Geneva: A vigorous dialogue after all

Or will the Constitutional reform process have to finally resolve the question of our electoral system itself — transforming it from a winner-take-all system to some combination of direct and proportional representation?

Most fundamentally, however, is the cost of not restoring competence and confidence in our electoral system.

Although Kenya had experienced elections-related violence before 2007/8 — in 1991/2 and 1996/7 — such violence had, in the main, occurred before the general elections.

It had also clearly been politically instigated in order to displace individuals and communities assumed to be in favour of the opposition from regions in which the then ruling political party wished to secure political support.

Of interest is why elections-related violence failed to occur in 2001/2 — at the moment when the then ruling political party could have been assumed to be most interested in stopping political transition.

The role played by senior civil servants and all heads of security services at the time in ensuring neutrality of the public service including the Provincial Administration and all security services — and so enabling a peaceful electoral process — must be explored further in this respect.

What is clear is that, once it had begun, the election violence of 2007/8 was beyond the control of the security services.

The state engaged in violence itself — a fact attested to by the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Post Elections Violence (CIPEV), which attributed no less than a third of all deaths to the security services.

Until the security services are able to act effectively within the boundaries of our Constitution and the law, the security situation will remain tenuous, with political parties and the citizens who support them resorting to private solutions for public problems.

Both parties to the conflict still demonstrate a lack of belief in the neutrality of the security services.

On the one hand, the organised violence in the North Rift is justified as legitimate public protest.

On the other, the equally organised counter-violence that moved out from Central and Nairobi into the South Rift is justified as legitimate self-defence.

Then there is the question of how best to achieve justice for the organised violence and the equally organised counter-violence.

The failure of parliament to pass Bills that would have established a constitutionally entrenched Special Tribunal to try perpetrators on both sides should, perhaps, have been anticipated.

Parliament, like the executive, clearly now wishes to assert itself as the arbiter of Kenya’s destiny — witness the mutterings about the continued role of the mediator and the mediation process itself as well as about national sovereignty.