OMWENGA: Will 2022 be more like 2002 or 2007?

We can collectively agree Kenya cannot experience anything like we did in 2007 following the disputed elections.

But avoiding a repeat of 2007 or worse would not be something happening on its own. Sober minds, patriots and all Kenyans must resolve that we cannot have a repeat of 2007.

That requires every Kenyan to reflect and ask ourselves why should blood be shed, why should violence be meted and why should anyone die just because of an election?

To be sure, political violence — which I define for the purpose of this article to be use of violence to subdue opposition or the use of violence to silence a political opponent — is something that has been around for centuries.

It is the case for societies whose democracies are mature and abandoned use of violence as a means of achieving political objectives centuries ago. But there is an eerily familiar telltale signs the phenomenon is creeping back into those societies.

For example, even though the inhumane issue of slavery in America was settled by the American Civil war in 1865, in which more than 750,000 people died, the country has remained relatively free of political violence ever since.

However, in what was described as an insurrection, former US President Donald Trump instead of conceding defeat at the polls following the November 2020 elections, chose to incite a mob of angry and armed rioters who stormed the country’s august house on January 6, 2021, in a futile effort to stop the certification of then President-elect Joe Biden as president.

It is uniformly agreed by every rational person other than the irrational blind followers of Trump that this one event was patently moronic and would never have achieved its purported objective.

The insurrection may have been an exercise in futility, but it also showed the strengths and weaknesses of the world’s self-proclaimed greatest democracy—and acclaim that has some factual basis.

The strength is no doubt the country’s institutions that held together as they are supposed to in a true democracy where rule of law is paramount and fully grounded.

The weaknesses shown are many but leading among them is the realisation that it is not far-fetched to believe that given the right combination of attributes, any madman can rise to power in America and turn her into a dictatorship no different like any of the worst the world has seen.

It came that close with Trump.

Question is, do we have fully entrenched systems and a grounding on rule of law that would ensure even if we do not have BBI that will have peaceful elections in 2022?

Put another way, are we to take it for granted that we cannot have another 2007 PEV or must each one of us do what we must to make sure we don’t?

The latter is, of course, what the doctor ordered.

We do so by first removing emotions from our political discourse.

You cannot make a rational political decision, let alone any decision if your mind is clogged with emotionalism which has no place in objective decision making.

There are two men who seriously have a stab at one becoming our next president and these are ODM leader Raila Odinga and DP William Ruto.

Each will make their case why they want to be president and why each is better than the other.

Raila will point to his decades long efforts to make Kenya a better place, including his liberation efforts that earned him many years of detention and torture for which he continues to suffer the consequences.

Ruto will point to President Uhuru Kenyatta, who promised him 10 years of rule as his successor.

A foreigner who lands in this country and knows nothing about it but is asked to vote for one of those two, odds are he or she would vote for Raila as that is what makes sense and objectively so.

Samuel Omwenga is a legal analyst and political commentator