Is Kenya running on a backsliding democracy mainly because of the massive corruption in government that is fast eating away the pillars and values of a democracy?
Or, is Kenya actually speeding towards post-democracy, a term coined by British political scientist Colin Crouch to refer to democracies that have a resemblance of institutions of democracy but in effect are much weaker than they ought to be?
Decisions that institutions fostering democracy should make are instead made by political leaders, rendering the institutions merely symbolic.
Or, could Kenya be both backsliding as well as moving towards post-democracy?
A country's democracy is said to be backsliding if the institutions such as the judiciary, electoral bodies and the media are manipulated or lack the wherewithal to withstand political pressure to conveniently deviate from norms, rules and best practices in support of otherwise illegitimate demands by power holders. In addition, civil liberties such as dissent, demonstrations, freedom of speech and selective application of law and protection become common and even get entrenched in the very systems meant to promote democratic values.
A post-democracy country has its share of worries. Granted, it has established institutions such as judiciary, legislature and the civil society as a non-state actors ideally promote democratic tenets. However, a post-democracy country is like a maggot that eats bones from within.
For instance, citizens lose trust in electoral processes because they think outcomes from such processes do not make meaningful change in public and private lives resulting in an increase in voter apathy and disinterest in political events. An example is when politicians hire crowds to attend rallies and meetings. In other words, people attend such events because of the attendance fee.
Moreover, the high level policy agenda is shaped and influenced by political power holders. As a result, accountability and transparency in government service delivery becomes opaque, making it very difficult for citizens to play their rightful role of checks and balances on government actions without fear.
Like many other Kenyans, I listened to the very able Budget Controller Margaret Nyakang'o extrapolate problems, actually, mysteries on the crafting of the national budget income and explanations, where available, of expenditure reports.
She joins a list of a handful other government officials who have time and again held our breaths to listen to how public funds are, on occasions irrationally generated and used. I am not sure where to place government economic advisor David Ndii as he tweets very cynical, condescending but at times brutally honest advisories particularly that we should never trust politicians. Overall, a quick sentiment analysis of his tweets shows that he has deeper frustrations on the economy is than he explicitly expresses.
For us to stop backsliding, or for the more optimistic, for us to steady our democracy, we have to grow a national memory. We forget injustices committed to citizens very fast. The Mavoko inhuman house demolitions happened the other day but with Israel-Hamas war beaming in all our media outlets, we forget that our own courtyard has victims of injustice.
We have to start embracing the history of our country. We have to count our blessings. We have to know who our heroes, heroines, statesmen and stateswomen are; who has contributed to improving the lives of the poor by creating job opportunities, who has put in place structures that make us proud, who has brought honour to our country like our athletes do or who has stood for values that make the world better like our fallen heroine Wangari Maathai. We must not throw out the window names and people who have politically sacrificed for this country in the first and second liberation waves.
In the same measure, we have to name our failures and learn from them. For those of us who have been in positions of influence, we have to put our hands on the negative things we let happen under our watch. There is no pride in pretending to have solved deep-seated genuine grievances that allow injustices to flourish and citizens lose hope in democratic ideals.
-Dr Mokua is Executive Director, Loyola Centre for Media and Communication
