Tag Archives: pre-election violence

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

Worth reading on Kenyan pre-election violence, and challenge ahead for March election

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“John Githongo: Former Anti-Corruption Czar on a mission to change Kenyan leadership” from November 2012 Think Business at “Kenyan Magazines”:

Based on Inuka Kenya’s mapping using information provided by credible Kenyan organisations and partners, more than 480 people have been killed since January 2012 in this violence. “It is pre-election violence associated with the new boundaries and the struggle for power. It is so insidious that it is almost passing unnoticed,” says John.

The new constitution, he adds, poses a lot of challenges for the transition process in terms of implementation. We have created new boundaries, instituted a system of devolved government and initiated new laws. Even the more developed economies have not attempted to implement the number of changes we are attempting to implement at the moment at one go. “We are a very versatile people but we will be tested in a way that is unprecedented.” He worries that the danger of things falling apart is that the disillusionment that might follow will cause Kenya to implode, not to explode, “Like an ice cream melting in the sun.”

“The biggest challenge the IEBC faces” by Wycliffe Muga in The Star.