Let's make a deal

Montreal, February 28

More news today, bringing a sigh of relief. The power sharing deal has been signed in a public ceremony. The basics are that the each party will get cabinet posts reflecting its numbers in parliament, and there will be a Prime Minister (for the first time since 1964) and two Deputy PMs. The PM will, according to the report: have "authority to co-ordinate and supervise the execution of government functions". A little vague.

Great first step, and only two months overdue.

Well, actually, more like 10 years overdue, but that's a whole other story.

I fully expect Kenya to recede from international headlines now, as it had already done to a large extent because there was no sexy violence going on for reporters to cover. What this will mean for the rest of a program of reform is very unclear.

In a way, I don't imagine Kenyan leaders moving forward or making much progress without international pressure to keep things going. There's a lot of opportunity to just stall and stall and stall, unless at least one of the main players (I'll speculate, optimistically, that it'll be ODM) keeping up the pressure and using its position to leverage some of the reforms they want to make.

As far as violence goes, it remains to be seen how well this political agreement will be received by the masses, and by the makeshift and not so makeshift ethnic gangs that carried out a lot of the attacks. If they see it as a reasonable agreement, things should remain calm and get better. If, for some reason, either side sees it as threatening their position (and I would speculate that this might come from Kibaki's "supporters"), we might see more clashes. I think it's unlikely in the short term, but what do I know?

I suppose the image of Raila and Kibaki, Luo and Kikuyu, agreeing to work and live together is a positive one for Kenya.

Without further reform, this deal will essentially be meaningless.