We are back to the same problem we faced in 2007, 2013, 2017, and late 2022/23 following the contested presidential election outcomes. The problem is installing a presidency that has legal powers but suffers a legitimacy deficit.
The Kenya Kwanza presidency has a serious legitimacy deficit. First, by its own making. Instead of immediately reaching out to half the country that was hurting following the ruling of the Supreme Court upholding the declaration of the coalition as the elected entity to form the government, it rubbed in the pain with shareholder rights, heavily skewed appointments that left some communities feeling excluded, appointed some people with questionable integrity issues, weakened the Opposition and brutally reminded everyone who differed that the next election would be 2027. A patriotic gesture of empathy and reconciliation where people felt aggrieved would have given priceless legitimacy to the office.
Second, we have mistakenly believed that running a “dialogue” between conflicting parties amounts to national healing. The NADCO report resulting from the political conflict between Kenya Kwanza and Azimio Coalition soon after the 2022 contested election did not address the question of whether the electoral process was tampered with. What came out, was attending to bluffs. While we moved on from the scene of a crime in Bomas, the NADCO “dialogue business” failed to improve the cost of living which Kenyans find unbearable.
Just like the many commissions of inquiry whose findings are never acted upon, the many series of dialogues since 2007 have turned out to be nothing but strategies to pacify agitated voters. In principle, dialogue is an important mechanism for conflict resolution.
However, we have abused the whole concept. Instead of addressing grievances during the dialogues, we end up with piecemeal solutions that cover up fundamental grievances. Well, we now know that dialogue is another way of compromising one group to bend and accept a pre-determined outcome.
If there is one impact the Gen Z protest has driven home is to dent the legitimacy of the Kenya Kwanza presidency further. Home and abroad the question of whether #Rutomustgo is a possibility has elicited public discourse ranging from contested legal positions, and political strategist scenario building to the formation of political camps either for or against the hashtag.
Whether the Gen Z protests stop today or not, the damage is done, and history is made. Unfortunately, with or without the call for “dialogue” with Gen Z, the legitimacy of the Kenya Kwanza will not benefit from such a strategy. The remotely close strategy in the line of “a sit together” would be mediation.
The push for #Rutomustgo cuts both ways between the presidency and Gen Z. For the former, there is a completely unfounded shielding of the presidency occupant from the idea of resigning. The people in the system dread such a thought to the point the occupant is made to feel like resigning is not and can never be an option. What is the option then? Kaa ngumu! Former Presidents Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta, as we now are made to know, contemplated conceding defeat. Left on their own, they would have given way for someone else to lead the country. In truth, had any of them stuck to their conscience and passed on the presidential button, their legacies would have been even bigger.
For Gen Z being partyless, tribeless, and leaderless, if the President decides to let be, resign and go to regroup for a future election – since he would still be eligible for another term just like Trump lost and is back to the campaign to do a possible final four-year term – they would not have ample time to build a profile of “comrades” whom they can quickly bank on to carry their transform agenda should they turn tables on the older generation and get a number of their own elected, if that is the end game.
Instead of banking on dialogue to solve the current political tensions where conflicting parties are digging in albeit in disguised manners, I pitch for an earlier election in early 2026. Let us go for a win-win outcome.
Dr Mokua is the Executive Director, Loyola Centre for Media and Communication
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