Chapter 8 - Not Yet Democracy: Electoral Shenanigans

Summary

Introduction

After a long period of single-party authoritarianism, first de facto between 1969 and 1982, then de jure between 1982 and 1992, Kenya returned to multiparty politics in 1992. This was a consequence of concerted efforts for political reform that facilitated the 1991 repeal of Section 2(A) of the Kenyan Constitution, introduced in 1982 to make the country a single-party state by law. It took a further two decades of activism before a new more progressive constitution was adopted in 2010, further advancing the cause of democracy in the country. Within the context of the new multiparty political dispensation, elections have been held regularly after every five years——the first in 1992 then, in 1997, 2002, 2007, 2013, 2017, and 2022. The timing of the 2013 elections (which should have been held in 2012) was affected by the implementation of the 2010 constitution that ushered in the country's second republic, which provided for a system of 47 devolved county governments, each with its own executive and legislative institutions.

This chapter examines these multiparty elections as democratic processes, with particular focus on presidential and parliamentary elections. It argues that of all these elections, only the 2002 election can be adjudged to have been free and fair. The rest of the elections were so replete with political corruption and all manner of electoral shenani-gans as to make them a mockery of any sense of fairness and credibility. The worst of them all was the 2007 election whose blatant rigging occasioned so much violence that pushed the country to the brink of collapse, only saved by external intervention given the country's strategic importance in great power geopolitics. Similarly, blatant manipulation of the 2017 presidential election saw it nullified by Kenya's Supreme Court, necessitating a rerun that was boycotted by the opposition presidential candidate, Raila Odinga. This rendered the legitimacy of President Uhuru Kenyatta's second term tenuous at most, nonexistent at worst.

Democracy, Political Parties, and Elections: A Conceptualization

The idea of democracy can be conceptualized at three levels—the abstract, the practical, and the concrete levels. At the abstract level, democracy is an intellectual creation, a mentally visualized reality postulated as a model of the possible and desirable in matters of social coexistence and the governance of society (Gitonga 1987).