Sugar pact between Kenya and Uganda gives CORD leader Raila Odinga fresh impetus

The sugar importation deal by presidents Uhuru Kenyatta and Yoweri Museveni (Uganda) has now turned into a political storm for the ruling Jubilee coalition and the Opposition CORD alliance.

Painstaking efforts by the president and his inner circle to explain the deal amid attacks from the Opposition have only added fuel to the fire that the deal has stoked.

And Opposition leaders led by former Prime Minister Raila Odinga appear to be enjoying every bit of the moment as they gather political mileage in sugarcane growing areas.

Raila yesterday dug into the controversial Kenya-Uganda sugar deal accusing top Jubilee government officials of cutting personal deals at the expense of the country.

In an exclusive interview with The Standard on Sunday (see full interview on page 19), Raila claimed that what makes the deal stink is the confluence of poor negotiation and pursuit of personal gain by those who fronted it. He spoke as pundits explained the political significance of the deal for both coalitions as 2017 elections issues frame themselves out from actions and inaction of major political players.

Business interests

“The State has been captured by personal interests and that is usually a dangerous situation for any nation. You have to know who sat in those negotiations and who was in the delegation to tell how much personal business interests got intertwined with state business,” Raila said

“People who have no business negotiating bilateral matters sit in negotiations over importation of a product in which they have deep business interests,” he claimed.

Yesterday, Leader of Majority in the National Assembly Aden Duale claimed Raila’s diatribe against the deal is informed by other ulterior motives which the CORD leader cannot discuss publicly. He claimed they are all related to the 2017 elections and Raila’s alleged weak grip on Kenyan voters.

“The main grudge is the relationship between the Ugandan President and our President. He knows too well we acted in the best interest of the country. What we are witnessing is a case of a leader who has refused to move on from the 2007 elections, one who approaching the 2017 walking backwards in fear,” Duale told The Standard on Sunday from Busia.

He said the insinuation that the trade deals cut in Uganda were for personal benefit of top Jubilee leadership is neither here or there.

“It does not matter that Brookside is owned by the Kenyatta or the Duale family. What is important is that it is a Kenyan company and it is big. This is a company which is already exporting milk to Tanzania, parts of Somali and other countries. Companies are not run using family names but sound business strategies,” he said.

Dagoretti South MP and chair of Central Kenya and Nairobi parliamentary Group Dennis Waweru said CORD is running out of options for 2017 and clutching at straws as far as Western is concerned. He claimed Raila’s preoccupation with “politics of poverty” has been rendering him politically irrelevant.

“Jubilee has already put in place measures to empower cane farmers who were disempowered during the grand-coalition times and by well-known associates of the former PM,” Waweru said.

But Raila denied making political capital out of the situation. He also dismissed the talk of winning back the Western vote through the deal saying sugar cane farming is not an exclusive activity of Western region.

“If speaking strongly for the people is called gusto, so be it. I know no nation on earth that abandons its farmers to the whims of business traders and exporters. Even industrial and developed nations like the US, UK, France, protect their farmers, subsidise them and cushion them against competition,” he said.

Analysts say how the sugar matter is played could have a bearing on the 2017 General Election especially considering that the sugar belt region is also rich in votes which could swing the election one way or the other. Already, Jubilee has set its sights on Western.

Political game

“It is a political game for the Opposition and government. Both sides are afraid they will lose out. It’s a well-known fact that illegal sugar imports have been funding political activities for both sides of the divide. What we are now seeing is a classic case of elite disintegration,” Prof Philip Nying’uro, a political scientist told The Standard on Sunday.

Nying’uro says both sides of the political divide have contributed to the sugar sector mess through what he calls “elite consensus.” He gives an example of alleged bribery of National Assembly parliamentary committee on agriculture to alter a report on sugar crisis in the country and how the matter dissipated.

“I want to predict that the sugar matter will die in matter of time through backroom consensus. What may not die down and is likely to trickle down to 2017 is the milk exports angle of the deal. This will be sustained by dislike for growing Museveni-Uhuru rapport ahead of 2017 election,” Nying’uro added.

Dr Francis Owaka, an “African Philosophy” lecturer at the University of Nairobi says defending the deal especially in the sugar belt region is like “defending the indefensible” given the areas long-standing grievances on mismanagement of the sector.

He says importing sugar when cane is rotting in the farms owing to state-toleration of mismanagement of sugar firms cannot rest in the minds of poor Western region farmers however much it is explained. “People know for a fact, that the cotton industry was killed politically through cheap imports. They have not seen the government importing coffee or tea when those sectors were crumbling,” Owaka says.

David Kigochi, the leader of Farmers Party of Kenya however, says farmers will see through propaganda, lies and misconceptions from either side of the divide. “While we celebrate the elevation of farming issue in political campaign and posturing, we are asking farmers to remain vigilante so that no one takes advantage of them,” Kigochi said.