This archive report was first published on 19 November 2019.
November 19, 2019
President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga's highly publicized handshake has been shrouded in mystery, with the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) report still pending weeks after its completion.
According to media reports, the President's Sagana meeting was choreographed and scripted, suggesting that he is yet to find a winning roadmap.
Mr. Odinga and the President have publicly stated that they came together to find a long-standing solution to Kenya's polarized and violent politics, but their actions have raised more questions than answers.
The President has pointed to the recent Kibra by-elections as a hallmark of the new-found peace, but the reality on the ground tells a different story.
Kenya is grappling with economic and financial woes, and the BBI is seen as a component of the succession calculus and a decoy to pivot public attention away from these issues.
Despite occasional arraignment in court of government officials, Kenyans are yet to witness high-profile convictions, and the country's sincerity in fighting corruption remains in question.
Back in the 1960s, Kenya identified tribalism and lack of equal opportunities as major impediments to social cohesion, but today, tribalism appears to be a normalized practice, with ethnic appointments to strategic public positions and boards of government institutions.
President Mwai Kibaki's 2002 reform agenda aimed to restore ethnic balance and representation in public sector recruitment, but these efforts have since stalled, and the country has returned to the dark days of Kanu.
Kenya is not blind to the abuse of discretionary powers, and the ongoing institutional decay and erosion of national ethos is due to the ethnicisation of jobs at the national level and acute nepotism and cronyism in counties.
