Democracy has winners and losers – ask the rest of the world

The people of Kenya have spoken. Our election day passed without major incident. The myriad international observers praised the electoral process, giving it a resounding thumbs up. You would have thought that the lengthy campaign was well and truly over. Job done. But sadly, Raila Odinga and his NASA colleagues have yet to grasp the essence of democracy – That inevitably, there are winners and losers.

Across the world, elections end at the ballot box and candidates accept whatever outcome they contain. Mr Odinga’s refusal to act like a democrat and accept defeat threatens to place us outside this global consensus.

The will of the people

Quite simply, NASA is behaving as if the will of the Kenyan people were incidental. The results of the election were conclusive – Uhuru triumphed by a full ten points. NASA’s own agents signed off on the forms at polling stations, seemingly happy that the electoral process had been carried out freely and fairly. All other Presidential candidates other than Raila conceded defeat, satisfied that they had lost an honest fight.

Only when the real-time tallying, which NASA themselves had demanded, began to indicate resounding defeat for their candidate, did the wild allegations of wholesale rigging begin. And ever since then, NASA has dreamt up increasingly imaginative conspiracy theories, passing them off as legitimate objections to an election which should have been over long ago.

The opposition seems to believe that in a democracy, whoever shouts loudest wins.

NASA is pulling out every trick in the book to create enough clamour and chaos which it hopes will result in being awarded at least some slice of power.

They have produced not a shred of evidence that the IEBC servers were hacked, and nor are they willing to disclose the identities of those they say have ‘incontrovertible’ evidence of such mass fraud. NASA’s call for a boycott fell flat on its face. Perhaps realising that there is no public appetite for their lies, the opposition has now turned to the Supreme Court.

We can assume that if any real evidence of rigging existed, then NASA would have made it public by now. The fact that they haven’t tells you everything you need to know.

But facts are incidental in NASA’s crude attempt to create enough deceptive noise with which to mask the reality of a crushing loss.

Apparently, anything goes in order to hide the truth of defeat. Musalia Mudavadi has made baseless allegations that Jubilee is blackmailing NASA candidates to concede defeat. NASA strategist David Ndii is even promoting a petition of secession - A breakaway state is nothing but fantasy, but it borders on treachery.

And most chillingly of all, Mr Odinga himself is continuing to wield the threat of violence, unless he gets his way, recently declaring publicly that “regardless of the court’s ruling there is nothing like accept and move on this time round if the court rules against us.”

How is it that the rest of the democratic world has learnt to accept defeat? The most controversial election result of recent times, George Bush’s victory over Al Gore in 2000 went all the way to the US Supreme Court, with the tallying process at the centre of controversy.

And yet, Gore accepted defeat and not a single life was lost in the protracted disagreement. Meanwhile in the UK, last year’s election for London Mayor was marred by administrative errors at several polling stations.

All candidates magnanimously accepted the result. And even many of the Europhiles including Prime Minister Theresa May, who so narrowly lost the Brexit vote have such respect for the will of the electorate, that they are now implementing the outcome.

In stark contrast, Raila continues to stamp his feet and insist that the only acceptable result is victory.

Evidence of wrongdoing?

He will inevitably highlight the type of minor inconsistencies which the US and UK have embraced, and shamelessly claim evidence of systemic wrongdoing. In doing so, he will be ignoring one essential facet of democracy; democracy produces winners and losers.

As Winston Churchill famously noted, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” It is not flawless, but the alternative is unthinkable.

Raila’s refusal to accept this salient truth places Kenya at odds with our natural allies, the liberal democracies of the Western world.

Given our past and the painful memory of 2007, we must demonstrate that we have moved on and have the maturity to accept democracy for what it is. Should we do so, then the sky is the limit for this country. Thanks to the progress made over the past few years, our international standing has never been better.

Mr Temba is a communications consultant