Why BBI risks failing with more handshakes ahead

It is Handshake Day, today. Last year on this day, President Uhuru Kenyatta and his nemesis, Raila Odinga of ODM, surprised everybody. They turned up at Harambee House to announce a secret deal. In the midst of mutual public hostility about the 2017 presidential poll, they had been holding secret peace talks. Now they had just signed a peace deal. 

A few people who had worked with the two leaders – on both sides – were openly surprised. Probably, they had thought, they should have been part of any dialogue between Kenyatta’s Jubilee and Raila’s NASA coalition? In any event, during internal NASA consultations, Raila had been unyieldingly against any dialogue with Jubilee. But such is political innocence.