There is something President Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto need to know. Kenyans from all walks of life are getting very jittery at the very thought of another five years under their leadership.
When you are privileged to live in my station in life, you have the rare opportunity to interact with diverse classes of citizens and to listen to them in their own spaces. You fit snugly in the smallest kiosk in Gorokocho and in the finest five star hotel in town. In both settings you are the little fly on the wall, listening to people’s ventilation of their aspirations, worries, fears and dreams alike. You discover that Kenyans are worried about where the Jubilee leadership could be taking them, regardless of class considerations. Worse still, for the Jubilee leaders, is the truth that restlessness with them is beginning to defy the politics of ethnic group identity. Yet this is the most potent political weapon in the country. It might significantly prove to be a tricky weapon, if the political Opposition gets its act right.
When your business begins to go to the dogs, the tribe means absolutely nothing to you. This is unless your salvation resides in the tribe. And things are not good at all. Go to supermarkets across the country. They will tell you that business is bad. But they don’t even have to tell you. There are no shoppers. Tellers are yawning with boredom. There is no work. If you find the same scenario at the bank, you could begin imagining that everyone has gone digital. That is until you become the fly on the wall, hearing about people’s woes, even as you take solace in the knowledge that so you are not alone in your earthly distresses. The big boys in the tribe — that is to say the owners of Kenya — are feeling it. They know that the tribe will not pay their employees or suppliers. Even the small fellow and the fence sitter in the middle understand this.
The tribe will not sort out the landlord, or the mortgage. There is the bank overdraft, the loan, school fees, medical bills, the disconnected electricity supply and a giant cocktail of other financial worries and wherefores.
Charm offensive
If amidst all this there are daily allegations of plunder of public resources by people close to government, or indeed perceptions that it is in fact those in power doing it, then the government is not sitting pretty at all. For when all these people have nothing left to eat, they will want to eat the government. This should worry President Kenyatta and his deputy, even as they make a whirlwind charm offensive around the country.
Yet dislodging Jubilee from power is easier said than done. For a start, they are taking full advantage of incumbency to up their game. The Deputy President is habitually taunting them about their cluelessness regarding their presidential flagship. While CORD, for example, is in the habit of shooting itself in the foot with public wrangles of “I am the best”, “I have been betrayed many times”, “Mr Such and Such is shooting blanks” and allied mumbo jumbo, the Jubilee horse has already left the blocks. It has launched a brand new party and put together a presidential campaign team. They are now everywhere in the counties, opening up campaign offices, which they will shortly be cascading all the way to the polling station, via the sub county, the location, the sub location and the village.
Whatever your grievances may be against the sitting government, you cannot disregard this kind of surgical arrangement. Your predicament only gets worse with the thought that they have billions of shillings to splurge on the campaign. When it comes to that, the Kenyan voter’s keen appetite for freebies will easily rule the day. They will temporarily forgive a delinquent government. The hiatus will, however, be big enough to allow Jubilee to sneak through the eye of the electoral needle, and back to power.
Moreover, Jubilee has good motivation to strive to remain in power, even if the price is emptying the public coffers to the very last penny. First is just the mere fact that it has tasted power. Jubilee has discovered that power is very sweet. There also exist anxieties about what a new government could do to the present leaders over the unending cases of corruption. Could it jail them? But even if it would not jail them, there is the unfinished business of the International Criminal Court (ICC). This is indeed the main reason the Kenya government is spending billions of shillings in the push to have Amb Amina Mohamed as the next President of the African Union (AU). In the event that Jubilee loses next year’s election, the reality that the ICC matter has not ended — that it only went into hibernation — would become obvious. It would be a huge advantage, therefore, to have at the helm of the AU a Jubilee insider who could help to mobilise the union against the ICC and against the then sitting Government of Kenya.
Amb Mohamed would be the right person for this assignment. It is a huge gamble, but it is there all the same. And so Jubilee will do almost anything to remain in power. Prepare for a protracted and noisy political campaign season, fully loaded with multi billions, treachery and propaganda. The kick-off is New Year’s Day, only a few weeks from now — when President Kenyatta and Opposition leaders will send mutually adversarial messages to Kenyans. The tough battle against the unsinkable Titanic that is Jubilee will be on in earnest. While the Titanic could still sink, it will not be easy.
That is why Amani National Congress (ANC) leader Wycliffe Musalia Mudavadi has been talking about a National Super Alliance (Nasa). Mudavadi has explained that his vision of Nasa is bigger than the usual political party alliances and formations in pursuit of political power. Nasa, he says, is about what he calls “all progressive forces in the country” coming together to remove from power what he calls “an irresponsible government.” He says that this will give Kenya a new lease of life.
Mudavadi is coming from the background of understanding that a divided Opposition hardly ever beats a sitting government anywhere in Africa — and certainly not in Kenya. In 1992 and ‘97 President Moi easily walked over a self-immolating Opposition. And ahead of the 2007/2008 mayhem, a seemingly unbeatable Opposition threw away obvious victory, when Kalonzo Musyoka decamped from the ODM mainstream to go it alone in his own version of ODM, as ODM-K. Even if we assume as has often been said that the election was stolen, this migration must have made the stealing easier. You can only convincingly steal in a situation where the outcome of the theft can convince even your own ardent followers that you did not steal.
But there is the bigger question of synergy. Synergy simply means that when we work together, our output is greater than the total of our combined output when we work separately and against one another. That is why in 2013 President Kenyatta got more votes than the entire Opposition put together. It does not matter that these were legitimate votes or, as CORD keeps alleging, the election could have been stolen. As you fight one another, your main opponent is consolidating his act and running ahead of you. Right now the Opposition should be oiling its campaign machine. It should be galvanising potential voters to register. It should be looking at the operations room and the war room, making sure all is well.
It should be ensuring that it has a call centre, a tallying centre, a voter contact director, an election day director tying up loose ends, a data base manager giving it daily updates of how things are sitting, a campaign manager coordinating all this, raising funds, finding volunteers; and above all, a candidate with a clear message. Oh my! Instead everyone is busy saying, “I am the one.”
Paid the price
This is where Nasa would begin making sense. You would be expected to fit in, regardless of who you are, popularising a change-driven functional machine. The church minister, the trade unionist and the political operative would all be expected to fit in. It will be interesting to know just how far this Nasa thought has gone and how close it is to becoming practical. For a good idea is like an egg. It should not stay in the incubator for too long. If it does, it will go bad. Is Nasa still on the drawing boards, or is it taixing ready for takeoff? It is certainly not airborne, for we would be seeing Mudavadi and Odinga flying together — with Kalonzo, Wetang’ula and the lot.
Yet you have heard Kenyans asking about the Nasa takeoff, every so often. The security guard, and the business executive alike, will stop you, seeking to know whether “this Nasa thing will work.” The bad news is that I don’t know. I am just as perplexed, wondering whether the political Opposition learns anything. Some have been heard saying, “This is Mudavadi’s idea and thing. We don’t know about it.” Some in CORD say: “If Mudavadi wants unity in the Opposition, let him just dissolve his party and join us.” But Mudavadi quips that this is to miss the point. He says this is not about him joining CORD, it is about rallying the country around renewed hope that does not necessarily reside in any one of the existing political outfits.
Mudavadi has himself previously paid the price of making wrong decisions. In 2002 he supported the Uhuru Project and sank with Kanu. But he surfaced to fight another day when he was the de facto Number Two to Raila Odinga in the foiled 2007 elections. It was a high moment, which many believe was stolen from them. Today, the combined Opposition faces a Jubilee that is standing in quicksand. Yet Jubilee could still beat a scattered Opposition. While Mudavadi has been wrong before, he seems to be right this time round. Nothing short of regenerating the combined energy of 2002 and 2007 will shake the Titanic that is Jubilee. Within this whole arrangement, Mudavadi will himself have to play a leading role. Equally important, the effort must see the sleeping giant that is called the Luhya vote wake up to do what it must do. Short of Nasa, or a Nasa-like formation, the Opposition and Kenya are looking straight in the eyeball of another five years of the Jubilee Government, for better or worse.
