President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga during the signing of the National Accord that established the coalition government between PNU and ODM. PHOTO/ CORRESPONDENT
By MUGUMO MUNENE mmunene@ke.nationmedia.comPosted Saturday, February 26 2011 at 21:00
In Summary
- Details have emerged that as the PNU side kept frustrating attempts at a deal, the ODM team had chartered a plane and was ready to swear in Raila at a secret location
Fresh details have emerged over the extremist negotiating conditions that President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga worked under ahead of the signing of the National Accord three years ago.
Interviews with officials familiar with what went on behind the scenes for 41 anxious days before an agreement was signed have revealed that key supporters and financiers of the two leaders nearly derailed the process that would bring a negotiated settlement to the violence that had gripped the country.
Cabinet positions
On the one hand, President Kibaki’s negotiators were wary of ceding too much ground to the ODM team as that might have meant they would lose their Cabinet positions.
This account was also reported by chief negotiator Kofi Annan in his memoirs Prisoner of Peace.
On Mr Odinga’s side, the Sunday Nation has learnt, some of his supporters had chartered a plane and intended to fly him to an unspecified location to swear him in.
“We could have ended up having a situation like the one in Cote d’Ivoire right now with two presidents,” said an aide to one of the leaders who was close to the negotiations at the time.
On the other hand, one of the negotiators on the President’s side constantly frustrated the process of striking a deal.
The negotiations ended up being so problematic that two days before the Accord was signed, Mr Annan stopped the mediation talks with the team at Serena – where tempers often flared and emotions ran high behind closed doors – and sought out the two principals.
President Kibaki and Mr Odinga eventually shrugged off the hard-line positions taken by some of their key supporters.
“Lest we forget, as some seem to have already, the horrific violence which ripped the country apart in 2007/8, Kenya must ensure that the vital year ahead delivers a blow to impunity, ensures that justice prevails and that healing and reconciliation is made a reality,” said Mr Annan in a statement to the Sunday Nation issued this week.
Mr Annan explains why, on February 26, in consultation with former President Mkapa, he decided to temporarily suspend the talks and engage directly with President Kibaki and Mr Odinga.
In his memoirs, he notes the gap between the positions of the parties and the desires of their leaders, as well as the gap between the process and the crisis that was happening on the ground, could no longer be tolerated.
Extreme disappointment
Behind closed doors, Mr Annan expressed his extreme disappointment at the parties’ lack of progress, and that the talks were no longer proving to contribute to the resolution of the crisis. The parties, he implied, had given him no other choice.
While news that he had suspended talks took the world by surprise, he could neither afford to raise fears of a lack of resolution on the ground, nor – with gangs forming in the wings – could he afford this to be perceived as a “failure”.
In his press statement on February 26, 2008, Kofi Annan insisted that this was not “an act of desperation” but a move to engage directly with the principals given that there was “a need for urgency and speed”; most importantly of all, he emphasised to the people of Kenya that “the talks had not broken down”.
“The February 28 agreement was not a sufficient step, but it certainly was the necessary, vital step toward peace in Kenya.
“With memories of Rwanda still on the minds of many, and the spectre of Somalia not so far away, what might have been had the African Union not stepped in does not bear thinking about,” said Mr Annan in his statement this year.
Lives already lost
“The lives already lost and the families torn apart are irreversible tragedies; but the extent of the violence risked spreading so much further, the number of deaths could have spiralled out of control and the crisis might have escalated from Kenya to the rest of the region, with devastating consequences for the entire African continent,” he said.
Mr Annan notes that he was pleased that he had perceived the hardliners at the negotiating table, though the agreement taken to the principals in the end would have been sold much more easily if such an agreement had been made by them.
“However, (I) had also come to realise that one of the parties at the negotiating table – whose posts included Minister for Education, Foreign Affairs and Justice – had personal stakes in the outcome of the agreement as these positions could be affected in the subsequently needed re-shuffle: they were actually much less likely to make a real agreement than the principals themselves,” he said.
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