Why indecisiveness will lead to Kalonzo’s ruin in his quest for high office

Kalonzo Musyoka

The past few weeks in Kenyan politics reads like a collection of African fables, riddles and folktales. Let’s begin with the ‘Great Migration’ that came quite early this year. Not of wildebeests, but of the horde of politicians that made a desperate exodus into the land of the ‘Independent Ticket’.

Their odyssey across the political savannah of rejection only indicated one thing: that party politics is merely a vehicle for the politician’s personal progress. But we knew that already.

But speaking of the convenience of parties for self preservation and political survival, let us now turn our attention to Steven Kalonzo Musyoka.

There is a famous African story about a hyena who couldn’t make up his mind. Following the scent of meat, the hyena arrived at a fork on the road and couldn’t decide which path would lead him to the meat he could smell in the air. In the end, after much agonising and running halfway up and down each path, he decided to take both roads at once.

In the process, he split himself! Further afield in Russia - a similar folktale tells of a vityaz (a Russian Knight) who comes upon a fork on the road with a sign in the middle that says “If you ride to the left, you will lose your horse, if you ride to the right, you will lose your head”. Kalonzo seems to be in this position. He is the ‘Kenyan vityaz’. Let me explain.

Last Thursday, we were reminded that among the eight presidential candidates listed by the IEBC, one of them is none other than the aforementioned Steve; the self-same Kalonzo Musyoka who is Raila Odinga’s presidential running mate in NASA. See why the hyena story comes to mind?

But this is not an accusation against Kalonzo, far from it. It is just a curious interrogation into this interesting case of ‘political double dipping’.

We cannot judge Kalonzo since, after all, it is human nature to keep our options open; especially if we are not entirely confident about a current decision.

In fact, people overwhelmingly prefer reversible decisions to irreversible ones.

We generally wait years before selecting a definite career path, date a potential partner for years before getting married, and hire employees on a temporary basis (or use probationary periods). We do this to avoid commitments that can be difficult, or nearly impossible to undo.

Although we have made it clear that we are not making an indictment on Kalonzo, we can still question his ‘fork on the road’ situation. Is he faced with an option of losing his horse, or his head?

Why has Kalonzo still not made a revocation of his presidential bid on a Wiper ticket? If we are to take his party secretary general’s answer to this question, we will be left more confused than informed. Hassan Omar’s cryptic response was that the reason will be clear by and by, when presidential candidates submit their nomination papers to the IEBC on May 28 and May 29. So we should sit tight and wait upon the infamous political watermelon to make his move. What intrigue!

In other words, Omar is not plainly saying that there has been an oversight. He is not saying that perhaps the Wiper party has been so busy campaigning for NASA that it forgot to withdraw Kalonzo’s candidature. Instead, he is insinuating that there is something cooking. As a result, it is evident Kalonzo’s position as running mate in NASA is fickle.

Plan B?

He has one foot out, haunted by memories of a broken MoU.

In his mistrust, he has taken insurance against a possible trap laid out by a more fiercely ambitious element in the NASA coalition, aka Raila, to snare his ambition. The insurance he has taken, is his Wiper presidential nomination.

And Kalonzo is not alone. Of the five candidates in NASA, three have made definite ‘Plan Bs’, just in case the NASA story does not have a happy ending for them.

Moses Wetang’ula still has his eye on the Bungoma Senatorial seat, while Isaac Ruto will be on the ballot for the Bomet governorship. So what does Kalonzo stand to gain from his ‘Plan B’? Let’s wait and see which road he chooses to take. Will it be the left path where he will lose his horse, or the right path, where he will lose his head? As we’ve been instructed, we shall understand it all, by and by.

—The writer is a PhD candidate in Political Economy at SMC University, Switzerland and a Research Fellow at the Fort Hall School of Government.

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