Nairobi — Mr Kalonzo Musyoka, the Vice President, so badly wants to be the tenant at State House that he will do anything to secure the rights of occupancy. But he's forgotten the critical fact the Kenyan people whom he seems to treat like morons are the only ones who can hand him the keys to that residence.

Employment psychology teaches us that any prospective employee who will do anything for a job should not get it. The rationale is that such a person has no firm principles, and cannot be trusted. Mr Musyoka's shocking call for a Kalenjin-Kamba-Kikuyu alliance to help him ascend to the presidency is such a desperately dangerous manoeuvre that it could put the country asunder.

Mr Musyoka either does not understand why the country erupted into abominable violence last year, or chooses to cynically fan the embers of tribal animosity. Some Kenyans wrongly believe that the country almost went to hell last year because the election was stolen. Such analysis conflates causation and result. Causation is the factual basis for why something happens. The result is the outcome and not an explanation why something happened.

The stolen election and the ensuing violence were the results of several factors and not causes of anything. In other words, the stolen election did not cause the violence. Both the stolen election and the violence were the result of the failure of the nation.

But this begs the question why did the nation fail? The short answer is that the nation failed because it never existed in the first place. You might wonder if my hypothesis is true why the country never saw such demonic before.

I would answer by referring you to the pogroms of 1992 and 1997, both occurring during election cycles. Yes, the seeds of a civil war have always lain below the surface. Like humpty dumpty, the state held together by the stroke of luck.

The most important challenge to Kenya's existence as a state is tribalism, or the failure of its ethnic communities to transfer their loyalties to the state. Kenya's tribal communities have failed to cohere into a nation. Thus the Kenyan state has no Kenyan nation which to govern.

To have a country and a state called Kenya without a Kenyan nation is like buying a car without an engine. Such an object would not be a car at all but a piece of junk. Bad things happen when a country and a state which has no nation tries to conduct a democratic election. Such a state is incapable of managing primeval and primordial proclivities to avoid serious violence or civil war.

It is not possible to build democracy before the nation. Democracy is a process that requires negotiation and compromise within a shared value system and political landscape. But and this is critical you can build democracy at the same time with the nation. You can also build democracy after the nation.

But not the other way round democracy cannot come before the nation. In my view, this is Kenya's challenge. Do Kenyan elites understand that they have no choice but to build the nation at the same time as they build democracy? Do they understand that the violence last year occurred because they attempted a democratic election in a national vacuum?

This brings me to Mr Musyoka. The man grew up in Kanu, the party that under both Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and Mr Daniel arap Moi perfected tribal blocs in Kenya. There was no real attempt by Kanu to inculcate national consciousness in the territory's inhabitants. The result is that very few inhabitants of Kenya can define a Kenyan. Most are more comfortable with their tribal identities.

That is why Mr Musyoka can appeal to voters by their group identity. To him, voters in Kenya are not individuals but masses -- like sacks of potatoes -- grouped as the Kikuyu, Kamba, and Kalenjin. To him, voters in Kenya have no individual agency. Is Mr Musyoka right, or is he wrong?

Voting patterns in the 2007 elections suggest that Mr Musyoka is right. Most voters in Kenya lined up behind their tribal warlords or ethnic barons. My view is that there is no future in Kenya if Mr Musyoka and most voters in Kenya agree that ethnic alliances are the only way to ascend to the State House.

Mr Musyoka and his competitors in ODM must turn away from the politics of ethnic alliances. Otherwise, Kenya will go the way of the DRC, Liberia, and other failed states.

Kenyan politicians must start to treat voters as individuals, not faceless tribal masses. In turn, voters must themselves demand to be treated like individuals. This is the only formula for Kenya's salvation and the reason why Mr Musyoka's KKK alliance must be completely rejected. The tribe cannot be a foundation for the modern state.

Makau Mutua is Dean and SUNY Distinguished Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School and Chair of the Kenya Human Rights Commission.