Civilized politics is not about “finding the true will of the people,” a project that is merely a totalitarian conceit,* but about fashioning tolerable regimes based on peaceful relations. Kenya has taken a great step in that direction, thanks to the efforts of Mr. Kofi Annan and the willingness of the leaders of the two major camps to step back from the abyss. According to the BBC,
Mr Odinga said the agreement was “just a piece of paper” – the most important thing was the will behind it.
“It means we recognise Mr Kibaki as president and he recognises that there were some flaws in the elections,” he told the BBC.
Of course, a world without criminal gangs competing for power would be preferable, but in the existing world of criminal gangs, getting them to interact more peacefully among themselves and with respect to their prey is preferable to conflict.
*The invocation of “will” is a dangerous foundation for a political order, unless by will one refers to the constitutional order as the “enduring will of the people,” in which case it may have some value. It is, however, not very enlightening to refer to a set of rules or procedures as “the will of the people” on analogy with the “will” of this or that person to do this or that act.
I don’t trust either side of the Kenyan conflict. Both of the leaderships come from the Mau Mau movement which was really quite frankly violent and trained during the Cold War in Soviet Russia.
All this coalition government in Kenya exposes between the two sides is a shade of the old Mau Mau movement.