Since first becoming president in 2013, Uhuru Kenyatta’s consolidation of political power has been ruthless. He has established a political system in which there is no clear distinction between the Jubilee Party and the state.
The police have been militarised, and alternative centres of political power both within the government and in the opposition are being dismantled.
Like his father Jomo in the 1970s and Moi in the 1980s, Kenyatta is slowly embodying the image of a dictator through a combination of co-opting Kenya’s wealthy economic and political class, and brute force.
Having won the 2013 elections in a controversial victory made possible through the support of a number of smaller political parties, Kenyatta later insisted on their dissolution and the formation of one umbrella party – Jubilee. He then became party leader.
Where he previously had to navigate the interests of various parties to implement his agenda, he can now make unilateral decisions with minimum opposition.
To further consolidate his power Kenyatta has invested massively in Mediamax, his family’s media company which owns several radio stations, a television station and a national newspaper.
He has also attempted to co-opt sections of the mainstream media. Soon after his inauguration in 2013, he invited some of the country’s top editors and journalists to State House for a “breakfast meeting”. This, he said, was to open a new chapter in “press-state” relations.
The much criticised invitation was quickly repaid with sympathetic and sycophantic media coverage of the government. And, a few high-level journalists were offered plum state jobs.
But, some sections of the press refused to play ball, and the public turned against what was gradually becoming a pliant media. Soon after that the honeymoon ended and the media clampdown began in earnest. Just one year after becoming president, editors and media managers started getting routine summons to State House.
Kenyatta even had the gumption to warn journalists on World Freedom Day in 2014 that they did not have absolute freedom on what to publish or broadcast. Since then the clampdown has been relentless.
Last April, the government decided to stop advertising in local commercial media. State departments and agencies were directed to advertise in the government newspaper and online portal My.Gov.
While it claimed this was to curb runaway spending it was clear the decision was aimed at starving the mainstream media of advertising revenue. This move came not long after Denis Galava, a top Kenyan journalist and editor at the Nation Media Group, was sacked for writing a scathing editorial about the President.
More recently the deputy president’s spokesperson threatened a journalist with sacking following a news report that claimed the president and his deputy had disagreed over cabinet appointments.
Meanwhile, just days before Odinga’s “swearing in”, Linus Kaikai, chairman of the Kenya Editors Guild, claimed that a number of editors and media managers were summoned to State House and given a dressing down by the president, threatening to revoke the licences of those who broadcast the event live.
Kaikai and fellow Nation journalists Larry Madowo and Ken Mujungu have since been threatened with arrest. They had to go to court to obtain anticipatory bail to bar police from arresting them.
There are ominous signs that Kenyatta is on a mission to silence the press as he consolidates his power. The government’s decision to disobey the court order directing it to end the media shutdown shows disdain for the law, and press freedom.
Although the mainstream media hasn’t done itself any favours by cosying up to him, it has largely played a vital role in sustaining political accountability.
With both houses of Parliament dominated by the ruling Jubilee Party, a weakened civil society, and opposition leaders without the institutional capacity to meaningfully confront the government, Kenya’s mainstream media remains a bulwark against the country’s descent to authoritarianism.
Kenya’s mainstream media must thus reclaim its place and defend the many liberties currently at stake under Kenyatta’s government.