Internal Accountability

The establishment of IPOA at the macro level was not only meant to improve external accountability but also sought to ‘improve the quality of internal investigations of the police, reassure members of public that the police will investigate complaints thoroughly and fairly, discourage police misconduct and improve police policies and procedures’ (GoK, 2009, p.90). In this respect, the Internal Affairs Unit (IAU) was established to investigate complaints against police officers. Despite establishment of the Internal Affairs Unit, there was little evidence of progress in the development of internal accountability. The system continues to face a lot of resistance from within, especially from the higher ranks, and lack of coherent accountability strategy. The police ‘don’t seem to have a strategy’ for ‘a clear accountability mechanism which has broken down, starting from the top going up to the station level.’²⁵²

Where police leadership has been hard pressed to explain crimes committed by the police, police leadership has always considered these a case of a few rotten apples.²⁵³ However, the argument is that if these criminals are not identified and weeded out in time, ‘it means there are systemic managerial failures because with good management structures you will be able to pick out the failures in the police service and rectify in

252 Interview with K-Int2

253 Interview with K-Int3

time.’²⁵⁴ At the station level, the point where the common man feels policing, the officers commanding station are not able to account for the police officers within the station. The system as currently stands is unable to make line managers accountable and as such the rank and file are not accountable thus systematic failure in the way policing is delivered at the community level.

The vetting process of senior police officers perhaps demonstrates the extent to which accountability mechanism in the police service had broken down. For example, it emerged that a Deputy Commissioner of Police had been earning a salary yet doing nothing for a period of one year, a period which he was still waiting for deployment from his seniors, apparently the Inspector General and his deputies, who happened to be members of the vetting committee. The Inspector General and his deputy could not account for what the officers had been doing for one year and were not subjected to explain why taxpayers’ money was spent for services not rendered by the officer.

Two factors seem to affect the actualisation of the Internal Affairs Unit.

These include lack of capacity and the attitude of the police officers. First, during the police vetting exercise, it was clear the unit was yet to pick up.

The head of the unit Leo Nyongesa was hard pressed to explain the achievement of the unit eight months down the line. Aside from that, the difficulty the head of the unit experienced while explaining the mandate of the unit points to some incompetence in initiating internal accountability within the wider police reform process and that his office lacked equipment and personnel. As for the capacity, the officer noted thus;

‘Internal affairs unit is a baby. We are in the process of establishing the unit and recruiting staff. There are so many complaints but we do not have the capacity.’²⁵⁵

254 Interview with K-Int2

255 Interview with NPS7

Despite these challenges, the unit was working with the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to arrest corrupt officers and was also holding sensitisation workshops. By the time of writing this thesis, the unit had

‘recommended about 20 cases for disciplinary action’.²⁵⁶

Secondly, there is a hostile attitude towards the establishment of accountability amongst the police not only to the IPOA, but also to allowing the authority to have oversight role on the operations of the IAU.

This element of hostility derives from the conversation with the police officers involved in the development of the standing orders which was being facilitated by Usalama Reforms Forum. It was also obvious that the officers participating in the process were jittery about involving IPOA in the development of accountability mechanism for the police. An officer observed that, ‘we should not bring IPOA too much in the operations of Internal Affairs Unit.’²⁵⁷

The above statement suggests not only resistance towards to IPOA but also the wish of the police to remain ‘closed and secretive’. Most important, it demonstrates that the distinction between the role of IPOA and the IAU is yet to crystallise amongst the officers. More startling is the fact that even amongst the police officers participating in the process, some did not have confidence in their seniors to get the unit running as most of the complaints likely to emanate from the Internal Affairs Unit would be against top police officers. Asked why they were engaged in an exercise whose success they doubted, an officer retorted, ‘We were protecting out jobs.’²⁵⁸

While the above discussions cast aspersions in the process of actualising the Internal Affairs Unit in the police service, there is hope that the unit will be up and running given the level of external support the unit is getting from external actors. At the time of writing, the UNODC Regional Office for Eastern Africa had advertised for the position of a consultant to help

256 See more at: http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-149752/senior-cops-put-task-about-their-leadership#sthash.qHVkGGpD.8FolylEz.dpuf

257 Interview with anonymous officer

258 Interview with anonymous officer

with the operationalisation of the IAU with the specific mandate to provide technical assistance and advisory services to all stakeholders. Secondly, with the hindsight of resistance from the police, and that the issue of police oversight and accountability is a new phenomenon in Kenya, the IPOA has embraced external support as critical in moving forward accountability element in the police. These efforts are captured thus;

we have technical people that we brought in because we also know that there are some areas we know require professional guidance.

We brought in an investigations consultant from New Zealand who is very competent because we know that police oversight authority is a new phenomenon in Kenya. We did not want to start making mistakes so we brought in somebody of that level. When we were setting up the structures we also brought in a consultant from Holland, this is somebody who is rated amongst the top ten in the whole world in terms of setting up accountability mechanism in the police service.²⁵⁹

Whilst there was evidence that internal accountability is yet to be accepted by the police, especially at the higher levels, and that there is very strong anti-IPOA and other external accountability mechanisms sentiments within the rank and file of the police, the symbiotic relationship between external and external accountability mechanisms makes it impossible for sustained opposition to accountability. However, given the fact that the police service is still in the process of establishing the internal accountability mechanism, it is still early to determine the extent to which this has been influenced by demands from external accountability.

4.5 Conclusion

This chapter has focussed on the implementation of the post 2007 police reform processes, at three levels namely, macro, meso and micro levels.

From the analysis, the police reform process in Kenya is progressing at a slow pace. The reform process still faces obstacles arising out of the

259 Interview with K-Int2

factors identified as pre-requisites for successful reform process by the Ransley committee.

At the macro level, political will and inadequate funding still pose a problem. Political will is manifest in the form of either support for or resistance to reforms from different stakeholders in different proportions.

Though the executive and international donors demonstrate political will through improved funding and provision of resources, the behaviour of political elite and their associates remains a challenge. This incidentally runs across the entire spectrum of the levels of analysis. At the macro level, the political elite and the legislature influence the reform process by providing the reform direction, in this case eroding the gains made by the institutionalisation of the reform process. At the meso level, institutional politics involving competition amongst the institutions managing the reform process has slowed down the reform, while the indifference to the reform process by local leaders has led to strained relationship between the public and the police. This has had the net effect of undermining public participation in the reform process.

Meso level analysis focused on the institutions governing the reform process. In terms of coherence of the reform process, the absence of the National Security Policy from where the police reform strategy should derive has created a situation where reform efforts remain fragmented and characterised by poor coordination amongst various stakeholders, particularly the security actors and the other stakeholders. This challenge thus made it difficult for the police to address security challenges facing the country including; Al-Shabaab insurgency, proliferation of small arms and light weapons, corruption other forms of organised crime. Other challenges are related to the wider societal problems for example youth unemployment, poor infrastructure that make it impossible for police to respond to distress call from the public.

At the micro level, the institutional culture of the police largely remains an obstacle in addressing the structural problems in the police. Whilst the vetting exercise was expected to weed out unsuitable crop of officers at

this level, it was not clear how the National Police Service would dismantle the networks that the officers may have established over the years. The culture of secrecy, protectionism and impunity still remained dominant even in the face of the police reform process. Also, mistrust still abounds between the police and members of the public thus making it difficult for the public to win the police confidence and vice versa, particularly in relation to community policing.

Building on this chapter, particularly on the influence on politics discussed at the macro level, the next chapter provides a more detailed analysis of the influence of power-sharing on the police reform process. This is for the purpose of unpacking the political intrigues that shaped the police reform process under the power-sharing arrangement.

CHAPTER FIVE: POWER-SHARING POLITICS AND THE POLICE REFORM PROCESS IN KENYA POWER-SHARING POLITICS AND THE POLICE REFORM PROCESS

IN KENYA

5.1 Introduction

The discussions in the previous chapter suggest that lack of political-will significantly impeded the reform process prior to 2007, and remains one of the key obstacles to the post 2007 the police reform process in Kenya.

This chapter provides an in-depth analysis of how politics, particularly the politics of power-sharing shaped the post-2007 police reform discussed in Chapter 4. It addresses the second thematic area in this study which explores the linkage between power-sharing politics and police reform processes in Kenya. Specifically, the chapter focuses on the fourth secondary research question thus; to what extent has power-sharing politics influenced police reform and wider SSR in Kenya?

The chapter is developed broadly around Arendt Lijphart’s consociational democracy (Lijphart, 2008) which we introduced and discussed in chapter two. The chapter however does not aim to test Lijphart’s theory, but seeks to use the overall framework as an organising tool for examining how power-sharing politics shaped the post 2007/08 police reform process in Kenya.

Lijphart’s early consociational democracy theory focused on grand coalition, in which power is shared among different factions forming the coalition government. In the 1990s however, the descriptions developed to include three other features namely; cultural autonomy, proportionality and minority veto. Lijphart’s notion of cultural autonomy means different things to different scholars. Ottmann and Vüllers (2014) consider cultural autonomy under territorial power-sharing dimension and further subdivide it into devolution and autonomy. In this chapter, as in Kanyinga (2009), devolution is used in place of cultural autonomy and involves both aspects of Ottmann and Vüllers (2014) dichotomy.

Lijphart’s structures have since then been modified into primary and secondary characteristics; with the grand coalition and cultural autonomy being the most crucial, whereas proportionality and minority veto occupy lower position of importance (Lijphart, 2008). In the case of Kenya’s power-sharing arrangement, we argue that all the Lijphart’s devices were present and influenced the police reform process in varying degrees, though the politics of the grand-coalition and devolution remained dominant. Hence, to what extent did power-sharing politics influence police reform process in Kenya? For the purpose of investigating this question, grand-coalition and devolution are used as pillars around which the discussions revolve.

The chapter is organised into four sections. The present section (Section 5.1) includes a brief introduction to Lijphart’s power-sharing theory and provides the organization of the chapter. Section 5.2 examines Kenya’s grand-coalition politics and its interrelationships with the police reform process. Section 5.3 discusses the Kenyan experience with devolution and how it interlinks with the police reform process at both national and county levels. In illustrating how politics impacted on police reform process and devolution, power-sharing arrangements before the 2013 general elections in Marsabit County are analyzed. Section 5.4 concludes the chapter by highlighting key findings in the chapter.