Why?

Why did they think they could get away with it? That is the question that will occupy historians for millennia. Just as historians keep going over and over the motivations of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime, so too will historians go over the ashes of the 2007 general elections and ask themselves how the ruling classes thought they could get away with it. Thousands were murdered in their homes and in the streets, though the official figures put it at 1,300 or so. Tens of thousands were maimed, some for life. Hundreds of thousands were displaced and billions of shillings of private property looted and destroyed. To date, tens of thousands continue to languish in abject conditions. So, when we see alleged ring-leaders being held to account, we must ask, "Why did they think they were going to get away with it?"

When Samuel Kivuitu, the head of the dismantled Electoral Commission of Kenya, declared Mwai Kibaki re-elected in December 2007, he set the stage for what would be a bloody confrontation between the re-elected president's supporters and those of the eventual loser, Raila Odinga. When the leading lights of ODM called for "mass action", could they have predicted that things would get so out of control that the country would not be the same again. At that stage, it was well within the President's power to put an end to the mayhem. He controlled the army, the police and all organs of government. No has suggested that he was not in control. So did he not deploy the security services to quell the violence as it erupted. If it is true that he, and Mr Kenyatta and Mr Muthaura, met with representatives f the outlawed Mungiki sect at State House, and that it is at these meetings that a plan was hatched to retaliate for the perceived persecution of the Kikuyu in the Rift Valley, how were they going to keep details of these meetings from seeing the light of day? If it is true that Mr Ruto and Mr Sang plotted to persecute the Kikuyu in the Rift Valley, and that they had a system in place to do so long before the elections were called, how did they hope to get away with it?

President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga could not have predicted the turn of events that the mediation process would have led to. Kofi Annan and his team of eminent African personalities conducted themselves honourably, though suspicions persist that they were acting in the interests of outside forces. As a result of their efforts, Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga share power uneasily in a coalition, Commissions of Inquiry were appointed to look into the issues surrounding the elections and their aftermath, and two landmark reports were issued, though it the Waki Report that has led us to where we are today.

If Raila Odinga and ODM had accepted the flawed results of the general elections, if the mediation had not led to the investigation of the violence, or the Kriegler and Waki reports, or the promulgation of the Constitution ... if, if, if. Today, as a direct consequence pf the 2007 general elections, Kenyans have a Constitution that they are proud of, their leaders are being held to account, and impunity, for once, has a fight on its hands, but the question "Why?" refuses to go away. We may never know, but we should never forget and we should always question. It is the least we can do.