Thursday, June 20, 2013

Why It Is Futile To Ask Kenyans To 'Move On'

Thursday, June 20, 2013 - 00:00 -- BY WYCLIFFE MUGA
Last week, I gave a brief history of the central role that election rigging has played in Kenyan politics, going back to the 1960s.
It would have been a great thing, if this kind of rigging—mostly done by nameless "dark forces" deep within the political establishment—was a matter or purely historical interest. But it is not. The "dark forces" were active this year too.
And so to a large extent, the conduct of the March 4 presidential polls was very much like a Moi-era election. Even the Supreme Court decision that finally settled the issue, was a vintage Moi-era court decision, and worthy of the subservient, eager-to-please Judiciary of a single-party authoritarian state.
But there was one innovation which distinguished this general election from past polls. Much of what happened in those crucial weeks was televised live.
The wily old 'Professor of Politics' former President Daniel Moi, would never have allowed such a thing. For he would have well understood what it would mean if ordinary Kenyans got to witness the inevitable shenanigans on live TV.
So now, it is not only those of us who know a rigged Kenyan election when they see one, who really know what happened. The man in the street also knows what happened.
Plus there remains the question of why, after the most elaborate and expensive election in Kenyan history, the full set of results have never been published.
And now, from deep inside the IEBC itself comes a series of leaks, to the effect that a mighty effort is being made to “reconcile” the vast gap between votes cast for the presidential candidates; and votes cast for all the other positions in that election.
Nobody can seriously expect Kenyans to believe that about a million citizens walked into the voting booth; tossed aside all the ballots for county representative, MP, governor and senator; and then voted only for the president of their choice.
If indeed a million voters had done this, it would not have gone undetected by the dozens of election observer teams who were swarming around the countryside.
So this latest twist in the ongoing electoral drama, only serves to reinforce what we connoisseurs of Moi-era skullduggery recognized right from the start: massive rigging in favour of one candidate.
Well, sooner or later, the truth will be known. And I strongly suspect that - when this happens - the exit poll from those Harvard scholars, which revealed a statistical tie between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, will be vindicated.
And that the 800,000 vote lead in favour of Uhuru was purely the work of our infamous “dark forces”.
Up to now they have operated in secrecy. But this year everybody who had a TV set got a front row view of their handiwork. And for those who had no idea that this is what routinely happens in Kenyan elections, it was a deeply traumatising realisation.
That, of course, is why all these calls for Kenyans to “accept and move on” are futile.
Nobody willingly “moves on” when they have seen for themselves what really happened; when they know that it was anything but a free and fair election.
And now, consider this question:
Did Daniel Moi really beat Kenneth Matiba in the 1992 elections? Or beat Mwai Kibaki in 1997?
Both Matiba and Kibaki filed petitions against Moi’s electoral victory after losing to him in these successive elections. Were they just poor losers, who refused to admit defeat? Or did they know something that many Kenyans, back then, did not fully appreciate?
In any event, did they quietly "accept and move on"? Or did they instead insist that a monstrous electoral fraud had been perpetrated with the active connivance of a complaint judiciary?
Just think of all the similarities: in the Moi era, both in 1992, and 1997, the process of predetermining the outcome of the presidential election began with the propagating of a persuasive narrative: that the opposition votes were divided between a number of ‘strong regional candidates’ and as such none of these candidates could beat Moi. Then came the fulfilling of that prophecy with a Moi victory.
This year, we heard of a supposed ‘tyranny of numbers’: the narrative was that there had been such overwhelming voter registration in the Rift Valley and Central Kenya, that even if the rest of the country opposed the Jubilee coalition, it would still win.
And once again, events were set in motion which ensured that what had been prophesied came true.
- See more at: http://the-star.co.ke/news/article-125055/why-it-futile-ask-kenyans-move#sthash.ZAvhQmfd.dpuf

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