Earlier this week, the Narc political party leader, Martha Karua, urged politicians on both sides of the divide, to seek dialogue as the means of resolving their differences.
But politicians generally only pay lip service to the need for dialogue when it serves their ends. Once their objectives are achieved, they are usually not very keen on dialogue, as it presupposes the likelihood of compromise and giving up something.
Certainly that seems to be the case with Ms Karua, whose time in high office during the Kibaki administration, gave her such influence that she is one of the elite group of politicians routinely referred to by their first names – like Uhuru, Raila, Kalonzo, Musalia, and (further down the pecking order) Dalmas.
Martha had no love for dialogue in her heyday as a powerful Kibaki government insider. Two memorable examples can be brought forward to confirm this.
First was when the opposition leaders, just before the 2007 General Election, demanded that (now retired) President Mwai Kibaki stick to the existing “gentlemen’s agreement” hammered out by the Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group (IPPG) in 1997, which allowed the opposition to nominate commissioners of the Electoral Commission of Kenya of that time.
This was a measure agreed on during the rule of (now retired) President Daniel arap Moi following street protests of just the kind Cord leaders were recently threatening to unleash. The idea was to assure the opposition that they would indeed have a free and fair election.
But whereas Moi had been willing enough to make this far-sighted concession to the opposition parties, when the same matter came up for review at a time when Martha was Kibaki’s Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister, she would have none of it.
Her constant reference was to what the law permitted “the appointing authority” to do. And so we went into the 2007 election, with an electoral commission which the opposition ODM was able to convincingly dismiss as a malleable tool of the Kibaki administration.
Had Martha shown just a little of Moi’s foresight in such matters; had there been an allowance for just one or two commissioners nominated by the opposition to the ECK; then ODM would not have been able to persuasively insist that they would not accept an election outcome so controversially arrived at by a commission which owed its allegiance to one of the presidential candidates in that very election.
But that was not the last we were to see of Martha’s contempt for dialogue. In the dark days of the post-election violence, when the entire global community was striving to help Kenya step back from the precipice, Martha was at the very centre of the drama.
Former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan had been mandated by the African Union – and supported by all the Western nations – to help Kenya find the path to peace. Indeed he was not the first mediator to show up here: former President of Ghana, John Kuffor and Archbishop Desmond Tutu had also been here earlier.
Yet who was more dismissive of these mediators than Martha? Who was more contemptuous of Kofi Annan’s efforts to secure a political settlement? As far as Martha was concerned, Kibaki had won, and that was all there was to it. There was no need for any dialogue, much less for arriving at a power-sharing formula.
You only need do a quick Google search with the keywords ‘Martha Karua Kofi Annan’ to see that Martha’s reluctance to see the coalition government formed was a matter of public record in February 2008.
But this does not mean that she never did any good while in government. She was easily the best Minister for Water that Kenya has ever had. And in a country like Kenya in which water-borne diseases are endemic, clean water is a matter of life and death. Martha presided over the decentralization of water and sanitation service authorities long before the word ‘devolution’ was ever in common usage in Kenya.For that she deserves full credit.
One interesting question arises from all this though: we all saw both President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, dismiss the calls for dialogue. And here is Martha who was also very dismissive of dialogue when in power, saying it is the only way forward.
Uhuru and Ruto are both young men, politically speaking. Are they really quite sure that they too may not one day be the outsiders demanding dialogue, even as the political establishment of the day gives them a cold shoulder?
– the-star.co.ke
