By Moyiga Nduru
NAIROBI, Nov 27 1997 (IPS)

Safina, registered as a political party only this week, has thrown its hat into the ring, determined to contest the Dec. 29 general elections in Kenya.

“We shall field candidates for both civic and parliamentary seats,” Paul Muite, a top Safina official, told a press conference here on Thursday.

He said the party was also discussing whether to field a candidate to challenge incumbent President Daniel arap Moi, in office since 1978. “But I think it would be better to field a single opposition candidate to face Moi,” he said.

Safina, co-founded by world famous conservationist Richard Leakey, was registered on Wednesday.

The state had dragged its feet on Safina’s application for registration as a political party for about two and a half years. Then, in October, the application was rejected by the Registrar of Societies, P. Omondi Mbago.

Mbago said in a notification letter, a copy of which was made available to IPS at the time, that the government had turned down the application because the party’s name had religious connotations. “In my opinion the name is undesirable,” he said.

Safina is Kiswahili for (Noah’s) ark and Kenya’s constitution forbids the registration of political parties along religious lines.

However, the state Wednesday reversed its decision and registered Safina, making it the 26th legal political party in Kenya. Leakey, in a prepared statement which he read at a press conference here on Wednesday, described the government’s move to register Safina as a “pleasant surprise … and a big victory for Kenya and democracy.”

The statement condemned the “undemocratic processes that occassioned the delay” of Safina’s registration.

Leakey said Safina’s overiding objective “is not to seek power for its own sake but to build a better Kenya.”

He said the Dec 29 polls would not be free and fair until Kenya embarked on a full constitutional reforms. “Unless that happens, we do not believe alternatives to KANU can compete. KANU has been preparing for the elections for the last five years, while the opposition was locked out,” he said.

Safina and the other opposition parties have been calling for constitutional reforms which would put them on equal footing with Moi’s Kenya African National Union (KANU), which has ruled Kenya since independence from Britain in 1963.

Safina’s registration came one day after top party officials — Muturi Kigano, Paul Muite and Farah Maalim — urged Attorney- General Amos Wako to decide on an appeal lodged by the party in October against the rejection of its registration bid.

The officials, who met Wako on Tuesday, said it would be unfair if the decision on the appeal was made after the Dec 7 deadline for nominations for parliamentary seats for the polls.

Political analysts here feel the government is wary of Safina partly because of Leakey’s ability as a fund raiser, which could help the party reduce the advantage KANU has as a result of controlling state resources.

Another reason for the hesitation to register the party, they say, is that with Leakey — a white Kenyan — at its helm, it could well cut across ethnic and religious lines. Unlike KANU, virtually all Kenya’s opposition parties are tribally based and stand little chance of defeating Moi in the general elections.

At Wednesday’s press conference, Leakey called on Kenyans with “integrity and comitment to national issues” to join Safina en masse.

He said Safina was committed to transparency, accountability and fundamental human rights.

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