Kajiado by-election loss jolts JAP take-off

President Uhuru Kenyatta, left, presents a nomination certificate to Kajiado Central JAP candidate Mr Patrick Ole Tutui, left in a yellow cap, at the party headquarters in Lavington, Nairobi. [PHOTO: GOVEDI ASUSTA/STANDARD]

NAIROBI: Last week’s Kajiado Central by-election may have come too early for President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee Alliance Party (JAP), leading to its loss.

Insiders say JAP fielded its first candidate only three months after it was formed and conducted campaigns without elaborate grassroots party structures.

Strategists believe lack of proper party structures, weak branding, its euphoric take-over by 2013 poll losers and a misguided “top-to-bottom” approach of unveiling the party contributed to the Kajiado loss.

Nevertheless, party officials believe the loss was a blessing in disguise because it would guide them to a successful take-off. Affiliate parties, including TNA and URP, are yet to disband and possibly merge.

Now JAP leaders say they are assured of a triumph in the Kabete by-election having learnt from their failures in the Kajiado Central race. They want to use Kabete to give the new party the necessary momentum. But despite the confidence, the just-concluded nomination exercise in Kabete won by former Embakasi MP Ferdinand Waititu is a headache for the budding party after some losers sought to run on other parties.

A similar scenario presented itself in in Kajiado where Patrick ole Tutui, the party’s inaugural flag-bearer in the Kajiado Central contest, lost to ODM’s Elijah Memusi by a margin of slightly more than 500 votes.

“We want to look at it as a good wake up call. We want to look at it positively and see what we need to do to take the party to the next level. The truth of the matter is that many factors informed our loss and those factors are not being discussed around. It has been reduced to a blame-game,” JAP Vice Chair David Murathe says. According to Murathe, other factors informing the loss notwithstanding, it underscored the importance of going into an election with proper party structures and with the party strictly in control of the campaigns.

He says there was no time to put up the party structures between the moment the seat fell vacant and the time the by-election was held. Murathe says the loss also presents the party with the opportunity to know who is genuine in embracing its philosophy. “A win would have opened the floodgates of unmitigated opportunists as opposed to genuine believers in the idea. And that is how people lose their political formations. We are now placed in a position where we can work on our structures with true believers,” he says.

The National Alliance Party chairman Johnson Sakaja told The Standard on Sunday a “party is not and cannot be about symbols and colours.” He, too, says Kajiado came too soon after the unveiling of JAP and even before the party could be branded properly for a gruelling political contest witnessed in Kajiado.

“The party requires serious branding. We must give Kenyans the reason for its existence, what they call ‘raison d’etre.” It cannot be that we just want our party to attain power. That is not enough. In fact, the talk of retaining power for the next two decades or so sounds like a threat to Kenyans,” Sakaja said.

MERGER BEFORE 2017

He said the branding must start from the grassroots so that all believers in his party can embrace it fully before it can be launched. He said all JAP coalition parties must dissolve and merge in readiness for the next General Election.

“We were already talking about these issues before Kajiado came. We want the process to commence as soon as possible so that by the end of the year we have clear leadership structures in place,” he said.

Kiharu MP Kang’ata Irungu, a JAP enthusiast, says the party is very much on course of consolidating its prime place in Kenya’s political space. According to Irungu, detractors and those resisting the promise of JAP are misguided on latching on to Kajiado to oppose the idea.

He says Kajiado was neither a Jubilee seat nor a stronghold. If anything, he says, it showed that JAP is growing strong because it narrowed a wide gap between the ODM and TNA candidate in the 2013 election.

“We are on course. We shall merge and emerge victorious. People are reading too much into this. They have misconstrued the facts. It’s like Mathare, which was never a Jubilee stronghold. It did not surprise anyone,” he explained. On claims that JAP was hastily formed without adequate consultations, Irungu said: “It all starts from there. I am not aware of any party formed using the bottom-up approach. It would be illogical to do so. You first form a party and then ask people to join in it.”

The Kajiado loss has led to calls to organise the party. Political commentator Mutahi Ngunyi called for “competence” in JAP’s organisation drawing parallels to 2007 when former President Kibaki hurriedly packaged Party of National Unity (PNU) braved a stiff challenge from ODM.

“Incumbents do not lose obvious elections. Kajiado was incompetently handled by JAP. Kibaki’s incompetence of 2007 led to war. 2017 is months away,” Ngunyi posted on Twitter on Monday.

ONGOING TALKS

New Ford-Kenya party leader Eugene Wamalwa agrees that Kajiado was a necessary jolt towards JAP’s organisation and consolidation of support. He, however, says consultations have been going on between his party and JAP, with the view to working together. “I think everything is underway. I believe there is still more time required to tie up our consultations. We already have a post-election pact with Jubilee and it is our desire to see Jubilee succeed,” Wamalwa said.

Jubilee’s Senate Majority Leader Kindiki Kithure, however, believes there is no cause for alarm arising from Kajiado and that there is still more time to organise JAP. He says nobody should panic because Kajiado’s loss was informed by variables outside JAP’s control.

Kithure says apart from the by-election coming “too early in the day” for JAP, the two candidates— Elijah Memusi and Patric Tutui—were essentially in JAP, that the seat was for ODM to defend, that Tutui had “personal challenges” to grapple with and that the gap was too narrow, among other factors.

“We have with us about three years to put up our party together and nobody should panic and rush things around. People should keep Kajiado out of this because it had way too many variables outside the JAP equation,” Kithure said.

Kithure says PNU was formed three months to the election. He says the earlier preferred party- Narc-Kenya, was formed without the blessings of its intended leader and candidate, former President Mwai Kibaki.

“JAP is the other way round. It’s the chief lieutenants who have originated the proposal and passed it down. We also have the advantage of time to carefully package the party in the next three years into a formidable outfit,” Kithure said.