The Kenyans dispelled all myths yesterday that they were incapable of stable government. The national referendum for a new constitution passed resoundingly more than 2 to 1.

Although implementation will be arduous, and the time available before the next election poses something of a challenge, it is clear that Kenyans across all spectrums of society want to put the 2007 violence behind them.

The coalition government which has operated so successfully after the Kofi Annan agreement in March, 2008, had unanimously supported the new constitution. Only a handful of renegade politicians, others who will ultimately be prosecuted for the 2007 violence, and church leaders myopically obsessed with tiny provisions regarding abortion campaigned for the “NO” vote.

They lost decisively and resoundingly.

Congratulations, Kenya!

In a huge and welcome change from past American policy, eight U.S. Congressmen are in Kenya to promote democracy. “Change,” I said? Absolutely!

Until the Obama administration, America’s promoting democracy in the Third World was something akin to my own dear old-style Chicago politics. You tell them what to do, and if they don’t, you shoot.

My own grandfather, a “died in the wool” Chicago Republican, stopped voting after he had been told at the voting registration table for the Eisenhower election in 1954 that he was dead.

His named had been removed from the voter registration lists to the corner’s, (presumably in a wool suite in a sealed coffin. At least he lived another ten years.)

The Reagan era was an intensely ideological one, and it was during that time that a “democracy officer” was attached to every American embassy in the world. In East Africa the officer was intensely hated. He meddled in everything, often trumping senior embassy staff because of his unique title.

And rather than promoting democracy, this officer’s function was punitive. When he/she saw something in the country that was undemocratic, local officials were given a tongue lashing, then a lecture, and finally aid was withdrawn.

Not exactly the best way to promote an ideology, if you ask me.

And it wasn’t. There was a terrible backlash that led to young people in particular concluding that democracy wasn’t. Rioting by students in both Nairobi and Kampala were several times linked to anti-American sentiments about meddling in their country’s politics.

Authoritarian leaders like Uganda’s Museveni and Rwanda’s Kagame seemed to fair much better than the outspoken politicians of Kenya and Tanzania.

Well, thank goodness, Obama has changed that. There is still a democracy officer, but much demurred, and hopefully soon to be retired. And instead of some School Mum approach in high Chicago Style, we’re now treating the Third World with respect.

Eight Congressmen led by David Price (D-NC) are in Nairobi to encourage democracy, and specifically, to encourage debate on the upcoming constitutional referendum.

The delegation is the “House Democracy Partnership” newly reconfigured in January, 2009, to reflect the new approaches of the Obama Administration.

Rather than lecturing local officials, local officials are invited to the U.S. Congress to shadow their counterparts. The Kenyan Speaker of the House has already enjoyed this junket.

Rather than telling a country how to run an election (as we did in Kenya’s failed 2007 process), USAid funds neutral components of an election, such as the voter registration process. Or – in the current constitutional referendum – a publicity campaign that does little more than tell people when the election is.

Compare this to the Bush Administration’s failed efforts to effect the outcome of elections throughout East Africa with funds supporting the candidate they felt was “more democratic.”

This is definitely a softer approach. Some might argue it could backfire.

Like in Afghanistan?

Nairobi students riot over … elections? And the man “solving” the situation is the one who caused the last election riots?

Wait, wait! The elections aren’t until the end of 2012, right? And the national referendum for a constitution isn’t for a few more months, right? What elections are we talking about?

The election for SONU, that’s Nairobi University’s student union.

Riots?

It started Friday when students claimed the results announced for the elections of their student union were rigged by political hotshots.

iPhone fotos showed pretty rough characters, not exactly your liberal arts sophomore, entering student election booths with giant pangas (machetes) and replacing one election box with another that sort of looked similar.

Sunday students really got themselves fired up and on Monday they took to the crowded streets of Nairobi. One car was set ablaze in the city center. The university grounds were trashed pretty badly. Oil tankers were hijacked and stopped in the middle of Nairobi roundabouts virtually stopping traffic in and out of the city.

Guests at the Norfolk Hotel opposite the university had slightly longer drives as taxis went the long way round River Road to avoid the university.

It’s virtually impossible to verify the students’ claims that their student union election was rigged by political bosses in the country, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty much on their side.

It’s definitely been true in the past. Becoming a student union officer at the country’s most prestigious university was a virtual path into national politics. The opposing national parties, in fact, supported slates of candidates until that was banned just a few years ago.

But here’s the clue that it may definitely be true.

William Ruto is one of the most evil men in Kenya. Until recently he was the Agricultural Minister, a pretty high profile position in a government with nearly 70 ministries but only a few – like agriculture – that sit with the President and Prime Minister.

But it is widely known that Ruto is one of the “list of 20″ submitted the World Court in The Hague as a prime suspect for having instigated the horrible ethnic violence which followed the last election. As that formal investigation proceeded, Ruto was dumped down a few stairs from Agriculture to Education.

It’s not a big drop, but a pointed one. Ruto commands a huge following in rural Kenya where he overlords other thugs and mafia, and his clout is just too powerful.

Not until he’s officially named by The Hague will Kenya’s leaders dare dump him.

So now, as Minister of Education, he has told the Nairobi faculty to undo their suspension of the student union.

The faculty had suspended the student union and closed the university. On the first action presumably because the faculty knows the elections were rigged (though none will say so), and on the section action, because the kids were trashing the campus.

That seems reasonable to me, a former student rioter myself. And besides, it’s what the students want! They were rioting against the outcome of the elections of their union.

Ruto’s insertion in this process is by association a pointer to the fact that the student elections were rigged, and probably, by him.

Poor Ruto. As he loses support among matriculated Kenyan politicians, he’s forced to succor among the kids. Good for Kenya. But temporarily not so good for Nairobi University.

Good luck, kids! You will overcome!

A single case or two of corruption brought down the Kenyan election. But the recently ended UK election, like the notorious Bush/Gore election, was riveted with irregularities.

Daniel Hannan, a Conservative MP for South East England since 1999, and winner of the Bastiat Award for online journalism, writes in his blog that this week’s UK elections were corrupt and therefore inconclusive.

He posits “how much easier electoral malpractice has become in the United Kingdom than in the two banana republics where I have been an election monitor.”

He claims that “Many people were denied a vote.”

And while Hannan looks from the inside out, there were plenty who saw the same thing from the outside in.

Election monitors from the Commonwealth Countries have been fairly unanimous in criticizing the results as unfair, inconclusive and flawed.

Kenya’s Ababu Namwamba of the election commission told UK newspapers, “The allegations of fraud and of voters being turned away threaten the integrity of the vote, especially in marginal constituencies where candidates have a majority of less than 1,000.

“The number of seats the Tories needed for an absolute majority is not that high — this could have made the difference. One candidate told me that the British system is possibly the most corruptible in the whole world,” Namwamba added.

Marie Marilyn Jalloh, an MP from Sierra Leone, added: “There has to be doubt over the legitimacy of the result… [The UK] system is a recipe for corruption; it was a massive shock when I saw you didn’t need any identification to vote.

In Sierra Leone, as in Kenya, voters must present an identity card corroborated by finger prints.

Even observers from places where elections have not been so contested criticized the process. Lisa Hanna, an MP from Jamaica, said: “I was shocked by the lack of checks.”

I dare say that the difference between Brown, Clegg and Cameron is much less than Gore and Bush, although the British may see that differently. But frankly I feel the difference between Gore and Bush was much greater than between Kibaki and Odinga, the two contentious rivals in the Kenyan election of 2007.

And in all three contests, the results were so close that even isolated acts of corruption or inadvertent irregularities could conclusively effect the outcomes.

What does this mean?

For a moment, let’s presume that some system could be put in place that would assure there were no irregularities … not one.

And let’s also presume that like the Dutch, institutions were in place to make everyone vote (the Dutch give out parking-like tickets to offenders who don’t vote).

It would still be close. Do you think that those who lost would concede so easily?

No, of course not. I happen to have been on the aggrieved side of the Bush/Gore outcome: I believe the world would have been a happier, more peaceful place if the results had better reflected the actual outcome.

But would I have conceded had the results been flipped? Would I have allowed the will of my community to proceed to waging decades of what I considered immoral wars? Or would I have sustained an outcome that I might in my inner conscience known was unfair? In order to “save the world from war.”

Elections work only when both outcomes are at some level acceptable to all sides. When compromise, however stinging, works.

Compromise in the world doesn’t work, today. That means elections won’t work. I’m not sure why, but the whole damn world is too polarized for elections, even incorruptible ones.