Kibaki’s strange relation with KKK

The so called reconciliation rally attended by President Mwai Kibaki as the guest of honour in Eldoret on 21st January 2011 was an eye opener to most Kenyans. It exposed the Head of State as a clandestine supporter of the KKK. Apart from that it also showed him as a very gullible victim of tribal nationalism which makes him harbour very unusual relationship with the KKK. Either way the rally told Kenyans that efforts to make the next general election a tribal affair have now taken a new dimension with the support of a very powerful section of the coalition Government.

If ever Kenyans fall into the KKK trap and organize themselves along tribal lines for the next year’s general elections then the danger of ending up with yet another tribal confrontation, with the consequences of real bloodbath which will probably be worse than what the country saw in 2007-08, are very real. Fortunately the Eldoret rally was seen by most Kenyans as a futile attempt to balkanize the country tribally to benefit the political class that has dominated Kenya for almost half a century.

What is more, the Eldoret rally had absolutely nothing to do with reconciliation between the Kikuyus and Kalenjins. It was a deceitful game of building castles in the air through creating an imaginary political smokescreen of Kenya being led by Uhuru Kenyatta as the new President and William Ruto as his Deputy or vice versa.

Everyone present knew the game was simply a fictitious ploy to hoodwink the people of Kenya and especially the Kikuyus and Kalenjins to make them not face some fundamental problems confronting them. To being with the wounds caused by the post election violence between the two tribes are still fresh and far from showing any signs of healing. The animosity runs extremely deep with hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu IDPs languishing in ramshackle tents made of torn canvas and plastic waste.

These are people who, before the post election clashes, lived very comfortably in their well developed farms now being occupied by Kalenjins who took the land from the Kikuyus through the most barbaric methods which included mass murders, rape and arson. Kikuyus, on the other hand, organized themselves through the Mungiki gangster militia that hit back at the Kalenjins in more or less the same barbaric method. That is why Ruto and Uhuru are today wanted by Luis Moreno-Ocampo in The Hague.

When politicians meet in public rallies such as the one in Eldoret and talk about Kalenjin –Kikuyu reconciliation they know very well that a lot more needs to be done apart from Kenyatta and Ruto holding hands on a political platform in front of the Head of State. Unless the Kikuyus are given back their farms they will never forgive the Kalenjins. Yet the Kalenjins believe the land they took from the Kikuyus was and still is their own ancestral property.

The problem between the Kalenjins and Kikuyus could only be solved through a properly functioning TJRC which would lay all the cards on the table before suggesting a solution. Unfortunately the TJRC is itself almost dead because it started on a wrong footing with an unacceptable Bethwel Kiplagat as its chairman. Without a proper TJRC, animosity between communities can only be solved through pretentious games of dramatic tragicomedies such as the one witnessed in Eldoret last Friday.

At the Eldoret rally Ruto and all his Kalenjin MPs knew very well that they would never welcome back the Kikuyus in the farms now occupied by their people, despite the fact that Kibaki’s main goal of going to the rally was to get his Kikuyu people back to their farms. On the other hand, Kibaki also knew very well that he would never accept William Ruto back into his Cabinet when he is a wanted criminal both locally and internationally. Yet Kalenjins’ conditionality of having the Kikuyus back to their farms was to have Ruto back in the Cabinet. The mutual arm-twisting between the Kalenjins and the President complicated the deceitful game at the Eldoret rally.

Apart from the ridiculous game of public pretense to solidify the unity in KKK, that tribal organization is facing an extremely serious legal problem. It is, in fact, for all practical purposes, a prohibited illegal organization. The Constitution does not allow the existence of such a dogmatically intolerant entity to survive camouflaged as a political group. That is why its leaders are in a terrible panic. They are hurriedly trying to establish an acceptable political body to replace it.

As seasoned politicians the leaders of the intolerable KKK, Uhuru Kenyatta, Kalonzo Musyoka and William Ruto, have read the writing on the wall and realized that their tribal institution is facing a massive rejection by the people. The move to get a new political party established before next year’s presidential election is itself faced with a subterranean divisive threat. Whose political party will be acceptable to all the three leaders?

Ruto is planning to move to the little known United Democratic Movement (UDM) while Uhuru has just announced a move to register the so called PNU Alliance, which brings together the same people who are in the almost dead old PNU, which includes Kalonzo Musyoka’s ODM-K. The possible unity between UDM, ODM-K and PNU Alliance will probably be the new face of the KKK, which is bound to face the same misfortune of total rejection by the people of Kenya because it will not have changed anything in the tribal aspirations of the rejected KKK.

Whatever the three musketeers of the KKK do they have a major problem of establishing an acceptable political vehicle with which to confront Raila’s Odinga’s formidable ODM. Long before that vehicle has been established a number of major hurdles appear to be confronting the three tribal kingpins of the KKK. First they have to obey the law; and the law is now governed by the new Constitution which has very strict requirements to be followed by those who want to establish credible national political parties in this country.

According to Article 38 of the new Constitution every citizen is free to make political choices, which includes the right to form, or participate in forming, a political party; to participate in the activities of, or recruit members for, a political party; or to campaign for a political party or cause. If that was all that the new constitution said about political parties, in the Bill of Rights, then the KKK leaders would have had a field day in continuing to confuse Kenyans by forming all sorts of political parties just before elections in order to attract people along tribal lines.

Indeed that is how both PNU and ODM-K were formed. Whereas the former is a party of the Kikuyus, Embus and Merus of the Mount Kenya region, the later is certainly a party of the Kamba people. The drafters of the new Constitution led by Nzamba Kitonga knew very well that the right to form political parties had to be included in the Bill of Rights. But they also knew that that right could be abused by the political class in Kenya that has all the time survived through ownership of such tribal political parties.

To solve that serious problem that indeed went against the very spirit of proper Bills of right, the drafters of the new constitution came up with very wonderful protection of the people’s rights in Chapter Seven on Representation of the people. Nzamba Kitonga and his team saved the people of Kenya through Article 91 of the new Constitution which demands every political party in the new Kenya to have a national character as prescribed by an Act of Parliament.

The new Constitution demands political parties to have a democratically elected governing body; promote and uphold national unity; abide by the democratic principles of good governance, promote and practise democracy through regular, fair and free elections within the party; respect the right of all persons to participate in the political process, including minorities and marginalized groups. All these are qualities which lacked in almost all political parties in Kenya except the ODM, which has also got an uphill task of shedding off the stigma that it personally belongs to Raila Odinga.

The new Constitution demands all political parties to respect and promote human rights and fundamental freedoms, and gender equality and equity; promote the rule of law; and subscribe to and observe the code of conduct for political parties. The new Constitution categorically prohibits political parties that are founded on a religious, linguistic, racial, ethnic, gender or regional basis or seek to engage in advocacy of hatred on any such basis. According to the new Constitution, therefore, the KKK itself would be a prohibited organization.

That is obviously one of the reasons for the rush to form political parties that appear to be national when in reality they will be well known tribal associations no different from the KKK. Apart from everything else Article 77(2) of the new Constitution states any appointed State officer shall not hold office in a political party. If KKK wins the next general lection and Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto become the country’s new President and Deputy President they will not be allowed to hold office in a political party. Even if, in the unlikely event, Uhuru and Ruto end up to be the President and Vice President of Kenya the tribal parties that will put them in power will be in fact without any nationally recognized leaders. A very terrible eventuality to imagine!