After a shocking month of bloodletting that erupted in the wake of the December 2007 elections, Kenya appears to have recovered well. A new coalition government now represents both sides in the poll dispute. Meanwhile, safari-goers have returned in droves to East Africa’s tourism mecca, gazing at gazelles just miles from the sites of January’s murders and gang-rapes. But the peace may be just a veneer—a temporary solution that fails to resolve the underlying issues of political competition and corruption. Kenya has achieved stability by mutually bribing its leaders, an arrangement that has led to the most expensive government in national history. And its political class—the same corrupt bunch who have been in power for decades—do not seem to have learned any lessons from the recent crisis. Now out of the international spotlight, Kenya has returned to its old, increasingly unacceptable politics.

Indeed, Kenya’s current government is a reprise of the group that won elections in 2002 under the banner of the National Alliance Rainbow Coalition, liberating the country from 24 years of dictatorial rule under Daniel Arap Moi. Then, current president Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga united in an attempt to defeat Moi’s successor, signing a memorandum of understanding that gave Kibaki the presidency and Odinga the prime ministry. But Kibaki marginalized Odinga after the elections, stacking the cabinet with allies and consolidating power in the presidency.

Kibaki and Odinga next met in 2007, as rivals contesting the presidential elections. Exit polling gave Odinga a sizable lead, but the official tallies—which were disputed by independent observers—handed victory to Kibaki. Odinga protested, and the resulting violence between his Luo tribesmen and Kibaki’s Kikuyu filled television screens around the world. Only in late February did the two sides, led in negotiations by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, agree to a power-sharing agreement. As in 2002, Kibaki would remain president, and Odinga would fill the newly-created position of Prime Minister. Unlike the previous election, however, Kibaki has kept to his word, and political disagreement has been muffled by a huge expansion in government privileges. The cabinet ballooned to a record-high 93 ministers, and government officials enjoy an untaxed salary of US$10,000 per month. It is an uncomfortable peace, with squabbles on everything from constitutional reform to speaking privileges—but so far it has held.

Unfortunately, Kenya’s poor have reaped little from the reconciliation of their politicians. Kenya is one of the ten most unequal countries in the world, with a small coterie of crony capitalists growing wealthy on tourism revenues derived from Kenya’s long-term stability and its status as the “pride of Africa.” Meanwhile, poor Kenyans of all ethnicities are crowded into the filthy, dangerous slums of Nairobi, or the neglected outer provinces of the country. The violence that broke out in January was, for many, less a conflagration of tribal grievances than an expression of discontent with Kenya’s economic disparities.

Indeed, tribalism is often overestimated as a factor in analyses of Kenya’s recent troubles. Identification with one of Kenya’s 40 tribes is certainly important. But the idea of a fierce, inevitable conflict between tribes is just the conceptual product of post-colonial power struggles. Kenya’s first president Jomo Kenyatta and Oginga Odinga—Raila’s father—were instrumental in forcing an end to British occupation. But after a dispute about economic policy, Kenyatta forced out Odinga and turned Kenya into a one-party state. He favored the Kikuyu, his own people, over other ethnicities, fostering a “winner-take-all” approach to governance that lasts to this day. Moi favored Kalenjin and demonized the Kikuyu; when Kibaki forced out Moi in 2002, he brought in a gang of kinsmen to govern and profit. In the 2007 elections, “It’s our turn to eat,” was the rallying cry of Odinga’s Luo, Luhya and Kalenjin supporters. As has been the trend, however, only the elite have a seat at the table.

January’s violence led many to fear a permanent descent into genocide. But Kenya was unlikely to ever become an “African disaster” of the same magnitude as its neighbors—Somalia, Sudan, or Uganda, for example. Tribal conflict has reached similar levels previously, as when 1,500 Kikuyu were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced between 1991 and 1996 under Moi, and the country has not succumbed to anarchy. Kenya has a relatively free press and a well-established middle class by African standards, which partly insulates it from the reflexive tribal associations common in many failed states.

Still, the ability to prevent total collapse does not necessarily translate into the willingness to fight corruption and bring economic development to Kenya’s poorest. And a power-sharing agreement is more likely a recipe for government pork than a prescription for change. Kenyans face the need to craft a new constitution, one that deals with transparency, regional inequality, poverty, land laws, and election procedures. Most importantly, reform must address the dominance of the executive branch, which marginalizes Parliament, and the winner-take-all system, which shuts out any opposition. But the current government, having sidestepped these issues by packing the executive branch with members of two different parties, is unlikely to agree to curtail the executive powers. Constitutional reform, moreover, has been an unresolved issue for decades. Kenya will likely keep muddling through—and its people will keep being left behind.