On the night of November 26, 2019 the BBI report was officially presented to Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga in State House, Nairobi. Kenyans found out that this initiative was truly a step forward, very much in the same vein as the “sacred” political history of the United States of America: a step in crafting a “more perfect Union”. Democracy is always an incremental process of moving forward through the dialectical process of the “union of opposites”. American democracy is the outcome of several critical events, ranging from the Civil War, World War I, Suffragettes (Women’s Movement), World War II, to the Civil Rights Movement spearheaded by Martin Luther King. By the same token in Kenya, we have had the Anti-Colonial movement led by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, to the quest for democratization of political life after independence, led by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga (Not Yet Uhuru).
When Vice President Moi took over from Kenyatta, he followed the footsteps of Kenyatta (Nyayo politics) and perfected the art of absolute control of political power in a “one party” state. This triggered the struggle for multi-party democracy whose aim was to democratize the political space. The triumph of multi-party democratic struggle ushered in the emergence of the less “noisy” President Kibaki, an economist by training. It was in this period that Kenya enjoyed some measure of economic prosperity. Kibaki’s rein came to an end in 2012 and the subsequent two general elections, 2013 and 2017, once again ushered in ethnic violence, threatening the very existence of Kenya as a “nation”.
It was then that Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila came together in 2018 to explore ways in which the Kenyan democracy could be moved to a more “perfect union”. Kudos to these two sons of the soil, who happen to be the sons of the two principal players who kicked off the process of moving the country towards a more “perfect union”: Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. Now the entire country will debate on the merits of the BBI and hopefully isolate critical ingredients in crafting a more “perfect union” in the present historical conjuncture.