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E-mail a friendJendayi Frazer
airdate January 14, 2008
Jendayi Frazer became Assistant Secretary for African Affairs in ‘05. She previously served as U.S. Ambassador to South Africa and as the National Security Council's Senior Director of African Affairs. She taught public policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, was editor of the journal, Africa Today, and worked as a political-military planner with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Frazer holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and regularly speaks about military-related issues in Africa.
Assistant Secretary of State explains the difference between voting irregularities in the United States and Kenya. (1:54)
Jendayi Frazer
Tavis: Jendayi Frazer is the assistant U.S. secretary of state for African affairs and America's top diplomat overseeing the difficult situation in Kenya. Last week, she traveled to Kenya in hopes of bringing both sides together following controversial elections there last month. Prior to her current post, she also served as U.S. ambassador to South Africa. She joins us from the State Department. Ambassador Frazer, nice to have you on the program.
Ambassador Jendayi Frazer: Thank you very much, it's a pleasure being here.
Tavis: Let me start by asking, for those who have been following this crisis but not so closely given what's happening in our own elections here, for a quick overview of what's happening in Kenya. What caused this violence around these elections to erupt?
Frazer: Well on December 27th the people of Kenya went out in record numbers and they held a very excellent peaceful voting process, but unfortunately the vote tallying was fraught with difficulties. Many irregularities, probably some that happened at the constituency level; there are 210 constituencies in Kenya. But most importantly there were irregularities which occurred at the electoral commission headquarters in Nairobi.
There was a back-and-forth between the two major presidential candidates, Mwai Kibaki, the current president, and Raila Odinga, the frontrunner contesting the election. There is charges of rigging on both sides but especially Raila Odinga's Orange Democratic movement believes that the government basically stole the election.
That led to many riots, some what people would call ethnic cleansing, inter-ethnic violence which took place, which very uncharacteristic of Kenya. And so it was a huge damage to the reputation of the country, and it's certainly an issue that puts the United States' interests in harm's way because Kenya has been a country of stability for us and frankly a peace-keeping country, a peace-making county in Sudan and Somalia and other places. So our interests are directly affected by this election violence and the charges of rigging.
Tavis: So where the violence is concerned, give me numbers. How many dead, how many displaced?
Frazer: Current numbers are about 600 dead and over 200,000 were displaced. Many were from up-country, the Rift Valley, Kikuyus who it looks as if they were organized attacks against them to push them out of the Rift Valley area. And so close to 200,000 internally displaced persons in Kenya today.
Tavis: For those who, to the earlier point, have seen Kenya as a rather stable democracy, not that violence can't erupt anywhere in the world, given voting irregularities that people are very passionate about, but if a country, in fact, was a beacon of democracy on a particular continent like we perceive Kenya to have been, how does something like this break out?
Frazer: Well, Kenya has had a difficult history, frankly. The 2002 elections were probably the best, the most free and fair. The elections in 1997 and 1992 before then were not considered as transparent and free and fair under President Moi. But the election of Mwai Kibaki in 2002 was considered very free and fair and so everyone hoped that Kenya was on a trajectory of progress.
That was seemed to be called into question. Essentially what you have in this election is an electorate highly polarized, and both candidates receiving about four million votes, and so a 50-50 contest. And the institutions didn't prove resilient enough to provide the legitimacy of who actually won that election.
Tavis: Tuesday brings the first meeting of the parliament in Kenya. What do you expect is going to happen when this parliament comes together for its first meeting, given the fractious relationship that still exists between the two dominant contenders for office?
Frazer: Well the positive side is that they are contesting in parliament halls rather than on the streets. But this first meeting is really solely to elect the speaker of parliament. Parliament will not open until March and so this will be a real test of the strength of the Orange Democratic movement of Raila Odinga, because they have 99 members of parliament who were elected in this last election, and they also have the right to nominate another nine MPs down the line.
And so really, they're right now competing, they're talking to different parties. It's a secret ballot so no one really knows how the election as the speaker will come out. Our ambassador, Michael Ranneberger, will be there. He will observe what takes place in parliament and we're hoping it remains civil and that they don't fight over seats and it is just a fair contest through secret balloting.
Tavis: And yet let me ask respectfully what's the worst that could happen as you all tactically look at this situation?
Frazer: Well the worst that could happen, of course, immediately on Tuesday in parliament is they actually start fighting. I've seen that. I was in Kenya in 1982 when members of parliament were throwing chairs at each other because passions were so high. That would be the worst in the halls, but more importantly that the Orange Democratic movement has called for rallies to take place the day after, on Wednesday, across the country, and that those rallies become violent with the police cracking down on the demonstrators or the demonstrators not being peaceful. And so violence continues in Kenya, and that would really be the worst scenario.
Tavis: So what are our strategic interests there, and I assume that we have them. I know that we have them because you were dispatched there for at least a week. So what are the U.S.'s strategic interest in Kenya?
Frazer: Well certainly the stability of Kenya is a strategic interest of the United States, and a stability that's based on justice, a stability that's based on democracy. So we have a lot of work to do in terms of electoral reform and constitutional reform. We also have key interests economically. Kenya is a regional hub. Most of the communication and transportation infrastructure goes through Kenya.
And so this crisis has actually disrupted fuel, for example, going into Uganda. It also impacts our interests regionally in Sudan. Kenya has been a lead country supporting the comprehensive peace agreement in southern Sudan and so right now they're not available to help make sure that that agreement in Sudan is implemented.
Kenya has also been a key partner of ours on counterterrorism, on Somalia, and so we really do feel the absence of Kenya diplomatically, in terms of its regional role.
Tavis: You are an ambassador; I'm just a lowly talk show host. So when I travel, I don't travel international with the stature that you travel with, Madame Ambassador. And so as a result, I suspect there may be things that I hear, things that people will say to me as I travel around the country or around the world, rather, that you aren't necessarily hearing.
One of those things, where the voting irregularity is concerned, that I've heard in any number of countries over the last eight years or so is that we ain't got no business telling nobody how to run free and fair elections when we can't seem to get our own house in order where our voting irregularities are concerned. Do you ever hear any of that in conversations like the ones you were in in Kenya?
Frazer: Well, I do. And as a matter of fact it came up because of our own election between President Bush and Vice President Gore. But the difference between the United States and Kenya was both of us had basically a 50-50 outcome, but we believed in our institutions. And so our courts ultimately made the call, whereas in Kenya, the Orange Democratic movement does not believe that their court system is impartial and can make that call.
And so what we, the United States, have said to both sides is that you need a political accommodation. The constitutional resolution of this problem would be for the Kenyan courts to then look at the vote-tallying process and make a decision. But the opposition has no confidence there, and so I think that what we've learned in Kenya is that the institutions themselves need significant reform.
The office of the presidency is too centralized, too powerful. The electoral commission wasn't able to stand up to pressure from both sides. And so there was this rigging. There wasn't the confidence in it. But I think also we've learned that the Kenyan people themselves have called for their leaders to end this crisis through dialogue. And so civil society in Kenya seems to be quite resilient.
Tavis: She is just back from Kenya. She is the former ambassador to South Africa and now the assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the State Department, working, of course, with our secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. Secretary Frazer, nice to have you on the program. Thanks for coming on to share your insights, just back from Kenya.
Frazer: Thank you very much, and happy fifth anniversary.
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