The period between 2008 and early 2013 marked the end of the grand coalition in Kenya, which had been formed out of the bitterly contested 2007 General Election.
CORD leaders Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka
The period officially marked the death of Opposition politics in Kenya, as there was no official Opposition party or leader because the main challengers, Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki, joined hands and formed the government.
In the early years of President Kibakiâs first term in office, there was generally no serious Opposition party, as Kanu was lukewarm and Uhuru Kenyatta who was the Opposition leader then, later supported the government. Serious Opposition politics began after the divisive constitutional referendum in 2005, which led to the sacking of Raila Odinga and his cohorts from the Cabinet. In this regard, the grand coalitionâs five-year stay in power was a very challenging period for competitive democracy in Kenya. With no significant Opposition to the coalitionâs agenda or policies, the coalition was not properly held accountable for its actions and therefore the common citizens suffered due to lack of serious accountability and transparency in the coalition. Above all, many key appointments were done without serious scrutiny and in other instances, nepotism and cronyism were the key consideration as long as both divides were comfortable.
Therefore, with the election of Kenyatta as President, in an equally bitter and divisive race, there is now an official Opposition party and this should obviously be a period of re-engineering competitive democracy in Kenya. However, a critical analysis of the state of the opposition coalition, CORD, paints a very sad scenario, as they have made no serious attempt to discharge both their political and constitutional duty of an Opposition coalition. Their understanding of Opposition politics seems opaque and directionless. This situation is more complicated because their party leader,Raila Odinga, seems not to have internally accepted that he lost, despite even the Supreme Courtupholding Uhuruâs win.
His frequent outbursts that his votes were stolen does not augur well for the re-organisation of the CORD coalition, as the pact is still in denial of the fact that they are not in government and therefore they should take their proactive role in Opposition. This denial perhaps explains why Raila Odinga is reluctant to return the government vehicles that he still uses as stated by the government Spokesman. The Opposition coalition is not performing its role of interest aggregation of political community and promoting responsible and reasoned debate but rather it is just opposing the Government for the sake of it or because they just donât like the President.
A case point is the recent mass funeral service in Kisii. Although they have stated that they did not incite the mourners against the Government representatives present during the burial, they lost a glorious moment to show leadership as they chose to remain mum when Jubilee leaders and a Cabinet secretary were heckled and booed by the crowd. Moreover, as Prof Kiiza of Makerere University Department of Political Science has stated before, Opposition parties are supposed to help build institutions in a country and particularly electoral commissions, media, civil society, and many more, but on this test, the coalition has failed.
Their approach is to demand the disbandment of the electoral body and demonise the Supreme Court when they donât agree with their decisions. This does not promote the rule of law and constitutional democracy, as it remains dictatorship and myopic if leaders only accept the jurisdiction and verdicts of institutions only if they get favourable rulings from such bodies. Therefore, there is need for the CORD coalition to play a constructive and developmental role as an Opposition coalition, as failure to do this will have a negative effect on national growth and development and affect every Kenyan.
By Dan Mwangi, The Standard
