Kenyan Rivals Sign Power-Sharing Agreement
Opposition's Odinga Will Be Prime Minister

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 29, 2008

NAIROBI, Feb. 28 -- Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga signed a power-sharing agreement Thursday to halt ethnic violence that has killed at least 1,000 people and displaced 600,000 in a post-election crisis that has ushered this nation to anarchy's door.

With ethnic militias arming for all-out conflict, the economy crushed and talks near collapse, former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan, who has been mediating between the two sides, bypassed deadlocked negotiating teams and appealed directly to Kibaki and Odinga.

By Thursday afternoon, the feuding men were seated in matching red chairs in the warm Nairobi sun, signing a deal that promises an influential position as prime minister for Odinga and a balance of power in Kenya's government that has been lacking since the country won its independence from Britain in 1963.

Although the United Nations, the United States and others characterized the deal as a significant political breakthrough, it remained unclear whether Kenyans would accept it.

"Let the spirit of healing begin today," Annan said after the signing ceremony outside a downtown government office. "Let it begin now."

Odinga, a fiery opposition leader who had eyed the presidency with what appeared to be a sense of righteous destiny, accused Kibaki of stealing the Dec. 27 election, which international observers found flawed.

The dispute set off a wave of violence driven by a sense among many ethnic groups that Kibaki's tribe, the Kikuyu, was unwilling to relinquish control after dominating Kenya's power structures for more than four decades.

Kikuyus and members of Odinga's ethnic group, the Luo, have fought hand-to-hand in Nairobi's poorest neighborhoods. And in the western Rift Valley region, politicians rallied ethnic Kalenjin and other militias to torch Kikuyu farms and houses in violence that included the burning of 17 people inside a church.

The violence has resulted in a crude segregation of Kenya's population that in many ways is a reversion to the country's colonial period, when ethnic groups were confined to artificially created homelands.

Tens of thousands of Kikuyus have fled east to central Kenya, considered their traditional home even though many no longer have connections there. Comparable numbers of Luos and other ethnic groups have been chased by vengeful Kikuyu militias to western Kenya, considered their ancestral land.

A similar sorting process has occurred in Nairobi's sprawling slums, where the trust that had existed among neighbors remains broken.

"How can you stay with people who attacked you?" asked Moses Wanjau, 21, whose house and shoe kiosk were burned by Luo neighbors he had considered friends. "How will things go back to normal after they did that?"

With displaced people clustered across the Kenyan countryside and Nairobi's charred slums still seething with bitterness, the mood was only cautiously celebratory as news of the political deal filtered out.

In the opposition's western stronghold of Kisumu, Odinga supporters waved green twigs in a sign of peace and chanted the not-quite-victorious slogan, "The struggle continues!"

"We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but it's not time to celebrate," said John Otieno, a teacher in Kisumu. "We know what happened after 2002, and we shall only be sure when everything is in place."

The allusion was to a power-sharing deal struck after Odinga helped Kibaki win the presidency in 2002, ending two decades of repressive rule under Daniel arap Moi. The agreement was never formalized and eventually collapsed.

Otieno and others said they would celebrate after changes were made to the constitution formalizing Odinga's prime ministerial position.

On Thursday, Kibaki, a quiet and seemingly courtly leader with extensive ties to an elite Kikuyu establishment, promised to convene parliament next Thursday to begin the work of implementing the agreement.

The deal peels significant powers from the presidency and attaches them to the new post of prime minister. That official will "coordinate and supervise" all government ministries and remain accountable to parliament, Annan said. If implemented, the agreement will achieve the separation of powers that Odinga and his supporters had sought.

Kibaki will remain head of the armed forces and will continue to appoint judges and some ministers.

On Thursday, Kibaki said the country "especially must deal with negative ethnicity, national cohesion and unity" in the months ahead. He also urged foreign tourists to return to Kenya's safari parks and lodges. The crisis has cost Kenya an estimated 400,000 jobs and $3.7 billion since it began.

When Odinga walked to the podium, a roar of cheers went up among his supporters. In a rare gesture of unity, he referred to Kibaki as "my countryman" and told Kenyans, "We have begun a journey, and this journey we are going to walk together."

Annan emphasized that there remains the final part of the negotiations, dealing with the underlying causes of the post-election crisis. Issues to be addressed include constitutional reform, social inequalities and what some officials have described as the nightmarish issue of land reform, a particularly sensitive subject because many in Kenya's political elite are implicated in illegal land grabs.

As evening fell and paraffin lamps lit up the Nairobi slum of Mathare, where machete-wielding, stone-throwing mobs chased out Kikuyus only weeks ago, people went about their business as usual, appearing neither delighted nor disappointed by the deal.

Tobias Okumbu, a car repairman who supported Odinga, said he was reserving his emotions for now. "If Raila is not going to be sworn in, it will be endless war," he said. "We are only praying right now and trying to live together as brothers and sisters."

Special correspondent Allan Akambo in Kisumu contributed to this report.