When Is a Reform not a Reform

The international community's message to the Kenyan government has been ringing out loud and clear: get serious reforms underway or else.
And the response seems to be: we are and we don't appreciate you saying otherwise.
If anything, the coalition government's rhetoric has become more strident since the top international mediator in Kenya's post-election crisis, Kofi Annan, came to town on Sunday.
After meeting the former U.N. secretary-general on Monday, President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga -- once political rivals, now uneasy bedfellows -- said the progress on reforms had been "impressive".
According to the power-sharing deal which ended the blood-letting after the 2007 election, the coalition government is supposed to update the constitution, reform a widely discredited police service and judiciary, and create a more equitable distribution of land. It was also supposed to bring those behind the violence to trial.
On the latter point, repeated efforts to create a local tribunal to try those suspected of fanning and financing the violence have so far failed, clearing the way for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to lead the way. It seems ready and willing to do so.
But government spokesman Alfred Mutua said on Sunday that the government's performance grade on reforms stood at 90 percent. In a full-page advertisement in the Sunday Nation, he said: "The reform agenda is on track and will be undertaken and completed for the sake of all Kenyans."
He said a constitutional review was underway, electoral reforms were on track with the formation of a new electoral commission and land reforms were to be discussed by parliament when it reconvenes. A final report on proposed police reforms is also due in two weeks time and parliament is also then to discuss major recommendations on judicial reforms.
It is a hefty list and it would be wrong to say no progress has been made. But maybe the problem lies in the fact that you can reform institutions all you want, it is not going to convince people that things have really changed if they see the same faces in charge of the new entities. Faces that have been familiar to Kenyan voters since the Moi era.
Maybe what Kenya needs is not so much a travel ban on politicians but a political ban on those who have failed in their promises and done nothing to institute reforms. Mind you, that could be said of a lot of countries.
Few seem to agree with Mutua's assessment of a 90-percent success rate. The business community rated the government's progress at 10 percent and civil society groups and human rights activists agreeing that nothing close to 90 percent has been achieved. The African Union's Panel of Eminent Persons, which is headed by Annan, said in a recent report that reforms were moving slowly and this had disillusioned the public.
There may be no concrete deadline on most of these reforms -- although it is now clear that "the sooner the better" is what the international community wants. But in the case of pursuing those responsible for the violence that killed more than 1,000 people last year, it seems increasingly likely that the government's foot-dragging is about to be challenged by the ICC. And that in itself is not without risks.
Church leaders who met Annan on Tuesday warned of the possibility of more violence breaking out when indictments are issued. It's clear that there is a very real danger of this international judicial process being painted over in the colours of local tribal and political animosities that exploded after the last election. One group might well see an indictment as evidence of another group's scheming or pressuring of the international court.
There is already evidence of growing internal tensions. The Standard reports that Monday's meeting between Annan, Kibaki and Odinga -- and their cabinet supporters -- erupted into shouting. "It was a tense meeting and at one point ministers shouted at each other trading bitter accusations over the status of reforms," a source at the meeting told the paper.
The Standard says ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is due in Kenya a week after Annan leaves. I imagine he -- and others both inside and outside the country -- are already mulling not only the evidence he and his team have accumulated but how the indictments will play in Kenya's fractured political landscape.