Why TNA failed to recapture Mathare seat

Lack of grassroots structures in President Uhuru Kenyatta’s The National Alliance (TNA) party contributed to its failure to recapture Mathare parliamentary seat.

The Mathare loss is painful to the Jubilee Alliance since it now means its parliamentary strength in Nairobi has been cut down by one seat from the ten it won in last year’s General Election. CORD now has eight seats.

TNA has no elected officials at the wards, constituencies and counties, a situation that complicated matters in Mathare. Even after President Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto campaigning for TNA’s George Wanjohi, he could not win.

“We will have to invigorate the party,” TNA Secretary General Onyango Oloo said while conceding defeat to ODM’s Mathare winner, Steve Kariuki. TNA chairman Johnson Sakaja said despite losing in Mathare, the party did its best to diminish ODM’s support in the area by a significant margin.

“In the 2013 election, ODM won the presidential vote in Mathare constituency by 7,000 votes but we have reduced that margin to less than a thousand. We have learnt our lessons and we are going to take corrective measures,” added Sakaja.

Kariuki garnered 14,966 votes while Wanjohi came second with 14,082 votes. Most of the other seven candidates in the race managed insignificant votes, some below 100.

Sakaja says the party believes it lost fairly and has to move on by building on the lessons learnt.

But Sakaja and Oloo’s views differ from those of Executive Director Joseph Maathai, who said the results indicate the party might have fielded a weaker candidate.

Political scientist Joseph Magut says while lack of structures may have contributed to the TNA loss, there are equally other factors.

“Yes, TNA needs to put up structures right from the grassroots to the national level without further delay. But generally, the party took the by-election casually while for CORD, it was a do or die contest,” says Dr Magut. But Sakaja says TNA has opened offices in 32 counties, and will in this coming week release its internal elections time table.

The defeat was also a slash on Jubilee’s dominance in the House, where with a combined 216 MPs, it had only a short-fall of 16 MPs to hit to 232 absolute majority that could allow the coalition carry out major constitutional amendments without the Opposition’s backing.

“ODM won because it was supported by CORD parties Wiper and Ford-Kenya, who camped there for campaigns. For TNA, the President was there for only a few hours while key leaders like Nairobi Senator Mike Sonko, a political magnet in the city, did not show support as expected,” added Magut.

But Magut also pointed out that the win could have gone either way because Mathare is a cosmopolitan constituency, and has largely been represented by the Opposition over the years. “ODM’s win can be attributed to strong campaigns by CORD co-principals, good coordination by the campaign committee and influence of Kariuki’s mother, Bishop Margaret Wanjiru,” added Magut.

Head of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Nairobi Adams Oloo says President Kenyatta and his deputy were forced to hit the campaign trail because of the fear of CORD’s surging popularity since Raila returned from the US in May. According to Oloo, ethnicity, voter turn-out, mobilisation ability and unity in the coalitions during campaigns had a role in deciding the winner.

Lawyer Titus Bittok said the by-election turned around to be a Kenyatta – Raila contest, thus rendering the candidates inconsequential on their own, and that post-nomination cracks in TNA may as well have contributed to Wanjohi’s loss.

Oloo and Bittok agree the contest was, by extension, focused on the control of city politics between CORD and Jubilee. The push for internal elections in TNA gained momentum earlier in the year, and currently, the party is carrying out member recruitment, targeting more than seven million people, according to its Secretary General.

Oloo had earlier noted the party intends to recruit about two million junior members (below 18 years) in a move aimed at popularising it at the grassroots before the 2017 polls.

“We want to have a reservoir of supporters by 2017. This is the best time to enlist them because their ideology and aspirations are still fresh,” Oloo had told The Standard on Sunday.