For decades, Kenya has been an oasis of peace, compared with her neighbors Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, and Somalia.  That changed on December 30, 2007.

After 24 years of the corrupt presidency of Daniel arap Moi, Kenyans had high hopes when, in December 2002, they elected Mwai Kibaki as their president for the next five years.  President Kibaki appointed as Kenya’s first “Corruption Czar” (“Permanent Secretary for Ethics and Governance”) John Githongo, a man of impeccable integrity.

Githongo performed his duties well—so well, in fact, that he unearthed massive corruption within the Kibaki government itself.  He learned, among other things, that a huge government contract had been handed to a nonexistent company, a scheme to transfer money from the pockets of the Kenyan taxpayers to those of some of President Kibaki’s associates.  When Githongo reported his discoveries to Kibaki, the president refused to support him.  Then, after his life was threatened, Githongo decided it was prudent to live to fight another day.  On January 24, 2005, he flew to England, tendered his resignation, and told the world what he had uncovered.  He was called a traitor for criticizing Kenya from a foreign country.

Although we have been told that Kenya’s economy has grown at an annual rate of five percent during Kibaki’s presidency, ordinary Kenyans are unable to see any improvement.  A few Kenyans are extravagantly wealthy, and a few more have a decent standard of living, but the vast majority still get by on less than one dollar per day—in a country where gasoline sells for five dollars per gallon.

Then, on December 27, 2007, the Kenyan people chose Raila Odinga as their new president.  But, instead of accepting defeat, Kibaki and his cronies stole the election from the Ken­yan people, in order to steal their money for five more years.

The rigging of the election took place crudely and openly.  Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, chief observer of the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM), reported on December 30, 2007, that “We regret that it has not been possible to address irregularities about which both the EU EOM and the ECK [Electoral Commission of Kenya] have evidence.  The result for the Molo constituency, for example, was announced in the presence of EU EOM observers at the constituency tally centre as 50,145 votes for President Kibaki, while the ECK today declared the result for the President to be 75,261 votes.”  In some parts of Kibaki’s home province, voter turnout exceeded 100 percent!

One of the clerks involved in tallying the votes, Kipkemoi Kirui, reported before television cameras what he had witnessed: “I left after the third constituency tally because of the shameless and blatant alteration of votes done at every section.”  The government responded with a news blackout.  Later, Kibaki’s spokesman said, “The only thing the President wants to do is to heal this nation, and the media is not part of that process.”

Shortly after Kirui’s courageous report of the election rigging, the chairman of the ECK, Samuel Kivuitu, announced that President Kibaki had been reelected.  The Kenyan people—at least those with an understanding of the distinction between truth and falsehood—knew it was a lie.  Minutes later, Kibaki was sworn in for a second five-year term.  Two days later, Kivuitu said that he had acted under great pressure and admitted, “I do not know whether Kibaki won the election.”

When Africans are told that they should choose their leaders the way Westerners choose theirs, when they turn out in large numbers to vote, and when the election victory is then stolen from them, some decide to seek justice by other means.  Odinga was told by many voices that, if he was unhappy with the official election result, he should challenge it in the courts.  That is absurd.  Judicial decisions in Kenya are sold to the highest bidder.  And, even if there were a just decision, it would not come before Kibaki completed his second term.

Within minutes of the deceitful announcement that President Kibaki had been reelected, the slums of Ken­ya erupted.  Kibaki’s government responded brutally.  Kenyan policemen—who carry rifles, not pistols—began shooting protesters, as well as anyone else unlucky enough to be in the vicinity.  In one case, a policeman shot and killed a mother and child.  Another officer, from the same ethnic group as the innocent victims, shot and killed the first policeman.  Kibaki and his cronies share responsibility for these deaths.  But they don’t care whether a few hundred innocent Kenyans are killed, so long as they can steal the taxpayers’ money for another five years.  And they know that the deaths of a few hundred poor Africans will soon be forgotten by the world’s most powerful countries.

The U.S. State Department contributed to the injustice by imprudently congratulating Kibaki on his reelection and calling on all sides to accept the results.  At the same time that we were killing Iraqis in order to spread democracy in the Middle East, we were recognizing as legitimate an African government that stole an election by blatant fraud, then gunned down those who were courageous enough to protest the violation of their democratic rights.  Washington later withdrew the congratulations, but the damage had already been done.

Some elements of the Western media are contributing to the injustice by reporting that Kibaki won a close election and Odinga refused to accept defeat—a patent falsehood.  Some Western media are also reporting that the violence is tribal.  The violence in Ken­ya has become tribal, but it began with corruption committed by greedy people who happened to belong to particular ethnic groups.  The violence in Kenya is fundamentally about economic injustice, not ethnic identity.  Githongo belongs to the same ethnic group as Kibaki.

Odinga is being told by non-Ken­yan leaders that he should “reach out” to, and “dialogue” with, Kibaki.  Reaching out and dialoguing with thieves rarely solves problems.  There will be no true peace in Kenya, until Mr. Kibaki admits that he lost the election and is no longer the president.  If that does not happen, Kenya will become increasingly unstable—with adverse consequences for her already unstable neighbors.