PDM is old wine in a new wineskin

As we mark two years since the signing of the National Accord, something unusual, but not unexpected, happened in Naivasha over the weekend.

Some PNU stalwarts held a two-day retreat that was ostensibly organised to put their house in order. There was a feeling that time had come for PNU to shed its negative past.

This saw the birth of the Progressive Democratic Movement (PDM), which inherited everything in PNU save for the name. Reason? It is a strategy for the 2012 polls.

It is surprising that politicians who are supposed to be preaching peace, reconciliation and championing the reform crusade have diverted their energies into forming alliances that will not solve the myriad problems experienced by wananchi.

Meaningful change will not be realised through political machinations and grandstanding, but through changing the manner in which we conduct politics. We require selfless leaders who champion the politics of development rather than politics of survival.

Registering new political outfits will only aggravate the already complex problems we find ourselves in today.

{Tony Moturi, Nairobi}

The Party of National Unity has shed its first skin and now boasts a glittering, new veneer.

Last weekend, the party’s top leadership met at the Rift Valley Lodge and emerged with a new identity for the party.

Three years after PNU was born, the same ‘midwives’ met again and agreed that they must have given the ‘baby’ the wrong name because all efforts to make it grow at the same rate with others its age had backfired.

The biggest or most fancy happenings for political parties have normally nothing to do with their identities. Political parties are all about organisation, strategising and knowing when to start and stop a campaign.

They are also about reading from the same copy and pulling in one direction. Catchy names have never been the name of the game.

What critics can’t wait to see is whether the change of name from PNU to PDM will spur the party to bigger and better things.

The party’s problems started immediately after its inception when its campaign machinery claimed the party had its owners. Kenyans, having heard this slogan before, knew it was just a matter of time before the centre refused to hold.

What nobody has been willing to explain to the party’s mandarins is that a re-invention must also factor in lessons from the party’s troubled past. Only time will tell whether PDM will now be more accommodating and have a national outlook.

{Kabaria Muturi, Nairobi}

The formation of PDM by the beleaguered PNU under the guise of a movement is a desperate move by PNU to regain lost popularity and ‘rig’ itself in come the 2012 General Election.

Careful observation reveals that the difference in abbreviations of PDM and ODM on a ballot paper would be so minimal as to confuse voters, especially if PDM were first on the ballot paper with the ‘P’ shortened to almost resemble the letter ‘O’.

Semi-literate voters would then be tricked into voting for the wrong party. Kenyans should be awake to such simple tricks.

{Alexander Chagema, via e-mail}

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