6th August 2010.
In 1997, a network of progressive minds, reformist parliamentarians, religious, governance and human rights Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) under the umbrella of National Convention Executive Council (NCEC) under the leadership of Prof. Kivutha Kibwana, actually for the first time really flexed its muscles through its clarion call of “No Reforms; No Elections” and the government of the day took note.
With one stroke, the Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group (IPPG) – read the political class, deflated the seemingly unstoppable peoples revolution!
For the sake of emphasis and a show of unity of purpose, in 2002 CSOs went into political alliance with the political class ala National Rainbow Coalition (NARC); and the incumbent government was subsequently defeated!
But the civil society had lost its identity; it had lost its moral pedestal to keep vigil on the government. And as if to confirm so, most of the fiscal and moral supporters of the CSOs redirected their efforts to the government and CSOs were advised to work with and through the government to ostenably realize harmonized outputs from various sector efforts- remember GJLOS and the Kenya Strategy Paper? Again, the political class had helped the CSOs to willingly but naively make themselves ineffective by the strategy of providing ‘starehe ya mbwa kulalia mkia wake’.
Come 2005, the CSOs had largely learnt the lesson that theirs is not to be part of the winning team, but to keep the systems winning for the people. This confidence did dawn with the largely successful campaign on Anglo-Leasing perpetrators. The political class provided the support; the CSOs firmly remained in control of the campaign. This then influenced the CSOs to adopt what Comrade President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni calls “Cow horn attack!” and were majorly on the same sides with political leaders but guarded their identity.
Alas! This was the folly, for come 2007 the CSOs had sufficiently regained credibility and secured their identity from the political class but had left themselves totally malleable to the donor institutions! This was most evident with their incapability to develop a unitary platform to monitor the elections. The donors insisted that they will only support a united platform. To prove how serious and keen they were on this, they offered and did support efforts to create this platform – This effort took a massive seven (7) months! From April 2007 to November 2007! And even then, no clear leadership structure was agreed on; actually the CSOs formed the first ‘Grand Coalition’ with Mr. Morris Odhiambo of Centre for Law and Research International (CLARION) and Ms. Koki Muli of Institute of Education and Democracy (IED) being the joint Co-Chairs of the unitary effort thereafter called Kenya Election Domestic Observation Forum (KEDOF).
This was not all. KEDOF was not able to recruit and train enough monitors to man all the 27,000 polling centres countrywide partly due to shortage of time and partly due to insufficient resources available. What’s more, KEDOF planned for an alternative tallying centre and use of cell phone technology to be used by the monitors and this was short down by donor priorities and administrative red tape. This explains why KEDOF did not forcefully assert itself in the election results dispute. It was not able to. As the adage goes “you cannot not be authoritative when you are speculating”!
Thank God, 2010 all the lessons above highlighted have been learnt. The Election Observation Group (ELOG) has a clear leadership in the Chairmanship of Kennedy Masime of Centre for Governance and Democracy (CGD). Funds, personnel and equipments were secured well in time. This is why ELOG was able to even do an accurate voter turnout and voting patterns to minute details.
Task ahead:
The CSOs must continue their good practices realized so far in addition to keeping up learning. The good practices include keeping together. Keeping guard against feel-good factor glory. Sustaining vigilance by the people all the time, now more than ever.
Remember a good student is always expected to lead the class! Kazi Kwenu, Kazi Kwetu..
ndolo asasa Esq
