Downside of rotational presidency

 

In a recent joint article (How to make Kenyan polls peaceful forever, The Standard, January 7, 2021), I boldly revived the debate of the possibility of a rotational presidency as being the balm for Kenya’s cyclic violent politics, which occur along tribal lines. This is precipitated by the often accurate association of the presidency with largesse.

My rough computation was that after 250 years, each of Kenya’s forty-something tribes should be purring with satisfaction at having had one of their own at the helm for at least one term. The country itself will also have hopefully enjoyed a quarter of a millennium of quietude and development.

My submission has now attained a life of its own since being amplified by President Uhuru Kenyatta’s own national megaphone during Musalia Mudavadi’s mother’s funeral.

Curiously, no one in the BBI camp’s learned throngs – among them fabled governance scholars – dares at this point to offer an honest interrogation of the pros and cons of the rotational model. They are obliged to aggressively market it as Kenya’s political nirvana because Raila Odinga is directly in line for succession.

Similarly, Deputy President Ruto’s camp, recognising the construction of the gallows on which its franchise could be hanged, has reflexively coalesced against these proposals.

Arguably, experimentation with a rotational presidency began with the devolution. For all intents and purposes, our counties are microcosms of either the heaven, or dystopian morass that Kenya will become under a rotational presidency.

For, in the counties, dominant tribes hold unfettered sway both politically and economically, thus providing a subtle glimpse of how each tribe will manage the country when its time comes to lead. Based on that, the future would be somewhat grim were there no other successful models in the world.

Distinguished incumbents may not be eligible to vie twice. At term’s end, they must constitutionally vacate, and give room to a possible political greenhorn, whose only qualification is the fact that his tribe’s time to lead has come. There may never again be a Kenyan F D Roosevelt, who, for his deft handling of America’s Great Depression and the World War II, went on to be elected president for a record four terms.

Admittedly, a rotating presidency with its attendant maxim of assured inclusivity might go a long way in deflating cyclical political pressure. However, this form of governance comes with the obvious risk of saddling the Office of the President with mediocrity.

Distinguished incumbents may not be eligible to vie twice. At term’s end, they must constitutionally vacate, and give room to a possible political greenhorn, whose only qualification is the fact that his tribe’s time to lead has come. There may never again be a Kenyan F D Roosevelt, who, for his deft handling of America’s Great Depression and the World War II, went on to be elected president for a record four terms.

To contextualise the dangers that come with election by quota, I focus on South Africa’s efforts at affirmative action soon after the collapse of apartheid. The Black Economic Empowerment law enacted in 2003 sought to redress many years of inequality and exclusion of black people by the white minority. There is a parallel here with the BBI luminaries’ recent epiphany that after 60 years of independence, the presidency should no longer remain the preserve of Kikuyus and Kalenjins.

In order to earn high points for diversity in hiring practices, many South African companies undertook to aggressively front and apportion people of colour token ownership of shares in fraudulent publicity stunts called ‘fronting’. Meanwhile, the racial lattice of the companies remained intact.

Some black folk, though completely clueless about the workings of the corporate world went on to become millionaires by reverse discrimination rather than personal efforts. The clear lesson here is that if not discreetly deployed, a rotational presidency’s only achievement might be… well… the rotation. The perennial challenges of corruption, economic underdevelopment, poor governance and the like will remain intact.

Some have argued that the sense of entitlement among black South Africans was detrimental to their entrepreneurship efforts. What is the need for hard work after all, when the low-lying fruits are more than you can harvest? At some point, the demand of people of colour to occupy positions mandated by the Black Economic Empowerment law exceeded supply.

What, equally, would be the use of one developing high-calibre personal competencies as a Kenyan presidential candidate if all that matters is to position yourself as your tribe’s front man during its turn to produce a president? This state of affairs also engenders a problem of credibility: the international community may no longer believe that the occupant of Kenya’s State House is there by virtue of being qualified, even when he or she really is.

Maybe the way out of these bottlenecks is to expand the definition of the concept of  ‘tribe’, around which the presidency should rotate, beyond merely ‘Luhya’, ‘Kalenjin’, ‘Kikuyu’, ‘Luo’, ‘Giriama’, and so on.   

A diversified complexion of the presidency is highly desirable. But let the first ‘rotated president’ be a guy who will help Kenya – a country endowed with a prime equatorial fauna and flora – to stop shamefully importing toothpicks and fish from China, rice from Pakistan, honey from Dubai, eggs from Uganda and coffee from Switzerland, a country without a single coffee plant.

We desperately need a tribe called ‘Kenyan Patriots’ to produce such a candidate for us.