May be Raila was right; we should get foreigners to run elections body

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By MURITHI MUTIGA
Posted  Saturday, August 13  2011 at  17:48

IN SUMMARY

• Godsend: Mr Hassan with his reasonably competent handling of the job so far and his “small tribe” origins seemed like a godsend

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It is true that the Kenyan Constitution is one of the most progressive in the world. It is also one of the most unoriginal.

We have borrowed many of the features of the American, German and other constitutions in Western nations and come up with a supreme law that is a fine piece of work but which might not address some of the most pressing challenges our nation faces.

Like ethnicity. It is stating the obvious to say that nothing looms larger in Kenyan politics than the question of ethnicity. As Kwamchetsi Makokha argued in these pages not long ago, sometimes in Kenya ethnicity is not the main thing–it is the only thing.

On that score, it is disappointing that our legal scholars and political scientists have not come up with any propositions to tackle this issue head on in our Constitution in ways other than an American-style declaration that all Kenyans are equal (so were black American slaves in theory at the time the US constitution was drafted).

Other countries have been more honest. An example in East Africa is Burundi. They recognised that because of their longstanding ethnic differences it would be foolhardy to hold elections in which you would expect Hutus and Tutsis to compete on an equal footing in senatorial elections in provinces where one or the other are dominant.

So their constitution requires that each of their 17 provinces should elect one Hutu and one Tutsi to create a senate with an equal number of each.

Their Parliament by law must have 60 per cent Hutu MPs and about 40 per cent Tutsis with three seats reserved for the Batwa minority.

Other countries with similar ethnic or sectarian differences have come up with their own creative solutions.

In Lebanon, where religion is to them what ethnicity is to Kenya, they simply drew up a constitution recognising their sectarian divisions, which they hoped would help maintain some stability.

So their president must be a Christian, their speaker a Shia Muslim and their prime minister a Sunni Muslim.

You can bet that one of the hot topics in the 2012 campaigns will be whether the country is ready for another Kikuyu president. The Constitution is abundantly clear that there is nothing to stop that. Wiser heads would say that perpetual dominance by the larger ethnic groups will sow the seeds of instability.

Maybe Kenya should have gone for the rotational Comoros model where the presidency is rotated around the nation’s three islands: Grande Comore, Anjouan and Moheli. All this comes to mind because of the row over the fate of the head of the electoral commission, Issack Hassan.

My view was that he was especially suited to that position because he comes from a community that is perceived as a minority and whose members are not directly in the running for the top seat.

We are a people whose instinctive ethnic instincts override all else. Should the Thika superhighway be named after Kibaki? A man from Mount Kenya and another from Lake Victoria will have entirely different views on that.

So Mr Hassan with his reasonably competent handling of the job so far and his “small tribe” origins seemed like a godsend.

Sharp knives

But with some members of ODM having unsheathed their sharp knives for him and considering the effectiveness of the ODM media operation, it is an open question whether he will survive the onslaught.

PNU, meanwhile, is plotting to stop the CEO of the electoral body’s secretariat, James Oswago. The process of picking new leaders for the organisation will be bitterly contested.

ODM and PNU are likely to take opposing positions with the inevitable result that the credibility of the polls body will take a hit one way or the other.

Maybe Prime Minister Raila Odinga was right after all. In these transitional times we should just get neutral foreigners from Ghana, South Africa or further afield to run our key bodies until we overcome our entrenched ethnic suspicions.

mmutiga@ke.nationmedia.com