By He Wenping (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-01-17 07:24

The research institute I work for was to send a delegation to Kenya at the beginning of this year for a study tour of the African country but was forced to cancel after learning about the turmoil raging over there.

Everybody was caught by surprise as Kenya - long seen as "Africa's model nation" - was engulfed by a "national disaster" in just one week following a controversial presidential election after decades of stability.

Because the opposition Orange Democratic Movement's presidential candidate Raila Odinga and his supporters disputed the victory of incumbent President Mwai Kibaki in last month's presidential elections, violent clashes soon broke out between the two and spread to other areas of the nation, claiming more than 500 lives and displacing at least 250,000 people.

I visited Kenya twice last year, in addition to meeting with the country's government officials, scholars, military officers, journalists and members of non-government organizations on various occasions in and outside China.

The overall impression I have is that Kenya no doubt is the most important and influential country in East Africa. Not only its economy has achieved an average growth rate of 5 percent in recent years.

What on earth has gone wrong that has turned such a "model country" upside down? Is it a problem in the "democratic" system or a "narrow-minded" leader who pushed "democracy" in the wrong direction?

Looking back at Kenya's history since independence in 1963, there have been only three presidents so far in sharp contrast to some other African nations where few administrations stay in power long enough to make a difference.

The Republic of Kenya's founding father and first president, Jomo Kenyatta, remained in power till he succumbed to illness in 1978; his successor, Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, lost the presidency following the country's first multi-party election late in 2002.

Though Moi bowed to Western pressure during his presidency and introduced multi-party politics in 1991, he and his ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU) party kept the late President Kenyatta's 24-year legacy and KANU's almost 40-year domination alive till 2002 by winning two consecutive general elections in 1992 and 1997.

Therefore, in a sense, Kenya's "democracy" characterized by multiple parties taking turns to command the national government has existed only since late 2002, when the current president, Mwai Kibaki, and his National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) won the first multi-party election with an overwhelming majority riding the tide of popular discontent with the ruling party and a wish for change.

The election result back then showed Kibaki garnering more than 25 percent of the ballots in seven out of eight provinces for a nationwide support rate of 64 percent, while the ruling KANU party's presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta -one of Jomo Kenyatta's four children - won more than 25 percent of votes in five provinces and 29 percent nationwide.

Maybe Kenya's "new-born democracy" was saved by the huge gap between the number of votes for the winner and the rest of the candidates, for the 2002 general elections and transition of national authority afterward went largely without incident.

In sharp contrast to five years ago, the "nascent democracy" was dealt a debilitating blow by the hairpin difference between the two candidates' votes in last year's general elections.

One side delayed the announcement of election results and then conducted the swearing-in ceremony in a hurry; while the other accused the ruling party of vote rigging and refused to recognize the result.

Soon angry supporters on both sides lost control and let loose their fury on the tribes their rivals belong to. Incumbent President Kibaki's Kikuyu and opposition party candidate Odinga's Luo ethnic groups seemed to have turned into sworn enemies overnight who would not stop until the other side was completely wiped out.

The suppressed tribal hatred for one another sowed by colonial rule is very easy to flare up into a firestorm once it is fanned.

Small wonder, even the Daily News, a German newspaper, suspects Western-style democracy "ruined" Kenya, because the nation's domestic differences have spread all over the country rather than diminished since the adoption of multi-party democracy.

The turmoil triggered by Kenya's latest general elections has again proved it is impossible to build and fortify democracy in Africa with one try.

And "democracy" is not a magic cure for all ills that works everywhere. It has to be based on a fully developed society, economy and a democratic political culture. I believe the Kenyan people, who have distinguished themselves with "relatively high democratic awareness and overall quality" in Africa, will no doubt wake up from this traumatic experience.

The relative calm the country has seen in the past few days also indicates there is still hope. I hope the delegation from my institute would soon be on its way again for the postponed study trip to Kenya.

The author is a researcher with the Institute of West Asian and African Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

(China Daily 01/17/2008 page9)