Paper Tiger Political Parties Stifling Deepening of Democracy in Kenya

Elections 2013 are gone. The fanfare of activities in and around the headquarters of the main political parties is no more. Months to the general elections, new parties are created and old ones emerge from hibernation to contest for various offices. The peak of activity is marked by acrimonious nominations in the parties of the season as the less significant ones wait to accommodate disgruntled losers. Election day comes, winners are declared and another flurry at headquarters occur for the scramble for nominated positions. Then, bar the occasional bye election, all is relatively quiet with mainly elected representatives as voices of virtually comatose parties for the next four years. Welcome to the life cycle of Kenyan political parties.

The reality is that our political parties are paper tigers. They lack coherent ideology, vision or purpose. Their membership is largely transient with loyalties tied to individuals rather than the party.  Hence personality cults support the existence of the party and the whims of individuals make or break the organization. A lack of committed membership also means that the parties are generally starved of funding and few individuals (“the owners”) contribute funds to run party activities. In turn, the owners feel they have a right to call the shots in the party. In fact this is the major genesis for favoritism and flawed processes during party nominations as the owners believe they have earned the right to subvert a one man one vote process.

The last true mass party in Kenya was KANU. It had a vibrant membership, formal structure, and active branch offices. However, for much of its history, it flourished as a beneficiary of a single party dictatorship with a large share of its members coerced into its activities. Unfortunately, none of the political parties that have emerged since the return of multi-party democracy have been able to craft a functional organization. Worse, while demanding democratic practice and transparency by the government, these parties have all been unable to successfully hold holistic democratic and transparent elections. Attempts to do this have been the death knell of the great parties of the last two decades – FORD, NARC and ODM. Only KANU under Uhuru Kenyatta attempted to carry out comprehensive grassroots to national elections, predictably followed by a major fall-out.  All these organizations turned out to be but paper tigers that survived on personality cults.   

Since the last general election, none of the owners of the three major parties - TNA, ODM and URP – have shown an appetite for reorganization and elections within their parties. Meetings are held, and declarations are made of near-future party elections. But will the paralysis brought about by fear of fall-outs be overcome this time? Are party owners willing to relinquish dictatorial control over parties? Are party enthusiasts willing to take a more active role in party affairs including financial contributions? This would allow them to make a grounded claim to ownership and therefore decision making within the party.

Personality cults alone cannot sustain a party that is making a claim to national leadership. Further, we should not expect to deepen our democratic culture if we cannot develop viable parties as strong institutions that can survive the test of time. There are mutterings about ODM holding elections in February 2014 and we wait with bated breath. Time will tell if we have learned any lessons from our recent history.