My blogging mojo was roused after seeing wangus recent post - kweli the cows really do come home eh..blog on lakini!
Democracy has surely matured in this country. Canada was able to stage a successful election procedure 1 month from the time an election was called, allowing a 63% voter turnout average through the provinces. Eventually the conservative party won the minority seating in the house of commons.(READ - Gay Marriage hopefuls, immigrant professionals, international students looking to work outside campus: dont hold your breath!) . What impressed me most is that their gvt has really come to terms with the true essense of coalition gvt.
Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party (was 3rd in the race with 20 something out of 155 seats), was most profound when spelling out his parties role - brokering power between the remaining parties. Minority gvts are inherently in a tough spot becuase they have to warm up to anyone who can remotely appear to support them without selling out of their core values. So doesnt it seem obvious that the best positioned group is the small, well rounded party , such as Jack laytons NDP, which appeals to the mushier sides of the lefties or the righties on an "issue by issue' basis ? (one of the buzz phrases of a coalition relations)
Kenyan politicians can borrow a leaf of two from this. Power brokerage is just that - powerful. Our multi party system can benefit from more pragmatic greed.(since it is clear that greed is not going away!) Its not all in the presidency! Coalition parliaments dont mean that You have to merge your parties in orde rto survive. Kalonzo, Raila, you can forge your power bases seperately, and leverage that power on an issue by issue basis. kalonzo you can work with uhurus team when the bill is right. Raila, you can discuss the benefits of Nak working with you on a program that serves your needs by conceding and giving support to them on other less important issues.
At the end of the day, I feel that the constituents of these blocs/parties are left less disenfranchised than with these frequent , impractical party merges. Votes balloted for a discrete set of views are so much more valuable than those ballotted for a wide array fo views chiefly due to the fact that you can assess their value a whole lot easier. In summary, it is my contention, our votes need to speak more clearly for the values we endorse.
Will we learn as voters for 2007?
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In our context i figure the merging of parties was designed (and quite succesfully so) to root out the grand KANU.
Do you recall the clarity & enthusiasm with which Kibaki unleashed some issues that his Govt would tackle eg. Corruption, Lean Government, Education, etc. Except education, the score card's looking quite sad. On that breath, i guess it makes sense to have smaller parties paying attention & bargaining to secure focus on their specific and selected issues.
The biggest problem in my view- is that out parties do not have consistent positions on any issue (except the unanimous chanting agst poverty and corruption. End result being that we have no socialist, left or right winged parties- we just have Kalonzo-for-President and Kibaki-for-President parties. And ofcourse, the Govt contractors (funding the campaigns) wearing sly grins on the sidelines.
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