Opinion: As Jubilee trudges, handshake spells political doom for NASA

Having already argued in this column that the handshake between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga is likely to lead to collapse of the Jubilee Party, what would be the effect of the handshake on the internal relations in, and future of, the NASA coalition?

NASA went into the elections last year with a publicly documented understanding that Odinga, the presidential candidate, would serve one term, and then back his running mate Kalonzo Musyoka in 2022.

Because the first presidential election was annulled and Odinga boycotted the repeat, NASA did not win and Odinga did not get a chance to serve as President.

In these circumstances, would Odinga still owe Musyoka a duty of support in 2022? The Musyoka-Odinga situation after the 2017 elections is a replica of the circumstances the two faced after the 2013 elections when, similarly, Odinga had promised Musyoka his support for 2017 if the two won that election.

Odinga did not get to serve the one-term envisaged ahead of the 2013 understanding, and there was uncertainty, even controversy, on what this meant, before Musyoka agreed to support Odinga for 2017.

It remains unclear what effect the Kenyatta-Odinga handshake will have on the personal ambitions of the leading politicians whom it affects.

While it is now widely expected that Odinga will not be a candidate in future elections, this is the situation he was in after the 2013 elections, only to become a candidate in 2017.

If Odinga is unlikely to run again, he may decide to play a different role by, for example, transferring the support he has built for himself to another candidate. Because of their agreement, Musyoka would expect that such support should go to him.

PERSONAL AMBITION

Whereas nothing in the handshake appears to have addressed the question of future personal ambitions, the emerging dalliance between Odinga and Gideon Moi, son of former President Daniel Moi, is regarded as an offshoot of the handshake. It is thought that Kenyatta and Odinga have exchanged promises about future power arrangements, and that the young Moi features in the promises. If such promises have been made, it is unlikely they involve Musyoka, who has a promise of his own with Odinga.

Thus, Odinga seems to be pursuing an agenda of post-election coalition-building that does not involve Musyoka, who sees himself as the next NASA leader.

In this regard, Odinga is behaving exactly the same way as Jubilee’s Kenyatta, whose handshake with Odinga is seen as unilateral coalition building on the part of the President, which excludes his deputy William Ruto, who sees himself as the next Jubilee leader.

Besides Odinga and Musyoka, NASA involves others. Until recently, there were two other principals: Musalia Mudavadi and Moses Wetang’ula. It is thought that the 2017 Odinga-Musyoka agreement was premised on an undocumented understanding that Musyoka would, in turn, support

Mudavadi in the subsequent elections after Musyoka retires, having succeeded Odinga. If this is the case, a disruption in the relationship between Odinga and Musyoka directly affects the basis on which the two agreed to join NASA.

Already, Mudavadi and Wetang’ula have virtually left NASA and are now talking up the need for regional party to represent the interests of the people of western Kenya where the two come from. Before that, Wetangula was ignominiously ejected as Minority Leader in the Senate, a development which he seemed to blame on Odinga, and which profoundly weakened NASA.

The greatest loser from a Mudavadi and Wetangula exit from NASA is not Odinga but Musyoka. To begin with, in any negotiations with Odinga about future political support, Musyoka’s bargaining power is weakened by the departure of the two. It is less likely that Odinga would feel compelled to support Musyoka in future elections than would have been the case if Mudavadi and Wetangula were part of the negotiations.

Secondly, without Mudavadi and Wetang’ula, NASA is gutted and would struggle to position itself nationally, and Musyoka would arrive without the galvanising advantage that the NASA brand would have given him. NASA remains a coalition of individual parties while Jubilee dissolved into a unitary party. In times of disagreement, such as these, their different structures become important.

With no fallback parties to exit into, and glued together by the advantages of incumbency, the Jubilee leaders have learnt to co-exist.

Unlike their Jubilee counterparts, the NASA partners have disagreed openly about the meaning of the handshake that involves their leader. Like the Jubilee partners, the NASA principals are now pursuing conflicting personal ambitions which further undermine the very idea that they are in a coalition together.

As part of this, the NASA principals have sporadically invoked their individual political parties, as if to say that that these would provide the fallback if individual expectations were not met within their coalition. Like their Jubilee counterparts, it is only a matter of time before the NASA partners go their separate ways.