Monthly Archives: January 2013

A few links to set the scene as we approach 30 days to Kenya’s vote . . .

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Jay Naidoo of The Daily Maverick writes from “the Mukuru Kwa Reuben slum, one of the largest in Nairobi” with an unknown population size: “I have a right to a toilet–it’s human dignity”.

An update on the preparation for Kenya’s citizen digital “crowdsourced” monitoring/mapping effort, using the Ushahidi software: “Uchagazi Community Next Steps”.

H/t to the UN Dispatch blog for noting another official pre-election delegation in Nairobi: “Kenya: UN official stresses need for peaceful and transparent elections”:

“Kenya’s elections will be watched closely around the world,” Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman said during a visit to Nairobi, the capital.

“Let me take this opportunity to appeal to all Kenyans to exercise their democratic right and participate actively – but peacefully – in the elections,” he said. “Let me also underscore the responsibility shared by leaders at all levels to abide by legal mechanisms and to send a clear message to supporters that violence of any kind would be unacceptable.”

Mr. Feltman, who oversees UN support to elections globally in his capacity as Focal Point for UN Electoral Assistance, commended the electoral authorities for their preparations and underscored the readiness of the UN to continue providing financial and technical assistance to the electoral process.

In the category of “open government initiatives,” and “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” the Project on Government Oversight (US) is asking citizens to push the White House to finally fill the vacancy for the the Inspector General for the State Department:

Inspectors general are independent watchdogs within federal agencies that are essential to a well-functioning government. They conduct audits and investigations that identify wasteful government practices, fraud by individuals and government contractors, and other sorts of government misconduct. Congress and the public rely on their reports to hold agencies and individuals accountable for wrongdoing, identify a need for legislation, and evaluate the effectiveness of government programs and policies.

Unfortunately, President Obama went his entire first term without nominating an inspector general for the State Department. At over five years, the State Department opening is the longest running vacancy among federal agencies.

 

Wycliffe Muga in The Star on “Why we should not dismiss foreigners”, with an example from his own experience in Kenya, but perhaps a universal lesson.

In the category of “it could be worse”: “Is a military coup Museveni’s last line of defense against NRM rebels?” asks Gaaki Kigambo in The East African.

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Kenyan Election: KPTJ challenges IEBC and Registrar of Parties; Police remain unready; “Minefield” for Women

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From the Sunday press conference of Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice, the released statement below warrants a careful reading.  Leading Kenyan civil society groups make it clear that:

the institutions charged with the regulation of political affairs have displayed a disturbing reluctance to enforce their respective mandates with regard to regulating political competition and ensuring adherence to electoral laws. The IEBC has displayed, within the last week, a tendency to buckle under to political pressure by repeatedly shifting timelines relating to the submission of nomination lists at the whim of the stronger political parties. This reinforces concerns around the independence of the IEBC, which were already raised in connection with the intervention by the executive in procurement of biometric voter registration (BVR) equipment.
The IEBC has also displayed a ‘hands off’ policy with regard to its regulatory mandate in respect of the nominations exercise. This is of particular concern because the IEBC will have to make bold decisions and interventions at the March 4th general elections if the country is to observe a credible, peaceful, free and fair election. Of further concern is the huge delay in rolling out civic education. This is despite the forthcoming elections being of an unprecedented nature in the history of elections in the country.

. . . .

The IEBC is required to regulate and monitor the process by which political parties nominate their candidates. The Commission only monitored that process and did not in any way regulate it. It was left to political parties to regulate themselves with disastrous consequences.
The Registrar of Political Parties has displayed an unwillingness to enforce her mandate and powers conferred upon her office by the Political Parties Act to rein in rogue political actors. . . .

KPTJ Statement on Political Party Nominations and mandate of IEBC 27.1.13

“Are Kenyan Police Ready for Elections?:  Force still under-resourced and poorly equipped as March polls approach”, from the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, iwpr.net:

As a result of the bloodshed, the government launched a programme of reforms to turn the police into a more accountable and professional force. Although the appointment of an inspector-general in December is seen as an important step forward, experts warn that the force still lacks the skills and equipment to contain outbreaks of violence around the April elections.

“Kenyans should not expect much difference in terms of capacity and professionalism from the police because they have not acquired much [since 2008],” Simiyu Werunga, a security consultant who heads the African Centre for Security and Strategic Studies, told IWPR.

“Women Navigate a Political Minefield in Kenya,” IPS, Inter Press Service:

Blatant discrimination, threats and intimidations, an uneven playing field and a largely unsympathetic public have turned electoral politics into a veritable minefield for women hoping to secure top government posts.

Despite adopting a more gender sensitive constitution back in 2010, in which Article 81(b) stipulates that not more than two-thirds of the members of elective public bodies shall be of the same gender, male-dominated parties continue to make a farce of the little political space offered to women.

“The Long Road to Internal Party Democracy” from The Star via AllAfrica.com.

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Somaliland Update

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Britain warns of “specific threat” to Westerners in Somaliland and urges its citizens to leave. This is sad; I found Somalilanders to be most welcoming and especially appreciative of the interest and attention of Western visitors. Likewise, during 2007-08, Hargeisa just felt safer than Nairobi, or Addis or Khartoum for that matter.

Former Ambassador David Shinn recently gave an interview with the Somaliland Sun that will be reassuring to Somalilanders wondering about the impact on them of the U.S. decision this month to give formal recognition to the new Somali government:

While I don’t speak for the U.S. government, I doubt that the formal recognition of the new Somali government will have any significant impact on Washington’s interaction with Somaliland. I believe the U.S. government will continue to work with Somaliland as it has in recent years. While there may not be public references to the two track policy, the separate administration in Somaliland remains a reality and I believe Washington will treat it as such. It is up to the leaders of Somalia and Somaliland to determine the nature of their relationship. I see no indication that the United States has abandoned any commitments reached in last year’s London conference. Nor do I expect this development will change in any perceptible way U.S. policy on combatting piracy in the region.

See David Shinn’s blog here.

Red Sea

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I thought this was worth revisiting in remembering the preparation for the Election Observation Mission in 2007 . . .

 

[Updated] International Crisis Group releases key up-to-date guide to Kenyan election preparations

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Update– the Associate Press reports “Analysts: Political Party Polls in Kenya a Failure”:

Political party primaries to select candidates for Kenya’s March national elections have been fraught with irregularities, disorganization and disgruntled losers, increasing the chances of conflict during the upcoming vote, analysts said Friday.

That’s bad news for those trying to avoid a repeat of what happened after Kenya’s 2007 elections, when a dispute over who won the presidency led to weeks of violence that left more than 1,000 people dead. The primary voting this week did little to instill confidence that officials are ready for another national vote.

.  .  .  .

Kennedy Masine, an official of the local Election Observer Group, described Thursday’s attempt to hold nominations as a “phenomenal failure.” . . .]

I’ve now finished an initial reading of the ICG report released yesterday entitled “Kenya’s 2013 Elections.”  It’s an important resource for two key reasons: 1) it is strikingly up to date for this kind of thing, with lots of new information, including footnote references for events even this week; 2) it is relatively comprehensive, covering a lot of ground in substantial detail.  It gives fair, sober assessment of the status of the major areas of reforms that were identified as needed in the wake of the disaster in 2007-08.  I hope it will be updated quickly once things shake out further with the primaries over the next few days.

In fact, you could take this report and prepare a “grade card” for implementation of the “reform agenda” over the course of the Government of National Unity.  Without being cynical or fatalistic, it would simply have to be quite low so far.  Regardless, by gathering a lot of the information that a lot of us have been thinking about in various areas in one place, the report could also be used as a road map to realistically “play to strengths” in the terms of the existing Kenyan institutions and develop last minute contingency plans and “gap fillers” in those areas where reforms and preparation are clearly going to be getting an “incomplete”, such as policing.  Surely it is clear by now that there need to be plans in place for how to provide extraneous security support beyond the Kenya Police Service in the event of a crisis triggered by major failure of the election itself.

Here is the Executive Summary with a list of recommendations.

An interesting point of reference is the NDI Kenya Pre-Election Mission of May 2012, to see what has been accomplished and not accomplished in the meantime.

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Fiasco

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“If how we did nominations is how we shall hold elections, God save Kenya,” Mituma Mathiu in the Daily Nation:

The political party nominations are a complete, utter fiasco, and they tell us a great deal about Kenya’s political culture.

First, and this is what puts the lives of all us in danger, is that politicians are a law unto themselves. . . .

Kenya’s party primaries Thursday will be key test for credible elections–international community should speak candidly this time

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A key indicator of major Kenyan general election problems ahead that was downplayed in 2007 was the magnitude of problems in the party nominations process.  All of us who were involved in supporting and watching the process were aware from our own experiences and from the Kenyan media that things were messy.  As it turned out, the U.S., at least, conducted a more systematic observation of the primaries and saw a lot of things that would have raised more red flags for the rest of us had anything been said publicly (or even shared privately with others working election observations).

For the latest this year, see “Confusion ahead of Jan 17 party nominations deadline” from The Star today and  “Rivals prepare for tough nomination fight” from the Sunday Nation.  Of course, the challenges now are much greater because of the addition of the Senate and county offices.  See “Fairness a Must In Party Nominations” from Jerry Okungu in The Star.

[Update Jan. 16 0200 Nairobi time, Daily Nation: “Lobby names possible nomination hotspots“:

Nairobi, Siaya, Nakuru and Migori have been identified as possible violence hotspots in party nominations tomorrow.

The Elections Observation Group said on Tuesday it was concerned about the rise in sporadic violence in parts of Kenya, particularly in Nairobi’s slums and Tana River.

The group has deployed 290 observers countrywide, with a concentration on the hotspots, to monitor and report on the primaries.]

Through my 2009 FOIA request for documents from the State Department on the Embassy’s own 2007 election observation endeavor, I was provided in addition to a minimal amount of information on the general election observation a copy of an e-mail about the primaries, as discussed in Part Eight of my FOIA Series, especially noteworthy regarding the role of the ECK, as well as hate literature, and the overall mess:

The one document released that substantively describes observation of voting by State Department personnel is a November 20, 2007 e-mail which is a headquarters “readout” of a video conference held “with Post to discuss the experiences of Post’s first-ever observation of the political primary process in Kenya.”:  Here is the text:

The Observation Effort:
*21 teams (total about 60 people) deployed to the field. This is our first time observing the primaries. We expect to deploy about 50 (100+ people) teams to the general elections as part of the larger international observer effort. The EU plans to deploy 150 people.
*These will be Kenya’s 4th multiparty elections but only the second “free and fair”.

Negatives Observed:
*The process was very poorly organized. We would say the the parties embarrassed themselves, except most of the party leaders have no shame and are thus immune from embarrassment. General feeling is that apparent total lack of organization is not an accident, but reflects efforts to rig/manipulate the outcomes.
*There were obvious deals between the incumbents and local party operatives.
*The process was well-run and by the book only in where parties had no hope of winning in that area anyway. Where there were real stakes, manipulation was rampant and obvious.
*Ballots were delayed for many hours in many locations; some politicians felt this was intentional and especially disenfranchised women voters, who either couldn’t wait all day or had to go home before dark for safety reasons.
*Hate literature observed to date is overwhelmingly generated by PNU supporters.

Positives Observed:
*Turnout was surprisingly good. People were very determined to vote. Many waited from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. or later for ballots to arrive. In some cases where ballots were delayed, people agreed amongst themselves to vote on whatever pieces of paper and honored the results.
*Dozens of outgoing MPs (including some we are very happy to see go, i.e. [REDACTED] were eliminated at this stage, which suggests that you can’t always manipulate the results.
*Our sample was biased as we purposely went to areas where trouble was expected and/or stakes were high, so we likely observed a disproportionate amount of rigging, etc.
*With the recent passage of the Political Parties Bill, this is the last time that the party nomination process will be run by the parties themselves. In the future, the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) will run it (at least, for all parties who want public money). PNU contracted with the ECK to run their primary this time, but it didn’t happen in practice–party leaders took over and wouldn’t let ECK do its job.

After the Primaries:
*We expect a lot of horse trading. Some winners were DQed on appeal and even without an appeal. There were also many “directed nominations,” which led to the resuscitation and handpicking of many old dinosaurs/unpopular incumbents notwithstanding voter opposition.
*There may be blowback with an impact on turnout for Dec. 27. There were widespread feelings of bitterness and disappointment, especially among ODM supporters, who expected to participate in a “new beginning.” Many people complained that, populist image notwithstanding, ODM is run like a dictatorship and that the way of doing things is no different than KANU used to do in the past. The positive difference is that the electorate is much more vocal and active in demanding transparency and participation in the electoral process. The howls of protest regarding some of the directed nominations show the electorate’s increasing maturity and lack of interest in this kind of politics.
*Many unsuccessful candidates have jumped to smaller/marginal parties. There is a cottage industry of sorts selling nominations.

Possible Impact on Main Parties:
*The disappointment and frustration with the nominating process was greatest among ODM supporters. Will this experience sap the energy of ODM supporters, or can ODM redeem itself? Will people continue to be willing to take a chance on an unknown quantity?
*Fear/stability is a powerful motivating factor in Kibaki’s reelection prospects. The contest between ODM and PNU can be characterized as “hope vs. fear.”
*PNU has much less internal discipline and message consistency. Virtually all PNU parties are fielding their own candidates for Parliamentary seats, so not much of a real coalition.

Political Violence
*Two possible types. One, aspirant (often incumbent) MPs use paid gangsters (and sometimes local police officials) to intimidate or disrupt the polling process (trash polling stations, threaten voters waiting in line and/or election officials). Two, spontaneous voter uprisings, where voters feel they are being disenfranchised and attach the presiding officers. If the ECK runs an efficient process as expected, this should lessen the possibility of voter violence. —–END—–

For context, this November 20, 2007 summary of what was observed during the primary election was roughly a month after the Ambassador’s intervention in the public opinion polling as described in previous documents and a month before the Ambassador’s public statement predicting a “free and fair” election the week before the general election. Nairobi is the State Department’s biggest Sub-Saharan post; it was staffed with smart and observant people and obviously well funded–the problem was not what the State Department didn’t know, rather it was what it wouldn’t say.

Update on the Egypt NGO trials, and an appeciation of “the local staff” working for democracy

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The Christian Science Monitor published an update today by Dan Murphy on the lingering situation of the trials of international NGO workers from the staffs of NDI, IRI and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Egypt:

“Mostly forgotten, Egyptian trial of U.S. NGO workers drags on”

. . . .

The departure of most of the Americans took the air out of musings in Washington that Egypt’s US aid would be cut off in retaliation and in general press coverage of the case. Further easing concerns were the eventual charges, around the question of illegally receiving foreign funding for the NGOs, which carries jail time, but not a death sentence. Press coverage has dwindled to a trickle.

Civil society growth at stake

Yet the stakes of the ongoing trial, which is scheduled to resume on March 6, loom large for the future of the development of civil society in Egypt as much as they do for the 13 Egyptians, American, and German who have remained behind. “The government has successfully stigmatized the NGO world,” says Becker.” [The American NDI worker who stayed behind with the Egyptians.]

“It’s very lazy to to class this as an American-Egypt battle, or about the former regime versus the revolution,” says Halawa, who joined NDI in Cairo in July of 2011 and worked on training Egyptian political parties on grass-roots organization, poll-watching, and outreach. “It’s about civil society in this country and the ramifications are quite huge. You get the feeling that people are quite scared. We joined up with the revolution, to fight for free elections, most of us were election observer, and most of us weren’t planning to stay on much longer.”

Halawa and other defendants complain that Egypt’s NGO community has not rallied around them, frightened off by the early claims in the Egyptian press that they were spies or guilty of treason. That tactic was a staple of the Mubarak-era, and the meme was pushed hard by Mubarak holdover Fayza Aboul Naga, minister of international cooperation until earlier this year, who had long been at the sharp end of Mubarak-era efforts to prevent civil society from flourishing here.

[Update: see this excellent McClatchy story for Jan. 16, “Egyptians democracy workers still on trial for helping U.S. groups”]

I think this is the time for me to say something long overdue about the Kenyans (and one third-country national) who reported to me as “local staff” for the Kenya and Somaliland programs when I directed the East Africa office for IRI in Nairobi in 2007-08. The local staff made the programs run successfully and taught me most of what I learned about Kenya. I loved working with them. As the only American there, I got a disproportionate share of the recognition and appreciation, but we were all especially dependent on the local staff because IRI was short-handed for East Africa in Washington. When the New York Times called me in July 2008 after the embargoed IRI exit polI showing an Odinga win was released at by CSIS in Washington, I sent the Times a written statement following my interview. I included this, although it wasn’t “news” when the story finally ran the next January:

The local IRI staff in Kenya did an outstanding job with the hard work of the election observation and keeping the office and programming together under very trying circumstances. I am very proud of the job they did with all of our programming. The exit poll was primarily handled by Strategic and UCSD and myself—if it failed in its execution that would be my responsibility and not that of anyone else in the office. As far as the decisions regarding whether or not to disclose the results to the Kenyan public, those were made in Washington and were outside the control of the local staff.

I hope that IRI and NDI and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation are able to be of substantial aid to those stuck facing trial in Egypt for simply working for democracy in their own county for these organizations. These people should not be forgotten.

New Development in Reading the Pre-Election Kibaki Tea Leaves: GOK repays DfID for “education scandal”

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I don’t want to make everything that happens in Kenyan government and politics in early 2013 “about” the Kibaki succession, because, of course, there are the “down ticket” races that matter, too.  Nonetheless, I was fascinated to see the news in the Standard this afternoon that the Kenyan government had repaid the British official aid agency DFID for losses on the “education scandal” that was current news at the time I started this blog just more than three years ago: “Kenya repays stolen fee education cash”.

The “education scandal” and the “maize scandal” were the two big breaking new corruption eruptions under the Government of National Unity that served to remind everyone that simply adding part of ODM to the second Kibaki Adminstration in April 2008 did not in itself solve anything regarding corruption.  The “maize scandal” was a new and insidious plot for the corpulent corrupt to “eat” off of hunger in the food crisis in 2009; the “education scandal” was the revelation of an older and ongoing insidious plot for the elite to steal from school children, dating to the inception of “free primary education” early in the first Kibaki Adminstration.

Why repay the money now?  One suggestion might be that this is an indication that Kibaki does have concern about his post-presidential reputation, his “legacy”.  Perhaps there is something to this.

Of course, Kibaki is a master of not communicating his intentions, conducting affairs behind closed doors and letting Western (and Kenyan) observers who feel compelled to do so offer speculative analysis and opinion to substitute for actual knowledge about what he is up to.  So who knows?

Amazingly, to me anyway, I have read otherwise trenchant reports and analysis of various aspects of the Kenyan situation that include unembellished lines to the effect that Kibaki will not be a major factor in the upcoming election as he is concluding his second and final term.  To me, it is quite obvious that H.E. Mwai Kibaki will remain the most important individual in the 2013 Kenyan presidential election until he passes the mace to his successor.  With the new constitution, partially implemented, he has less direct and formal power in the 2013 election than he had in the 2007 election.  He remains, nonetheless, far more powerful than any other single individual, even Uhuru Kenyatta or Raila Odinga certainly, and more by far than any one member of his inner circle.  How he will use that power, and how much we will even ever know about how he uses that power, are in question.

Would it be hard for Kibaki to hand off the presidency to Raila Odinga this time?  The polls show Odinga leading but Uhuru in range with just a few weeks to go, so in some ways the race is similar to 2007.  Not to suggest that Kibaki would prefer Uhuru in the way that he preferred himself in 2007, just taking note of the parallels.  Some people have suggested that he might prefer Saitoti or later Mudavadi to either Raila or Uhuru, but did they really know something or were they going on guesses, rumours or even misinformation? Certainly the dynamic of having a possible runoff and the need to win in the counties makes things different and more complicated this time.  It will be interesting to watch.

In the meantime, congratulations to DfID and I will hope that President Kibaki does in fact want to leave office with the best possible reputation on governance and corruption issues in these closing weeks.  UPDATE: (I do think that it must be noted that there is no indication here of an intent to actually recover “stolen” funds, rather that the Kenyan taxpayers are taking up the burden from the British taxpayers.)

Here is news from Saturday, Jan. 12 that President Kibaki has refused to assent to the hugely controversial Retirement Benefits bill passed by the 10th Parliament on their way out of office, awarding themselves a big gratuity of 9.6M KSh on leaving office, along with post-parliamentary benefits such as state burial and security, diplomatic passports and airport VIP lounge access.

Warnings to Take Seriously for Kenya’s March Election . . . and something to enjoy

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The Council on Foreign Relations has just published a “Contingency Planning Memorandum No. 17” regarding “Electoral Violence in Kenya” by Joel Barkan, of CSIS and professor emeritus from the University of Iowa.

Well worth a careful review. Joel Barkan is a dean among the community of American scholars of Kenyan and East African politics who has also worked on the democracy and governance assistance side with USAID in Kenya during the birth pangs of 1992 and made the transition to the policy world in Washington through his post at the CSIS Africa Program and activities such as helping to spearhead the “Kenya Working Group” to put together a broad range of people in Washington working on Kenya issues to generate necessary focus within the U.S. government. Joel was our “resident expert” among the Election Observation delegates for the International Republican Institute observation for the 2007 Kenyan election and had the singular position of being independently identified as someone we wanted as a delegate by both IRI staff and as a “suggestion” to me from Ambassador Ranneberger.

Someday, when a careful history is written of the last Kenyan election and its aftermath, Joel will be noted as one of those who helped the United States get its diplomatic response turned around in part so that we were then able to assist in addressing the crisis presented by the failed election. He spoke out from Kenya and immediately afterwards back in Washington about the obvious failure of the ECK central tally in Nairobi–and raised in Washington the failure to release and use the IRI/USAID exit poll data as a clear indicator that the ECK’s announced numbers did not justify the intransigence being shown by Kibaki and his networks of “hardliners”. Thus, Joel is an obvious person to pay attention to in preparing for the 2013 election.

Let me also flag the comment to my last post entitled “Countdown to Chaos” from Andrew J. Franklin, an American former Marine who has lived in Kenya since the 1970s. I don’t know Mr. Franklin personally yet outside the blog, but this is a warning “straight from the ground” in Kenya, from someone with involvement in the security business. It is a lot easier for expats in Kenya to keep their heads down and say nothing, so I take his cautions with extra gravity.

In closing, let me refer you to a video from bloggingheadstv.com with Mark Leon Goldberg of UN Dispatch and Wycliffe Muga of Nairobi’s The Star. Regular readers will have noticed that I cite Wycliffe Muga’s Star columns frequently as having noteworthy insight. I didn’t get to meet nearly as many Kenyan journalists as I would have liked while working the last election, in part because I wasn’t wanting to be in the media myself and in part because I was just too busy with the immediate demands of the job with the programs I was responsible for. Nonetheless, I did get to meet Wycliffe in person early on and got tutored in some important intricacies of Kenyan politics, both historically and in terms of the current situation in Mombasa at that time where he was living then. I will call Wycliffe a friend, like Joel, in the interest of disclosure and because I like them both–but please don’t assume that either of them necessarily ever agree with me on anything I write here!

I think it might be fair to call Wycliffe something of an “Ameriphile”, which of course I appreciate as an American myself. In this bloggingheadstv discussion, Wycliffe perhaps provides a “shot in the arm” for those of us who might get discouraged by some of our more feckless foreign policy moments and expresses appreciation for what the United States did ultimately do in applying muscle to leverage a mediated settlement of the Kenyan 2007-08 election crisis, as well as, in particular, health assistance in the form of PEPFAR.

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