Today, I should explain why opposition politics is a bloodsucker in Kenya. The 2018 handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and Opposition leader Raila Odinga ended a looming conflict that threatened Kenya’s destiny. So Uhuru got clever; he captured the opposition captain, and the rest was peace, opening up of businesses and return of normalcy. That’s how opposition politics should be killed in Kenya after elections.
Nillennials have no pulse for opposition politics — we’ve grown with it, we know what it is and what it’s not. I won’t shun public intellectualism that fuses opposition politics with Raila. What I know is that if you capture Raila, you have captured opposition and all its debris of over six million voters and their relations.
Raila’s heart is with his followers (Minority Whip of National Assembly Junet Mohamed called them ‘cows’). If you strike him, you strike them, and that’s dangerous politically. To bring his followers aboard, capture him and bring him on board. That’s different from his nemesis DP William Ruto who shepherds a flock, but you cannot strike him. For DP Ruto, you strike his flock to scatter him.
Baby Boomer public intellectuals advance a narrative that opposition works to check the government. That’s a 19th-century truism! The experiences that millennials have with opposition are political demonstrations where they tangle with police service or political rallies where they learn songs, proverbs and riddles. Fundamentally, opposition politics should be defined by ideologies. For example, in the US, the Republicans (elephants) and the Democrats (donkeys) have clear-cut ideologies. Such explicit cut ideologies are not in Kenya. We have frustratingly experimented with bananas, oranges and hidden watermelons and colours reds and blues.
We know through history textbooks that in post-independence Kenya, the opposition led by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga was seemingly communist and Jomo Kenyatta’s governing ideals were largely capitalist. Jaramogi left those ideologies only to be used in opposition political market places as cash cows. That ‘power belongs to the people’ are splashes of quintessence, which decorate the graphic ideological cover of our no-longer-new constitution.
Our opposition politics has shown us things. They can marshal political rallies to boycott a national agenda or sanction a regime for their cause. The opposition has had an ‘entanglement’ with civil society organisations for about three decades, and today, their DNA cannot be isolated. Opposition politics seized the normative functions of civil society and trade unions, and the key players were left in ghostwriting and motivational conferences. What’s my defence? Leaders of trade union organisations like Francis Atwoli are now vocal political power brokers. Others like Knut’s Wilson Sossion are political appointees advancing opposition politics in Parliament. These union leaders are highly bendable, unlike their predecessors like Tom Mboya.
That’s why civil society advocates and public intellectuals are always wallowing in nearly tragic political ‘mulatto’ complexes. They support Raila today and swear him as people’s president, but once he mutates like the politician he is, they call his bluff. Moreover, Raila is confusingly a coat of many colours — today he is a revolutionary and tomorrow he’s an enigma brokering political power. That said, he has genuinely taught us that opposition politics should be killed after elections. I have a few ‘because’ to support this.
Development agenda
One, no regime delivers under active political opposition. At least, we know the opposition flattens development record curve to deny a government credit. They can sabotage the development agenda with great success if a regime isn’t cooperating. That’s why with opposition politics opposing, we can’t hold a government accountable for their failure to deliver — they’ll blame it on opposition politics. Second, elections are exorbitantly expensive under active opposition politics. No election can take place without them being consulted widely. If the government is not ready to cow to their demands, they’ll sabotage the electoral process. That sounds familiar?
More painfully, ethnic divisions and tribal hatred thrive under opposition politics. That’s a great revelation. Notably, in 2008 and 2018, ethnicity and tribal fractures healed immediately opposition joined the government through handshake deals. That’s it. When opposition and the ruling regime settle their ruckus, civility among citizens is birthed. Every time opposition is killed, we culminate political rows, ethnic tensions and divisions. Check!
Graft can’t be prosecuted under active opposition. This we have seen. When opposition was laid in 2008 and 2018, there were notable high profile prosecutions of corruption and other crimes. That’s unlike opposition’s sensational-dossier exposes, which start and end with newspaper headlines. Opposition politics is to civilian-led-states what militia groups are for militarised states. Militias are organised to overturn dictatorial regimes through coups, whereas opposition politics exist to seize power from governments through sabotage. If you think I am hallucinating, put forth your defence.
-The writer is a political economist
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