NAIROBI: Despite being closeted in a safari lodge to focus minds on the search for peace, Kenya’s feuding parties failed to meet an optimistic deadline set by mediator Kofi Annan to settle their election dispute this week.
But at least the worst violence has stopped, giving an exhausted and traumatised nation respite in a crisis that has killed 1,000 people and made more than 300,000 homeless.
Though many Kenyans will cheer if President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga do strike a power-sharing deal in coming days, there are also fears any “quick fix” would bring new problems and paper over the crisis’ deep roots.
“I am very nervous about what is going on,” Oxford University expert on Kenya, David Anderson, said of the talks, which were postponed on Thursday for the weekend.
“It seems to have all the makings of a classic Kenyan deal which will basically amount to a decision by the parties to get both their noses in the trough without resolving deeper issues.”
Analysts say Kibaki’s Party of National Unity (PNU) and Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) must go much further to tackle constitutional reform, corrupt land distribution and wealth inequality if future flare-ups are to be avoided.
Former UN boss and mediator Annan had set a mid-February deadline for a political agreement, and then a year to tackle underlying problems like land and wealth disparities.
But the first deadline was missed with the talks’ postponement, and many fear the year target could allow the deeper issues to be swept under the carpet.
Annan is impatient for progress, sources say.
“He thinks that there needs to be a new election and some form of shared government,” one diplomat said.
“If they refuse to reach a deal, Annan will fly away.”
Adding to palpable political tension around Kenya, hardline supporters on both sides have been agitating about a “sell out” and vowing protests if their leaders give in.
Both sides say they won the Dec 27 election, though the election board declared Kibaki the winner by a small margin.
Most observers said the vote-tally was flawed by rigging, and the dispute unleashed weeks of violence.
Kibaki’s PNU has little short-term incentive to make concessions, given that its man is in State House while Odinga has nothing, analysts say.
And even if PNU and ODM do come together, it is hard to see how they might co-exist and run matters of state harmoniously given how much bitterness and bloodshed there has been.
DIVIDING SPOILS
Division of cabinet and civil service jobs would likely be a source of constant wrangling, let alone how to accommodate Odinga as vice-president or prime minister, as some suggest.
“A power-sharing system in which the principal participants are deeply suspicious of each other is difficult enough to manage,” said Kenyan political columnist Macharia Gaitho.
“It would be even more difficult when the policy implementation arm of government, the civil service, is divided down the middle with key officials loyal to different political camps ... There is clearly a lot of hard bargaining ahead.”
When it became clear a week ago that both sides had agreed in principle to find a political solution, there was relief and joy across the nation, stoked by a local media relieved to get photos of inter-ethnic violence off front pages.
But as the week has passed, conversation in bars, slums and villages across the east African nation has become sourer.
Many Kenyans are asking why so many had to die and lose their homes and property if political leaders can now start working out a comfortable accommodation together.
Others say it will be impossible to paper over the deep cracks opened up, particularly between Kibaki’s Kikuyu community and pro-opposition ethnic groups like Odinga’s Luos.
Thousands of Kenyans have had to return to ancestral homelands due to antipathy and threats from other communities where they had previously been living and working.—Reuters