Peace Deal In Jeopardy, Seven Months On

Seven months after President Mwai Kibaki and the then opposition leader Raila Odinga agreed to share power in a national unity government, the situation in Kenya has steadily reverted to “business as usual”, with efforts to resolve the trigger factors behind the violence remaining sluggish.

Initial prospects that the unprecedented killing of over 1,500 Kenyans would naturally inspire fundamental reform, the resolution of historical injustices and tribal reconciliation have steadily faded. Moreover, the country’s discredited electoral commission, which was widely blamed for bungling the election, is still intact and was in fact allowed to conduct four parliamentary by-elections occasioned by the deaths of two cabinet ministers in a plane crash and the unresolved murders of two legislators.
Last May, President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga hurriedly crafted a slapdash plan dubbed Operation Rudi Nyumbani ( Swahili for “return home”), to immediately resettle the country’s estimated 350,000 Internally displaced Persons (IDPs). Several legislators, religious leaders and civil society groups implored the government to shelve the operation, advising that it should be preceded by a campaign to help heal tribal tensions.

The two leaders disregarded the pleas for a reconciliation campaign and sent army trucks to ferry the IDPs from the camps to their homes and farms “on a voluntary basis.” The operation started off well, but murmurs that IDPs in some camps were being intimidated to leave surfaced almost immediately. These allegations remained largely unsubstantiated until Médecins Sans Frontières came out and reported that it had witnessed government officials and armed police forcing people to vacate a camp in Western Kenya. There were also reports that in some parts of the particularly volatile Rift Valley province, returnees from President Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe, which bore the brunt of the post election violence, were met with threatening leaflets and, in some cases, open reaffirmations that they were still unwelcome.

The country’s Ministry of Special Programmes claims to have successfully resettled nearly 200,000 people, but according to the local media and several humanitarian agencies, a large majority of the IDPs were simply transferred from large camps in urban areas to smaller, less conspicuous “transit camps” near their rural areas of origin, where they now live in makeshift tents and subsist on relief food provided by the government, the Kenya Red Cross and other humanitarian groups. Some have moved in with relatives, relocated to their tribal homelands or began new lives as squatters on church grounds and open fields.

Although the government has declared all the IDP camps officially closed, the Kenya Red Cross estimated in early September that there were still 13,164 people living in the camps, having found themselves completely unable to sustain their families outside the camps. Others rejected the idea of moving into the transit camps after the government failed to fulfill its initial promise to compensate the victims of the displacements, instead offering a $125 (Ksh 10,000) token for each family. In the Rift Valley town of Molo, a leading local newspaper reported that large groups of IDPs went on drinking sprees with their payouts, saying they had opted to drown their sorrows as the sum was too measly to help them rebuild their lives.

Meanwhile, two independent commissions were formed to investigate the 2007 elections and their violent aftermath. One commission chaired by a retired eminent South African Judge Johann Kriegler probed the controversial elections, while a second one studied the post election violence under the chairmanship of Kenyan Appellate Judge Philip Waki. Both commissions completed their work on schedule and presented highly trenchant reports to President Kibaki.

The Kriegler Commission recommended an overhaul of the Electoral Commission of Kenya and substantive reform of the country’s electoral laws. It is still unclear to what extent its recommendations will be adopted.

On its part, the Waki Report implicated certain unnamed politicians and businessmen from both the Kibaki and Odinga sides of having incited and planned various forms of violence and killings, saying their actions had helped morph the initial unrest over President Kibaki’s controversial reelection into an all-out tribal war motivated by historical skews in the management of such resources as land, job opportunities and political power.

The Waki Commission went ahead to actually identify and recommend the prosecution of ten key personalities suspected of having played integral roles in planning the violence. Although the list of ten has remained secret, Justice Waki did divulge the names to former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, handing them over in a sealed envelop before television cameras in Nairobi. Dr. Annan brokered Kenya’s power sharing deal earlier this year.

President Kibaki and Mr. Odinga have dithered over their preferred course of action concerning the Waki Report, but at a public celebration to mark Kenyatta Day on October 20, both leaders hinted that they would consider a reconciliatory amnesty for the violence masterminds and perpetrators, a move that Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Martha Karua has warned could encourage impunity.
Another issue gathering dust on the shelves is the constitutional review process. Although the enactment of a new constitution within 12 months was a fundamental understanding in the February accord, no legal frameworks, timetables or budgetary allocations have been designated for the process. Instead, several influential cabinet ministers and legislators - including Minister Karua, under whose mandate the constitutional review process falls, have shifted their focus to the next elections. Ms Karua has begun her presidential campaign nearly four years ahead of elections due in 2012.

Kenyan politics has been a lucrative affair for decades, and it is likely that many leaders will resist efforts to address such controversial issues as ethnicity, land and constitutional reform because such efforts could link them to past corruption, election fraud or even the post election violence itself, thus tipping the ethno-political networks that have kept them firmly within the circle of power.