Initiatives of Change

1997 CEC

After having heard of the effectiveness of a Clean Election Campaign project in Taiwan in 1992, Joseph Karanja brought together ten friends for a weekend conference to consider the situation in Kenya. As a result, they decided to launch the Kenya Clean Election Campaign (CEC) ahead of the National elections in December 1997. He was convinced that it was the right thing to address the corruption, violence, and apathy that had become a permanent feature in the elections. They decided to start early because of the electoral process in the country; the government used to get the Central Bank to print money to fund the elections - not for their operations but for the bribes by intimidating people or bribing them, thus having the election tied up a year in advance.

The group approached religious leaders first. They talked with the heads of the Catholic, Anglican, and other churches and the religious leaders of the Muslims. Three points were put forward in these talks:

to ask people to commit themselves to accept no bribes, nor vote for anyone who offered a bribe

to encourage people to take responsibility for the integrity of the voting process in the voting booths

to encourage honest men and women to stand for election to parliament

The religious leaders gave their full backing to this and encouraged CEC speakers to address their congregations, which over the succeeding months the CEC did. This proved a most effective way of reaching the ordinary voter, because on praying days churches are always full in Kenya. A group of businessmen helped to finance advertising the campaign in the Kenyan press and a printer undertook to print hundreds of thousands of leaflets without charge.

Joseph Karanja, Lawyer and co-leader, Clean Election Campaign, Kenya. (Photo: Mike Lowe)

The 22 Catholic bishops invited all Kenyans, especially the eight million Catholics, to support the campaign by signing the pledge form. The pledge, which was part of the leaflets, consisted of the promises not to accept bribes, when possible to prevent and expose actions that would distort or rig the election results, and not to take part in any violence. In all, over 700,000 pledges were signed and returned. The campaign leaflets also outlined fourteen qualities of a good leader, all of them non-political qualities, as a background for voting choices.

The campaign became extremely popular and quickly grew into a national movement that many of Kenya’s 33 million people took part in. Ordinary Kenyans invited campaign people to their homes to talk to various groups about the campaign. The people hosted campaigners wherever they went. The entire country was mobilized to support the campaign and it gave an opportunity to every Kenyan to play their part in curing the rot in the country.

The media and other organizations also gave their support to the campaign. For the government, it was hard to fight against it, because they could not openly come out against a campaign that was fighting corruption. They made the campaign wholly a positive one. They did not seek to blame any particular party or individual but launched an equal challenge to all leaders not to take part in corruption.

The apathy in the country, a result of the corrupt system, was broken. The campaign encouraged people to approach good leaders in their areas to stand as candidates. Furthermore, so they did. 30 candidates, who probably would not have stood for election but for the encouragement of Joseph Karanja and his colleagues because of the perceived corrupt nature of politics, won office. Eleven government ministers and 26 deputy ministers lost their seats and President Arap Moi’s majority in parliament was reduced to four. Some members of his own party were no longer simply yes-men and his dictatorial power was reduced.