A Tense Parliament, and a Fresh Attempt at Talks

15Jan08

As Kenya’s parliament convened, supporters for both sides exchanged heated remarks and fought over the legitimacy of the votes they cast for parliamentary seats. Supporters of opposition candidate Raila Odinga, whom many believe to have been robbed of the presidential election, challenged the use of the secret ballot and claimed that results were easier to falsify using the traditional democratic voting method. When president Mwai Kibaki entered the chamber – marking the first time he and Mr. Odinga have been in the same room since the contested Dec 27th election – no one from the opposition stood to recognize him. It seems that reconciliation is still a long way from coming, though Kofi Annan’s arrival may compel more discussion than departing African Union president, John Kufuor, was able to generate. Kufuor was unable to bring the two sides to the negotiating table to even begin talks.

Eventually, secret ballots were cast into a transparent box; the method, although still unsatisfactory to some, was probably the best solution available. To deny a secret ballot at this point may set a precedent for a new general election, which would in turn make tribal-political affiliations far more apparent than they could otherwise be. Threats and the use of force under such circumstances would certainly delegitimate yet another election and create grounds for further ethnic violence.

More troubling are recent rumors that those who burned and slaughtered over the last few weeks have been receiving payment for their crimes. The going rate, according to the BBC, is $14 per kill and $7 per burned home (USD). [When searching for the original source of this information, which some gained from Kenya's Human Rights Commission, nothing could be found. With luck, this is because of a simple server malfunction, but it may be that the site has been taken down by the government for providing such potentially incendiary information.] Evidence of premeditated murders occurring along ethnic lines, sponsored by the political parties, would be seriously damaging to Kenya’s reconciliation and could earn both sides a date with an international court.

Mr. Odinga’s party is also planning to launch new rallies to protest the election results, although both Odinga and others in parliament point to their participation in the political process as a sign of their willingness to peacefully resolve the conflict. Whether the rallies will spark the kind of violence that the ‘million person protest’ failed to generate two weeks ago remains to be seen, and Mr. Annan’s arrival & high police presence around Nairobi may mitigate that potential. The death toll is estimated around 500, with over 250,000 displaced persons, according to Kenya’s Red Cross.

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