group (IPPG) reforms.
In January 2003, the opening words of Francis Urquhart in Michael Dobbs's 'House of Cards' trilogy television series became very real for Kanu.
“Nothing lasts forever. Even the longest, the most glittering reign, must come to an end someday.”
Kanu was out of power after 40 years of independence, and Moi was finally out of State House after 24 years.
The opposition had finally learned the folly of being split against a Kanu and Moi that were not shy to use state machinery to hang on to power. It came together as the National Rainbow Coalition and backed Mwai Kibaki, who went on to win 63 per cent the vote in the presidential election.
Kibaki’s main opponent in that election was Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Jomo and Moi’s protégé and successor in Kanu.
Ahead of the 2007 election, the ruling coalition split and Kanu leaders, led by Kenyatta, hooked up with Kibaki to keep him in power, and Kenyatta’s shot at the presidency in 2013 was seen by some as his reward.
The 2007 election result and the Kibaki government’s actions, including getting sworn in at State House under the cover of night, brought the country as close to civil war as it had ever been since Independence, with civil unrest worse than Matiba imagined in 1993.
As a result of the violent 2007 elections, in 2010, a new Constitution came into existence, and by 2013, the political scene had changed again, and quite drastically from 10 years earlier.
Kenyatta and his running mate, former Agriculture minister William Ruto, who had both been indicted by the International Criminal Court for the 2007-08 election violence, teamed up and were declared winners of the election with 50.07 per cent of the vote.
It is now 2023, and while in many ways today’s Kenya is very different from that of 60 years ago, it is still fighting poverty, ignorance, disease and corruption.
What story will be told in 2083? All I know is it won’t be me telling you.