Kenya’s democracy is young. For most of its independence, between 1969 and 1992, the country was a one party state under president Daniel Arap Moi of the Kenya African National Union (KANU). Multi-party elections were introduced in 1992, though KANU remained in power until 2002, when Mwai Kibaki became president at the head of the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) – an alliance of opposition parties that lasted just three years, from 2002 to 2005.
Today KANU is much weakened, and NARC lives on as NARC-Kenya, a rump party from the original coalition. The rise and fall of such political vehicles distinguishes Kenyan politics in the region, and reflects how political leadership depends on political elites forging ethnic alliances that seal a majority. In the case of the 2013 election, the victorious Jubilee Alliance had the secondary objective of avoiding trial for its leaders at the International Criminal Court over allegations from 2007-08 post-election violence, and was successful in both.
The Jubilee Alliance brought together Uhuru Kenyatta’s party The National Alliance (TNA), a Kikuyu dominated party, and William Ruto’s United Republican Party (URP), a Kalenjin political vehicle established by Ruto in 2012. TNA, though founded in 2000, was taken over by elements close to Uhuru Kenyatta in the same year for the purposes of contesting in 2013. Their alliance was unlikely, as the worst of the 2007-08 post-election violence was between Kalenjins and Kikuyus in the Rift Valley. The Jubilee Alliance Party (JAP) was established in September 2016 (see East Africa Politics & Security – 09.08.16), and its constituent parties dissolved. Since then it has been successful in reaching other ethnic groups.
The Kenya opposition alliance will be based around the core parties of the Coalition for Reform and Democracy (CORD) which contested the 2013 elections with Raila Odinga as its presidential candidate. Whether it contests as CORD or not remains to be seen.
An oddity of the Kenya election is the date, 8 August 2017, which will be just four years and five months since the previous poll. This is curious, as the constitution states elections shall be every five years. The reason however, is that the constitution, passed in 2010, stipulates that the vote shall be on the ‘second Tuesday of August each fifth year.’ The 2013 elections were held in March 2013 to allow the previous parliament to run to the end of its term.
