Tag Archives: governance

Following Jimmy Carter funeral Donald Trump takes office and deploys “neutron bomb” to US foreign assistance

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American “olds” of my generation (we who are 45-64 are the only age cohort who went for Trump in last year’s presidential election) may remember the 1970s controversy over President Carter’s decision to go forward with deployment of the neutron bomb in Western Europe.

To some sensitivities way back in the day, before we “beat the Vietnam syndrome”, the notion of a defensive nuclear weapon that could kill people without “nuking” physical infrastructure was distasteful even faced off against the Soviet Red Army across the Iron Curtain. This was before the peak of the “nuclear freeze” movement and the birth of the National Endowment for Democracy and the modern era of democracy assistance under “PeaceThroughStrength” during the Ronald Reagan administration.

If you are too young to remember the Cold War I think you probably had to be there but I will try to link back soon to some of my related blogs posts and list some other references.

On Friday an acting official on behalf of Secretary of State Rubio delivered the symbolic equivalent of such a weapon to direct immediate Stop-Work orders freezing funding for State Department and USAID funded Foreign Assistance (subject to a few advance waivers for Egypt and Israel, some emergency food assistance and security matters). All to be reviewed and restarted, modified or terminated on authority of Secretary Rubio to make sure they directly serve the strictures of the Trump/Rubio formulation of “America First” as opposed to, you know, helping other people in service to our national interests as per US statutes enacted during the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and subsequent administrations up through 2024.

Of course it was never not America first but it was in some real sense at important times and in important ways “America +” (or so most of us Americans have always believed).

Secretary Rubio came off the Board of Directors of the International Republican Institute (a major State and USAID nonprofit foreign assistance implementor) as well as leaving the U.S. Senate this week to take the post under Trump.

A good piece explaining “Why Kenya’s protests are different this time”.

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Happy Saba Saba Day.

A range of Kenyan voices have been saying that the current “Gen Z” protest movement has already generated an irrevocable shift in Kenyan politics and/or even Kenyan society.

I suspect that veteran professional “Kenya watchers” and analysts in interested foreign capitols are not yet sure about that.

Here is a good piece in The Conversation by Owino Okech at SOAS that I find useful in assessing the durability of the movement: “Kenya’s protests are different this time: 3 things that make it harder for government to crush them.”

Kenya’s election was very close – would Raila have won with Ngilu instead of Karua as running mate?

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Raila Odinga Kenya president campaign

The closeness of the election is somewhat obscured now by the “winner take all” nature of Kenya politics and the quick consolidation of power by Ruto, but it really was very tight under any view. No disrespect to Martha Karua intended because her choice did help revitalize Raila’s campaign when he had persistently trailed in the polls throughout and then moved ahead when she was tapped.

Nonetheless, all politics in Kenya is local/tribal and she was undoubtedly picked in part to try to offset Raila’s weakness versus Ruto in the core Kikuyu old Central Province, as well as a play for “good governance” support from the “international community” and civil society (which had adopted Karua for a variety of reasons in recent years in spite of her understood role as a Kibaki Kikuyu hardliner opposed to the peace deal and power sharing in the 2007-08 ECK and PEV crisis).

At the end of the day, I think Karua was respected but not highly popular, whereas Ngilu was less respected internationally, and perhaps among some parts of Kenya’s more intellectual class, but more popular as a politician.

One thing that I am guessing that happened is that Raila overestimated the practical value of going with a “Good Government” choice in terms of support from Washington and London, and otherwise from “the Western donors”, just as he overestimated the transferability of the support that Kenyatta had in those capitals to him. I think he just may have been behind the times on this: there were years when Ruto or a candidate with his profile would have drawn active criticism internationally for corruption but 2022 was just not such a year for a variety of reasons. Likewise people in Washington that considered Ruto “dangerous” as late as a couple of years ago because of his role in the PEV seem to have gotten over it once they saw him as the long-established frontrunner in the polls and BBI not catching on. I think many were unsure whether Kenyatta was really going to follow through on supporting Raila which made it that much easier to rationalize a Ruto presidency.

“On the ground” among Kenyan voters, Raila could not pull off running a traditional opposition anti-corruption oriented campaign after several years of the handshake and clearly counting on Kenyatta’s support. Too much cognitive dissonance, especially after getting beat in the Courts on a BBI that got larded up and bogged down to the point of becoming notably unpopular in its own right. On that front, the Karua pick seems to have proven too late and too out of step with the messaging from Raila’s other coalition heavyweights.

Given that he was behind in the polls and needed a spark, I do think choosing a woman made sense, but Ngilu as a more traditional Kenyan politician who was a current office holder and a long established vote getter from a “swing” region and ethnicity might have fit the bill quite a bit better. A more obvious choice to match up versus Mudavadi and Wetagula on Ruto’s side and a more congruous fit with the rest the established heavyweights on the Azimio team.

“Freedom Under Threat”: New report on the spread of laws restricting NGOs in Africa from Freedom House

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The new report “Freedom Under Threat: the Spread of Anti-NGO Measures in Africa was released today. It provides a valuable review of recent developments in counter-democracy push back from governments in power in numerous countries.

In Kenya, here is a good, straightforward recitation of the approach taken after the “UhuRuto” election of 2013 with a Jubilee Party platform calling for a crackdown on independent NGOs said to be modeled after post 2005 repressive measures established by the Meles Zenawi government in Ethiopia (see “Attacks on Kenyan civil society prefigured in Jubilee ‘manifesto’“) and the legal “pitched battle” since:

In Kenya, meanwhile, the new government elected in 2013 made six successive attempts to modify the PBO Act—a progressive law passed by Parliament and signed by the outgoing president just months prior to the elections.49 All of the attempts were loudly opposed by NGOs and the political opposition, and the High Court ordered the government on October 31, 2016, to publish the original PBO Act in the official gazette to bring it into operation.50 The government refused to comply, prompting NGOs to request that two cabinet secretaries—overseeing the Ministry of Devolution and Planning and the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government—be held in contempt of court.51 The court ruled in the NGOs’ favor on May 12, 2017. Rather than implement the court order, however, the government continues to apply the outdated NGO Act of 1990, and it is unclear how the situation will be resolved. The broad-based Civil Society Reference Group, an alliance of over 1,500 leaders of national and international NGOs that ran a multiyear campaign for the adoption of the PBO Act,52 continues to insist on its implementation. Indeed, Kenya represents an interesting case study of the pitched battles that have characterized the struggle between governments on the continent that seek to narrow democratic space on the one hand and civil society sectors that seek to preserve democratic gains on the other.

The moves by African rulers appear related to or inspired by authoritarian trends elsewhere:

Although no attempt is made in this report to analyze laws outside Africa, there are parallels between anti-NGO measures adopted across the continent since 2006 and those adopted in Russia and China—two influential global actors that have forged close ties with African governments. Sudan’s anti-NGO law coincided with the first of several Russian laws,6 closely followed by Rwanda’s measure in 2008. Russia’s second wave of legal restrictions coincided with those of several African countries—notably Ethiopia, Zambia, and Mozambique—while China’s 2016 and 2018 regulations came alongside measures by several other African governments surveyed in this report. It is difficult to establish specific links between the African laws and those adopted by the two global powers, but the close relationships built in Africa since 2000—particularly by China—support a modeling hypothesis.

Must reads on Kenya

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Kenya’s dangerous path toward authoritarianism by Neha Wadekar in The New Yorker.

Kenyatta’s grand plan to silence Kenya’s free press by George Ogola in African Arguments.

This is how you capture the rise of Kenya’s vibrant contemporary art scene by Abdi Latif Dahir in Quartz Africa.

Central Kenya’s Biting Poverty by Dauti Kahura in The Elephant.

Crackdown on the media in the best fashion of past despots by Macharia Gaitho in The Nation.

Uhuru must resist temptation to take Kenya back to KANU days by Rasna Warah in The Nation.

Vested interests may stifle U.S. arms embargo on South Sudan by Fred Oluoch in The East African. [“Kenya — whose Mombasa port is the main entry for arms destined for South Sudan — has remained cagey on the issue.”]

Updated Feb 7: Autocratic fangs bared in Kenya as unlawful television shutdown finishes first week; police fail to produce unlawfully detained activist

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For a good overview:

“Kenya’s About-Face: Fear for Democracy as Dissent is Muzzled” by Jina Moore, New York Times, Feb. 4.

Today the police failed to honor an order to produce detained opposition activist/lawyer Miguna Miguna, who has been arrested by police and held in defiance of a previous order granting bail. No charges have been initiated against him by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution.

The Court ordered the Inspector General of the Police to appear tomorrow morning with Miguna. Raila and other NASA leaders came to Court for Miguna this afternoon.

Miguna is a firebrand “character” on the local scene in recent years who was not in NASA, running for Governor as an independent against ODM/NASA incumbent Evans Kidero and the new Jubilee Governor Sonko, gaining little support as a candidate. Post election he has associated himself with an activist wing of political opposition calling itself the “National Resistance Movement” and pressured for, publicized and participated in Raila’s (peaceful) “people’s president” swearing in ceremony. It would seem that the regime saw him as someone they could visibly and conspicuously “shut up” who did not have a political constituency or independent mass following.

Personally, I have not considered Miguna’s role one that I thought seemed constructive over the years, but he does not deserve to die for that and I am worried for him.

What does it take for people to see that Kenyatta and Ruto just are not the men whom their Western friends and publicists would try to make us believe?

Looking at Kenya over the years it is so easy to become inured to State violence used not in the interest of the nation or the citizens but of political power and self interest of those controlling the ruling party.

537th they came for Miguna Miguna, and I said nothing because I was not Miguna Miguna?

UPDATE: Later Monday, KTN broadcasting was restored and while NTV remained off the public airwaves its signal was restored to cable and DSTV for those subscribers. Citizen and Kikuyu language sister station Inooro were still blocked from broadcasting. The partial restoration came just ahead on a contempt petition following the original order that broadcasts be restored secured by a public interest litigant. Citizen, unlike its rivals, went to Court itself to challenge the ban.

UPDATE:  Miguna, a Kenyan born citizen who fled to Canada as a refugee during the political persecution of the Moi days, was finally taken late at night to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and bundled onto a plane for Amsterdam and on back to Toronto.  The police having run out of time finally after serial Court orders to produce him took him to the airport instead of the courtroom.  The authorities will have to file affidavits explaining their actions in preparation for contempt hearings.  Miguna asserts that he was physically mistreated aside from the extralegal aspects of his detention and his alleged deportation or expulsion.

Ken Opalo points out in The Standard that Interior Minister Matiangi shouldn’t have overreacted to Raila’s oath of office in first place, since “the people’s president” is not a real office and the ceremony was a political statement not a treasonable offense.  To this I would add that the State Department’s pronouncement from Washington helped fuel rather than diffuse the confrontation, in particular by decrying the ceremony as a “self-inauguration” without noting that the opposition had stepped back from a claim to an actual office (the stated goal of the opposition is take office through new elections later this year).

Candy and Communists for Kenya: as Kenyatta’s Jubilee “deepens” partnership with Communist Party of China, Mars’ Wrigley East Africa to sell “affordable Skittles”

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“Affordable Skittles” for the “kadogo market” as Wrigley offers may not quite match Kentucky Fried Chicken in Nairobi, but perhaps the biggest news since Burger King arrived?

And yes that event at State House celebrating the deeping partnership of Jubilee and the Communist Party of China yesterday has turned heads. I think a lot of Americans had not been aware of this relationship. Obviously it makes sense in carrying forward the spirit of KANU of Kenyatta and Moi and their understudies. Kenya always labeled itself a “democracy” whether one party rule was formal or informal. China, of course, is also “democratic” with numerous parties other than the Communist Party.

Caption from Presidential Communications operation: “Today we agreed to deepen our relationship with the The Communist Party of China in order to enhance Jubilee party management and democracy.” The Presidency

At a micro level I would take umbrage at the blatant use of State resources for Jubilee Party business, but since the Party was launched at State House in the first place and the donors supporting “Western-style” democracy and the “rule of law” and such were not willing to say “boo”–nor the IEBC nor the Office of the Registrar of Political Parties, there is never a reason to be surprised at this point. We reap as we sow.

ICYMI: An important read from Tristan McConnell in The Atlantic: A Deadly Election Season in Kenya – The Killings Suggest a State that is More Predator than Protector.

And here is the story from Moroccan World News of how the Chinese connected the African Unions computer servers at the Addis headquarters directly to Chinese servers in Shanghai.

Kenya 2017 – EU Election Observation Mission releases Final Report

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The Kenyan Ambassador to the EU accuses the EU EOM of violating a Memorandum of Agreement with the Government of Kenya governing its observation by releasing its Final Report this week. (I have not had a response yet from a request for a copy of the MOU from the EOM or been able to otherwise locate a copy–it is likely routine.)

The report has a fair bit of information on the immediate mechanics of voting this year, while noting that few of the recommendations of the 2013 EUEOM had been met in preparation.

Of the 22 recommendations made by the 2013 EU EOM, it appears that none of the five priority recommendations have been implemented, and only two have been fully implemented (related to a unified voter register and defining the duration of the campaign). The rest have been partially implemented, albeit minimally in some cases, or not implemented at all.

I do not have any particular comment regarding the voting itself having elected not to be there myself.

While observing that the new IEBC was appointed unduly late, in a climate of mistrust, the report does not addresses the context or even mention the “Chickengate” convictions by the Courts of EU Member the UK for bribes paid for previous IIEC/IEBC procurements, or the Government of Kenya’s failure to prosecute the recipients, for example.

I will be interested to hear more on the thoughts of others who were there.

EU Election Observation Mission 2017 Final Report

Timely new reading for the latest chapter in the Kenya struggle

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Brand new from Palgrave, Westen K. Shilaho’s Political Power and Tribalism in Kenya. Reading now.

Best overall international piece so far on Kenya Supreme Court decision

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Lots of good journalism out today, but this story from Peter Fabricus in my evening Daily Maverick Weekend Thing strikes me as hitting many of the right notes: “Kenya’s courts step up to electoral plate.”

One of the most important lessons from today is how cowed Kenya’s media really is by the Government.  This decision did not have to come as quite such a suprise if Kenya’s media had felt free–or been brave enough–to just cover the polling stations and constituency tally centres.  But we went through this in 2007 (when results were broadcast then taken down), and 2013 when self-censorship was the order of the day.

Today, Kenya took a big step forward on the rule of law — a sign that perhaps the press can become in the future in fact as free as the Constitution provides and the West pretends.

For Kenyan must reads, start with Nanjala Nyabola, “Why I’m proud to be an African today,” at IRINnews.com.