Political realignments and what they portend for key leaders

Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka, Kanu's Gideon Moi, Mwangi Wa Iria (Usawa Kwa Wote), and DAP-K's Eugene Wamalwa. [Joseph Kipsang, Standard]

Political realignments should not surprise Kenyans. Nor should they be seen as acts of betrayal. After all, ours is what Mahatma Gandhi once described as “politics without principle”.

We have no ideologies that we subscribe to. And we have a dearth of conviction politicians. Even consensus, often reached in times like these, is reflective of self-serving interests rather than fealty to the nation or its citizens.

To preclude Kenyans from being disappointed by shifting political alliances, it is imperative to understand what they portend. Obviously, there are beneficiaries and losers both in the short term and long term. The immediate beneficiaries of the latest realignments are President William Ruto and his erstwhile political adversary Raila Odinga.

The rapprochement between them has eased political tensions considerably.

For Ruto, it allows him breathing space to push his economic stabilisation agenda without the disruptive maandamano protests. A Raila endorsement also firms up the President’s tenuous hold on the populous Western and Nyanza front and assures him an unassailable lead in the 2027 elections.

Raila benefits from the President’s support without which his bid for the African Union Commission (AUC) chairmanship comes a cropper. Further, it cements his putative role as a Kenyan kingmaker and African statesman. Odinga gets to write his coda on his own terms, exiting the local political scene on a high rather than in ignominy. But all these plans are contingent on both Raila and Ruto singing from the same hymn sheet with or without the success of the former’s AUC bid.

Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua ostensibly comes off worse in these new arrangements. He has previously made public his disdain for Odinga. He cannot now turn around and endorse him without a loss of face. Yet being at loggerheads opens up a battlefront he can ill-afford. As it stands, Gachagua is yet to cut the Gordian knot by keeping his own political backyard united.

On the one hand, he faces a relentless push from younger politicians in the Kenya Kwanza party. On the other, there is pushback from Kamwene, a new formation led by Martha Karua whose raison d’etre is Central Kenya leadership. How he surmounts these issues will either keep him in the national limelight or consign him to the annals of Kenya’s history of deputies who never ascended to the top seat.

Raila’s exit provides Azimio co-principal Kalonzo Musyoka the latitude to take up agency for himself. It enables him to inherit the formidable Azimio support base and at the same time shed off the puerile watermelon tag that has previously defined him as a beneficiary of the political misfortunes of others.

But he is considered by many to be too vanilla to galvanise the sort of political support that would take President Ruto head-on in the 2027 elections. Suggestions that he now takes the lead in the organisation of mass protests are a dig at his abilities to manage the same.

Karua has the bona fides as a reformist. But she may be denuded of the benefits of these sterling credentials by her greater Central Kenya constituency. At the moment, their preoccupation is in the turnaround of the economy, a lifeline for most. Should Ruto succeed in doing this by 2026, it may spell a definitive end to Karua’s presidential ambitions.

-Mr. Khafafa is a public policy analyst