Rally Urges Canada to Help Restore Democracy in Kenya

A group urging Canada to step up to the plate to help the people of Kenya in their hour of need gathered for a press conference on Parliament Hill on Monday.

David Kilgour, former Secretary of State for Africa, the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD) and members of the Kenyan-Canadian community called on the Harper Government to provide humanitarian assistance and support for the restoration of democracy in Kenya.

While the speakers commended the government for its contribution of $1 million to the Kenyan Red Cross on Jan. 3, they said Canada can do much more.

"Canadians and Kenyans have so many Commonwealth and other longstanding ties," said Kilgour. "We and our government should stand with Kenya's people in their time of trial just as we did with Ukrainians after their flawed presidential election in 2004."

Kenya is in crisis following disputed elections on Dec. 27 in which President Mwai Kibaki was re-elected in an extremely close presidential race.

In the run-up to the election, Kibaki's opposition rival Raila Odinga and his Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) was ahead in most opinion polls.

Odinga seemed to be on course to win until Kibaki was handed a narrow victory. International observers say the poll didn't meet democratic standards, and both sides accused each other of vote rigging.

The ODM, which led in earlier vote tallies, said it suspected fraud after Kibaki narrowed the polling gap overnight.

Delays announcing election results fuelled tensions, and violence erupted across the nation late Saturday after Kenya's election commission stopped releasing vote counts. At one point, Kibaki's Party of National Unity and the ODM both claimed victory.

"Canada needs to change its current position from simply acknowledging the irregularities in the Kenyan election to publicly rejecting the Dec. 27 election results" said CCD executive director Naresh Raghubeer.

Raghubeer said that while the casting of ballots was done in an orderly manner, the counting of votes and transmission of results appears to have failed to meet minimum standards of "fairness, accountability and transparency."

"The root cause of the problem is the lack of a democratic constitution," said Tegi Obanda, International Coordinator of the Coalition for Constitutional Reforms Kenya. "Without a new constitution, Kenya is heading towards becoming a failed state, with the attendant risks and cost to other nations, including Canada."

While the Kenyan government estimates the death toll to be around 500, Reuters reported Monday that Odinga claimed "closer to a thousand" people may have died.

More than 250,000 people have been uprooted by the unrest, with about 100,000 displaced people in the Northern Rift Valley region facing starvation, the UN said Thursday.

According to Kilgour, the situation is now relatively calm in Nairobi, but violence continues in other regions of the country. Up to 4,000 homes have been burned in Kibera, a large slum area outside of Nairobi where about 1 million of Kenya's poorest live.

It is these people and others like them, said Kilgour, who were counting on Odinga to become the next president and now "their one chance has been stolen from them." The opposition has demanded a re-run of the election.

After the 2004 presidential election in Ukraine was compromised by corruption, voter intimidation and fraud, many countries including Canada sent observers, among them Kilgour, to oversee a second election.

Results of the original election were annulled, and under intense national and international observation, the second run-off was declared "fair and free." Kilgour believes a similar outcome is possible in Kenya.

"Let's get out there and help, let's have Canadian observers go. Let's pitch in the way we pitched in with Ukraine to secure democracy for Kenya."

As well as rejecting the election results, CCD wants Canada to:

* call for an interim national unity government in Kenya comprised of all elected political parties to establish and adopt a democratic citizen-driven constitution within one year;

* support the holding of a new presidential election to be observed by the international community (including Canada) following the adoption of a new democratic constitution;

* offer the assistance of Elections Canada to provide technical advice and support for new elections;

* support the activation of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) to assist in restoring stability and democracy in Kenya; and,

* increase humanitarian assistance for the construction of numerous homes and shelters lost as a result of the post-election violence.