EXPLORING THE LINK BETWEEN GLOBAL CAPITAL EXPANSION, CHINESE ASCENDANCY, AND THE VERDICTS OF WESTERN ELECTION OBSERVERS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: THE CASE OF KENYA'S 2017 GENERAL ELECTIONS.

• Author: Omulo, Albert Gordon

INTRODUCTION

Western election observers appear to be frustrating the advancement of genuine democracy in Africa. According to Nic Cheeseman, Todd Moss, and Jeffrey Smith,

Election monitors regularly fly into a country to watch voting. Ideally, they are objective witnesses to a poll, helping to deter violence and to boost the credibility of the result. Monitors are supposed to help make democracy work. Recent elections in Africa, however, suggest the opposite. Observers keep missing--willfully or otherwise--the actual ways in which elections are actually stolen. All too often they confuse peaceful voting with a "free and fair" election. This misplaced tolerance leads them to endorse illegitimate outcomes. Rather than expose rigging, monitors are too often helping undemocratic leaders stay in power. (1) Elsewhere, Susan Dodsworth has asserted that "Western election observers apply a 'double standard' to elections in sub-Saharan Africa" (2) and that "Western election observers were statistically less likely to allege that significant fraud had occurred in an election in sub-Saharan Africa, than an election of the same quality held elsewhere." (3) However, this alleged behavior of Western election observers has largely escaped holistic critical scrutiny from scholars; analysis on the phenomenon mainly centers on the following three aspects: 1) the '"progress bias,' a tendency to tolerate flawed elections that improved on those held previously," (4) 2) "the risk of triggering electoral violence," (5) and, 3) "a desire to protect relationships with strategic partners." (6)

In a scenario reminiscent of what Chris Hedges has described as "universities hav[ing] been purged of dissidents and independent scholars who criticize neoliberalism and decry the decay of democratic institutions," (7) explanations have tended to be rather muted on globalization as a factor, at a time when the global power structure is strongly coalescing around neoliberalism and big business threatens to run roughshod over the nation-state. Undoubtedly, despite the fact that "globalization has created new opportunities for economic development," (8) it is true that "market power has often expanded at the expense of democratic and social accountability" (9)--the general neglect of this fact by contemporary scholars of African democracy constitutes the problem that this paper seeks to address. Accordingly, emboldened by Cheeseman, Moss, and Smith's scathing assessment of election monitors, this paper discusses the conduct of Western election observers within the context of China's rise as a global power using Kenya's 2017 general elections as a case study.

After the introduction, this article is organized as follows: It first outlines the background to the 2017 general election in Kenya and its immediate aftermath; secondly, it reviews contemporary literature on the state of Kenyan democracy; thirdly, it conceptualizes Kenya's 2017 elections through the prism of globalization and monopoly capitalism; and fourthly, it explores the link between the International Criminal Court (ICC) charges faced by President Kenyatta, the latter's leadership style, and China's ambitions as an emerging global power, detailing how these factors may have informed the stance taken by the Kerry team, then draws its conclusions.

BACKGROUND TO THE 2017 GENERAL ELECTION IN KENYA AND ITS IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH

What constitutes "democracy"? As a concept, democracy is indefinite; (10) nevertheless, there are two main views on what it represents--the procedural and the substantive views. The procedural view "believes democracy is a form of government, and it emphasizes the procedures that enable the people to govern: meeting to discuss issues, voting in elections, and running for public office, for example." (11) It "focuses on how decisions are made." (12) Its tenets are inspired by the following three discrete questions: 1) "Who should participate in decision making?" 2) "How much should each participant's vote count?" and 3) "How many votes are needed to make a decision?" (13) In regard to the aforementioned questions, proponents of the procedural view contend as follows: First, "all adults within the boundaries of the political community should participate in government decision-making" (universal participation). (14) Second, "all votes should count equally" (political equality). (15) Third, "a group should decide to do what the majority of its participants wants to do" (majority rule). (16) Moreover, so the adherents of the participatory view of democracy argue, " [i] t is not enough for everyone to participate in a decision; all votes must carry equal weight." (17)

On the other hand, the substantive view "is concerned with what the government does" and "sees democracy in the substance of government policies, in freedom of religion and providing for human needs." (18) Its focus is "not on the procedures followed in making those policies." (19) Indeed, "[i]t argues that in a democratic government, certain principles must be embodied in government policies." (20) For instance, "[s]ubstantive theorists would reject a law that requires Bible reading in schools because it would violate a substantive principle, the freedom of religion." (21) While contention abounds among proponents of this theory regarding whether the government should provide "social rights (adequate health care, quality education, decent housing) and economic rights (private property, steady employment)," (22) there is a broad consensus that the states responsibility is to avail the following two elements to its citizens: "civil liberties (freedom of behavior such as freedom of religion and expression)," (23) and "civil rights (powers or privileges that government may not arbitrarily deny to individuals, such as protection against discrimination in employment in housing)." (24)

According to Markus Thiel, "a 'procedural' democracy owns characteristics worth protecting and possibly endangered by enemies' of the democratic system, for example, the freedom of elections." (25) In the lead up to its 2017 general elections, Kenyan society appears to have been cognizant of the dangers the procedural aspect of its democracy faced, for two primary reasons. First, its citizens protested violently in mid-2016, and this culminated in the resignation of the country's Independent and Electoral Boundaries Commission (IEBC) officials, who had been accused of various malpractices, including "bias, mismanagement, and corruption." (26) Accordingly, a new commission, selected through a largely transparent process, by a bipartisan panel comprised of members representing the interests of both sides of Kenya's political divide--President Uhuru Kenyatta's Jubilee Government and Raila Odinga's opposition outfit, the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) (27)--and the clergy, thought to be neutral, was sworn into office promising "to deliver a 'free, fair and credible election.'" (28) Second, prior to the appointment of this new commission, the country enacted The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2016, which, among other progressive changes, introduced the idea of an "integrated electronic electoral system," that is, "a system that includes biometric voter registration, biometric voter identification and electronic result transmission system," (29) to govern and guide the electoral process. The international community seems to have also prioritized the procedural aspect for Kenya's democracy for, in alignment with the aforementioned positive changes, "the US and Kenya's other donors... invested $24 million in an electronic vote-tallying system designed to prevent interference." (30)

Notwithstanding the aforementioned elaborate and progressive preparations, the electoral process was, again, considered unsatisfactory by, among others, consequential stakeholders such as the country's judicial arm of government, for it appeared to fail the test of procedure. Characterized by what the country's Supreme Court would refer to as numerous irregularities and illegalities, it was found to have substantially breached and neglected the letter of the law, especially with regard to the aforementioned components of the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill (2016) to the point that it was nullified. In offering its verdict, following a petition by opposition leader Raila Odinga, Kenyan Chief Justice David Maraga said the following:

Election is not an event; it is a process, from the beginning to the end. We will, I believe, be able to demonstrate why we reached our conclusion: that taking the totality of the entire exercise, we were satisfied that the election was not conducted in accordance with the dictates of the constitution. (31) In stark contrast, a robust team of international observers, led by former US secretary of state John Kerry and former prime minister of Senegal Aminata Toure--of the Carter Center Election Observation Mission--in what appeared to be an abrupt shift from a preference for procedural democracy to one for substantive democracy, made premature pronunciations, (32) whose effect would give a clean bill of health to an election process that "declared incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta winner for a second term, amid opposition and civil society claims of fraud." (33) Appearing unperturbed by the fact that "[t]he new $24 million system [that] was supposed to enable scans of the 34A [result] forms to be sent to the electoral commission and posted online immediately, so they could be double-checked by all parties and the public," had "broke[n] down at polling stations all across the country," (34) Kerry would state the following in an interview with CNN, only three days after the Kenyan election:

This is not an electronic vote ultimately; it's a paper ballot vote. And so it is determinable as to what happened. And I think it is important for all the candidates to allow the process to be transparently put to the test and...