Kenyan Regime Refuses to OK Leakey’s Party

Undermining the government’s recent promise to implement certain political reforms before this year’s general election, Kenyan authorities Monday refused to legalize a popular political party led by reformer Richard Leakey, the world-famous paleontologist.

Claiming, among other things, that the Safina party’s objectives are unlawful, Registrar-General Omondi Mbago called those intentions “incompatible with peace, welfare or good order in Kenya.”

Critics cited Monday’s decision as proof that the ruling party’s declared support for political change is merely cosmetic and designed to derail the reform campaign by the country’s political opposition.

Officials of Safina (its name means “ark” in Swahili) say their goals are to promote free and fair elections and to advocate constitutional changes through peaceful means. Though the exact number of Safina supporters is unknown, party leaders said Monday’s decision will mean the “disenfranchisement of millions of Kenyans,” who will be denied “the right to freely select their leaders.”

A date for the presidential vote, in which President Daniel Arap Moi is seeking a fifth five-year term, has not been announced. Reformists have been lobbying for changes in the electoral system, which they say gives Moi an unfair advantage.

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Leakey--whose party has been fighting to be legalized for more than two years and has 21 days to appeal the decision--said he was not surprised by Monday’s news. Moi has frequently attacked Leakey, a white Kenyan, as a neocolonialist in league with foreign interests.

“This campaign of vilification, much of it racist and tribal, was surely an attempt to prepare the ground for this decision,” Leakey said, reading from a statement. Although Leakey has said he has no desire to be president of Kenya, observers maintain that Moi still considers him a threat because of his good relations with Western donors and his ability to fund a viable opposition party.

“The government just doesn’t get it,” noted one Western diplomat. “It will continue to try to get away with cosmetic legal changes.”

Since November 1995, at least 36 political parties have either been denied registration or been told to keep waiting for a decision.

Safina officials said they plan to stage a “peaceful” rally to give Kenyans an opportunity to show their support for the party. “If Moi is right and no one cares for this ‘foreign-influenced body of anarchists,’ ” Leakey said, the president should give Safina the opportunity to poll the public.