بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
ANALYSIS OF THE POWER-SHARING AGREEMENT IN KENYA FOLLOWING THE POLITICAL CRISIS BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 27/12/2007
On Thursday 28/02/2008, President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya signed a power-sharing agreement with Raila Odinga, leader of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), that was witnessed by both Kofi Annan, chief mediator of the African Union appointed mediation panel that was strongly supported by the international community, and President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, chairman of the rotating leadership of the African Union. Immediately the deal was signed, messages of support and congratulations poured in from the international community as represented by the same parties which had shown a keen interest in resolving the political crisis in Kenya and pressuring for a solution including the United States foreign secretary Condoleezza Rice, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, European Union (EU), African Union, East African Community (EAC), Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) etc. Behind this power-sharing deal were two key influential powers, the US and UK, that imposed this solution upon the Kenyan government in order to preserve their vital interests.
Kenya had witnessed an intense struggle for power during the election period before the 10th general elections that took place in 27/12/2007. The leading politicians in Kenya took prominent roles in using strong words against their rivals and building tribal coalitions in an attempt to either gain or secure power. Historically all leading politicians in Kenya have strong links with Britain, the old colonial power that continued to control Kenya’s politics in order to attract prominent politicians as a means to dominate Kenya. The leading politicians in Kenya’s recent past, all of whom exploit tribal chauvinism (‘asabiyya), are three: –
Former President Moi from the Kalenjin tribe who ruled for 24 years until he gave up power in 2002.
Then his successor and the current president Mwai Kibaki of the Kikuyu tribe (Kenya’s largest tribe). Thirdly Raila Odinga, son of Kenya’s first vice-president Oginga Odinga, who comes from the Luo tribe (Kenya’s second largest tribe).
In the 2007 general elections, Moi lined up with Kibaki to seek to secure power under the umbrella of the Party of National Unity (PNU), a coalition of various mainly new political parties—apart from the old British established former ruling party of Kenya African National Union (KANU—that were established on tribal lines to secure votes from different regions i.e. a coalition of tribal parties.
On the other side Raila Odinga, the leading opposition politician, established one unified party in the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) by placing tribal leaders at the leadership of the party under his control i.e. a coalition of tribal leaders. Both sides exploited the shallow tribal partisanship bond still carried by many Kenyans, apart from Muslims, to seek for votes. By the time of the elections, PNU was a party built mainly of the Kikuyu elite surrounding Kibaki together with a few non-Kikuyu like Moi who were generally in the orbit of British politics since their early days in pre-independence Kenyan politics. Raila’s ODM was a coalition of the remaining major tribes—particularly the Luo, Luhya and Kalenjin tribes— and other smaller tribes that were uniting with the target to remove the Kikuyu from power. Both PNU and ODM spent enormous sums of money in seeking votes, portrayed their rivals as dangerous mercenaries, and both parties claimed before the elections that it definitely had the majority vote and could only lose by massive rigging thus preparing their followers for a major struggle in case they were not declared winners. Moreover, several leading politicians from both sides obviously had links with tribal militias formed of unemployed youth who were prepared to fight against other tribes to protect politicians’ interests. Moreover, Kenyan politicians showed themselves ready to unite and break coalitions, and also strengthen or weaken links with the colonial powers—the US and UK—solely for the sake of gaining power. All these politicians and parties clearly showed that they were truly secular politicians of the Machiavellian school of thought who believed “might is right” and “the ends justify the means” in their unlimited ambition for power.
Thus when the final results of the general elections were announced by the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) on 30/12/2007 in which ODM was shown to have won most of seats in Parliament (104 out of 210 elected parliamentary seats) yet at the same time Kibaki was announced to have narrowly won the presidential elections against Raila Odinga, the stage was set for an ethnic cleansing campaign and the ODM refused to accept these results as genuine. Then the ODM cleverly mobilised public sentiment to ‘prove’ that Raila won the presidency but that the ECK, a body of 21 commissioners all of whom had been appointed (or re-appointed) by Kibaki, was pushed into declaring Kibaki a winner in the presidential elections via ‘rigging’. Raila thus called for major public demonstrations and rallies in order to challenge the results and cause an ‘orange revolution’ to achieve power against a hostile regime similar to what happened in Ukraine and Georgia. Raila exploited the anti-Kikuyu sentiments he had raised during his elections campaign, together with widespread public anger with the endemic corruption and poverty, so Kenya exploded into chaos, looting, ethnic clashes and widespread violence. All these raised the realistic indications that Kenya would fall into civil war based on tribalism similar to what happened in Rwanda and Burundi, thus the international community in general, and particularly the US and UK, decided to move quickly to resolve the crisis before their interests were destroyed. It is interesting to note, however, that Muslim-dominated regions of Kenya were relatively safe and peaceful since Muslims did not participate in the barbaric tribally-based ethnic killings.
As we have stated, all the leading politicians in Kenya were nurtured under British patronage; however Odinga shifted to the American camp to seek its assistance to achieve power in Kenya so the US encouraged him to imitated the ‘Orange revolutions’ of Georgia and Ukraine. However the influence of powerful tribal politics and the explosion of tribal clashes made the US and the UK, these as the two influential powers in the struggle, to reach a compromise based upon sharing power due to fear that the fighting would erupt into civil war that would endanger their interests.
It is well known to perceptive observers that the intense struggle between the ODM and PNU was the continuation of an Anglo-American struggle for power in Kenya ever since the US adopted the call for ‘multi-party democracy’ in sub-Saharan Africa in the early 1990s as a means to remove old single party dictators who were entrusted with power, and constantly supported, by the British— both former President Moi and his successor, Kibaki. The US objective in calling for multi-party democracy was to attract politicians into its camp under the pretext of being in the ‘opposition’ in an attempt to gain power in Kenya. However the entry of tribes into the conflict and the fear of civil war convinced both the US and UK that neither could assume exclusive control of Kenya’s entire government, at least not at this time, so the two countries agreed to share power to preserve their vital interests. This is because Kenya is considered the key strategic country in East and Central Africa with many vital interests for western powers including: –
1. Geostrategic interests: Kenya is situated at a key geographical point just below the Arabian Gulf, at the mouth of the Red Sea and with a long Indian Ocean coastline plus being the entry point for many landlocked African countries like Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Thus control over Kenya ensures control over vital sea lanes, as well as East & Central Africa.
2. Political interests: Nairobi has long been a key capital for western powers in Africa with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UNHSP) both having official headquarters as well other UN agencies having important regional offices. At the same time, other key international institutions used to secure western interests also have important regional offices in Kenya such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank etc thus Nairobi is the focus for many international campaigns and conspiracies. Moreover Nairobi has been used as the base to either promote rebellions in neighbouring countries or impose ‘resolutions’ that favour western interests as happened with both the Sudanese and Somali peace talks. Also Kenya itself is a prominent country in several African institutions such as the African Union (AU), East African Community (EAC), Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) etc which means that many important US and UK plans are implemented by proxy through the Kenyan government.
3. Economic interests: Kenya has the largest and most developed capitalist economy in the East African region, though primarily as a market for western goods and not as a manufacturing country, and Mombasa seaport is the entry point for most of the imports of neighbouring landlocked countries. Moreover almost all of the most profitable companies are owned by British and other western multinationals in the mobile telecommunications, banking, agriculture, horticulture, cement manufacturing and other sectors.
4. Military interests: Kenya is considered an important base for British military forces and the UK managed to renew its defence treaty with Kenya in 2007 during Kibaki’s rule. As for the US, it has a treaty allowing its forces to use Kenya as a rapid deployment post in case of need, and this post was used to launch the invasion of Somalia in 2007. The US in particular is trying to gain influence in Kenya via the training of Kenyan military personnel. Moreover, the National Defence College in Nairobi, located near the British military headquarters in Kenya, is now a regional centre under direct US supervision to train so-called peacekeeping forces both as a means for the US to use such forces to assert US military interests in the region by proxy as well as to attract prominent officers into its camp.
5. Intelligence interests: Nairobi is a major base for the US intelligence agencies including the CIA, FBI and others particularly after the 1998 bomb attack on the US embassy in Nairobi which is the largest in sub-Saharan Africa. As a result of close cooperation, the US has used Kenyan authorities to support its so-called ‘War on Terror’. Similarly the British as well as other countries including ‘Israel’ also have major intelligence bases in Kenya.
6. Ideological interests: The UK has always used Kenya as a model of the supposed ‘benefits’ of free market capitalism for other African countries to follow, something which the US has also been doing since it invested great efforts in the early 1990s to push for multi-party democracy together with liberalisation/privatisation policies to favour its own multinationals. Kenya was the first sub-Saharan African country to undertake multi-party elections even if only nominally in 1992, and the elections of 2007 was the fourth such multi-party elections that was supposed to prove the success of such a model yet it instead proved the failure of capitalist democracy to unify the people or provide solutions to the endemic corruption and poverty affecting the masses.
After the results of the elections were announced followed by chaotic fighting that threatened to result in widespread civil war threatening their long-term interests, the US and UK quickly began pushing their leading men in Kenya, namely Odinga and Kibaki respectively, to accept a power-sharing agreement. Thus we saw repeated efforts by the UK and US ambassadors in Kenya to meet personally with both Kibaki and Odinga to push for power sharing. Britain also quickly sent its African men to mediate the conflict such as former President of Sierra Leone, Ahmad Tejan Kebbah, who was the head of the Commonwealth Election Observer Group monitoring Kenya’s elections. Then on 1s January, 2008, the US and British foreign secretaries issued a joint statement calling on Kibaki and Odinga to compromise to achieve political stability for the “sake of democracy.” The US also sent the then head of the African Union, President John Kuffuor of Ghana, to try to mediate but he was not immediately successful. The US then sent in its undersecretary of state for African affairs, Jendayi Frazer, to Nairobi where she met repeatedly with Kibaki and Odinga. Britain also sent its foreign minister in charge of African Affairs, Lord Malloch-Brown, to Nairobi for meetings with Kibaki and Odinga. At the same time, the US and UK built strong international pressure via the UN security council, African Union, European Union etc to push for a mediated solution under a panel of so-called ‘Panel of Eminent African Persons’ headed by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan and assisted by both the former Tanzanian president, Benjamin Mkapa, and the former first lady of South Africa, Graca Machel.
The mediation efforts begun in earnest at the end of January 2008 and Annan promised a political resolution with one month; this was because he knew that he was representing the key interested powers, the US and UK, which ensured him that he would not fail. And, just to show how important the issue was, US President George Bush made several public statements pushing for a political resolution to the Kenyan crisis. Similar statements were also made throughout the process by British Prime Minister George Brown. Thus it was obvious that the key powers were going to impose a resolution that protected their strategic interests in Kenya. These countries also used a threat of identifying and prosecuting prominent politicians before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Rome for committing war crimes as a means to impose the power sharing deal. In fact, were it not for fear of endangering their vital interests in Kenya, the US and UK would not have attempted to prevent civil war; rather, they would have left the conflict to continue to the end no matter how many died…!
In the end, and despite several problems along the way primarily caused by hardliners in both the PNU and ODM camps as well as repeated small scale fighting throughout the mediation efforts, Annan’s team finally pushed the main local players—Kibaki and Odinga—to agree to a power sharing agreement that would leave Mwai Kibaki as the president while creating a new executive prime ministerial position for Raila Odinga. This agreement is complicated since it requires a ‘grand coalition government’ between the PNU and its allies on one side and ODM with is minor allies on the other. In other words, all major parties will be in the same government without an official opposition, a strange situation for western countries who insist on multi-party democracy with an official opposition! This proves that western powers call for the slogans of multi-party democracy merely as a pretext to achieve their interests and no more. So such powers support dictatorships if such dictatorships protect their interests; and they call for multi-party democracy to oppose dictatorships if that is in their interests!
Despite the US and UK agreeing to share power in Kenya, however the reality of colonialism—and particularly US colonialism—does not acknowledge power sharing save as a short rest for a fighter amidst a constant struggle. This means that both powers will await a suitable opportunity to exploit to expel the other from the equation in order to take exclusive control over Kenya.
Thus the power sharing agreement is a potential mine-field that can be detonated at any time. For example, the agreement requires the creation of a position of an executive prime minister for the first time since 1964 as well as requiring major constitutional, legal and administrative reforms to work. And there are major question marks as to the extent of the prime minister’s powers especially when compared to the president’s powers. Moreover, since the deal is the result of a compromise based upon a benefit bond between the US and UK, and such deals are notoriously weak and subject to bargaining and recalculation over time depending upon the variance of each power’s interests and strength, this means that the new ‘government of national unity’ in Kenya will be exposed to the danger of collapse at any time that either power believes it has the strength to resolve the struggle exclusively in its favour.
In conclusion, the Kenyan election crisis has proven yet again that the western ideology of capitalist democracy has failed to unify people in Africa or guarantee their progress since it is a tool to ensure Africa remains under western dominance. Rather it has produced dangerous and selfish so-called politicians who are ready to sacrifice a whole country for their personal interests. Yet the same western powers that have caused the problems for Africa through their colonialist exploitation today pretend to be the saviours of Africa by imposing false solutions that recycle the same corrupt politicians who set the country on fire! It is important that Muslims in Kenya, Africa and the world realise that it is their divine duty to expose the corruption of the western ideology of capitalist democracy and offer the divinely-revealed ideology of Islam which is the sole solution for African and the world to spread security and justice worldwide.
25th March, 2008