Yearbook 2012
Kenya. According to
countryaah, tensions rose in Kenya ahead of the upcoming
presidential and parliamentary elections. Within the
unifying government, which had been formed in 2008 to end
the violence after the 2007 elections, disagreement
prevailed over when the election would be held, but
according to a court ruling at the beginning of the year, it
must be held no later than 60 days after the expiry of the
sitting parliament's mandate in January 2013. In March,
Election Day was nailed to March 4, 2013. The political
situation was further tightened when the International
Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague announced on January 23
that four Kenyans would be prosecuted for crimes committed
the weeks after the 2007 election, when more than 1,100
people were killed. Among the defendants were three
high-ranking politicians: Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta,
Cabinet Secretary Francis Muthaura and former Education
Minister William Ruto, and the head of a radio station.
Kenyatta and Muthaura now left their government posts
(Kenyatta, however, was allowed to remain as Deputy Prime
Minister). However, both Kenyatta and Ruto intended, despite
the charges, to stand in the upcoming presidential election.
The lawsuits against them would only begin after the
election, the trial of Ruto and Arap Sang would start on
April 10, 2013 and the one against Kenyatta and Muthaura a
day later. President Mwai Kibaki and the Kenyan government,
who opposed the ICC to take up the cases, made new efforts
to try them in a regional African court instead. Both Ruto
and Kenyatta accused Prime Minister Raila Odinga of being
behind the ICC prosecution. ICC chief prosecutor Fatou
Bensouda in October criticized the government for not being
sufficiently cooperative. She emphasized that legal
proceedings would continue even if one of the defendants was
elected president. Another two persons were the subject of
the ICC investigation, but no charges were brought due to
lack of evidence.
As the election approached, a series of layoffs from the
government parties occurred as politicians attempted to
acquire new platforms for the upcoming elections. Kenyatta,
who received high opinion numbers, resigned from Kenya's
African National Union (KANU) and in May formed a new party,
the National Alliance (TNA). In the same month, Musalia
Mudavadi resigned as Deputy Prime Minister and at the same
time left Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and
joined the newly formed Party United Democratic Forum
(UDFP). The UDFP was said to stand close to President
Kibaki.
Former political enemies Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto
decided in early December that their parties would cooperate
in a group called the Jubilee Alliance. There also joined
Musalia Mudavadi and his party. But the collaboration
between Mudavadi and the other two has cracked considerably
since Kenyatta was appointed presidential candidate the week
before Christmas with Ruto as his vice presidential
candidate.
In early December, Raila Odinga also formed a new
alliance, called the Coalition for Reform and Democracy
(CORD), together with Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka. Later
that month, Odinga was named CORD's candidate in the
presidential election.
George Saitoti, another prominent politician who had been
named as probable presidential candidate, died in a
helicopter crash in June. It was unclear what had caused the
crash, something that sparked speculation that it was a
sabotage.
Saitoti was responsible for the country's internal
security and was believed to have pushed Kenya to join the
military in neighboring Somalia in 2011. The Kenyan troops
succeeded in capturing the port city of Kismayu in the
autumn, one of the strongholds of Islamist militia
al-Shabaab. From February, the Kenyan troops formally joined
the African Union Peace Force in Somalia (AMISOM).
The militant al-Shabaab was suspected of a series of
attacks in Kenya. Most of them were aimed at people in the
area near the border with Somalia, in Nairobi or around the
coastal city of Mombasa. One of the bloodiest deaths was a
concerted attack in July against two churches in the city of
Garissa in the Northeast when at least 15 people were
killed.
The act created tensions between ethnic Somalis and the
rest of the population, which led to violence in several
places. Following new attacks in December, the authorities
urged thousands of Somali refugees to leave the cities and
head to two already overcrowded refugee camps.
Concerns also rose in the coastal province, where the
population has long felt neglected by the Nairobi
government. Mombasa's Republican Council (MRC) threatened to
boycott the election if it was not allowed to form an
independent coastal state (MRC had been banned by the
government in 2010 for "criminal activity", but the ban had
been lifted by a court in August).
At the end of August, riots broke out in Mombasa after an
Islamist preacher, Aboud Rogo Mohammed, who was suspected of
being linked to al-Shabaab, had been shot dead. It was
unclear who performed the act, but many Muslims blamed the
police.
A dispute over grazing land between the peoples snake and
pokoma in the Tana River district in the southeast demanded
hundreds of lives in August and September. Local politicians
in the area were accused of playing on old tensions to
strengthen their own position before the parliamentary
elections. The situation was made worse by the fact that so
many weapons were in circulation in the region due to the
conflict in Somalia. Prosecution was brought in September
against Dhadho Godhana, who was also forced to resign as
deputy minister of cattle. New violence erupted in December,
demanding forty lives.
In October, the United Kingdom High Court granted three
Kenyans the right to sue the British authorities for being
subjected to torture and other abuses during the so-called
Mau-Mau uprising in the 1950s. The British government had
previously admitted that torture had occurred, but
considered that too long had passed for those involved to be
given a fair trial of the cases.
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