Kenya’s Elections: The Women Are Coming

Okello Oculi writes that women are making significant inroad into Kenya’s politics

Sophia Abdi Noor, an outgoing nominated member of parliament, was defiant before the start of election campaigns for Kenya’s 2017 elections, saying: “I leave the dedicated women seats to others and campaign against a handful of men. I will win because people here are tired of men who only think of themselves’’. She won by over 6000 votes as part of a surprisingly rich harvest of a total of 22 women getting elected to Kenya’s top legislature by trouncing male opponents.

The constitution has borrowed from Uganda the stipulation that from each of the 47 counties in Kenya, at least one woman should be elected. This “dedicated seat’’ is contested by women bashing against other women’s political fists. This has ensured that 69 women have been elected. The most women-friendly constitutional provision is in Senegal where community leaders - drawn from among politicians, academics, women’s associations in rural and professional sectors, civil servants and elders – required that political parties must have women as 50 per cent of their list of candidates. Kenya’s constitution provides for a yet –to- be implemented 30 per cent.

Women also sprung victories as Governors of three counties. In Kirinyaga County, Ann Mumbi Waiguru added pepper to her victory by defeating Martha Karuwa, a former Attorney General of the country and presidential candidate in the primaries against Mwai Kibaki. In Bomet County, Joyce Laboso grabbed the top job; while in Kitui County, the veteran politician and former presidential candidate, Charity Ngilu, went from seeking power at the centre to rule at a decentralised political space. Sophia Noor’s dictum that voters are tired of “men who only think of themselves’’ was almost certainly at play here; and will haunt these women in their incumbency. To the extent that they vindicate her claim, Kenya’s political culture will know valid change.

Another trinity of women also broke open the gates of Kenya’s Senate chamber as elected members. In Uasin Gishu, Margaret Kamar won the Senate seat. In Nakuru County it was Susan Kihika who won the prize; while in Isiolo County it was Fatuma Dullo who is now Senator. They no longer have to carry their headties at lower elevation as a pedigree that only got there by bye-passing the hazards of contesting elections.

Women have also exhibited flair of political stubbornness. In Taita-Taveta County, for example, the post of “Woman Representative’’ was won by Lydia Mazighi who contested under the banner of the ruling Jubilee Party; while the Senate seat went to Johnnes Mwaruma of Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), and Granton Samboja took Governorship as WDM-K candidate. In Tana River County, Rehema Hassan won as “Woman Representative’’ under the Maendeleo Chap Chap Party, while the Senate seat went to Jubilee Party and her Governor-elect was an ODM hunter.

In central Kenya, Kawira Mwangaza dared to run as an “Independent’’, while the Jubilee Party carried both Senate and Governorship slots in Meru County. Maison Leshoomo in Samburu County won as candidate of Kenya African National Union (KANU) – a dominant party formerly under the dictatorship of President Daniel arap Moi; and under whose banner Uhuru Kenyatta suffered defeat against Mwai Kibaki.

A rare breed of winners was two journalists. Mohammed Ali won Governorship of Mombasa as ODM candidate. He waved a record of being a fearless investigative journalist. He had run a column known as JICHO PEVU in which he “exposed crimes and corruption in government and private sectors’’; and survived death threats. He was seen as less of a threat than Christopher Msando, the head of information, communication and technology for the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission whose corpse was found dumped in a forest 25 kilometres away from Nairobi. He had been tortured –presumably to extract computer codes for hacking its wits - and murdered one week before elections on August 8, 2017. Journalist Paul Katana won in Kaloneni Constituency in Kilifi County also along Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast.

It is notable that none of the women who won non-dedicated seats came on the wings of Raila Odinga’s ODM. Prior to the 2010 Constitution with no windows for dedicated seats for women, Gikuyu women tended to win seats in elections but not Luo women. They often defied horrendous violence, such as the woman candidate in the 2007 party primary in Meru District whose opponent had thugs shove human faeces down her throat and fractured her spine. She refused to be intimidated into withdrawing from contesting the election.

It is not clear if women candidates suffered from a flaw which election monitors from the African Union and the European Union complained about, namely, that: “in the polling stations where we were, the presiding officer and the party agents rejected a number of those ballots and when they showed them to us, what we would find is that a voter has ticked a particular box and 90 per cent of the tick would be in the box while the rest had spilled over to another box’’.

The monitors did not indicate if female presiding officers defended female candidates. Being an election official was not a vaccination against being endowed with virulent anti-women attitudes prevalent in communities they came from.

There was a high casualty rate among incumbent governors. Some 22 out of 47 governors lost their seats. It was widely assumed that Jomo Kenyatta, the country’s hero of independence politics, used to maintain legitimacy for his regime by instructing his regional and local officials to ensure that selected incumbent members of parliament and cabinet ministers lost elections. The weeding exercise ensured that a breath of fresh air blew across the political space and cleansed growing complaints against corruption; ethnic privileges and unbalanced allocation of development schemes. It is more likely that this high turnover is part of gains to Kenya’s political culture from the constitutional reforms of 2010. The reforms took large funds from the centre to counties, thereby, drawing even former senators and permanent secretaries to contest for governorship. The electorate can only hope that high level corruption has not reached rural economies on the wings of decentralisation.