Monday, April 07, 2008 Speak Out: On dividing land and power in Kenya By Carmel P. Geverola
NAIROBI, Kenya—With a signing ceremony, the two rival political leaders in Kenya put an end to their bitter dispute over who won the Dec. 27 presidential elections.
It took 41 days for international mediators, led by former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan, to come up with a formula on how to govern Kenya that is acceptable to both President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga.
The electoral row cost the lives of at least 1,000 people and forced more than 350,000 to flee their homes. Kenyans were split between those who supported Kibaki of the Party of National Unity (PNU) and Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).
As emotions ran high, rage exploded into ethnic violence. Neighbors turned against neighbors in some slums in the capital Nairobi and villages in the Rift Valley, Nyanza and the Western provinces. Before the elections, Kenya was touted as a model of stability, peace and democracy in Africa. How did an electoral fight turn into a tribal bloodbath?
At stake during the presidential race was not just the people’s choice but ethnic pride as well. Kibaki comes from the Kikuyu, the largest ethnic community out of 45 tribes in Kenya, while Odinga is a Luo, a minority group from the Western province.
Supporters of Odinga felt betrayed by the Kibaki government for reneging on its promise to make their leader a Premier after the 2002 elections, which saw almost all tribes backing Kibaki under the National Rainbow Coalition.
It did not help matters that the Kikuyus were getting more than their fair share of key government posts and lucrative business deals.
Local candidates capitalized on the deep-seated hatred for certain tribes during their campaign speeches. Some observers even said the scenes of election violence—burning of people and homes, hackings and beatings—were orchestrated.
Divided over land
US Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger was quoted as saying that “what has precipitated all this hatred in these regions is not just politics…. There could be some underlying factors like the issue of land.”
US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer went so far as to say that the post-election violence has degenerated into “ethnic cleansing.”
The land issue goes back to the British colonial rule. After Kenya gained independence from Britain 45 years ago, land distribution and tribal resettlement were handled by the Kenyatta government. Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, was Kenya’s first president. His tribe was able to buy property or resettle in fertile lands in Central Kenya and the Rift Valley.
In the Philippines, land ownership remains a hot political, economic and social issue. The Sumilao farmers’ 1,700-kilometer “March for Land” from Bukidnon to Malacañang just recently ended. They secured a deal that allows them to acquire 50 hectares of the 144-hectare land owned by San Miguel Foods Inc. But they had to fight for more than a decade to own the land they have been tilling as part of their ancestral domain.
Twenty years since the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law was signed, the implementation of the program has a spotty record. Carp will expire in June this year. It had already been extended in 1998.
Overhaul
House and Senate bills have been filed to give more time to Carp but one of the sponsors, Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros, said there is a need “to overhaul the existing agrarian reform program.”
One provision of the law allows the reclassification of agricultural land to commercial, residential, industrial properties and ecotourism parks. Landowners take advantage of this provision to exempt their properties from land distribution.
The post-election violence in Kenya appears, on the surface, to be a protest against poll cheating and corruption. It seemed a case of “dagdag-bawas” (vote padding) by both PNU and ODM gone terribly awry. But according to political analysts, the ethnic clashes were rooted in the land issue.
Kibaki and Odinga acknowledged the “deep-seated and long-standing divisions within Kenyan society” during the signing of their power-sharing deal last Feb. 28. They agreed to form a grand coalition government based on the German model and to create the positions of Prime Minister (for Odinga) and two deputy prime ministers.
In the weeks after the signing, the coalition government has been hard at work to put into action has been agreed upon by their leaders. Kenya offers important and hard lessons for Filipinos who may have become apathetic to elections and feel that casting their votes is an exercise in futility.
