‘Everything is Possible Without Moi’: Kenya's 2002 Abortive Transition and 2007 Post Election Violence

Abstract

In 2002, Kenyans voted out Kenya African National Union (KANU) and replaced it with National Rainbow Coalition (NARC). It was a watershed moment in Kenya’s political history. The elections were considered the freest and fairest of them all since independence in 1963. Significantly, the passing of power from Moi to Kibaki was incident free. However, it turned out that the KANU defeat and ineligibility of Moi to stand for re-election was not the panacea of Kenya’s socio-economic and political ills as NARC had made Kenyans believe. Patronage, corruption, tribalism, impunity and arbitrary rule remained hallmarks of Kenya’s politics. The article argues that the 2002 elections superficially pointed to a consolidated democracy but did not substantially result in the reorganisation of Kenya’s politics. Kibaki and most of the NARC politicians were beneficiaries of a centralised power structure under one party state and therefore could not countenance a reformed state. Kibaki impeded reform and trashed a pre-election agreement between NARC affiliate parties which was instrumental in his ascendancy to the presidency. Consequently the fallout within the NARC coalition polarised the country along the tribal axis. This polarisation snowballed into the highly divisive 2005 constitutional referendum and the 2007 post-election violence following the ‘stealing’ of elections by Kibaki and his cohorts.