For Newly Reelected Kenyan, 5 More Years May Not Be Enough

As Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi got ready to embark on a fifth five-year term after his reelection in grossly flawed and chaotic general elections last week, many Kenyans and outside observers expressed doubt that he will be able to carry out the overhaul needed to ensure the country’s position as East Africa’s pivotal nation.

Confronted with the challenges of eradicating corruption, promoting development and forging national unity, analysts said, Moi will have to remake himself and his government to achieve in five years what he has failed to do in 20.

“The president and the new government are taking charge of a country undergoing the most turbulent times since independence,” said the daily East African Standard in its Saturday editorial. “They face an uphill task to salvage the nation from crisis.”

Although voting results were still expected Saturday from the country’s sparsely populated northeastern region and from a couple of constituencies in Nairobi, the capital, election officials confirmed that Moi had garnered the necessary 25% of the votes in five of the country’s eight provinces to declare victory.

Unofficial results gave the president, whose inauguration was anticipated as early as today, 39% of the vote. His closest challengers, Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga--who reportedly won 33% and 11.5%, respectively--have rejected the results, charging widespread rigging.

Irregularities at last week’s poll included mixed-up and missing ballots and ballot boxes.

Whether Moi can defy naysayers by guaranteeing his country’s economic recovery while quelling political unrest and suppressing tribal animosities remains an open question for many observers.

*

On the one hand, Moi and his ruling Kenya African National Union, or KANU, party--which managed to cling to a small majority in parliament--can be praised for maintaining relative stability in Kenya, which is situated in a region tainted by turbulence. The country has been spared the horror of genocide and war.

Kenya can also boast of an educated middle class and a solid business community that has ensured the availability of consumer products and luxury goods.

However, the Moi government’s dismal record on social and infrastructure development weighs heavily on many Kenyans who have suffered a severe decline in living standards over the last two decades.

Public health facilities lack medicines and basic equipment, roads are peppered with potholes, urban decay and crime are mushrooming, and disease and illiteracy are on the rise. Electrical power is erratic in many areas and nonexistent in others. Telephone communication is also inconsistent.

“The average person may not have read the constitution, but they are able to judge that basically their lives are not going in the right direction,” one Nairobi-based diplomat said in a recent interview. “Basically, things have been getting worse in Kenya, from roads to schools to hospitals, and people feel that.”

Inadequate salaries have led many professionals, most recently nurses and teachers, to strike.

Demoralized university students--whom analysts say Moi would be wise to woo, since they are Kenya’s prospective future leaders--have also taken their complaints to the streets in recent months.

Sixty percent of the population is under the age of 30, but these Kenyans’ employment prospects are bleak. Every year, 650,000 new job-seekers--many of them university graduates--compete for 55,000 jobs in the formal sector.

“They bought into the dream, but the dream has brought them nothing,” the diplomat said. “If Kenya does not address that problem of the extraordinarily high disparity between rich and poor, then down the line problems are likely.”

*

The demise of basic services has been attributed to economic losses caused by high-level graft and by theft from the country’s public coffers.

Evidence of poor governance last year led the International Monetary Fund to halt a three-year, $205-million aid package. That decision caused the stock exchange to slump, interest rates to skyrocket and the currency, the shilling, to depreciate by 25%.

Many analysts are doubtful that Moi will be able to ensure the country’s economic recovery by honoring his preelection promise that a recently created anti-corruption unit takes “its work seriously and that the law is followed to the letter, irrespective of who is involved.”

*

Sources say the resumption of talks about suspended international loans will depend on the commitment of Moi’s new economic team.

“There’s so much corruption at a very high level. That’s the biggest problem,” said Alastair Matheson, a veteran observer of Kenyan politics. “There’s not much hope of investment for some time.”

Many foreign businesspeople have not regained confidence since last summer, when politically motivated ethnic violence racked Kenya’s Indian Ocean coastal region, leaving at least 65 people dead. The perpetrators have never been brought to justice.

Tourism, the country’s third major producer of foreign revenue after tea and coffee, was also hit by the coastal fracas.

Despite these problems, the ruling party insisted in a public statement Friday that the election results indicated that Kenyans “have demonstrated their faith in KANU and its leader, President Daniel Arap Moi.”

Not quite, say some observers, who believe that the vote was evidence of a timid electorate demonstrating its traditional caution and reserve.

“Continuity is a big thing,” Matheson said. “But a lot of people are against change and fear change.”