Kenya suffers from Kikuyu-Kalenjin State House fatigue

By Muthui Kariuki

The National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) 2002 General Election victory was largely the outcome of a redoubtable gang-up against Kanu by long-suffering opposition parties.

This year’s General Election is likely to present a repeat of the 2002 scenario complete with its cathartic feeling only that this time round, the gang-up won’t be against a party but an ethnic community.

At the moment, the political arena is abuzz with activity as potential candidates try to outdo each other in trying to cobble together winning combinations with ethnic arithmetic being a major consideration. Although it is not being said loudly, candidates are busy sizing up each other’s ethnic numerical strength to build unassailable coalitions of strong voting blocs.

There is a chance, however, that the various centres politicians are trying to build may not hold and the big names may end up going to the ballot with a little more than their ethnic communities behind them.

This presents another scenario I feel is highly likely in the coming elections — a run off. Unlike in the previous elections where a contender could run away with victory by just garnering the highest number of votes, the percentage of votes cast notwithstanding, the new Constitution insists on a 50 per cent-plus one vote rule, besides acquiring a quarter of the votes in more than half of the 47 counties.

If the candidates fail to agree on pre-election pacts and run separately, there is a good chance that in the first round, a Kikuyu candidate — thanks to the community’s obvious numerical strength, resources and the advantage of incumbency — will emerge tops in the first round. But that is where the party will end.

For a Kikuyu candidate, a run off with a member of any other community can present the worst electoral nightmare for a number of reasons. After ten years of President Mwai Kibaki’s rule, it is understandable that other communities wouldn’t be too keen to have another Kikuyu succeed him.

Add to this the fact that Kenya’s founding President Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, ruled for 15 years, bringing the community’s total since Independence to 25 years in power.

Daniel arap Moi’s uninterrupted 24-year reign makes the Kalenjin second after the Kikuyu in hugging State House. In a country of well over 40 ethnic groups, the two communities have controlled power for half a century! The country is clearly suffering from Kikuyu-Kalenjin fatigue and this feeling may decide who wins the next elections.

A run-off in which a Kikuyu candidate is competing against a non-Kikuyu is, therefore, likely to foment a formidable coalition against the Kikuyu candidate, ensuring he/she stands little or no chance of winning. It is almost a foregone conclusion then that any candidate who finds himself in a run-off with a Kikuyu can prepare his victory speech.

While Kikuyu presidential hopefuls may blindly move forward with the misguided belief that they have the numbers, the human and economic resources to hold their own in the political battlefield, it may come as a rude shock on the day of reckoning that they stand no chance against the combined force of the rest of the country. Remember the 41 against one 2007 war cry?

He who retreats

It doesn’t help at all that the perception that the Kikuyu never vote for a candidate from another community still persists. Many would be reluctant to give their vote to a candidate from a community believed to be stingy with its own vote.

While it may hand someone easy victory, such a ganging up against one community no doubt does not augur well for both the isolated community and the nation at large. A closer examination of voting patterns and the unfortunate events that followed the 2007 General Election would reveal the fingerprints of the so-called Kikuyu-phobia.

As I have argued in these columns before, Kikuyu presidential aspirants would do themselves, their community and Kenya a great favour by postponing their quest and supporting another community.

The long-standing and growing suspicion of Kenya’s biggest ethnic community can be broken once and for all if its leaders display magnanimity by backing candidates from other communities. Learn from the observation of he who retreats in order to live to fight another day.

By choosing to give another community the chance to lead, Kikuyu leaders would heal old political wounds, build new and lasting alliances and create a truly cohesive nation where ethnic suspicions are not the order of the day. They would also be helping to prevent a situation where political rivalry drives the nation to the precipice as it almost did five years ago.

This is not in any way a call to anyone to give up their constitutional rights. Far from it. It is just a call to reason. It is a call to leaders from my community to sacrifice their ambitions for the greater good.

This treatise is informed by the great wisdom of Abraham Lincoln who in 1865 observed "With malice toward none; with charity for all: with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in."

-Writer is a journalist and comments on social issues.