Why top leaders love BBI’s mixed bag of fortunes

Suna East MP Junet Mohamed and BBI National Initiative Co-chair Dennis Waweru during the Building Bridges Initiative steering committee preparations to present signatures to the IEBC at Anniversary Towers on December 10, 2020. [David Gichuru,Standard]

A conflation of political considerations, personal ambitions, strategic interests and pursuit of national good is playing in the background of the fervent push for constitutional changes packed in the handshake deal.

Through their handshake which triggered the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), President Uhuru Kenyatta and ODM leader Raila Odinga have given a lifeline to sunken careers, revived fledgling ones and offered fresh prospects for more people to sit at the top.

In pole position of the BBI beneficiary hierarchy sits the president, his deputy William Ruto and Raila. The first and the latter are presiding over the process and would take credit for its passage in a referendum. Accordingly, they will oversee sharing of the spoils at the top with good chances of perpetuating their legacies through the new occupants.

Below them is a cadre of experienced politicians running political parties but are weighed down by one thing or the other from actualising their political desires. These are political figures that have bestridden the country’s political scene for decades, leaving impressive marks but at the same time accumulative political liabilities. And the bottom is a cadre of political newbies whose careers exploded with the 2010 Constitution, mostly two-term governors. Thanks to the 2010 Constitution architecture which did not envision career progression, these two-term governors have to either go lower or take a chance at the top.

“An expanded Executive and constitutional recognition of the opposition will reduce the notion of political scarcity and the propensity for electoral violence every five years. Similarly, it will enhance the doctrine of a constitution of hope over one of fear,” Uhuru told the country on Jamhuri Day.

At 59, Uhuru is - by regional standards - fairly young for retirement. His acolytes have urged him on. He has on several occasions said he is exiting, but equally admitted that he is fairly young. While he is barred from running for a third presidential term, nothing bars him from the newly created posts if he qualifies.

At 75, Raila is still dancing to reggae and daring rivals to bring it on. He has kept rivals guessing as to his actual plans for 2022 although many say it is an open secret. He dreads 2022 conversations and is most touchy when implicated in a fifth stab at the presidency.

Electoral commission chief Wafula Chebukati (3rd Left) receives a box containing signatures from BBI Secretariat officials led by Suna East MP Junet Mohamed (2nd Left) and BBI co-chair Dennis Waweru (Right) at Anniversary Towers for verification on December 10, 2020. [Stafford Ondego, Standard]

Incidentally, he had expended his last bullet at the 2017 General Election, which ended in a repeat poll which he refused to take part in, leading to the handshake. Nobody quite knows the full scope of the deal he struck with Uhuru given the talks were not public. “It was a two-man project which we kept secret up to the last minute. It was not easy accepting to talk to Uhuru. No other person was privy to the talks which we undertook to heal the country,” Raila told supporters in Oyugis in March last year.

As the man closest to the top seat, Ruto has great interest in botching the BBI plan. Not only does it spoil the party for him, but by empowering new rivals, it also spreads presidential influence to other players. The converse of it is that he can embrace the initiative and use the new positions to reward allies as well as to neutralise opponents.

BBI therefore presents a mix of fortunes to the DP, leading to the the “oppo-support” position he is now being associated with.

“No serious presidential candidate can afford to oppose BBI if they are honest with themselves. It reduces the tensions in the competition for the top seat to their benefit. It enables them to accommodate others, and it helps in unity and cohesion of the country,” Senate Majority Whip Irungu Kang’ata says.

Former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka has for the last 10 years played for the opposition without a formal role. Since the handshake, however, the benevolence of the president and ODM leader has handed him some international assignments, which have made use of his skills and consolidated his international image.

Dislodge him

And because of the long stay in the cold, new rivals powered by the devolution wings, among them Machakos Governor Alfred Mutua and his Makueni counterpart Kivutha Kibwana are threatening to dislodge him. BBI is a godsend opportunity to redeem himself. 

“We are prepared to do a coalition agreement and if need be we will even do a merger,” Kalonzo said last month, of his keenness to work with Jubilee.

A similar situation obtains for Amani National Congress leader Musalia Mudavadi, a constant figure in national politics for the last 30 years, and who has increasingly been sidelined from access to the top leadership.

Baringo Senator Gideon Moi leads the country’s oldest political party, Kanu. After serving two terms as a senator, and with the shadow of his larger-than-life father Daniel Moi no longer over him, he may want to scale up and assert his place at the top.

Gideon was handed the symbolic power baton at the burial of his father earlier this year. In keeping with expectations, he can only go up and it is left for him to figure out how. He has taken BBI with gusto, traversing the breadth and length of the country to drum up support for it.

“We are now building support for the BBI but when the time comes, we will work towards having one bullet,” Gideon recently said at one such rally.

For Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya, Mombasa’s Hassan Joho, Mutua and Kibwana among others, they will either rise or fall with BBI. Together with their lot, their careers risk stagnating if BBI does not sail through and grant them a window of opportunity at national leadership.

The referendum could act like a dry run for the 2022 General Election and give rise to new political alliances and a new lease of life to political careers that are in their sunset days. A referendum also carries the promise of being a political launching pad for a serious presidential challenge in 2022.

Like the International Criminal Court cases in 2013, where Uhuru and Ruto were accused of orchestrating crimes against humanity in the 2007-08 violence, the BBI promises the same effect on the 2022 elections.?