By Edward Wanyonyi
NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 4- The recent announcement by the National Cohesion and Integration Commission of Nairobi, Kisumu, Eldoret, Mombasa and Nakuru as possible hotspots for violence during the 2022 election campaigns period brings to the fore two critical issues about the legacy of peacebuilding projects and the capacity of the State to deliver ensure lasting peace and security.
Pre-electoral drums of war are nothing new in the context of post-independence and post multi-party democracy in Kenya.
Moreover, that few politicians and those especially serving the regime of the day have been convicted is not news.
What is in alarming about the latest NCIC red flag is three intertwined aspects that characterise the current peacebuilding experience in Kenya.
First, the amoral stance taken by subsequent governments has made the criminal, the peace disrupter and the violence entrepreneur the elected and celebrated brand of of politician.
The inciter therefore gets elected and gets to Parliament and provides a counter balance to the Executive and the Judiciary and thus in this new found status has at their disposal significant sway in terms of commercial immunity- to either drag cases through the criminal justice system and at times to compromise some of the key witnesses.
In this regard, the delay in execution of justice serves as an embodiment of impunity and thus encourages more to see the pursuit of violence and breaking of the law as a means of power capture.
No wonder for the elected leaders, the pronouncements by NCIC merely amount to paper bullets and even when arraigned and taken to Court, the current consequence mechanism is so weak and flaccid that they come from the Courts and proceed to more incitements.
The second aspect that perhaps fuels and abets electoral related violence has to do with the security architecture around elections.
Right from Executive reading of the evolving political context, the signals issued to regional and station commanders, the public order management approaches deployed, and the (de)escalation procedures employed.
Often times there has been a perception of bias and a heavy-handed approach that is rings of extra judicial leeway employed against those perceived to be in the opposition and thus this creates a highly volatile context where inter communal conflicts are justified as communal defence and justice remedy options.
It is this apparent hardening of the chain of command in ways that seem excessively aggressive in the defence of the state or the preferred regime and not the nation that there seems to be a fissure that justifies runaway and protracted violence and the amplification of the same as part of the electoral rigging narrative.
Third, the lack of a multi-agency approach in tracking and prosecuting electoral violence incitement and orchestration crimes has created multiple opportunities for criminals to sponsor and escape overall scrutiny and immediate apprehension in a way that such actions delay or frustrate their desired objectives around capturing power.
It has become common place to see electoral violence entrepreneurs and sponsors hiring vehicles, crude weapons and ferrying armed actors across wards and sub counties and in some situations across several counties.
That all relevant Government agencies are not able to establish and run a common situation room to contain such travelling gangs until mayhem has been unleashed is utterly astounding.
A multi-agency approach that brings the collective of agencies across the board and with the requisite training to establish complicity and criminal intent is perhaps the first stage in bringing about a culture of deterrence.
The three interwoven aspects therefore bring to question whether peacebuilding projects undertaken across the counties with high potential for violence will hold and offer communities the necessary resilience and cover during the coming elections.
While we hope that the electoral and campaign financing actors will have fruitful interlocutions ahead of the electoral season and commit towards reduction of incidences that could trigger violence, it will be equally important for the Ministry of Interior and related agencies to reflect on ways to establish a command structure that will rally both state and non-state actors to coordinate and run firm and end to end safety and security electoral system.
Such a system should take into consideration the deployment of early warning systems, the flexibility and dynamic agility of the chain of command and the need to harness all resources across multi-agency agencies.
The writer is a national security and public engagement researcher and a member of the Crime Journalists Association of Kenya.
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