Since Kenya’s conflagration after going to the polls, the voices of ordinary citizens, the media and civil society have tried to drown out the politicians by calling for peace. But this week Parliament reopened — and that may spell trouble.
The problem is that leadership and power are two very different things. Until a few weeks ago, power in Kenya manifested itself in shambas (farms), Mercedes Benzes, big stomachs and the Big Men in our midst. Leadership resided merely in quaint discourse about accountability, vision and responsibility. The two never met. Since the election, leadership has failed and power has showed its real hand.
Never before have we needed legislative heroism as we do now. Alas, parliamentary politics, while making for good theatre of the absurd, rarely demonstrates moral courage.
Atrocities are being committed across the land. Luos, it is said, are being forcefully circumcised by Kikuyus in Nairobi slums, Kikuyu homes in the Rift Valley are being branded the number 41 in blood (there are 42 tribes in Kenya and all are seen to be against the Kikuyu).
Meanwhile, politicians ignore calls asking them to be bigger than themselves, removing their snouts from the trough for a day or two. President Mwai Kibaki has continued with his grand stand-off, his ”aw shucks” smugness, which seems to say ”I won; why should I be complaining?”, raising the ire of half of the population that did not vote for him. Raila Odinga looks grim, like the Reaper himself, scaring the other half out of their wits. Perhaps only legislative compromise could cure our current psychosis.
But our legislative history doesn’t give us much hope. One of the first bills the last Kenyan Parliament passed was to grant MPs a significant raise, following that with an additional raise after a year. Perhaps only such common greed can provide the beginnings of a compromise between the ruling party and the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).
When the National Assembly opened this week, an ODM member was elected Speaker. This could be the best thing that has happened in recent weeks. Not because it will be seen as democracy at work — we are beyond such luxuries — but because a win by Kibaki’s party would have been seen by Odinga supporters as further rigging by an arrogant, illegitimate government that needs to be taught a lesson. In that dismal, reductionist sense, the Speaker’s election saved some lives this week.
Now we wait for the next face-off as MPs laugh all the way to the bank. Some MPs had promised that their first move would be to reduce salaries. Now they are caught up in a dead heat, with roughly the same number of MPs on each side, in a house requiring a two-thirds majority to conduct business.
I think the salaries will stay the same as Kenya burns.
Billy Kahora is assistant editor of Kwani?, a journal published in Nairobi, and a member of the Concerned Writers for Kenya