From an opendemocracy article by Peter Kimani, Kenyan journalist (link):

Kenya is tottering on the precipice as post-election violence rocks different parts of the country, in what the Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai calls "ethnic cleansing." But were the pogroms prefigured by Kenya’s political elite long before the first ballot was cast? 

The New Year could be the start of a long annus horribilis for Kenya, which faces its most uncertain days in a generation. Already last week’s General Election, which saw President Mwai Kibaki officially re-elected as the head of the PNU (Party of National Unity), has triggered violence across the country that has claimed over 200 lives.

Among the casualties are 35 women and children burnt in a church in Eldoret, about four hours northwest of Nairobi, where they had sought refuge to escape election violence. Others who escaped the inferno were bludgeoned to death by warriors from the Kalenjin tribe.

William Ruto, a key figure in the Opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) is a Kalenjin. The victims of violence were ethnic Kikuyus – President Kibaki’s tribe and the largest in Kenya. Raila Odinga, the leader of the ODM who is now contesting Kibaki’s re-election, is a Luo whose tribesmen are accused of killing ethnic Kikuyus in Nairobi’s slum of Kibera which forms part of his Langata constituency.

Tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes and are now camped in churches and police stations across the country

. The head of Kenya Red Cross Society, Abbas Gulled, has said warriors blocked roads to the areas affected by conflict, frustrating the delivery of humanitarian aid. Police have also clashed with ODM supporters caught pillaging in Kisumu, some four hours west of Nairobi, the coastal city of Mombasa and Kakamega in western Kenya.

Winding queues have become a common feature in the country’s capital city of Nairobi and other major urban centres as acute shortage of consumer goods and fuel are reported. Violence has disrupted public transport and its ramifications are being felt beyond the Kenyan borders, which serves as the gateway to commerce for land-locked East and Central African countries such as Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. Vice-President Moody Awori says Kenya’s national economy is losing over 15 million pounds daily.

The American ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger, hailed the Kenya General Election (in whichh the incumbent Kibaki claims 200,000 majority over his rival’s 4,300,000 votes) as "a model for world democracies," while the European Union Observer Mission called for an independent audit of the poll, after the Opposition claimed massive rigging. At the same time the PNU has raised claims of vote rigging against the Opposition. Government officials maintain that Kibaki was re-elected fairly and advised anyone with evidence to the contrary to petition the election through the courts.

This is a route Odinga is not willing to take, announcing he will mobilise one million supporters to endorse him as "the people’s president

." This sounds like a script straight from the Filipino 2001 Second People Power Revolution when Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was sworn in as president at a public square before driving Joseph Estrada out of office after the police and the army withdrew their support.

Rumours were rife in Kenya this week alleging that the Police Commissioner Maj Gen Hussein Ali and Army head Joseph Kianga had resigned to protest the poll outcome. This prompted the Government Spokesman Alfred Mutua to state the two were behind the President. While the Attorney General Amos Wako has called for an independent inquiry into the vote.

As the militant African-American activist Malcolm X would have put it, power "by any means necessary" is a mantra that perfectly fits Odinga, who was detained for six years for his role in the abortive 1982 coup in Kenya.

Not spontaneous anarchy

What is unfolding in Kenya may be anarchy but it has also been choreographed long before the first ballot was cast. Beyond picking its name from the Ukraine’s Orange movement, the ODM election strategy was overseen by Dick Morris, the disgraced political strategist wanted for tax evasion in the US, and who was alleged to have been instrumental in fomenting revolution in the Ukraine and Mexico.

Presenting Morris in Nairobi late last year, Odinga announced that the American would serve as his chief campaign strategist. He had to beat a retreat after local media exposed Morris as the Republican who moonlighted for the Bill Clinton campaign before being fired for allowing a prostitute to eavesdrop on his conversation with the former American president

. That was the last that was heard publicly of Morris, although he is listed to have donated 165,000 Kenyan pounds to the ODM campaign kitty in pro-bono services.

The birth of ODM is rooted in another revolt that commenced in earnest in 2005. It set the stage for the anarchy now being played out. In 2002, Kibaki had joined a short-lived political formation, the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) that brought together his then Democratic Party with Odinga’s Liberal Democratic Party and Charity Ngilu’s Social Democratic Party – while former Foreign minister Kalonzo Musyoka defected from the Kenya African National Union (Kanu) which had taken power from Britain in 1963.

This formidable force, with Kibaki as the compromise candidate, romped to victory in the December 2002 election. Grumbling started soon after over a mysterious Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that was allegedly signed between Kibaki and Odinga

. Incensed by the constant bickering about the MoU, Kibaki fired Odinga from cabinet alongside his lieutenants such as Peter Anyang Nyong’o and Kalonzo Musyoka. This was after they campaigned against the draft Constitution during the 2005 Constitutional referendum: their "No" Orange symbol clashing with the government’s "Yes" symbol of a Banana.

Those fired from the cabinet congregated under the banner of ODM and were joined by Uhuru Kenyatta, son of founding President Jomo Kenyatta, with the subtle nudging from retired President Daniel arap Moi.

Their vacant cabinet positions were filled with Opposition MPs from Kanu and other parties. After the fall-out with Kibaki in 2005, Odinga then broadened his political net by enlisting the support of William Ruto from the former white settlements of Rift Valley, and former Vice President Musalia Mudavadi, who is from the populous Western province, two of the provinces that provided the bulk of Odinga’s presidential votes, and which PNU claims were inflated in favour of the ODM presidential candidate. …

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