Tag Archives: ethics

One year out, do any Kenyans doubt that William Ruto would use violence to avoid being the first Kenyan president to be found by the Electoral Commission to have lost re-election at the polls?

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I am too far removed from “the ground” in Kenya to be able to directly answer this question myself, but it is one that has to be asked by the UK and German governments leading this year’s democracy assistance “basket fund”, by all Kenyans of course, by foreigners and ex-pats working in democracy assistance or civil society efforts, etc.

To me, the factual underpinnings for any such belief (regarding election violence) seem conspicuously lacking from everything I know about Kenya, Kenyan politics, William Ruto specifically and his history since 1992’s re-election of Daniel arap-Moi when Ruto was a key KANU “Youth Winger”. That first multi -party and post-Cold War election was observed by the International Republican Institute (“IRI”) with funding from USAID after Moi rejected the request of George H.W. Bush’s Ambassador Hempstone to permit an International Election Observation Mission by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (“NDI”) and US democracy assistance involvement became a permanent feature.

Most recently the normal baseline of extrajudicial killings that appear to connect to issues of political power seems to be increasing. Again, I am at a great distance and not a source of facts or judgment about what Kenya’s main political players are doing just now, just a repository of the inconvenient context of recent decades in the lives of these men, their competition and their country (and mine).

Certainly for IRI, NDI and their funders at the National Endowment for Democracy the unique new context includes “January 6” which they denounced rightly and as was required of them at the time, with a new Trump II administration which “woodchippered” USAID, tried to eliminate NED, and has adopted the previously unprecedented practice of direct POTUS endorsement of some foreign presidential candidates on a seemingly ad hoc basis as to process, motive and timing.

Likewise the role of non-democratic actors in Kenya’s Presidential campaign will presumably be that much greater than in the past; those actors are unlikely to incentivize or pressure Ruto to adopt more thoroughly democratic norms.

Kenya 2007 election- Ambassador Ranneberger and Connie Newman at polling station Nairobi

Remember what the State Department’s Acting Inspector General said about Ambassador Gration’s email in 2012

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State Department OIG on Amb. Gration Email

Egypt: PRESS RELEASE AND PRELIMINARY STATEMENT: Disregard for Egyptians Rights and Freedoms Prevents Genuine, Democratic Presidential Election | Democracy International

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PRESS RELEASE AND PRELIMINARY STATEMENT: Disregard for Egyptians Rights and Freedoms Prevents Genuine, Democratic Presidential Election | Democracy International.

Update:  Here is the podcast link for a very interesting conversation on Wednesday on CBC’s The Current with Eric Bjornlund, President of Democracy International, along with Professor Susan Hyde of Yale, on “The Ethics of Observing Egypt’s Presidential Election.” I think it ultimately comes down to simply calling it as you see it. The ethics of “observation” are thus very different than the norms of diplomacy; Democracy International seems to have done a fine job– saw and were willing to say that the process was not genuinely democratic.

Wycliffe Muga: Tobiko Is Not Fit To Hold DPP Position

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I was surprised to learn, quite recently, that Uganda has a Ministry of Ethics and Integrity. It reminded me of a Tanzania-based expatriate I once met who assured me that her work was in advising a Tanzanian Ministry with an equally improbable name: the ‘Ministry of Beekeeping’ (I have since learned, incidentally, that this may have been a private joke of hers, as what Tanzania actually has is a Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, within which there is a ‘Forestry and Beekeeping Division’.)

All the same, I have to wonder what that Ugandan ministry, concerned as it is with ‘ethics and integrity’ would have made of the appointment of Keriako Tobiko as the Director of Public Prosecutions – something which seems imminent at the time of writing.

The question is, After all that we have heard, can we really believe that this is a man of sound ethics and undoubted integrity? Were the accusations made by Prof Yash Pal Ghai, merely a figment of the good professor’s imagination, or is it actually true that Tobiko considered the entire constitution-making process as little more than a ladder that he could use to get access to the top political circles, and thus ascend to high office?

At other times, these accusations may not have mattered all that much. In the first place, Kenyans were previously accustomed to a childlike obedience to the dictates of the imperial presidency. In the second place, doing the dirty work for those higher up than you – or even just having the unmistakable capacity for doing so – was a recognized path to advancement in both the Moi era, and the early years of the Kibaki presidency. But times have changed, and there is – I think – a critical mass of Kenyans who are determined that we should no longer live in a country where those in power more or less do as they please, and the rest of us just have to put up with it.

In the circumstances, accepting the appointment as DPP will most likely prove to be not so much a victor’s laurel on Tobiko’s head, as a crown of thorns. As long as he holds this office, every step he takes will judged against his seemingly irregular appointment, and unflattering assumptions will be made as to his motives for every serious decision he takes.

And there is no question that this is an irregular appointment. Nobody can say at this point whether he is guilty or innocent of all or any of these accusations. But it is clear enough that they bear looking into.

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via Tobiko Is Not Fit To Hold DPP Position–The Star (Nairobi).