Reshuffle to widen divide
2004-07-02 10:13
Nairobi - This week's government shake-up in Kenya, while purportedly aimed at healing rifts in an 18-month-old coalition administration, is actually more likely to widen the divisions between rival factions, analysts said on Thursday.
It took 10 years and three elections for the east African country's various opposition parties, which are based much more on tribe and region than policy or ideology, to forge the unity needed to defeat former president Daniel Arap Moi's Kenya African Union (Kanu) in polls held in December 2002.
The ouster of Kanu, which had been in power since independence in 1963, prompted widespread expectations of economic revival and serious governance, but the past 18 months have spawned growing disillusion with the ruling National Rainbow Coalition's (Narc) constant wrangling and President Mwai Kibaki's perceived weakness.
The chief casualty of these internal battles has been Kenya's new constitution, deadlines for whose completion have gone unfulfilled with frustrating frequency.
On Wednesday, which just happened to be another missed target date for finalising the new basic law, Kibaki took action, making a rare live television appearance to announce what he called a "government of national unity".
MPs "poached"
In the reshuffle, Kibaki moved ministers from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), a key coalition member, to lower profile portfolios and brought in a couple of Kanu politicians into the cabinet.
Kanu chief Uhuru Kenyatta, the official leader of the opposition, dismissed Kibaki's "government of national unity" claim, saying his MPs had been "poached."
LDP has been bickering with Kibaki's own National Alliance Party of Kenya (Nak) over unfulfilled pre-election pledges and the delay in enacting the new constitution.
Also ON Thursday, the head of commission that was working on the draft document resigned, grumbling about "sabotage."
The president created more ministries to make space for the politicians from Kanu and for Simeon Nyachae, the leader of another political party, Ford-Kenya, who had refused to play second fiddle to Kibaki in 2000 and stayed out of Narc.
"Kibaki played fire brigade politics in the reshuffle," political analyst Mutahi Ngunyi said.
"He was just cooling off tempers because of unfulfilled promises, but in the long run, the tempers are bound to rise again and divisions deepen in and outside parliament," said Ngunyi, who writes for the mass-circulation Sunday Nation newspaper.
LDP has already blocked some Narc bills in parliament, not because they opposed the legislation, which was designed to protect forests, but to protest their camp's perceived marginalisation.
- AFP