National Chairperson’s Opening Remarks During the CPK central committee meeting

Thank you comrades for attending this video conference meeting of the CC. I am glad we are able to successfully participate in the meeting using the modern means of communication, the internet. Allow me to make a few remarks concerning the agenda of today’s meeting that was earlier posted to you by the Secretary General, comrade Benedict Wachira.

On CPK’s participation in the 2022 national elections

CPK participated in the national elections of August 9th 2022. The party nominated 71 candidates that were in turn successfully nominated by IEBC, allowing them to campaign for positions of governor, senator, member of parliament, women representative, and member of county assembly positions in various counties of our country, including Nairobi, Kiambu, Kisii, Nyamira, Siaya, Kitui, Isiolo, Taita Taveta, Kilifi, Tana River, Mombasa, Kwale, Bungoma and Kajiado.

In the process, unfortunately, most of the candidates did not pay the nomination fees required by the party pleading various reasons, but we gave them the party tickets all the same. Again, only a few of the candidates were actually members of CPK but we allowed them to stand with our party as we considered them good persons who met the threshold of the national constitution, particularly chapter six.

The decision to allow the candidates to stand for the elections as our party candidates, despite the above, was informed by the fact that CPK wished to appear in the ballot papers in as many constituencies of Kenya as possible. This would continue to popularise CPK and to consolidate the democracy space that we have won as communists in Kenya hitherto. We do not take it for granted that as a consequence of our concerted and consistent struggle for progressive reforms in Kenya, there now exists the Communist Party (CPK) which is registered as such by the Registrar of Political Parties. What seemed impossible only a few years ago is now a reality which provides hope for other progressive forces in the Eastern Africa region, Africa and even beyond.

Why did CPK participate in the elections?

CPK participated in the national elections partly because article 11 of the constitution of the party points out that one purposes of the party is to participate in national elections and field candidates.

But, while doing so, as a communist party and communists, we are conscious of the fact that the elections that are held after every five years are only regular rituals of the ruling class that hardly change things for the better in the country. The living conditions of the majority of Kenyans show hardly any improvement despite the elections being held regularly after every five years. Kenya has hitherto performed five such election rituals since independence from classical British colonialism. Sometimes new leaders are elected or changed yet the lives of the voters have mostly remained unchanged despite the changing of the leaders and leaderships. Leaders and leaderships change but the socio-political system remains the same; neo-colonial capitalism which is of exploitation and oppression of person by person.

The national elections are part and parcel of bourgeois elections practised in capitalist or capitalist oriented countries of the World. Bourgeois democracy and bourgeois elections do not aim at changing the capitalist system but retaining and perpetuating the status quo. Usually, the candidates who are elected to the bourgeois institutions themselves do not participate in the elections in order to work to liberate the masses and to improve their lives – as they claim during campaigns – but rather to enrich their own lives, amass wealth for themselves and to protect and perpetuate their class interests.

That is why they use all means possible including corruption, propaganda and lies of all sorts, violence, etc. in order to win elections. This is true in Kenya as also in other bourgeois elections in the World, the difference being only in form and extent but the content and aim being the same, that is, maintaining the status quo of the capitalist and imperialist system (As a matter of fact, I have discussed bourgeois democracy and elections thereof in Itikadi 1, 2 and 3).

But be it as it is, why does CPK, communist parties or communists for that matter, still participate and continue to participate in the bourgeois national elections? One, because the masses still believe in the elections and participate in them. Through incessant propaganda of the ruling classes that has existed for decades and that was brought to Kenya by British colonialism, the Kenyan masses have been made to believe that there is no alternative method of bringing about political and socio-economic change and leadership other than the regular five year national elections. This despite the fact that the desired change and progress for the society of the majority of citizens has remained as elusive as bourgeois democracy itself.

Yet, because communists must be with the masses and not allow themselves to be alienated from them, we participate in the elections with the masses, but – unlike the bourgeois – because of the masses and for the masses. During the course of participating in the elections we aim at popularising CPK and communism, learning of and from the masses and exposing the contradictions and falsehoods of the ruling class and capitalism. CPK’s intention was and remains to use the elections to measure the consciousness of the masses and as a consequence assess our tactics and strategies of the struggle for true liberation of our society and nation, socialism.

However, we must be honest as a party. Hitherto, many candidates that CPK presented during the elections were in fact neither members of the party nor communists. That is why we could not expect them to act as we would expect CPK members and communists to act while campaigning for the seats and even when they succeed to be elected to the Kenyan bourgeois democracy institutions. We must change this. In future we will not give our party tickets to non-members for the elections because doing so will not add value to our struggle and party during and after the elections.

National elections and political reforms

In the meantime, CPK believes in progressive reforms that improve the welfare of the masses even under the present circumstances of the neo-colonial capitalist system. This is so long as we do not forget that the ultimate aim of our struggle is to destroy capitalism and replace it with socialism. So if we could get a few members of CPK to be elected as representative of the people in the elections they would use their elected positions to articulate the wishes and aspirations of the masses of Kenya and to expose the lies of the system inside the bourgeois democracy institutions. Few progressive reforms for the masses could be won by the elected members of parliament even while exposing the contradictions of the system, calling upon the poor and oppressed to struggle to consolidate whatever progressive gains achieved hitherto while continuing with the struggle against capitalism and for socialism as popularized by CPK.

The performance of CPK in the 2022 elections

The performance of CPK in the elections remained more or less the same as in 2017, yet the party performed better than it did in 2017 in terms of the number of candidates it presented for the national elections. The Party has also qualified for Political Parties Funding, even though the amounts that will be awarded will not be significant due to the skewed funding formula coupled with the fact that the Party did not perform well. Out of the 71/1882 candidates that stood on CPK’s ticket this year, only two MCAs were elected, one in Kitui and the other in Taita Taveta.

This in my view was due to both subjective and objective factors.

The objective factors: This year’s elections were dominated by money. The voters demanded money and cared less about the candidates’ manifestos or promises. They despised candidates who refused or failed to bribe them with money. They seemed to have lost hope in the elections and decided to use their votes to squeeze as much money as possible from the candidates and nothing else seemed to have mattered to them as far as the elections were concerned. That is why, while large crowds were gathered by the wealthy candidates despite their political parties, meetings of the ’poor’ candidates like those of CPK were ignored altogether or had very low attendance.

Again, while there were large crowds in the election meetings of the rich candidates where few shillings would be distributed after the meetings, many people did not participate in the actual voting. This is because they did not expect to receive anything after voting.

The Kenyan mass media too which belongs to the ruling class popularized only the candidates that represent the interests of their class and businesses. As a consequence of this, the candidates of political parties like CPK were ignored and ridiculed as inconsequential in the elections process by the bourgeois radios, TVs and newspapers.

However, there were also subjective factors that made CPK perform poorly.

As I have observed earlier, CPK did not identify candidates early enough and as a consequence ended up presenting non-members of the party as our candidates for the elections. Some of candidates were opportunists who wanted to use the party to enter the bourgeois democracy institutions for personal interests that were not motivated by the ideology of our party. They were candidates who always wanted to know what the party will do for them and never bothered to find out what they would do for the party. And when individual members did contribute to their campaigns, not only did they not appreciate but they also assumed and asserted that it was their right. Lacking socialist motivation, many of the candidates did not put enough effort in the campaigns as though they were forced to run for the elections.

In this regard, many of the candidates were the result of the mistake we made as a party that we must learn from and correct. As I pointed out earlier, in future elections we shall present only members of CPK as our candidates and do so early enough. We shall train them about elections, how to prepare for them in time and about the tactics and strategies of fighting to win the elections and if they lose it should be because of objective factors and not subjective ones.

Lessons learned by participating in the elections

As I said earlier, one of the reasons CPK participates in the national elections was to measure the consciousness of the Kenyan masses whom we seek to organise to struggle for social and national liberation. The experiences of the CPK candidates from the various counties and constituencies of our country is that the consciousness of the Kenya voters is low. This, of course, differed from place to place. But generally, the masses everywhere seemed to care less about the ideology of the candidates or that of their political parties. All they cared about was the money they would get from the candidates as bribes for them to elect them.

We will discuss about our various experiences in the course of participating in the elections in the places we contested. We should use the experiences to help the party devise tactics of mass mobilization aimed at triggering hope among the masses by making them believe things can be changed for the better and that it is possible for them to bring about the change by engaging in all forms of struggle, including voting positively for the change that will bring progressive reforms.

CPK and Kenya Kwanza Alliance

CPK is a member of the Kenya Kwanza Alliance that won the 2022 national elections and has formed the current government with William Samoei Ruto as the President of Kenya. As a party, we campaigned for CPK candidates and also the presidential candidate and for Kenya Kwanza candidates where our party did not present candidates for the elections.

We joined the alliance through the agreement of the alliance that we signed and which is in the custody of the Registrar of Political Parties as a legal document. I and the Secretary General, comrade Benedict Wachira signed the agreement on behalf of CPK together with the principals of the other coalition parties and in the presence of members of the Central Committee of CPK. The speech I made during the occasion is available on the internet.

CPK joined the Kenya Kwanza alliance for several reasons. Firstly, one of the purposes of CPK stipulated in the constitution of the party is to form alliances with political parties, movements, civil society organisations and other formations with similar objectives at a certain time in history. After discussing with the leader of UDA, who is now President of the Republic, on several occasions and after examining the agreement of the Alliance and making our input to it, we concluded that the agreement contained objectives that are similar to the minimum program of CPK. That is why on the speech that I made at the ceremony of signing the agreement, and after explaining why CPK decided to be a member of Kenya Kwanza Alliance, I told the principals of the Alliance that if the agreement is implemented before and especially after the Alliance wins the elections, then it will provide hope to the poor, exploited and oppressed Kenyans that form the majority of the population.

The agreement of the Kenya Kwanza Alliance which also produced the manifesto of the Alliance called the PLAN, promises to implement bottom-up economic and social policies to address the historical injustices that have hitherto marginalised the majority of citizens through the existing trickle-down economic policies. Kenya Kwanza is an alliance of political parties. It is not a political party. In this regard, our identity as CPK and as communists remains. So, now that the Alliance has won and formed government with Ruto as President, our key role as CPK is to push for the implementation of the progressive reforms contained in the agreement and manifesto of the Alliance.

As a matter of fact, communists all of the World and in history have always entered principled alliances with progressive forces of all sorts in the journey of the struggle for national and social liberation and that is ultimately geared towards socialism. In this regard, Lenin pointed out that it is only those who are unsure of themselves are afraid of making or entering into alliance for a strategic goal of struggle.

The Kenya Kwanza Alliance also campaigned on a platform of the hustlers’ movement, as opposed to the so-called dynasty politics. The CPK had to participate in the process and bring forth actual class politics, which went beyond the rudimentary hustler-dynasty narrative. Indeed, for the first time in the history of bourgeois elections in Kenya, the rich came out openly in support of one side, in this case the Azimio Coalition, where Raila Odinga was seen as former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s project. The bourgeois media and politicians sold a narrative that the decision on who is to become the President of Kenya has never and will never be made by the masses, but by the ruling class known as ‘deep state’. The net effect of such a narrative would be to cement the helplessness and hopelessness among the masses not just in elections, but in all aspects of their lives. The win of the Kenya Kwanza coalition is also a win for the masses as there is still hope that they can achieve what the ruling class had (and more importantly, will) continue to declare unachievable.

Among other things, the agreement talks about sharing positions in government if and when the Alliance wins the elections and takes over power. This would depend on the number of elected leaders each party will win and the general contribution of the party for the campaigns for the Alliance.

CPK, as I have said, did not perform well in the elections. However, we participated actively in the campaigns for the Alliance and the President. Besides, we were early participants of the agreement of the Alliance and appear vividly in the manifesto. As such, we expect to be involved in the government as we were involved in the agreement, manifesto and campaigns. But of utmost importance for CPK is for the agreement and manifesto of Kenya Kwanza Alliance to be implemented faithfully for the Kenyan people to address the challenges of poverty and underdevelopment.

The way forward for CPK

The 2022 elections are over. And as I said in the beginning they were part and parcel of the bourgeoisie elections that take place in Kenya after every five years. I also said that CPK participated in the elections in order to measure the consciousness of the Kenyan masses today, to popularise CPK and socialism and to influence progressive reforms in and after the process.

CPK succeeded in participating in the elections despite our performance. In the process, we learned about the level of consciousness of the Kenyan masses and gathered various experiences where we campaigned. We popularized CPK and communism in the country and made it be accepted as a reality to the extent that it entered into alliance with the bourgeois political parties for the common struggle for the bottom-up economy.

So what is the way forward? In other words, what is to be done? The answer to this is obvious: we must continue with the struggle for social and national liberation that ultimately will lead to socialism. This means doing the hard work of building the Communist Party of Kenya (CPK).

All the experiences we have gathered hitherto as individuals and collectively as a party must be used to build the party. As leaders of the party and as members of the party we must dedicate all our efforts, creativity and material and intellectual wealth towards building the party. Whatever difficulties we face, whatever bitter experiences we have come across, whatever disappointments that have confronted us and may confront us all should not make us relent on the struggle for building CPK. We must use all means at our disposal to build the party and struggle for socialism. Being members of the Kenya Kwanza Alliance must not divert us away from the road of CPK and communism. We are communists, and we must always strive to remain communists who are always aware that there is no true freedom and liberation of Kenya and humanity other than communism. We are lucky to be conscious of this but that also means more sacrifices are required of us by our consciousness and society.

I will soon present for discussion by the Central Committee my thoughts on the way forward towards building CPK as our main and urgent task of the moment. In the meanwhile, I invite all of you members of the Central Committee to study the Chairperson’s Speech of 5th January 2019 during the last National Congress of CPK.

Mwandawiro Mghanga,

National Chairperson, Communist Party of Kenya (CPK)