My knowledge of Kenyan politics is fairly limited, but can anyone else feel the contempt expressed by rich world commentators in describing the supposed ethnic backgrounds/allegiances of the participants? It's a multi-purpose set of imagery, portray everything as being the product of irrational pre-historic inter-tribal conflict, and then bemoan the inability of African nations to form competent, corruption free governments. Thus they paint the picture of a normal political constituent apparently too lacking in sophistication to separate their interests from some "tribal elder" (who, surpise! Looks, acts and speaks like any western politician, quite free from the regalia you would assume such a position to necessitate).
None of this constitutes analysis, and is usually based on spurious assertion, rather than any kind of rational discussion with participants. The media just re-explores the same set of stereotypes, based on some kind of immutable law of ethnic war, like as soon as someone adopts any given identity they immediately place themselves at the disposal of their leaders to mobilise for genocide.
Luckily for us, the media has a simple formula for all disputed elections so we can all understand where to file the results:
In Eastern Europe, all elections feature: (a) A pseudo-Soviet strongman sympathetic to Russia versus (b) a liberal democratic pro-western moderniser. If (a) wins, the result was rigged, if (b) wins hail a new era of openness and development.
In Africa, all elections are more or less rigged, because all African leaders are corrupt, however, if the winning candidate is a favoured neo-liberal, this corruption becomes "some concerns were raised about the poll". If the rigged election is contested raise the prospect of civil war motivated by tribal allegiances.
In South America, all candidates are either pro-US or anti-US. The latter will be a dangerous populist and demagogue, exploiting the poverty of his people to stir up hatred, thus illustrated by a photo of them with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.
This saves us the trouble of dealing with the particular political and social histories of all those pesky foreign countries. Which handily means we can ignore the impact of rich world countries on their history, meaning we don't have to question the impact of colonial policy on Kenya, or how de-colonisation was deliberately managed in such a way as to promote tribal conflict, starting with how Britain accumulated colonial bureaucrats and functionaries, promoting systems of feudal patronage and nepotism. Then, the way in which "responsible" groups were found among these administrations through whom international finance could retain control, whom could form a political class, distributing wealth and power according to their own loyalties, creating divisive notions of exclusion and favouritism. The same networks through which they rig elections, so they can continue to support the same corrupt system.
