Democracy and the Social Question III

AFTER THE STORM: HOW TO ASSESS THE SETBACK IN KENYA’S DEMOCRATIZATION PROCESS

Introduction
The democratization process in Kenya has not been progressing in a sustainable manner over the last eighteen years since the 1990s but has stagnated and at best has been in a cyclic spin. There has been much motion without movement forward. During these years, the democratization process was closely controlled by a dominant ruling class which through the strategy of institutional capture. The institutional capture is so acute in Kenya to the extent that the democratization process has been stymied. The democratization process which was intended to deliver popular power, popular livelihoods and popular participation has been decapitated and subverted by the same ruling class in Kenya.
Democracy as a norm has therefore lost the worth of its salt in the Kenyan society. Apart from the repeal of the detention without trial, return of multi-party politics and permission of political leaders to hold public meetings upon notification of the police, not much else has occurred for nearly twenty six years since the 1982 de jure establishment of Kenya as a single party state.
Democracy is nothing if its essence is not for the social pursuits and the development agenda of the majority of the citizens of any country. Kenyan democratization has not entirely been about the pursuit of these popular agendas but in ensuring that there is a smaller even if ineffective government that interferes very minimally in the economy; the propping up of a powerful tiny elite and the facilitation of free access by Multi-National Corporations (MNCs) to Kenyan markets and resources. The democratization process has essentially focused on stability than on empowering the citizens to make decisions that will put them in control of power and resources. There is doubt therefore if the democratization process in Kenya was properly defined and whether there is a national consensus on what that democratization process should achieve.
The masses have been left on their own by the alliance between the owners of capital, the political ruling class and the foreign powers who are interested in the Kenyan political economy to the extent only where Kenya serves as the geopolitical crucible and arena for maximizing various interests of the foreign powers within the East and Central Africa and the Horn of Africa. The Agenda of this alliance is stability and not democratization.
Over the years, economic goods in Kenya have not been increasing at a proportionate rate to the growth in the population. Even worse, the increase in economic goods and opportunity has ended up becoming goods and opportunity for the same elite that has controlled the economy and politics since independence. As the economic goods shrink, the population has resorted to a serious cut throat competition for economic goods and opportunity without popular participation and popular power. State power therefore has been left as a drug only the elite of these ethnic communities may be addicted to. Unfortunately the struggle has been largely un-strategic hence the strategic misfit in the democratization process and struggles. Instead of a struggle for democratizing power and livelihoods to increase access to economic goods and opportunities, the masses have been drawn into an elite struggle where the elite line up the ethnic votes as a basis to access state power in order for these elites to access even more economic goods and opportunities. This has created a political market whose access is by way of the currency of ethnic votes. Once the electorate has secured “their elite” in power through their ethnic votes, “their elite” discard them, forget them and cut the bridge for the next five years. In the long run, the elite have structured and organized the elections to become a mere ethnic census. Not an arena of choice between platforms for democratizing power and making popular livelihoods and participation a reality.
The elite have ensured that the debate in Kenya is hollow. They have used the institutional capture strategy in securing elite power and escaping responsibility of applying the state in the transformation of the economy, politics and society.
The theory of institutional capture has led to the stagnation of the democratic discourse. Institutional capture has institutionalized impunity and arrogance. The elite have become arrogant and totalitarian.
The only way therefore for assessing the set back in Kenya’s democratization process is through the assessment of the theory of elite capture of institutions of governance and the reaction of the excluded masses from the development debate. The elite capture of institutions has apparently led to Instrumentalization of institutions. Once institutions are instrumentalised, the people get alienated; they become aliens to the very institutions they called for in the struggle for democratization. The institutions then become ineffective and dysfunctional hence the contempt of institutions by the political and popular actors. This contempt has ultimately led to the option of violent settlement of conflicts in the society.
Institutional capture and the set back to the democratization process in Kenya
Institutions of public good and governance are a social enterprise for transforming social and economic conditions of the citizens of a country. They are the public enterprise for change and development. These governance institutions should be applied to the process of democratizing power, facilitate popular livelihoods and popular participation2.
The Kenyan contradiction, which is a largely African and developing world’s crisis indeed, is that governance institutions have instead been taken over and are now controlled by a tiny minority which constitutes the ruling class. These institutions have been instrumentalised by the elite for capturing and retaining power.
My observation is that this is the main cause of the setback back in the democratization process in Kenya. The elite take it that they have some divine power to rule over the peasants and patricians and therefore it is natural that they should manipulate and control these institutions of governance to keep them in power.
In Kenya, right from the cabinet, the military, the public service, the police, parliament, the universities, the media, the church and the religious organization in general down to the civil society including the trade unions have increasingly over the last thirty years been captured by the ruling class.
Even the Electoral Commission in Kenya was long ago captured by the leadership of Kenya’s ethnically driven political party oligarchs. The Electoral Commission in the last general election therefore found itself totally impotent to resolve a simple dispute over the election results even when the Commission’s chairman had for days been on national TV asserting that the electoral results were being “cooked” by his officials.
Most public institutions seem to have been instrumentalised to perpetuate the longer stay in power of the traditional post colonial rulers and financial elites. This is the problem of democratization in Kenya.
Leadership renewal has been infeasible in Kenya. it seems that in Kenya, the more things change, the more they remain the very stale same. Corruption and impunity has been entrenched and made part of the character and nature of leadership.
In effective the government in Kenya no longer is dedicated to the service of the electorate but of the elite.
There are three key factors why this has been the case;
a. Foreign interest and stake in the Kenyan political economy; in 2004 the Standard Newspaper commissioned a report that showed that 69% of all of Kenya’s economic productivity is controlled or owned by foreign interests. Kenya remain a net consumer of economic goods, services and technology from other economies especially European and North America. No wonder then that the influence of most foreign missions in Nairobi is so enormous.
b. The lack of reform institutions,
Reforms and the democratization process can not occur in situations where there are no reform institutions. As we have noted here above, there are barely any reform institutions in Kenya. Most, if not all of Kenya’s over 200 registered political parties are conservative right wing or centre right political parties which are established to capture power not to democratize power and be the force for democratization. The cabinet for decades since the purge of the socialist-leaning ministers ( headed by Jaramogi Oginga, Pio Gama Pinto and Bildad Kaggia) from the KANU cabinet in 1966 has remained a club for the ethnic power brokers who eventually end up in cabinet to maximize their economic interests. It has to be noted that even Kenyan universities and activist civil society organization have ceased to be reform institutions. There is little if any democratic debate happening within these institutions. In the end the democratic debate has been left to pockets of organic intellectuals who are organized and given a platform by various NGOs and institutes such as
c. Lack of a democratic constitutional framework and the limitations of an authoritarian state;
d. Lack of a reform minded leadership;
e.The pre-eminence of ethnic identity in the political process in Kenya.
These five factors have played out to create and lead to a situation where the ruling elite have constructed a cabal of political and business elites who are mainly accountable to foreign powers than to the electorate. In this situation, it is fairly clear how institutional capture has become the biggest obstruction to democratization in Kenya.
The January- March chaos that rocked Kenya were therefore an outcome of this mosaic of structures and conditions that have excluded the people and left them with nothing but contempt for and frustration with the political process and the now abstract democratization process.
Kenya’s political problem- A diagnosis of the structure that necessitated violent political action and ethnic cleansing in the post election Kenya.
The 2007 presidential elections were very much an ethnic census for ODM and PNU politicians. Mainly driven by the Kikuyu and Luo political and business elite and swiveled by the Rift valley politicians, the high stakes political contest made those elections the most horrendous Kenya has ever had. The fact that government is totally unaccountable to the electorate between elections, which is a feature of the presidential system of government, elections in Kenya have become a battle ground for settling scores between the elite and between the people and the rulers who they have been unable to hold accountable or exact punishment on between elections.
The Kenyan political problem can be summarized as follows; we have a winner take-it-all political system that does not allow power sharing on the basis within coalition building framework. In this instance the losers-lose-all. The scaring reality that if you lose in an election you will miss out the economic goods and opportunities for at least five years or actually even longer- and this within a seriously unequal society- makes the political and business elite plan to retain or access state power at all costs. The fraudulent pre-election coalition building attempts have not at all solved the crisis but only falsified the structural problem of power imbalance and power monopolization by those who are the first past the post. That is why the constitution had to be amended by the National Accord and reconciliation Act to facilitate power sharing within a coalition government framework but then this created the new crisis in the country of a Westminster parliamentary system without an official opposition.
These structural ailments are further complicated by the first past-the post single member constituency electoral system that has made only the boys with money and who can buy violence and the ballots to impose on Kenya an electoral dictatorship. What Kenya has witnessed since 1964 till date is constitutional tyranny. Add to this grim situation the ever increasing and unprecedented youth poverty and unemployment, pervasive and structural gender and regional inequality that tend to take both ethnic and regional lines and it soon becomes clear to all that we have a complex problem in our hands3.
The formation of the grand coalition government may have brought about a return to the status quo ante but it only postpones the political issues to 2012 or earlier. The grand coalition is actually a hindrance rather than a necessary evil in the search for national renewal, reconstruction and reconciliation. The set back in democratization therefore shall persist until the reform movement properly diagnoses this structural weakness established by the current constitution.
Impunity, the ethnic grievances and real victims of a flawed constitutional foundation
The deeper insight into this diagnosis must observe that there is colonially founded and constructed ethnic division that since the arrival of the colonialists has been instrumentalised into the most potent force in Kenya’s state formation. To be honest, ethnicity in Kenya has been and remains the most preponderant factor in state formation. Even the Kenyan constitution has not assumed such significance as ethnicity has in the process and struggles of state formation. The massive amount of evidence available can not fit into this essay. From this ethnic conflagration, certain narratives and historical accounts have emerged to be dominant. One of them is the political grievance the Luo community has against the Kikuyu community. The story is that while Jaramogi sacrificed the opportunity to become Kenya’s first Prime Minister and demanded that Kenyatta must first be released; and while Kenyatta went on to become the first Prime minister and then first President of Kenya; he quickly surrounded himself with a clique of Kikuyu politicians who not only hounded Jaramogi Oginga Odinga out of power but went on to mastermind the assassination of Oginga’s political soul mates like Pinto and then brooked the assassination of TJ Mboya, a Luo confidante of Kenyatta himself, when he proved ambitious and dangerous to the Kenyatta and Kikuyu power and economic elite. It is narrated that the Luo community has there after systematically suffered marginalization and victimization by successful administrations including the Moi dictatorship and later the Kibaki NARC government Raila Odinga helped form. In between independence and the killing of Odhiambo Mbai during the Bomas conference, the assassination of Robert Ouko was yet another cynical attack on the Luo political leadership. The perceived grabbing of power away from Raila Odinga by Mwai Kibaki in the December 2007 elections has not made matters lighter when it comes to the tension that exists between these two communities.
On the other hand, the Kalenjin and ethnic communities in Rift Valley have advanced serious grievances regarding the way the Kenyatta administration handled the land issue. The settlement of some 35,000 Kikuyu families in rift valley under the supervision of the Kenyatta government assisted by former President Moi has continued to anger the majorities in Rift valley. Till this day, the fact that it is only one million acres out of ten million of the colonial government held land that was distributed and that nine million acres ended in the hands of the Kenyatta associates, civil servants and remnant white settlers remains a bitter thing for the Rift valley communities to swallow. This could explain but not justify how the Kisii, Luyhia and other Kenyans settling in Rift Valley have found themselves on the receiving end along side the Kikuyu community.
It has to be recalled that in this debate the real victims of the Kikuyu-Luo and Kalenjin elites’ dominant politics are the Kenyans from the small communities whose rights have been vitiated and violated more pervasively without much ado-with impunity. For instance, the Somalis of Kenya have suffered worse victimization than the Luo marginalization or the fact that non Kalenjins and Maasais have settled in the Rift Valley. The Wagalla massacre of 1984 for example where more two thousand Kenyan-Somali men were burnt and others starved to death at the Wajir airstrip goes to show that while the political arena in Kenya is shaped to mainstream the agendas of the elite hailing from the dominant ethnic communities, the smaller ethnic communities have suffered beyond comprehension in independent Kenya. The Taita, Kambas, Tavetas and the Mijikenda have suffered near-apartheid neglect remaining landless in their own country and being treated as second class citizens. It is seriously believed that in the coast province, non coastals can apply and obtain land title deeds long before any coastal Kenyan can access the same from Voi all the way to Malindi and Lamu.
The Borana, Burji, Rendille, Turkanas and Pokots are some of those Kenyans who have suffered the reign of scorched-earth state policies since independence in the hands of governments dominated by the elite from the dominant ethnic communities. This was in an attempt to silence their rebellion against Kenya’s criminal and predatory state. These land relationships are what have made the Kisii community divided politically since 1992. This is because some of the members of the Kisii ethnic community have interests in the Rift valley and fear majimbo4 on the ground that they may be evicted while those who have no such land and property interests outside the Bantustan of Gusii land generally need economic devolution of economic and political power to alleviate crashing poverty and therefore support majimbo.

(Footnotes)
1The writer is a Governance specialist, Panafricanist, and political and democracy activist working with National Convention Executive Council (NCEC) in Kenya
2 The concept of democracy as popular power, participation and livelihoods was developed by Prof. Issa Shivji at his key note address to the National Convention Assembly (NCA) 5th
Plenary session; February 2001
3 For the detailed analysis of inequalities in Kenya see Reading on Inequality in Kenya: Sectoral Dynamics and Perspectives; Society for International Development, East Africa,(2006)
4
Majimbo
is the Kiswahili word for federalism t hat is understood to structured as devolved regionalism

AFTER THE STORM: HOW TO ASSESS THE SETBACK IN KENYA’S DEMOCRATIZATION PROCESS

Cyprian Orina Nyamwamu

In the final years of the 20th century, an Africa that was largely ruled by autocratic regimes began to emerge with a preponderance of democratically elected governments, heralding a new era in Africa’s body politic.

The 21st century has been dubbed the new epoch of African renaissance as democracy and good governance have become benchmarks of the new continental vision.

All is not rosy however, with the spirit of democracy challenged even in its infancy and electioneering an exercise fraught with very real risks of domestic and regional overtones including glaring tribal divisions fueled by special interests.

The usually stable and relatively prosperous nation of Kenya was wracked with upheavals following the contested December 2008 elections. Over 1500 died, half a million were left homeless and destitute and Kenya’s reputation is shattered, still to recover.

The factors leading up to the conditions that caused such barbaric violence are varied and complex. Though the violence is thankfully behind Kenya and the competing parties have reached an accommodation, the underlying core issues remain close to the surface.

Cyprian Orina Nyamwamu is a Governance specialist, Panafricanist, and political and democracy activist working with National Convention Executive Council (NCEC) in Kenya, and delivered an eloquent address “After The Storm: How To Assess The Setback In Kenya’s Democratization Process,” on Tuesday, 24 June 2008, at the Goethe-Institute Gebrekristos Desta Center Addis Ababa, as the concluding lecture of the series.

The lectures of this series, held in English, with speakers from both the Ethiopian and international community, provide a podium for open dialogue on democracy issues. Capital is the media partner of this series and publishes the contributions.

The dilemma of ethnic and national constitutions and the 2005 constitutional referendum: the market as the arbiter
The upshot of these unmediated tensions among Kenyan communities has not been fully studied consciously. The fundamental forces driving the tensions and eruptions are survival and not hate. The tensions exist because the national constitution is defective and does not facilitate citizenship, survival and livelihoods and civic space for expression of our Kenyan nation hood. Since the state support system is lacking and when encountered that state encounter is normally destructive and vicious, Kenyans have generally fallen back to their ethnic community structures for support systems and affirmation.
The outcome of this is that Kenya has come to be ruled by two types of constitutions- the civic or Kenyan constitution and the ethnic constitutions1. For many years, the ethnic constitutions have carried the day for the numerically dominant ethnic communities leaving the smaller communities latching onto the Kenyan constitution to seek justice.
This backdrop is what made the 2005 referendum and the 2007 elections a life and death affair. The Orange side/ODM allied communities saw these as the only opportunities to form government and midwife a constitution that shall engender their dominance and possibly institute political justice and transformation. The banana side/ PNU saw this as a sure way to lose economic and political advantage that the elite of these communities have held since after Kenyatta took over the reigns of power from the colonial administration.

It is interesting that in the frequent outbreak of conflict between the elite on the one hand and the citizens on the other hand divided along ethnic lines, it is the market that has always become the arbiter. In other words, Kenya’s constitution is so unrecognized every time there is a political and material-based conflict such as before or after general elections. In these instances a full blown state of anarchy normally takes root that is difficult to be mediated by the normative constitutional and rule of law framework. It is normally the push form the investors and the economic stakeholders who demand for some political pacification including power sharing in order to save the collapse of economic productivity2.
The crisis of unequal neighbors
The phenomenon of the crisis of ethnic and civic constitution has created the crisis of unequal neighbors. This means that ethnic identity has come to determine what rights and quality of rights citizens have in Kenya. During various episodes of violent eruptions in Kenya, many victims of violence have been reported by the media astounded while saying “I saw my neighbors burn our house”. This is because certain neighbors are more equal than others. Elites from various ethnic communities depending on the ethnicity of President have accessed title deeds in many districts in the coast and many other provinces while the coastals and traditional inhabitants in these provinces have for decades since independence been denied title to lands they have lived on since their ancestors.
Democratization within an autocratic constitution, weakened social base and a weakened reform movement
Kenya has undergone several fundamental constitutional reforms since independence. The more than thirty amendments that were made to the current constitution had far reaching governance consequences that have significantly made democratization of the state and politics in Kenya complicated3;
a. The Amendments fundamentally overturned the constitutional philosophy and design. The Bicameral chamber Parliament was reduced to a unicameral National Assembly; the regional governments and regional assemblies were cut out.
a The amendments transformed the system of government envisaged at independence; the Parliamentary system of government was substituted with a mixed system of government which escaped all the accountability and checks systems within either a parliamentary or presidential systems of government. The amendment of the constitution by the National Accord does in 2008 to re-introduce the post of the Prime-Minister have done little to address this fundamental flaw in the constitution.
a The Amendments basically established an imperial presidency that totally emasculated the other institutions of governance therefore personalizing power in the presidency. This has led to the observation that Kenya has a constitutional and elected dictatorship that is totally unaccountable to parliament or to the electorate.
aThe centralization of power has led to the massive inequalities that the country is witnessing today. Corruption and heightened ethnic tensions may have been fertilized by this centralization of power and resources at the center.
aThe constitutional dictatorship has severely undermined the access to and enjoyment of rights and freedoms by the citizens. This has fundamentally undermined initiative and the expression of the collective will of the people of Kenya hence the under development. Impunity and the disrespect of the rule of law are the other features that have persisted under the current distorted constitutional framework.
aThe deprivation of security of tenure for judicial officers made the judiciary in Kenya subject to the executive. From presidential control over appointments to the control of financing of the judiciary by the minister for justice, the administration of justice in a quandary.These amendments basically established an autocratic state under the current constitution. The political conditions these constitutional arrangements have created make it very difficult for democratization to progress forward.
The main strategies of democratization in Kenya have included the making of a democratic constitution to establish a democratic state; carrying out a comprehensive truth telling and transitional justice process to uncover the past and punish or at the very least shame impunity so that a new value system may take centre stage in Kenya’s political process and thirdly through the consolidation of issue-driven leadership and politics in the country. These three strategies have been undermined and totally stalled by the elite. There are three reasons why it is difficult;
Firstly, constitutional reform, transitional justice and the introduction of issue driven politics can not happen in a framework dominated by an autocratic constitution. The autocratic constitution principally engenders a criminal state where the ruling classes violate the constitution and the law with impunity in their pursuit of economic interests, power and wealth.
Secondly, these strategies have been ineffective because the social base has significantly been weakened and the masses are materially deprived and therefore not strong enough to negotiate with the elite. Alternative political organizing has been difficult to sustain in Kenya as the elite have totally controlled political parties and made it very difficult for any other groups to organize outside the political parties’ framework. The trade union is weak as is the youth and women movement. The business sector has found itself totally intertwined to political parties dominated by the same ruling elite.
Thirdly the reform movement has been weak since the early 1990s and has been weakened further since the coming to power of the NARC government in 2002. The reform Movement in Kenya is no longer coherent enough to offer a forceful reform agenda.
In short, the elite see no need to transform the paradigm this constitution has established if they can use this to maintain a stranglehold over the political process.
The elite fear that democratizing the state and politics will transform the paradigm of our governance from ethnic based plane to an ideological plane. The current statement of constitution reforms in twelve months are therefore empty banter without a grain of truth. Without a reform movement that is strong enough to force the ruling class to concede fundamental reforms, all the attempts at institutional, governance, constitutional and policy reforms such as those intended through the grand commissions that have been formed under the grand coalition government will be merely a white wash.
For the last one decade therefore, the social base forces including the youth, the pastoralists & peasants and the factory workers have resorted to turn on each other and to retreat to violent expressions of their unmet social and economic needs and demands.
Conclusion
The struggle for democratization in Kenya has being cyclic and stagnated for more than four decades because the process is arrested by the elite. The elite have achieved these by mainly using parliament to amend the constitution severally to make all institutions of government subject and captive to the tiny but seriously powerful and wealth ruling class in Kenya.
This capture of institution of public good and governance has resulted in the instrumentalization of ethnicity, the displacement of ideological contestation, the withering of political parties and the weakening of the social and economic base so severely that the electorate, like a dog is turned by its tail-the elite.
For the democratization processes to be jumpstarted and put in the correct direction the following steps have to be taken;
· The emergence of an ideologically and politically committed-reform-minded leadership has to be assembled and consolidated deliberately and carefully. This leadership must be tasked with the responsibility of consolidating a clear reform and democratization agenda and a reform movement that is popular enough to have the buy-in of the majority of the people of Kenya and potent enough to force the opening of the democratic debate in Kenya and to force the ruling class to concede to the reform agenda. The Koffi-Annan AU driven reform agenda currently underway in Nairobi will be a whitewash because it is controlled and directed by the same ruling class that benefits from the current status quo. If care is not taken, the result of the many initiatives aimed at reform including the Kriegler commission, the Waki Commission, the Ethnic and race relations commission, the Constitution of Kenya review experts team, the land reform initiatives will be the absolving of the elite of all responsibility and renew the political legitimacy of the very criminals who have perpetrated crimes and stalled the reform and democratization agenda.
· The reform Movement must focus on the introduction of fundamental and essential constitutional and legal reforms through strategies such as mass action aimed at persuading the elite to free the control they current hold over the institutions of public good. In this instance the November package of reform proposals that were arrived at the National Multi-sectoral reform Council in 2006 should be popularized by the emergent reform Movement under a new and committed leadership.
· Fundamental steps have to be taken to retrieve political parties from the control of the tiny political and business elite. Political Parties must be transformed into public institutions for participating in the democratization process. The passage of the Political Parties Bill into law in 2007 and commencement of that Act from July 2008 offer a real opportunity for the transformation of the Political Parties in Kenya.
· The making of a new constitution through a popular and democratic process – as opposed to the state controlled process- will eventually open the sound democratic space for a thorough-going democratization and development process in Kenya.
· The new constitution should essentially transform the electoral system in Kenya into a more proportionate representative system that will return political parties to the centre of the governance of the nation and to down grade the role of ethnicity in the political process.

[References]

Berg-Schlosser, Dirk (1992) ‘Ethnicity, Social Class and political process in Kenya’, in Walter O. Oyugi, Politics and Administration in East Africa, Nairobi: Konrad Adenauer Foundation

Chege, M (1994) ‘The return of multiparty politics’, in Barkan, J.D., Beyond Capitalism vs socialism in Kenya and Tanzania, Nairobi:East Africa Educational Publishers

Ghai. Yash. P. and J.P.W.B. McAuslan (1970) Public law and political change in Kenya: a study of the legal framework of government from the colonial times to the present, Nairobi: Oxford University Press

Kenya Human Rights Commission (1996) Ours by right, theirs by might: A study on Land clashes; Nairobi: Kenya Human Rights Commission

Kanyinga, Karuti (2006) ‘Governance institutions and inequality in Kenya’, in Society for International Development, Readings on Inequality in Kenya: Sectoral dynamics and perspectives, Nairobi: Society for International Development

Leys Collin (1975) Underdevelopment in Kenya: The Political economy of neocolonialism 1964-1975, Nairobi: East Africa Educational Publishers (reprinted in 1994)

Mamdani M. (1990) ‘State and civil society in contemporary Africa: Reconceptualization of state nationalism and defeat of popular Movements’, Africa development, Vol 15, No.3/4:47-70

Mamdani, M. (1996) Citizen and Subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Ngunyi, M. (1995) ‘The state, elite politics and crisis of opposition in Kenya’, Uppsala: Nordiska Afrika Institutet
Society for International Development (2006) ‘Readings on Inequality in Kenya: Sectoral Dynamics and Perspectives’, Nairobi: Society for International Development

(Footnotes)

1 See Mamdani’s typology in Citizen and subject
2 In the January –March post election political crisis in Kenya, it is the push from the investment community headed by KEPSA and the Manufacturers Associations which teamed together with foreign missions to demand for power sharing to halt further economic down-slide. Political Parties and other actors such as the religious order and the Trade unions were completely insignificant and irrelevant in the political negotiations that ended in the formation of the
Grand Coalition government.
3 See the detailed analysis in Nyamwamu, C. (2008) Inter-parties Forum on Constitutional Reform: Position paper for an effective and democratic process towards completion of the of constitutional review process, Nairobi: Centre for Multi-Party Politics (unpublished).