A KENYAN CONTROVERSY January 5, 1998 NewsHour Transcript

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Following a contentious election, Daniel Arap Moi was sworn in as Kenya's president for a fifth and final term. The 73 year old leader promised to fight corruption and implement democratic reforms. Following a background report, Phil Ponce and guests examine President Moi's victory.

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A RealAudio version of this segment is available. NEWSHOUR LINKS: September 9, 1997 The former president explains his efforts to help Africa feed itself. May 22, 1997 The Congo's new leader, Laurent Kabila, has yet to form a government. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Africa OUTSIDE LINKS: The Africa Online homepage for Kenya.

PHIL PONCE: Today Daniel Arap Moi was sworn in as Kenya’s president for his fifth and final term. His inauguration came after a muddled, controversial and sometimes chaotic election. Moi was declared the winner Sunday, with 40 percent of the vote against divided opposition The 73 year old president promised to be more sensitive to the needs of his people and to crack down on corruption.

President Moi has ruled Kenya for nearly two decades.

For nearly two decades, Moi has ruled the East African nation of Kenya. Moi was the successor to the founder of modern Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta. Kenyatta became Kenya's first president in l963, after leading the fight for independence from Britain. Kenya, with a population of 29 million, is one of the potentially richest nations in Africa. The country's renowned parks and nature preserves made it a popular tourist site. In the early 1990s, pressure from the United States and other countries forced Moi's government to multiparty elections.

In the first freely contested election in 1992, Moi’s party, the Kenyan African National Union, got the largest block of votes. The opposition, split along tribal lines, could not unite behind a single candidate. Opposition leaders vowed not to take part in the most recent election unless the rules were changed to give challengers a better chance to win. The opposition also demanded more civil liberties, including freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

Civil unrest.

Since last summer, more than one dozen people have been killed in pro-democracy demonstrations. Kenyans took to the streets to protest Moi and his government.

PROTESTER: I will shout at the top of my voice to let him know that I am outside, No. 1; secondly, he must abide by what these people want--we will influence--if he wants to shoot me he is welcome but we will go to the streets.

PHIL PONCE: Police broke up demonstrations with tear gas and rubber bullets. The unrest hurt Kenya's tourist industry and further weakened the economy of this once-prosperous country. Even though Moi had instituted an economic reform program, the International Monetary Fund suspended a $220 million loan package because it said the government failed to tackle corruption. After the disturbances this summer, Moi agreed to political reforms which legalized opposition rallies, recognized previously banned political parties, and gave them more access to radio and television.

All that paved the way for the latest election. In the election, Moi again faced scattered and divided opposition. Thirteen candidates ran against him, including one of his former vice presidents. But there were so many problems in the voting that polls had to be kept open an extra day. The election was marred by eight deaths, and soldiers were on duty to try to maintain order. As the ballots were slowly counted over three days, there were accusations from the government and opposition camps of mismanagement and fraud. Independent election observers expressed dismay at the process.

REV. MUTAVA MUSLIMI, Independent Election Observer: The Kenyan people who displayed such patience, dignity, determination in participating in the process deserve much better than this.

PHIL PONCE: Two of the opposition leaders said they would reject any declaration of a Moi victory.

MWAI KIBAKI, Opposition Candidate: We know that he has not won, so he can only be a winner by bringing himself in.

PHIL PONCE: But others accepted the results and expressed hope the election process would pave the way for a widening of democracy in the future.

PHIL PONCE: Now, for two perspectives: Constance Freeman is the director of the African Studies Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. She was the economic counselor at the U.S. embassy in Kenya from 1991 to 1995. Salih Booker is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Studies Program. And welcome both. And I should point out that we invited Kenya’s ambassador to the United States to join us tonight, and he was unable to join us tonight. Constance Freeman, President Moi has been in power now for 20 years, twice as a result of multi--party elections. How has he managed the transition to stay in power?

Ms. Freeman: "President Moi is a very wily and a very clever politician."

CONSTANCE FREEMAN: I think that, above all, President Moi is a very wily and a very clever politician. For one thing, KANU is the one party that has influence all the way down to the grassroots and has had over time.

PHIL PONCE: And KANU stands for--

CONSTANCE FREEMAN: KANU is the president’s party, Kenya African National Union. And Moi, himself, tends to have a very acute political sense. This summer, when the opposition was threatening to boycott the elections and was calling for a number of reforms, he picked up several of the reforms, managed to get a parliamentary group put together, and implement a package of these reforms, or promise to do so. And the opposition’s reaction was you stole our issue. And he managed to defuse some of that protest last summer essentially by going along with them. And it seems to me that what will happen next in this process depends upon whether Moi reacts with his African chief hat on as he did in ‘92, and essentially crack down on dissent, or if he reacts as the wily politician and implement some reforms, and that that will be very interesting and very crucial.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Booker, how do you think he’s managed to hold onto power so long?

SALIH BOOKER: Well, he’s also a very wealthy man, and he’s become wealthy during those two decades in power, in part by pilfering some of the resources of this very rich country. He’s used this wealth as part of building a patronage political machine. That’s why the ruling party is so powerful, and that’s why it’s also been fairly easy often to divide the political opposition parties.

PHIL PONCE: Would you say that Kenya--is Kenya more democratic this time around than it was in the last elections in 1992?

SALIH BOOKER: Well, certainly, there’s a greater space for freedom of expression, freedom of some political association. But these elections that just occurred really took place over the last two years, not these last several days at the polling booths. And during those last two years the president had a virtual monopoly over a political party. Other opposition rallies were banned. The president had a monopoly over access to the major media in Kenya. So there was never an opportunity to create an environment where the other parties could compete evenly with the ruling party.

PHIL PONCE: So some of those reforms came late in the game?

CONSTANCE FREEMAN: Yes.

PHIL PONCE: For example, the recognition of parties and allowing freedom of assembly.

SALIH BOOKER: Literally less than two months before the actual polling date.

CONSTANCE FREEMAN: One commentator said that he used many of the techniques of an urban party machine that you might have found some years ago here--gerrymandering, splitting the opposition over ethnic issues, and managing the registration process--and all of those techniques were used, in addition to buying votes and keeping the opposition from holding rallies, et cetera.

PHIL PONCE: Ms. Freeman, given the problems that they have, the logistical problems and other kinds of allegations regarding this election, is it possible to really know just how fair this election might have been?

CONSTANCE FREEMAN: I suspect that there were attempts to rig these elections on all sides. I suspect that there were probably even more on the government’s side. I doubt, however, that that was conclusive because effective rigging would have given the governing party better results than they got. Moi only came through with 40 percent of the vote, and the parliament seems to be split close to 50/50 at this point.

PHIL PONCE: And, by the way, 40 percent was enough to win, given the way they elect a president, even though he did not achieve a majority?

CONSTANCE FREEMAN: There were 11 candidates running against it, and so they split up that vote, in particular the top four did.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Booker, why does it matter to the United States what happens in Kenya?

Mr. Booker: "I think it demonstrates in many parts of Africa that elections are not enough, certainly, that there’s a need for changing the social contract between the state and its citizenry."

SALIH BOOKER: Well, part of this is a larger trend in Africa. The question of democratization and electoral democracy taking hold in large parts of the continent, the beginning of the 90's saw an end to the one party state and the one party dictatorships in so many African countries and the advent of multi-party electoral politics. We saw the first round of these multi-party politics in the early 90's. And, of course, President Moi did the same in Kenya. This now is the second round, and I think it demonstrates in many parts of Africa that elections are not enough, certainly, that there’s a need for changing the social contract between the state and its citizenry. And that’s what the constitutional reform movement in Kenya was about. President Moi was able to defuse that largely by getting the political party opposition to agree to go ahead with these elections and ignoring the churches and the NGO’s and the human rights organizations.

PHIL PONCE: NGO’s stands for--

SALIH BOOKER: Non-governmental organizations--that had been calling for wider political reforms to change the nature of the political system so that it doesn’t really matter which political party or individual is elected, that the rules of governance will change. There will be greater accountability, less corruption, greater transparency in governance. And this is not just in Kenya. This is almost through Africa right now. But a big country like Kenya and a big country, for example, like Nigeria, what happens there on this question of democratization had a great influence on what happens in much of the rest of Africa.

PHIL PONCE: Ms. Freeman, is there a concern that some civil unrest that Kenya has seen some of its neighbors go through, is that a concern in Kenya, itself?

CONSTANCE FREEMAN: I think that Kenyans, in particular, Kikuyu, have tried to avoid really exploding into civil unrest because they went through the Mau Mau revolt against the British.

PHIL PONCE: And the first term you used was the--

CONSTANCE FREEMAN: Kikuyu, sorry--the Kikuyu are one of the two largest tribes in Kenya--the Kikuyu and Luos. The Kikuyu during the pre-independence period revolted against the British in a very bloody revolt called the Mau Mau. And many of them who I know have said, we don’t do this again. Enough Kenyans are now middle class; that they have something serious to lose from violence; however, if Moi decides to put on his chief hat and to try to suppress the opposition now, I suspect that the patience may be running out, and the potential for future civil disruption, if not violence, is greater than it was after the ‘92 elections.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Booker, do you agree with that?

SALIH BOOKER: I’m inclined to believe even a bit more than that, that this election and Moi’s imposition of himself for yet another five years spells increasing instability in Kenya. I think there are large sectors of society that are increasingly disaffiliated with the government. The economy is doing badly. Foreign investors are not going to have confidence in the political stability of the country, and elsewhere you have a younger generation talking about a Mau Mau II option, or a Kabila option, named after the rebel leader in neighboring congo that overthrew the other dinosaur of African dictators, Mobutu Seseko, earlier last year.

PHIL PONCE: Ms. Freeman, has Mr. Moi--as he alluded to--I mean, do you see him as sort of like a last of a breed, a political dinosaur?

CONSTANCE FREEMAN: Well, he’s certainly been identified as one of the last of the big men in Africa to rule with an iron hand. It’s almost an heir apparent kind of image. And he certainly has the amount of graft and corruption in Kenya, particularly with the government, has been indicative of that type of an African ruler. It seems to me that the key and most crucial issue now is to see what he does on corruption.

PHIL PONCE: And we’ll have to leave it there, Ms. Freeman, Mr. Booker, thank you both very much.

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