NAIROBI, 8 April 2009 (IRIN): Deepening rifts in Kenya’s coalition government and a failure to press ahead with promised reforms have given rise to fears that the country could slide back into the kind of violence that claimed more than 1.000 lives and forced about half a million people from their homes after elections in December 2007.
– Kenyans are not only growing far apart but also frustrated and angry at the way politicians are playing a game of Russian roulette with their future; the pent-up anger will erupt with volcanic ferocity, Wafula Okumu, a senior research fellow in the African Security Analysis Programme of the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies, told IRIN.
– Admittedly, the coalition is currently under some stress and this is a source of worry for us in the humanitarian community, Aeneas Chuma, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Kenya, told IRIN on 6 April.
Changes to the judiciary were among a host of reforms agreed by Kibaki and his election rival Raila Odinga during mediation talks led by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2008.
Meanwhile, Odinga, the prime minister in the coalition government Annan steered into being, has become increasingly critical of the head of state, describing his leadership as “primitive”.
The 7 April departure from government of an assistant minister – in a country where resignations on principle are virtually unheard of – marked another blow for the coalition’s stability. Danson Mungatana left complaining that corruption and anti-reform forces were frustrating those determined to bring change.
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