Kenya

Each year, Reporters Without Borders (RWB) publishes a list of 180 countries rank-ordered according to the degree of freedom the media enjoys. RWB uses objective criteria, which it outlines on its website. It cautions that it is measuring media freedom, not media quality. Its list is divided into five bands, from best to worst.  The top band consists of seventeen countries, mostly in Europe but none from the African continent. The second band consists of thirty countries, five of which are African. For comparison’s sake, it includes countries like Canada (no. 18), France (33), the United Kingdom (40), and the United States (45). The African countries are as follows: Ghana (23), Namibia (26), South Africa (28), Cape Verde (29), and Burkina Faso (41). In these African countries, freedom of the media is roughly equivalent to that of the United States and big NATO allies. In fact, they all actually rank higher than the United States and, with the exception of Burkina Faso, the United Kingdom.  The third band runs from Botswana (48) to Bolivia (110). There are twenty-one African countries, including Senegal (50), Liberia (89), and Kenya (96). Others in this band include Hong Kong (70), Mongolia (71), and Israel (87).  The fourth band runs from Bulgaria (111) to Kazakhstan (158). This band includes seventeen African countries, including most of the large ones: Uganda (117), Nigeria (119), Angola (121), Ethiopia (150), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (154). This band also includes India (138), Russia (148), and Turkey (157).   The fifth and final band, representing the countries with the worst media freedom, runs from Burundi (159) to North Korea (180). It includes five African countries in addition to Burundi: Somalia (168), Equatorial Guinea (171), Djibouti (173), Sudan (174), and Eritrea (179). This band also includes Cuba (172), China (176), and Syria (177). The bad news is that the twenty-eight African countries in the bottom half of the list outnumber the twenty-one in the top half. Further, Africa’s largest states by population are in the bottom half: Nigeria, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The good news is that the top half includes almost all of the states of the southern cone (Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, and Lesotho), Ghana, and several francophone states around the continent, such as Senegal, Madagascar, Niger, and Ivory Coast. Other good news is that the five African states comparable in media freedom to the United States include two large, important ones: Ghana and South Africa. The RWB index provides a useful tool for comparing media freedom around the continent. It also provides yet another example of the diversity of the African continent. With respect to media freedom, Ghana and South Africa, for example, are far removed from Sudan and Eritrea.   

In this episode of Africa in Transition, I speak with Vincent Makori, host of Africa 54, Voice of America's daily African news show. We discuss the current state of Kenya's politics, focusing on Uhuru Kenyatta, Raila Odinga, and their families' political relationship dating back to Kenyan independence. We discuss the role that ethnicity plays in Kenyan politics, the role Cambridge Analytica played in most recent election cycle, and the apparent deterioration of democratic norms and the rule of law. According to Vincent, ethnic tensions in Kenya only manifest during election season because they are drummed up (with the help of certain foreign data firms) by politicians seeking short-term electoral advantage. To that end, political parties are primarily constructed around transient alliances defined by ethnicity rather than significant policy differences, and they change from election cycle to election cycle. Vincent argues that the personal and political rivalry between the two leading candidates, Kenyatta and Odinga, who are Kikuyu and Luo, respectively, has more to do with election-related violence than actual, historical grievances between different ethnic groups. You can listen to my conversation with Vincent here.

The March 9 meeting about reconciliation between President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga has, for the time being, pulled Kenya back from the brink. On news of the meeting, the Kenyan shilling rose against the U.S. dollar. Odinga has called off his defiance campaign against the Kenyatta government, while Kenyatta apparently is allowing Odinga to continue to use the title “people’s president." The official document released detailing the pact refers to both as “his excellency,” a title normally reserved for the chief of state. However, the two will not be part of a power-sharing arrangement. Spokesmen for Odinga are saying that he agreed to meet with Kenyatta to avoid possible future bloodshed along ethnic lines. Details are scarce, but the two leaders were said to be covering a “vast agenda,” including free and fair elections in 2022, and will be traveling around the country together on a “unity” tour. Kenyatta apparently did not consult with his vice president and likely (until now) successor, William Ruto. Odinga, for his part, did not consult in advance with his coalition partners, though he has since met with them and Kalonzo Musyoka, one of NASA's four leaders, has proposed a meeting with Kenyatta. Still, some are accusing Odinga of “betraying millions of Kenyans.”  Kenyan media reports that diplomatic, religious, and business pressure all played a role in the decision by Kenyatta and Odinga to reconcile. Kenyan media is suggesting that U.S. Ambassador Robert Godec played a leading role in this effort. Then there was the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who arrived in Nairobi the same morning as the meeting. Though Kenya is divided by ethnic rivalries easily exploited by politicians, the crisis that seems to have ended was shaped by the personal rivalry of Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga and their families dating back to independence. Both are leaders of large tribes, Kenyatta of the Kikuyu, Odinga of the Luo, and both are rich, though Kenyatta is richer. Nevertheless, because the rivalry was personal, the resolution of the crisis could also be personal. It is significant that Kenyatta has agreed to allow Odinga to retain some of the trappings of a chief of state. Kenyatta may be borrowing from the logic of King Henri IV of France in 1593 when he allegedly said, “Paris vaut bein une messe,” or “Paris is well worth a Mass.” For Henri, becoming king of France was worth a conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism. For Kenyatta, sharing some of the trappings of the presidency is well worth retaining all of the presidency’s power. Presuming the deal sticks (it will be debated and voted on in parliament soon), reconciliation could upend Kenyan ethnic politics. With the Kikuyu and the Luo, the third politically-ambitious ethnic group in Kenya is the Kalenjin. Their political leader is William Ruto. He has well-known personal ambitions for the presidency and will almost certainly run in 2022, but the new pact between Odinga and Kenyatta could upset his plan to lead the Jubilee Party. With which other ethnic group will the Kalenjin ally? Kenyan media seems to like the idea that the Kenyatta-Odinga reconciliation was midwifed by foreign diplomats, and there is no doubt they played a role. Kenyatta’s and Odinga’s own personal interests, however, were likely more important.  

In a joint press conference on March 9, President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga promised to begin the process of reconciliation following their bitter standoff around the 2017 elections that raised the specter of ethnic violence. Up to now, both had refused to participate in talks. In their appearance together, Kenyatta said, “We will begin a process of discussing what ails us and what creates division among us.” Odinga said it was "time to resolve our differences.”  If sincere, friends of Kenya will welcome Kenyatta and Odinga moving their country back from the brink. It is not quite clear how to account for the reconciliation now. Odinga had himself inaugurated as the “people’s president” in opposition to Kenyatta’s formal inauguration as president, and he has denied the legitimacy of Kenyatta’s presidency. On the other hand, Kenyatta spokesmen have accused Odinga of treasonous behavior. While the ethnic differences the two personify have not gone away, it is possible that the two have agreed to a deal that would be personally advantageous to both of them, whether financially or politically. The move has received mixed reactions, to say the least. Some have praised the two for their “show of statesmanship,” while Dr. Miguna Miguna, a leader in Odinga’s National Resistance Movement who was allegedly sent to Canada against his will, accused the opposition leader of “betrayal.” The BBC raises the possibility that the reconciliation move is a public relations stunt related, somehow, to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's visit to Kenya. Perhaps—he arrived shortly thereafter—though that seems far-fetched. In any event, Kenya’s friends will be watching over the next several days to see if the political temperature cools.   

Rex Tillerson will make his first trip to Africa as Secretary of State between March 6 and March 13. He will visit five of Africa’s fifty-four countries—Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Nigeria. The trip hardly appears to be a “reset” by the Trump administration in its approach to Africa. The State Department spokesperson, Heather Nauert, when announcing the trip, said that its purpose was “to further our partnerships with the governments and people of Africa.” She also said that the Secretary would be discussing how the United States “can work with our partners to counter terrorism, advance peace and security, promote good governance, and spur mutually beneficial trade and investment.” This rhetoric implies little change in the U.S. agenda in Africa since the end of the cold war and may reflect apparent White House disengagement and disinterest in the world’s second largest continent.  The selection of countries the secretary will visit indicates a strong emphasis on security issues. Djibouti is the site of the only U.S. base in Africa. Nigeria and Chad are deeply involved in the struggle against the Islamist, anti-western Boko Haram, which involves limited U.S. military training and equipment sales. Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti are also involved in the struggle against al-Shabaab, the terrorist organization centered in Somalia, where the U.S. military also has assumed a limited support role.  Chad, Djibouti, and Ethiopia are backsliding with respect to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Kenya faces unresolved issues related to its recent contested presidential elections. Ethiopia’s strong-man prime minister abruptly resigned in February, resulting in a care-taker government that is set to elect a new prime minister soon. Nigeria, the giant of Africa, has established itself as a credible democracy, but goes into a 2019 election cycle that could be violent. Secretary Tillerson’s itinerary does not include what is in many ways the most successful African state, South Africa. It has the continent’s largest economy and is a functioning “non-racial” democracy. Its new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, provides the possibility of a reset in the bilateral relationship, which at present is no more than “cordial” and “correct.” The secretary’s trip is unlikely to advance the United States relationship with sub-Saharan Africa in any meaningful way. The focus is on security, not economic development, trade and investment, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Further, the Trump administration has yet to articulate a distinctive policy toward Africa. U.S. engagement, limited though it is, appears to be more military than diplomatic, reflecting the Trump administrations security preoccupations. There is still no assistant secretary of state for Africa, no U.S. ambassador to South Africa, and numerous other Africa-related positions remain unfilled. Certain authoritarian African leaders, like Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, have made positive statements about President Trump. Democratic leaders on the other hand, notably Nigeria’s Muhammadu Buhari and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, were deeply critical of the president’s public denigration of Africa and Haiti. With the U.S. recessional from Africa, save for security issues, African states are turning to other partners, notably China, France, and the EU. In a thoughtful article, John Stremlau, an American visiting professor at Johannesburg’s prestigious University of the Witswatersrand, suggests that, for the time being, growing the United States relationship with sub-Saharan Africa may rest more with the legislative branch than with the executive branch and the secretary of state. He points out that since the 1990s Congress has consistently supported closer economic and political partnerships with Africa, reflecting the big American business, philanthropy, and civil society constituency for Africa.  

The administration of President Uhuru Kenyatta has responded to rival Raila Odinga’s “inauguration” as a self-declared people’s president last week in a way more characteristic of an authoritarian regime than of a new democracy. It has transformed an act in Odinga’s political theater into a challenge to the legitimacy of the Kenyatta administration. Kenyatta’s attorney general has called the inauguration treasonous, and one of Odinga’s newly formed ancillary groups “criminal.” More seriously, the administration had temporarily blacked out the transmission of Kenya’s four major television stations, and it initially ignored a court order to allow the stations to resume broadcasting. The administration arrested several Odinga-allied politicians, some of whom were promptly freed by the courts. Despite rumors to the contrary, Odinga himself has not been arrested, though one of his key supporters has reportedly been deported.    Kenya is generally counted as a middle-income county, a label that reflects the country’s comparative wealth but obscures the huge differences in levels of development between rural and urban areas. Within the latter, there are those in the modern economy living in certain glittering Nairobi precincts and involved with the celebrated game parks catering to international tourism on the one hand, and those trapped in the slums on the other. To generalize broadly, Kenyatta is the face of the wealthy, Odinga of the poor; of at least parallel importance, however, are Kenyatta’s Kikuyu and Odinga’s Luo tribal identities. The two ethnic groups, like Kenyatta and Odinga, have long been rivals. Though Kenya’s postcolonial history has seen bloody ethnic conflict, flawed elections, and authoritarian government, a new constitution in 2010 distributed political power away from the center, created a more independent judiciary, and guaranteed basic human rights, including freedom of the media. A hope had been that the new constitution would guide Kenya away from its winner-take-all political culture, lowering the stakes for any one office and ultimately lowering the likelihood of violence. Yet it is not an overstatement to say that between Odinga’s “inauguration” and the government’s undemocratic response, Kenya faces a serious political crisis that threatens to unravel its recent economic and political progress. It now appears that Kenya’s economic progress and celebrated new constitution merely papered over both deep ethnic rivalries and those among Kenya’s “big men,” who show little regard for the interests of those outside their particular constituency, be it ethnic or political. As I have written previously, the precipitating cause of the current crisis is a disputed presidential election (followed by a disputed redo) between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga. (It should be noted that the elections for other offices went well, with inevitable disputes being satisfactorily adjudicated in the courts.) Following the two elections and numerous court cases, Kenyatta was declared the winner and has been duly inaugurated as president. However, Odinga and his supporters—approaching half of the electorate—do not accept as legitimate the Kenyatta presidency. Hence, Odinga staged his own “inauguration” and claims that he, not Kenyatta, is the legitimate president of Kenya. Many Kenyans now fear that they are on a downward trajectory toward an ethnically-based civil war, as occurred following disputed elections in 2007. It is to be hoped that memories of this violence will help prevent a repeat.

Following the January 30 “inauguration” of Raila Odinga as an alternative president of Kenya, the Interior Ministry declared that his National Resistance Movement (NRM) is an “organized criminal group” under the Prevention of Organized Crimes Act. Thus far, however, no arrests have been reported. The NRM is an offshoot of Odinga’s broader political coalition, the National Super Alliance (NASA). NASA created the NRM as its resistance wing, according to Kenyan media.  The Kenyatta administration had sought to prevent Raila Odinga’s “inauguration,” and when it ultimately took place, to minimize media coverage of it, including a live television blackout. President Kenyatta’s office earlier had said that any “actions” (a reference to Odinga’s) would be subject to the law. In December, the attorney general said that if Odinga declared himself president, he would be committing high treason, punishable by death. In an interview with the Voice of America in early January, Odinga raised the possibility that he would establish an alternative government, either in Kenya or abroad. The current political crisis is the outcome of two disputed elections and associated judicial processes. The crisis resulted in a second term for Uhuru Kenyatta as president of Kenya. NASA refuses to accept this outcome and maintains that Odinga was the genuine winner of the original presidential elections, and therefore the Kenyatta presidency is illegitimate.  Personal rivalry between the Kenyatta and Odinga families dates back to Kenya’s independence. It both feeds on and promotes ethnic and class conflict. Kenyatta is Kikuyu, probably the country’s largest and most powerful ethnic group, and the face of big business; Odinga is a Luo, a traditional Kikuyu rival ethnic group, and the voice of the marginalized, especially in the Nairobi slums. A concern is that the 2007 scenario may repeat itself, during which a disputed presidential election morphed into an ethnic conflict that left over one thousand dead and up to half a million internally displaced. A power sharing settlement was cobbled together by the UN secretary general that led to a new constitution designed, among other things, to decentralize governance and mitigate Kenya’s winner-take-all political culture. The new constitution appeared to be working. Hence, in part, the disappointment among friends of Kenya over the current crisis. At this stage, the current crisis could be dissipated by an agreement between Kenyatta and Odinga. Both are “big men,” rich, and beneficiaries of the status quo. Over the years they have been in social as well as political contact. However, mismanagement of the crisis could have dire consequences. Negative scenarios might include mob violence by Odinga’s supporters or government arrests of Odinga’s associates, or even perhaps of the man himself, as the attorney general has threatened. These actions would inflame Odinga’s followers, with likely deleterious consequences.  

As he has long said he would do, Raila Odinga had himself sworn in as the “people’s president” at noon on January 30 in the presence of thousands of supporters in Uhuru Park in downtown Nairobi. With only limited success, the Kenyatta government tried to block media coverage rather than using the police to prevent the event. The attorney general and other lawyers of the Uhuru Kenyatta government said the inauguration amounted to treason. Odinga’s oath, according to western media, was “I, Raila Omolo Odinga, do swear that I will protect the nation as people’s president, so help me God.” Media described the crowd as numbering perhaps two thousand and ecstatic. Odinga and his umbrella political movement, the National Super Alliance (NASA) has never accepted the legitimacy of the August and October elections, nor the subsequent court decisions that resulted in the second term presidency of Uhuru Kenyatta.  Ethnic divisions in Kenya have long played a major role in shaping politics. Kenyatta, the son of Jomo Kenyatta, who was the leader of the liberation struggle against the British, is seen as the face of the wealthy, big businesses, and the Kikuyu tribe. As with the effort to blackout the January 30 “inauguration,” Kenyatta’s critics see him as increasingly resorting to authoritarian means to consolidate his power. Odinga, nearly as wealthy as Kenyatta, appeals chiefly to the poor in the Nairobi slums, the Luo ethnic group, and others who regard themselves as marginalized. The disputed elections mark a point at which Kenya is more divided than at any time since the disastrous elections of 2007 in which disputed elections morphed into ethnic conflict that left thousands dead. In December, reflecting the fragility of the country, the U.S. acting assistant secretary of state for Africa asked Odinga not to proceed with his “inauguration,” and called on him and Kenyatta to enter into negotiations. Thus far, this has not happened and responsibility for the impasse appears to be shared by both leaders.  The Odinga “inauguration” has certainly led to further polarization, as has the Kenyatta government’s attempt at a media blackout. The concern must be that miscalculation by either leader could ignite what is likely a powder keg. Kenyatta must do all he can to ensure restraint by the police force. For his part, Odinga must implore his supporters to avoid violence.   

Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga's decision on December 10 to postpone his inauguration as the president of an alternative “People’s assembly” for Kenya has, at least for the time being, lowered the political temperature in the country. Odinga had announced that he would be sworn in as president in Mombasa on December 12, based on his claim to have won the original August 8 elections. Those elections, in which the election commission had certified Uhuru Kenyatta as the winner, were thrown out by the Supreme Court as not having followed all the constitutionally-mandated procedures. Odinga and opposition voters subsequently boycotted the election rerun in October and they do not recognize the legitimacy of Kenyatta’s victory. Following that election, Kenyatta was sworn in as president and has organized his administration. However, up to half of all Kenyans question or deny the legitimacy of his election and inauguration, according to polling. Spokesmen for the Kenyatta administration said that if Odinga proceeded with parallel inauguration, he would be committing treason, raising the possibility that Kenyatta might attempt to arrest him. In a bitterly divided Kenya, this could provoke widespread ethnic violence, even civil war. (Kenyatta is a Kikuyu, Odinga a Luo; both big ethnic groups are allied with smaller ones). Odinga is still saying that he will proceed with his inauguration, perhaps even before the end of he year.  Why did Odinga back down? Will he continue to do so? The Kenyan press is reporting that some of Odinga’s coalition partners, the National Super Alliance (NASA), Odinga’s family (especially his wife), and foreign diplomats led by the U.S. ambassador, urged him to pull back from the brink. On Twitter, U.S. Ambassador Robert Godec said, “NASA’s decision yesterday (December 10) is a positive step. We again call for a sustained, open, and transparent national conversation involving all Kenyans to build national unity and address long-standing issues.” Ambassador Godec and Acting Assistant Secretary for Africa Don Yamomoto are continuing to call for dialogue between Odinga and Kenyatta. However, the Kenyan press is also reporting anger at the postponement among Odinga’s grass-roots supporters. What happens next? Odinga‘s spokespeople say that he and NASA want dialogue on security reform, strengthening the judiciary, and greater government devolution. Kenyatta, too, is calling for dialogue, but he has ruled out further talks about election reform, a recurrent Odinga theme. So, if Kenya is back from the brink, the political stalemate continues. Christmas is coming, and much of Kenya shuts down for the holidays. Come January, however, politics will resume. In the meantime Kenya is divided and uncertainty about almost everything is the watchword.

Not only is opposition leader Raila Odinga refusing to recognize the presidency of Uhuru Kenyatta, sworn in on Tuesday, he has announced that he will be sworn in as “the people’s president” at a December 12 ceremony. The legal basis for the inauguration, he said, will be Article One of the Kenyan constitution, which states that sovereign power rests with the people. Odinga, leader of the opposition National Super Alliance (NASA), continues to insist that he won the original elections on August 8, in which Kenyatta was declared the victor. Those results were annulled by the supreme court, which judged that constitutional procedures had not been followed. Odinga boycotted the election rerun, which took place on October 26, resulting in Kenyatta winning some 98 percent of the vote amid 39 percent voter turnout (roughly half of what it was for the August election). Odinga denies that the most recent elections are legitimate. For his part, Kenyatta used rhetoric designed to unify at his inauguration, even as police broke up Odinga’s concurrent rally and prayer meeting with tear gas. Kenyatta and Odinga are “big men,” multi-millionaire scions of families that have been rivals since Kenya’s independence. They are playing with fire. Kenyan politics are shaped by ethnic identities. Kenyatta’s Kikuyu is probably the largest ethnic group, and its politicians have dominated Kenyan governance for much of its post-colonial history. Other ethnic groups, notably Odinga’s Luo, regard themselves as marginalized. The continuing political turmoil in Nairobi is almost certainly having an economic impact on Kenya and the entire east African region, though it is hard to quantify. Odinga’s announcement that he will stage an inauguration on December 12 is bound to add to investor uncertainty. What happens next? Kenyatta controls the Kenyan bureaucracy, the army, and the police. His inauguration has been recognized by the judiciary and the international community. Odinga, on the other hand, has substantial support in the Nairobi slums and in those parts of the country dominated by the Luo and their tribal allies. Odinga could bring the country to a halt. A wild card is the undisciplined police and the other security services. Most of the deaths that have taken place during this election cycle have been civilians at the hands of police. Further police violence could set off Odinga’s supporters, who are already seething, though it’s unclear what it will take (at least fifty people have died in election-related violence since August). So, too, could any move to arrest Odinga. Should either happen, it is likely that he would be unable to control his supporters, and mayhem would follow.   

President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga’s impasse over the 2017 election has cast a shadow on Kenya’s future.

Raila Odinga refuses to accept as legitimate the repeat presidential elections of October 26, in which the Independent Elections and Boundary Commission declared Uhuru Kenyatta the winner. Yesterday, in his first public statement since the elections, Odinga said that the “resistance wing” of his political party, the National Super Alliance (NASA), would mount a “pro-democracy” campaign of economic boycotts and picketing. He said that NASA would form a “People’s Assembly” to govern Kenya until a “legitimate” government can be formed.  Odinga provided few details about the People’s Assembly. He said it would include “the youth, religious leaders, economic interest groups, and the civil society.” NASA, he continued, would petition the assemblies of Kenya's forty-seven counties to adopt the People’s Assembly. Meanwhile, Kenyan media outlets are carrying stories of increased rioting in certain Nairobi slums with some reports of confrontations along ethnic lines between the Kikuyu and the Luo. Odinga’s promise of strikes and boycotts through NASA is a promise of increasing unrest. It remains to be seen whether his People’s Assembly will resonate beyond NASA and to the county assemblies or whether its support will merely mirror Odinga’s electoral base. Despite Odinga’s ostensibly peaceful tactics and goals, fomenting ongoing unrest and pushing proposals for an alternative government following a bitterly contested election in a country increasingly characterized by deep ethnic divisions would seem to be the height of irresponsibility. Avoiding widespread violence will hinge on both the Kenyatta government’s response to this new development and on Odinga's leadership of his new movement. Restraint by the security services, already responsible for up to eighty deaths, is particularly important. As is the prospect of arresting Odinga for “treason,” which would likely enflame his supporters and lead to disaster. A decision by Odinga to leave Nairobi for good for western Kenya, say to Kisumu in the Luo heartland, would increase the chances of civil war. For now, however, Odinga’s fight remains one of words. The unrest reported by the media in Nairobi still appears to be restricted to certain slums and there is anecdotal evidence that many Kenyans are tired of the Kenyan political crisis and want life to return to normal. So while it is possible that Odinga is overreaching, it is always dangerous to light a match near a powder keg. 

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the agency charged with conducting elections, on October 30 declared Kenyatta the victor in the second running of the 2017 presidential elections. It said that he had received about 7.5 million votes, 98 percent of the total ballots cast. Turnout appears to have been less than half of that of the August elections. (The October election was a rerun of the one in August, whose results were annulled by the Supreme Court because of unconstitutional procedural issues.) The leading opposition figure, Raila Odinga, claimed that the deficiencies of the August election had not been addressed, urging his supporters to stay away from the polls, which they largely did. This is likely the principal reason why the turnout was so low. Four counties in a region of Kenya that supports Odinga did not vote at all because of security issues. The electoral commission initially postponed the vote to the weekend, but has since cancelled, arguing that there could be no impact on the final results because Kenyatta’s margin of victory was too great. The elections were bloody, if not so much as those of 2007, when more than one thousand people were killed. According to human rights groups, the security services killed at least seventy Kenyans after the August polling. Western media quotes human rights groups as saying that at least another fourteen have died since the October election.  Odinga has claimed that Kenyatta is attempting to establish a dictatorship, and, indeed, the latter has moved to curtail the involvement of the judiciary in future elections. In response, Odinga says that he is transforming his party into a “resistance movement.”  What happens now is unclear. Much depends on how Kenya’s two “big men” choose to react. What does Odinga mean when he says that his party will be a “resistance movement" going forward? Will he challenge the results in the courts? For his part, will Kenyatta reach out to those Kenyans that are not Kikuyu or allied with them? Will he follow through on his attempts to limit the reach of the courts in election matters?  The answers are not clear, and the outlook is not promising. Thus far Kenyatta has resisted calls for dialogue with the opposition; Odinga has stopped short of urging his supporters to eschew violence. On the other hand, Kenya’s new constitution appears to be popular, and the August elections below the presidential level appear to have gone well.  These and other issues will be explored in a Council on Foreign Relations Expert’s Brief that will be published shortly.

Only a third of registered voters in Kenya voted in an October 26 presidential election rerun, in comparison with the nearly 80 percent who participated in the August elections. It appears that most of opposition leader Raila Odinga’s supporters followed his call to stay away. No doubt they were joined by many Kenyans concerned about the possibility of violence, especially from their neighbors in ethnically-mixed neighborhoods. Incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta will be the victor, though it will be some days before the electoral commission announces the final results. Even so, the low turnout all but guarantees that a significant portion of the Kenyan electorate will not regard the elections as legitimate, and Kenyatta’s political position in his new term of office is likely to be weak. Polling in about 10 percent of Kenya’s counties has been postponed until October 28 because of security concerns and the non-delivery of voting materials. There are so many anecdotes of election irregularities that it seems highly likely that the elections will again be challenged in the courts. Preliminary analysis indicates that the October 26 voting was largely along ethnic lines. Odinga is a Luo tribal leader, and residents in the predominately Luo west of the country, where voting was postponed, and some of the Luo-dominated townships around Nairobi, stayed away. Kenyatta is a Kikuyu, aligned with the Kalenjin tribe of his vice president, William Ruto. Those who went to the votes appear to have come from those two ethnic groups and their allies. Some in the Western media are breathing a sigh of relief that the violence was not worse—five people were killed yesterday. Counting both the August and October elections, around fifty people died, the majority at the hands of the security services, far fewer than the roughly one thousand killed during the 2007 election cycle. That being said, the sense of relief is premature. In African elections now, violence on the day of the vote is becoming rare. Instead, violence breaks out when results are officially announced, meaning this upcoming week is likely to be more dangerous than that of October 21. Kenya is a bitterly divided country, politically and ethnically. Odinga maintains that Kenyatta is intent on establishing a dictatorship. Kenyatta’s attacks on the judiciary provide at least the semblance of a basis for such accusations. It remains to be seen whether the political and ethnic divisions will result in the general escalation of violence, strikes, and other activities that will slow the economy. Because of Kenya’s key position in East Africa, its turbulence can affect its neighbors, especially Uganda, South Sudan, and parts of Tanzania. The port of Mombasa and the country’s relatively well-developed infrastructure services the entire region. It should be anticipated that al-Shabab and possibly other terrorist organizations will seek to exploit the weaknesses of a Kenyatta administration that is not recognized as legitimate by a significant percentage of Kenyans. As has been true throughout the election process, Kenyatta and Odinga are crucial to resolving this crisis. If Kenyatta were to reach out to opposition voters and Odinga were to accept the legitimacy of the Kenyatta presidency, if the two together were to repudiate tribalism, national healing could proceed. Both Kenyatta and Odinga regularly promise dialogue, but thus far it has led to nothing. Regrettably, neither has shown much sign of setting aside personal ambitions and interests for the sake of the common good. Can these two leopards change their spots now?