Cord leader Raila Odinga addresses the media at Serena Hotel in Nairobi on March 21, 2016. Mr Odinga said the Opposition would not go to the elections next year with the electoral commission as currently constituted. PHOTO | ROBERT NGUGI | NATION MEDIA GROUP
In the 2013 General Election he trailed Uhuru Kenyatta by about 7 per cent of the vote.
The controversy over the signatures collected by the Coalition for Reform and Democracy (Cord) in a bid to force constitutional referendum highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the Opposition.
On
the one hand, it is impressive that Cord can mobilise hundreds of
thousands of people to join the Okoa Kenya campaign. On the other, the
process of collecting signatures was not as organised as it should have
been, which has created the opportunity for the Independent Electoral
and Boundaries Commission to claim that more than a third of the 1.4
million names were invalid.
Whether or not this was a
fair ruling, it meant that the petition fell short of the one million
signatures it needed. This result is a familiar one for many long-term
supporters of Raila Odinga: Defeat has been snatched from the jaws of
victory.
In a column a couple of months ago I suggested
that precisely this combination of opposition disorganisation and
ruling party manipulation meant that it was very unlikely that Mr Odinga
would win the elections scheduled for 2017.
Some of
my Kenyan friends and colleagues were upset by the article, including
columnists and researchers that I greatly admire such as Godwin Murunga.
They felt that it overestimated both the gains made by the Jubilee
Alliance since 2013 and the difficulties faced by the Opposition.
The conversations that I had on twitter and Facebook
around that time got me thinking: Had I fallen into the trap of
believing the government’s propaganda? Was there a way that Mr Odinga
could win the 2017 elections, after all? Having mulled this over for a
few weeks, I can now see a way for the Opposition to unseat the Jubilee
Alliance. The key to such a victory will be to effectively harness the
new system of devolved government.
The reasons that I
thought it was unlikely that Mr Odinga could win the next election were
fairly straightforward. In the 2013 General Election he trailed Uhuru
Kenyatta by about 7 per cent of the vote.
MOBILISED MORE PEOPLE
There
are two possible explanations for this. Either Mr Kenyatta ran a better
organised and funded campaign, and so mobilised more people, or the
election was rigged. Either way, the implication is the same: Only a
much more effective opposition campaign has any chance of winning in
2017.
If Mr Odinga lost because his campaign was less
energetic than that of 2007 and he failed to inspire enough of his
supporters to register and vote, the only remedy will be a better and
more organised campaign that can ensure a higher turnout in his
heartlands.
Similarly, if he lost because votes were
illegally added to Mr Kenyatta’s total during the tallying phase, then
the only remedy will be to build a broader and deeper political
structure that can ensure that party agents are present in every polling
station to detect fraud. Either way, the challenge is to build a
stronger political machine.
The problem was that at the
time I was writing I did not see many signs that Cord was building a
more effective and internally democratic set of coalition (or party)
structures. My feeling was that this would make it difficult for Mr
Odinga to perform much better in 2017 than he did in 2013, especially
given the fact that since the end of the power sharing government senior
Cord leaders have lacked a steady source of funds.
At
the same time, the efforts of Jubilee Alliance leaders to penetrate into
the former Coast and Western provinces in a bid to erode Mr Odinga’s
electoral superiority there suggested that, in these areas at least,
Cord might struggle to retain the votes it won in 2013.
This
point received particular criticism from some interlocutors, who argued
that lavishing attention and money on historically marginalised
communities would not be enough for Mr Kenyatta to win these areas. This
is a good point, as the depth of feeling and the strength of local
political networks is precisely why national parties have struggled to
exert dominance in either part of the country over the last 20 years.
However,
it is important to note that I was not claiming that the Jubilee
Alliance would perform better than Cord in these areas. I was suggesting
that it might do relatively better than last time. Even an improvement
of a few percentage points for Mr Kenyatta would make life difficult for
Mr Odinga. Keep in mind that the potential for election rigging means
Mr Odinga cannot rely on simply winning the election — he needs to win
big.
Only this will prevent a repeat of the 2007
election. Winning big is especially difficult when you are faced with an
established president; one who enjoys strong advantages of incumbency
and great personal wealth.
Since the reintroduction of
multi-party elections in Africa, sitting presidents have won 85 per
cent of the elections they have contested. Against those odds, even a
small erosion of the opposition’s support base can have a fatal impact
on their electoral chances.
So how can Mr Odinga win in
2017? To some extent, Cord leaders have begun to respond more
effectively to the challenges that they face, boosting their prospects.
The
coalition has started to place a much higher emphasis on voter
registration, and the Okoa Kenya campaign has enabled them to flex
political muscles, mobilising support across the country. At the same
time, the rise of Mr Hassan Joho within Cord provides Mr Odinga with a
strong base from which to resist President Kenyatta’s attempts to rally
support at the Coast — although it is important to keep in mind that
Joho also has his detractors and won less than half of the votes cast in
the Coast in the last election.
SIGNATURES DEBACLE
But
on its own this is unlikely to be enough. The signatures debacle —
however much it may have been manipulated by the government — suggests
that when it comes to grassroots organisation, Cord still has some way
to go. This is significant, because it is the strength of party networks
that will determine whether Mr Odinga can compete with Mr Kenyatta’s
vast election resources, and it is an effective network of party agents —
and not election technology — that will determine whether rigging is
possible.
So what is the solution? The crucial element
that I underestimated in my previous column was the impact of the new
system of devolution. In the past, the government has usually been able
to out-mobilise the opposition in large part because it could use its
control of the state to effectively campaign across the country. By
contrast, opposition parties have often struggled to campaign
effectively outside of their homelands.
The system of
decentralisation introduced under the 2010 Constitution radically
changes this picture because it means that in about half of the country
the state is in the hands of the opposition, not the government.
In
the 2013 polls, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) won 16
governorships, eight more than Kenyatta’s The National Alliance, while
the two parties won the same number of senators (11). At the same time,
ODM secured 377 county assembly members – the most of any party. As all
Kenyans know, these victories were not only in places like Nyanza, but
also in areas such as Nairobi and Mombasa.
These
candidates, and the government resources that they control, represent Mr
Odinga’s best chance of making it to State House — if he can ensure
their loyalty.
Under the Constitution governors are not
permitted to utilise the resources at their disposal for party
political ends. But many will ignore this and use county funds to
promote their own political interests.
Moreover, even
if county leaders wish to abide by the law, there are a number of things
that they can do to change the electoral calculus, such as promote
voter registration. Indeed, the constitutional requirement for county
governments to foster political participation could even be interpreted
as implying that local officials have a duty to remind citizens of their
democratic rights and obligations.
ESTABLISH NETWORKS
If
they do so, county leaders will effectively be campaigning for
themselves and the presidential candidate of their party at the same
time.
If a governor in Nyanza gets thousands more
voters to register and cast their ballots in the county elections, they
are likely to also cast a vote for Odinga in the national contest while
they are in the polling station.
Similarly, if
candidates for governor establish networks of party agents to monitor
the vote, they will be able to simultaneously record information about
the presidential poll.
In this way, the presence of
county level leaders can substitute for a party structure. In turn, this
presents Mr Odinga with a great opportunity to close the “registration
gap”. At every election that I have observed in Kenya, pro-Odinga areas,
such as Nyanza, have registered at significantly lower rates than
pro-Kenyatta area such as Central. If decentralisation reduces the
advantage that the government has historically enjoyed, it could be a
game changer.
But all this only works if Mr Odinga can
keep county level leaders on his side. This means the key battle in the
coming months will be the one for the hearts and minds (and wallets) of
Kenya’s 47 governors.
We know that many of those who
were elected under the Cord banner in 2013 have had their heads turned
by the advances of the Jubilee Alliance, and may not support Mr Odinga’s
campaign this time round.
The more governors align
with Jubilee — publicly or silently — the greater the risk that
devolution will empower the government rather than the Opposition. This
brings us back to internal party organisation.
Each
governor will make their own calculation based on the situation that
they face in their county, but they will be far more likely to back Mr
Odinga if the Opposition looks like a viable government-in-waiting, and
if the Cord leadership proves that it is willing to listen and respond
to their voices and concerns.
Dr Nic Cheeseman teaches African politics at Oxford University, @fromagehomme
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