[allAfrica.com] Politics of Internally Displaced Persons The East African Standard (Nairobi) COLUMN 27 April 2008 Posted to the web 28 April 2008 By Dennis Onyango Nairobi Members of Parliament from the Rift Valley who accompanied President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to the region to comfort the internally displaced persons knew they were up against a tall order when they left Nairobi on Thursday. Two days before they flew to the Rift Valley for reconciliation rallies, the region's MPs had voted against the tour by a margin of 27 to 15. The Government, keen to see the trip succeed, made it compulsory for Cabinet ministers and Assistant ministers from the region, flying all of them to the Eldoret Airport. But despite the public pronouncements area MPs, including Cabinet ministers, may have made on IDPs, Rift Valley politicians have opted to follow the voters, not the other way round. Internally displaced people at the Afraha Stadium, Nakuru. Picture by Lucas Thuo On the ground, and in private conversations, resettlement is a live wire that is sure to kill political careers and even claim more lives. The reasoning is basic and, in private, no MP is ready to go against it. Most of the displaced people now camping in various places in the Rift Valley are largely individuals who trace their roots back to Central Province, the President's home province. Asked whether he could stand in public and urge voters in the region to allow the displaced to return, an MP said he would not. What he planned to do was take a well-rehearsed line, saying they had merely accompanied the President and the PM to deal with the problem. Baringo Central MP, Mr Sammy Mwaita, says the problem is far more complicated than the Government is willing to admit. There are the wishes of the people and the anger carried over from the past five years when Rift Valley found itself in the Opposition for the first time since independence. There is also the power sharing arrangement, which he says is still being viewed as skewed in favour of President Kibaki. All those are intertwined with questions carried from way back in the 1960s over how land was allocated to communities that moved into the Rift Valley. The MP does not expect much to change in the attitudes in the region, even after the President's tour. "There is a lot of scepticism. There is a feeling that the coalition was put together simply to enable the President resettle the IDPs and not to address the historical questions people have had over land in this region," the MP, a one time Commissioner of Lands, said. Those feelings, he says, are also laced by anger over what happened in President Kibaki's first tenure, when hundreds of people were evicted from the Mau Summit. The feeling, the MP said, is that those who were evicted from the Mau are not being seen as IDPs, and the residents wonder why. The Government has emphasised the right of Kenyans to live and own property anywhere in the country, as long as it is done legally. On the ground, according to the Baringo Central MP, residents want to know why people with title deeds were evicted from the Mau while others are being prepared for resettlement because they have title deeds. "We are dealing with the same Government whose senior minister said a title deed is a mere piece of paper. It may sound trivial, but on the ground, people ask why titles issued in Moi era were treated as mere pieces of paper while we are being asked to recognise the ones that were issued in the Kenyatta era." Mwaita is just one of the several MPs who say they cannot dare tell residents of the Rift Valley to allow everybody to resettle. "Land to a Kenyan is what security is to an Israeli. People want the issue addressed conclusively, once and for all. And the President needs to recognise the fact that people feel he is hurrying up this just to resettle IDPs. He needs to know the power sharing has caused grumbles and there are fears over how long this will last," the MP said. Similar sentiments were expressed by other MPs who, privately, say the matter runs deeper than whether the IDPs had title deeds or not. "Here, people are asking us very basic questions, and nobody is going to put his career at risk just to save Kibaki from dealing with the fundamentals. People ask, 'if it is true that people can own land or settle anywhere, let him tell us the number of people from our community, or Luos or Luhyas who own land in Central Province'. It may look petty, but that is the mood here," an MP said. According to the MP, the problem runs deeper than the notion that the land was sold on the basis of willing seller, willing buyer, which diplomats are talking about. Like others, he said speaking in support of the IDPs amounts to "hanging yourself". Silently, Rift Valley MPs are arguing that some leaders in Central Province need to surrender some land to resettle the people. The projection is that at most, the Government needs about 30,000 hectares of land to resettle the IDPs. Some MPs say the Government can legally acquire that amount of land from the ranches that dot Central Province. "These are things nobody want to talk about in public. But it's the feeling down here," an MP said. Some MPs, saying they are acting on the wishes of their people, want the resettlement to wait for the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission that will look into, among other things, community displacements, historical land injustices and the illegal or irregular acquisition of land, especially to the extent that such injustices relate to the recent violence. While the Government says the existence of IDPs threatens food production in the country's breadbasket regions of the North Rift, residents think otherwise. On the ground, the belief is that most of the IDPs were from towns and are not farmers. Those who farmed, locals argue, constituted about two per cent of the farming force in the region. Even as the Government wound up the tour of the region, Nominated MP Mr Musa Sirma declared that nothing had been achieved. "Any solution that is imposed from the top will never succeed. This is what we told the President from the word go," Sirma said. According to the MP, what went on in the entire tour was "all a game of lies". "It is a game in which no one is telling the other the truth. Even as the President left, there was no one on the ground to keep the process going. To the people here, it is not just about settling those evicted in December and January. We have people living in the forests to evade police arrest. We have people in police custody. Those are IDPs in the eyes of their communities," Sirma said. "The President is trying to treat a cancer using painkillers. He is just telling communities to reconcile without telling them how. I doubt it will work," he added. The tension that characterised the relations between the Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka during the tour did not help matters, Sirma said. "There is a feeling that the tension is being fuelled by the President's team deliberately. It is trickling down to the ground where people are being asked to reconcile." ======================================================================================== Copyright © 2008 The East African Standard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). ======================================================================================== [images//media.fastclick.net/w/ get.media?sid=7943&m=1&tp=1&d=s&c=1&f=b&v=1.4]