WHAT is hate speech? In Kenya, a country where most educated people speak three languages—English, Swahili and one of around 40 tribal languages—it is a question people are grappling with. This month Moses Kuria, an MP from Jubilee, the governing party, was recorded appearing to call for Raila Odinga, Kenya’s main opposition leader, to be assassinated. Mr Kuria, from the Kikuyu tribe, said that Mr Odinga should “eat corn”. In Kikuyu, “corn” is slang for bullets, but Mr Kuria says he was misinterpreted.

Whatever he meant, Mr Kuria’s words have landed him in jail on charges of “hate speech” and inciting violence, together with seven of his colleagues—three others from the government and four from the opposition. All eight are accused of stoking ethnic tension ahead of Kenya’s presidential election. Polling day is still over a year away, but the rhetoric is already heated.

The government now seems determined to calm things down: the arrests came as President Uhuru Kenyatta agreed to negotiate with the opposition about the make-up of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). That brought an end to a month of bloody protests. But while peace has resumed, few are confident that it will last.

After the 2007 election, perhaps 1,200 people were killed. The vote was extremely close: Mr Odinga came within two percentage points of the winner, the then-president Mwai Kibaki. Allegations that it was rigged circulated on local radio stations, helping to spark the violence. Afterwards, Mr Odinga became prime minister in a government of national unity intended to heal the divisions.

In 2013, however, he lost comprehensively. Instead, Mr Kenyatta, like Mr Kibaki a Kikuyu, came to power by building an alliance with William Ruto, a politician from the Rift Valley who had been part of the opposition in 2007. Their coalition, which brought together voters from Mr Ruto’s Kalenjin-speaking people with Mr Kenyatta’s supporters, won comfortably.

Despite some tensions between the two, Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto are fighting together again this time—and most people expect them to win. But Mr Odinga has been trying to cut into Mr Ruto’s base. Two prominent Kalenjin politicians, Isaac Ruto, a governor in the Rift Valley (no relation to William) and Gideon Moi, the son of a former president, Daniel arap Moi, are supporting the opposition.

Added to that is the dispute over the election commission. Over the past month, supporters of Mr Odinga have marched through Nairobi and other cities protesting at corruption in the IEBC. The police have responded heavy-handedly—according to Human Rights Watch, an NGO, six people were killed by gunfire in the west of the country in protests in late May and early June. Some suspect Mr Odinga’s real aim is to discredit the commission before an election he is likely to lose.

For the moment, the dispute has cooled. Diplomats from Britain and America stepped in and offered to mediate between the government and Mr Odinga about how to reform the IEBC. Protests are on hold until the negotiations finish. But there is still a year until the election. And in a country where government is still primarily a source of largesse, the costs of losing are far too high.