NAIROBI: Six months after a bloody crisis that nearly tore Kenya apart, an “odd couple” of former enemies is doing better than expected in leading the country towards recovery, although dangerous tensions remain.

A huge and costly Grand Coalition government led by President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga took office in April after bloodletting by their supporters killed at least 1,300 people in the first two months of 2008.

Some analysts say the trauma of January and February, sparked by Kibaki’s disputed re-election, may gradually make way for a new era, with better politicians and greater concern for the economy over selfish regional or ethnic interests.

“I think the crisis woke the country up. It helped the country to recognise the fragility of the economy. People started to see the connections between politics and the economy which Kenyans had not experienced before,” said Professor Calestous Juma of the Harvard-Kennedy School of Government.

It took intervention by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, Washington and African luminaries to push Kibaki and Odinga into joining a coalition castigated for bestowing a slew of 41 ministries and attendant perks on Kenya’s notoriously greedy politicians.

The coalition, Kenya’s biggest, has also been attacked for setting a fashion, now followed in Zimbabwe, of ignoring democracy for the sake of peace.

Despite the criticism, most Kenyans seem content with the arrangement, desperate above all for anything that fends off another shocking eruption of tribal and social hatred.

“It is becoming clear to me that the coalition is the only thing that stands between Kenya and anarchy,” said Makau Mutua, chairman of Kenya’s Human Rights Commission.

A recent Gallup opinion poll showed that 63 per cent of those surveyed approved of Kibaki and the government in general.

Odinga, widely praised for his dynamism in the new job, won an approval rating of 85 per cent.

Bloated government

Many previously sceptical analysts now believe the government could last until the next election in 2012, partly because so many people benefit from the bloated administration.

“There really is a locked-in mutual interest in keeping the whole thing going because everybody in the political class is doing very well out of it,” said Patrick Smith, editor of Africa Confidential newsletter.

“The Grand Coalition is a fix between the political elites promoted and financed by big business,” he said.

Africa Confidential’s Smith warns that even if the government lasts, unless it addresses the core land problem in the Rift Valley, cause of the most brutal violence, trouble could erupt again at any time.

“This coalition would at best be an interim measure, a sticking plaster over a gaping wound that could easily open up again,” he said.—Reuters