January 1st 2008 did not bring in a happy new year for Kenya. The post-election violence breaking the news for the three last days of December was a harbinger of worse to come. As an East African, I had sensed that it would be highly unlikely that the son of the country?s first vice president Odinga Oginga would be allowed to win this election fairly. On point of principle, Odinga Oginga had himself resigned from the national party that he had helped to found ? the Kenya African National Union (KANU) ? back in the heady independence days of 1960.

With the burning of the church and its safety seekers in Eldoret on January 1st, images of the furious chaos in Rwanda during the genocide years returned. In Nairobi city, the sprawling slum areas growing cheek by jowl with the high value areas are a constant reminder that all is not right, and certainly not equitable. The core of the inequity in the country however goes far beyond the slums, to a national economy where the bulk of Kenya?s wealth lies in foreign hands (a mere 31% belongs to nationals) and where the wealthiest twenty companies that trade on the Nairobi Stock Exchange are foreign. It does not take much to conclude that electoral democracy has served these foreign interests very well since independence in December 1963 from the British. Why would anything dramatic change now under electoral democracy? What would be risked by supporting a political leader with a potential for questioning and perhaps shaking up the status quo?

Just as happened with Rwanda, mainstream media here portrays the situation in Kenya as a tribal one, between the Kikuyu peoples (22% of Kenya?s population and much favoured by the UK and the USA) and the Luos (13% ? who also live in Uganda and Tanzania but had artificial boundaries drawn across their original territories by the British and German colonial powers). What is really at stake however is not of the making of either the Kikuyu or the Luo, but of those who want to ensure that the results of electoral democracy do not collide with established views of the relations of power, about who participates in the decisions of power and in whose interests those decisions are made. The problem lies with those who have been imposing for half a century so-called democratic governance structures on countries in Africa (and one might also add, in Pakistan and Tibet). The emulation of Western systems of governance is one of its most egregious exports. Some of the most corrupt and oppressive regimes on the African continent have been supported for years by foreign interests paying lip service to those governments that manage somehow to present a regular election fiasco to continue to prop up political and economic systems to feed the rest in the west. Herein lies the embedding of corrupt systems within democratic governance structures. Boiled down, elections are essentially a risky proposition for the West and for those embedded local interests whose power positions depend on maintaining the status quo.

Kenya is no stranger to organized and militant resistance. The Mau-Mau rebellions in the 1950s united several Kenyan tribes in a deadly battle against British rule. In response, the British set up a governance system that ensured that the balance tipped in favour of one tribe above all the others ? a divide and rule system ? and then layered this with structures that would ensure that unified resistance to capital?s continued exploitation of the country would never be successful, but that national power struggles, in the eyes of the watching world, would always be reduced to a ?tribal? issues. Kenya is also no stranger to the decades of displacement in the region. Refugees from neighbouring Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea are now both potential victims of the simmering violence in the country, and potential recruits. At the same time, those who are able are packing up their belongings and keeping the back door open to make a timely exit out to Uganda or Tanzania.

Recounting the election results or sitting down for peace negotiations may be one way to resolve the present political impasse, but we need to build on traditional modes of consensus building for the benefit of the majority. In the long run Kenyans must get together to address the larger non-negotiable aspects of political and economic decision making ? who is really making those key decisions and for whom? We might want to reconsider the value of our own cultural expectations of how decision making is most representative for our peoples. Some of our countries in Africa have had their cultures so devalued; that we have forgotten our traditional ways of accountability and representation. Electoral democracy in a situation where the economic system is dominated by foreign interests ends up serving only those interests and their domestic allies. A national ethos that is inclusive and truly democratic must first and foremost represent the interests and needs of the people at the bottom of the economic and social ladder, those that ultimately become victims of ?tribal? manipulations of political leadership.

As my friend in Cameroon often says, ?If we Africans fail to think for ourselves, others will think for us?.

<B>NIDHI TANDON</B>