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KENYA: Media’s Role in the Election Fallout
Analysis by Sisule F. Musungu*
GENEVA, Jan 24 (IPS) - As Kenya’s tenth parliament met for the first time last week, the violence that
rocked the country after the announcement of Mwai Kibaki as the presidential
winner in the Dec. 2007 elections had largely died down. But the country is
bracing for more violence and turmoil.
As Kenyans and the international community try to come to terms with what
happened, it would be useful to systematically think about the role played by
the key institutions of democracy. In Kenya, the media, together with a
robust civil society, has been a key force for democratisation. But as things
unravelled after the elections, one could not help but wonder whether the
Kenyan media could have done better, whether media could have helped
forestall the fallout.
The unravelling of the elections and the violence that followed the bungled
announcement of Kibaki’s win over opposition leader Raila Odinga has put
into serious question the basis of Kenya's democracy and, in particular, the
institutions of democracy in the country.
There is no doubt that the biggest culprit in the Kenyan chaos is the Electoral
Commission of Kenya (ECK) led by Samuel Kivuitu.
Furthermore, no one seriously thinks that the Kenyan High Court would
objectively address the presidential election dispute. Not after Kibaki
appointed new judges a few days prior to the elections and when the chief
justice is said to have been waiting to swear in a particular candidate even
before results had been announced.
The appointment of judges was a significant event that went largely
unnoticed. The protests of the Law Society of Kenya and a few other groups
could hardly be heard above the din of the election euphoria.
But, Kenyans have always known the weakness of the ECK and the courts,
which is why looking at the conduct of the media becomes important in
thinking about what went wrong.
In successive polls over the years, Kenyans have consistently ranked the
media as the most trusted institution coming ahead of even the church.
Public institutions such as the courts and parliament have never won the
confidence of the country.
While there has been intense discussion about how the international media
reported the post election violence, there has been little discussion about
how the local media handled the whole situation.
The media could, and should have provided credible and useful information
regarding the issues and numbers in the disputed constituencies.
The media also failed to appreciate the importance of the dispute, and
reduced it to a two-man affair. The "it depends on Kibaki and Raila" approach
did not, and will not help.
After what was widely believed to be a stolen election by Daniel Moi in 1992,
there was a big push - and blood was shed - by Kenyans to establish
mechanisms to guard against rigging and therefore to ensure the credibility
of results. Everyone was clearly aware that evidence of rigging or lack of
credibility would lead to violence in different forms - including ethnic based
violence which had been seen around that time in the Rift Valley.
Apart from safeguards related to the composition of the electoral
commission - which Kibaki ignored in appointing most of the current
commissioners - 1997 reforms established a cornerstone safeguard; the
rule to count votes and announce the results for local elections, Members of
Parliament, and presidential candidates publicly at each polling station and in
constituencies.
This rule was not just meant to guard against stuffing of boxes or
disappearances of ballot boxes during transportation etc., as happened in
1992. This rule was meant to allow the media, observers, political parties and
the general public to know local results without relying on centralised
tallying. Results would be put into the public domain allowing observers and
any interested parties, including the political parties to compile their own
tallies independently.
It is because of this rule that European Union (EU) observers of the Dec. 2007
election were able to authoritatively talk about alteration of figures at some of
the constituencies they observed.
Why did the Kenyan media fail to play the role of a watchdog and use the
publicly announced results at the polling and constituency level to ensure
that there was no fiddling or allegation of fiddling?
Hours before the ECK declared Kibaki the winner, it was clear that the
mainstream media - with their extensive network - had possession of
most, if not all, the publicly announced results and could therefore
independently come up with the tally.
Both the Daily Nation on its website and the Kenya Television Network (KTN)
did in fact display advanced figures on Dec. 30 before suddenly withdrawing
the figures. The Daily Nation’s figures, for example, showed Odinga with over
4.5 million votes and Kibaki at just over 4.2 million.
Why did this happen? Did the media cave in to threats and intimidation from
political players? Is it possible that the media did not have information to tell
the country what exactly happened in the 48 plus constituencies that have
been cited as problem areas?
Ten million, predominantly poor people, went to vote in December elections
with the promise that "yote yawezakana" (all is possible). The media was in
the forefront telling these people that it was only their vote that counted.
After the announced results - for good reason - people thought that their
vote didn’t count, and the media was not telling them why. The country was
obviously heading for trouble.
The violence - including state sponsored violence - that followed the
announcement of the results was seriously misdirected, uncalled for and in
most cases criminal. But, it was also a complex phenomenon beyond simple
Kikuyu against Luos or vice versa.
While the local media - at least the mainstream media - has avoided the
Kikuyu-Luo dichotomy, the media promoted another dangerous dichotomy.
They reduced the problem to simply a Raila-Kibaki game, while failing to
tackle seriously the extra-judicial killings by police.
By taking this position the media is letting everyone else off the hook. The
people at the ECK, the Police Commissioner and the intelligence services, the
people running State House, and the people around Odinga should all be
held accountable for their actions.
Thus far the returning officers who had gone missing and the police who
were sent to look for them have not been questioned and no criminal or other
serious investigations are being undertaken. It is critical that the media
focuses on responsibility of players beyond two individuals - including
responsibility of the media itself.
Over-simplification leads to the usual conclusion that people in Kenya only
vote for their tribe etc. To suggest that people voted for Kibaki or Odinga
simply because they are Kibaki or Odinga is an insult.
To many of the people who went to vote, each candidate represented a
particular vision and particular direction for the country. Tribal affiliations to
these two or people around them obviously played a role in determining the
level of trust voters placed in each of them, but if we kid ourselves that this is
just about that and nothing fundamental, we might be missing the point and
the solutions we provide will be misdirected.
Violence and chaos undermine democracy in many ways: when the state
seeks to use violence and chaos to restrict media freedom - as in the case of
the ban on live broadcasts; when the state seeks to use violence and chaos as
a reason to restrict constitutional freedoms; when the state seeks to use
violence and chaos as a reason not to dialogue.
But more portent is when violence and chaos, including state sponsored
violence, lulls the population to simply seek "normalcy".
Now that Kenyans are starting to understand, in stark terms, the adage that
"power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely", it should be clear
that normalcy for the sake of normalcy is the beginning of the slide to
repression.
As Kenya moves forward, searching for direction, the media will have a
special role in focusing the country and the international community on long-
term solutions and dangers of short-term political fixes. A government of
national unity, for example, can at best give you a few years of peace. In fact,
Kenya had a government of "national unity" before the elections so we know
that can’t do the trick.
* Special contribution to IPS. Sisule F. Musungu is a Kenyan lawyer based in
Geneva and a director at IQsensato, an international development think tank.
He is a member of the Society for International Development's East Africa
Scenarios Project team.
(END/2008)
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