Uganda, Kenya ‘needed’ M7, Ruto, but should thank Besigye and Raila

Barring a Lazarus phenomenon, the declaration of William Ruto, 55, as Kenya’s fifth president lays a wreath on the political career of his rival Raila Odinga. Raila has rejected the results and hinted on a legal challenge which could clarify important aspects of the electoral process, just as he did in his 2017 election petition.

 The razor-thin margin of victory in the official results shows an electorate sharply divided and would make a re-run interesting. But the complaints from the four dissenting electoral commission officials have so far been long on the allegedly flawed process of processing the result, but short on whether the results announced are different from those from the polling stations. Early doors it might be, but it already seems over bar the shouting.

 Yet even in defeat Raila deserves a bouquet, not a wreath. To understand why, we need to step away from the emotion of the electoral outcome and even the particular geography and draw comparisons with another serial activist and election contestant: Kizza Besigye in Uganda.

 The zero-sum nature of electoral outcomes predisposes us to a win-loss binary view and to a short-term snapshot of the result, rather than examine the vista of the expansive landscape of the process before, during, and after. We rarely examine the options available to the losing candidate and how the choices they make shape the political landscape.

 For instance, after the 2001 election in Uganda, Besigye had a reasonable option to take arms to wage war against the Museveni government. The violence and vote theft during the election offered political and moral justifications. Besigye, who had retired from the army only two years earlier, enjoyed the support of senior military officials as well as, at least tacitly, from at least two countries in the region.

 Some consideration was given to the idea and James Opoka, an aide to Besigye, was killed during what security officials said was a door-opening visit to the Lord’s Resistance Army then fighting the government in northern Uganda. However, a firm decision was taken to oppose the government politically, not militarily. Because it did not happen, we rarely acknowledge how close we came to yet another civil war.

 Raila’s equivalent moment came after the 2007 presidential election which he claimed, credibly, to have won, and which led to Kenya’s worst post-independence political violence. With the wind behind his sails and a reasonable claim to the throne, Raila chose a lower position in a government of national unity rather than reignite the tinderbox by holding out or insisting on a rerun in a febrile environment. Hard-nosed cynics would later criticise him for blinking first and folding his hand, but this was not merely political poker; it was full-chamber Russian roulette for Kenya.

 If the violence created incentives for political reform, the power-sharing agreement that followed created space for the writing of a new Constitution in 2010 that reformatted the power dynamics in the country.

 In challenging his 2013 election loss in court, Raila was following in the footsteps of Besigye in 2001, 2006 and 2011, and testing the new constitutional order. It paid off in the 2017 lawsuit that overturned the election result and ordered for a rerun – an outcome so stunning and unprecedented that Raila did not even have to contest the re-run.

 Many of the fruits of Besigye’s presidential election petitions remain on paper but are no less significant. They will shape the political and electoral reforms that Uganda will inevitably have to undergo one day.

 After the fractious military regimes of Idi Amin, Obote and Lutwa, there are some who argue that Uganda needed a Museveni to bring the army under centralised command and control as a prerequisite for political order. From having a country without an army, Uganda’s challenge now is to prevent the army from having a country.

 Similarly, some see in Ruto’s election a potential break with the tribal, corrupt and dynastic politics that have shaped Kenya although the jury will be out on that long after the court has heard the election contest.

 Given their respective political histories, one can see why, at least in some areas, Uganda needed a Museveni, and why Kenya might need a Ruto – but both countries should eternally be grateful that they had Besigye and Raila as the main political protagonists.

Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and poor man’s freedom fighter.

[email protected]; @Kalinaki