Tame the egos: The elephant in the Opposition politics and the nightmare there in

Are elements in Kenya’s Opposition treating the citizens as if they are political property? Nairobians, especially, seem to be treated like God’s bits of wood. They are commodities to be counted and traded off.

Embakasi East MP, Babu Owino, particularly seems to imagine that Kenyans are remotely controlled chariots. They will carry him to City Hall as their governor next year, and to State House as President in 2032. He has broken ranks with the Linda Mwananchi brigade to focus on his Nairobi ambitions. He now leads a political party. Such is self-focus that misses the bigger goal.

What does it matter who occupies the captain's chair if the vessel's rules permit the captain to become monstrous? What does it matter how many parties assemble under a single banner if they have not agreed on the principles by which they intend to govern? And what does it matter if the opposition wins City Hall and State House but reproduces the very grammar of power it once condemned?

People’s frustration with the incumbent is assumed to be an unconditional endorsement of whoever assembles an outfit that calls itself the alternative. When discontent with the establishment is reaching the apogee, do naïve politicians begin mistaking the public's hunger for change for a divine anointing of themselves? Do they begin jostling for power because of this loss of focus?

We have been here before. In 1992, the top brass in the original Forum for Restoration of Democracy (FORD) each began imagining himself God’s anointed one for Kenya. Ken Matiba was pulling one way, and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga another way. The two camps sank to the lowest ebb of political fortune. They split into Ford Kenya and Ford Asili. They handed victory to the incumbent Kanu government. Other outfits sprang up, too. Yet Kanu dominated them for another 10 years.

The Opposition against William Ruto’s regime is getting there. It may learn one day too late, next year, that no political formation has the right to take the citizen for granted. The people in the Linda Mwananchi Movement and those in the United Alternative Government seem headed towards the rude epiphany of wisdom after the act; a veritable political post-coital tristesse (PCT).

A nation searching for a new direction asks more of its politicians than the provision of a vehicle, or individual ambitions. Kenyans are not an exception. But, here we are again, in our familiar pre-election theatre.

Politicians in Linda Mwananchi are debating the colours, names, ownership, and legal identities of political parties. Which outfit will carry the Opposition's presidential candidate? Who will control the ticket? Who will negotiate the coalition? Who will captain the vessel? Who will be the Governor of Nairobi next year, and run for State House in 2032?

These are certainly heavy questions. In Kenya, political parties are instruments of power,determine nominations, shape alliances, and influence access to public office. But they are not the questions upon which a nation's future ultimately turns. There are more relevantquestions. What path are we on? What is our destination?

Who has determined it? Who are the passengers? What rules govern the journey? And what recourse do the passengers have, should the captain take them somewhere they never agreed to go?

The week's political manoeuvring, the bickering and disagreements among key Opposition figures sound like the eerie call of a sinister bugle.  The future of Jubilee, and President William Ruto's increasingly charged exchanges with his adversaries provide the immediate backdrop. But the real question seems to lie beneath the headlines. Is Kenya's emerging Opposition building a democratic alternative to Ruto, or is it only assembling vehicles whose owners are competing for control of the journey, and future access to public resources?

Perhaps more urgently, has the Opposition begun to take the citizen for granted? In earlier reflections, this writer has mused about the Last Safari to Pagak. Let us be clear about what Pagak means here, lest it becomes no more than a familiar loose metaphor. Pagak, invented by Okot p”Bitek in the dramatic poetic monologue titled Song of Lawino, is not a geographical destination. It is a metaphor for the homestead of death. And there are many guises of death.

Relative to Kenya’s Opposition, Pagak is the political condition in which a people, having invested their hopes in a new set of leaders, discovers that it has merely arrived at a familiar destination under different colours. You have seen Babu Owino in a quarrelsome monologue about a party, its name, colours and abracadabra. Pagak is the disappointment that follows unexamined political faith in people like Owino, a post-coital tristesse.

In this Pagak, Kenyans will wake up to a veritable post-nut-clarity as politicians laugh at them.The State has changed its occupants, but not its habits. When a “team player” tells us that he wants to be the Governor next year, and President five years down the line, our sense of judgement should wake up. For this person is saying that he will begin fighting his President next year, so that five years later he is the President. Holy simplicity! Is Linda then taking on the character of the caravan that inherits the language of reform, but retains the instincts of domination?

Linda Mwananchi should avoid becoming a coalition that mobilises citizens against the abuse of power, only to grab power. Kenyans may not want to discover – once the big man is safely installed – that he swindled them. This seems to be what happened with William Ruto. He promised to take Kenyans to a place of hope. He has taken us to Pagak.

Pagak is what happens when the passengers change vessels but never interrogate the route. We followed Ruto’s bottom-up promises without asking about the route. Now here we are; people who wanted to kiss him in 2022 today want to kick him out of power. Ruto reminds us that a country can have a change of government without changing the grammar of power.

Because of the Ruto experience, some characters in the emerging Opposition may need to be closely scrutinised. The Opposition as a whole has certainly not already failed. Yet, is there need to demonstrate that  the individuals who are splintering off into personal outfits have something fundamentally different to offer? Why do they seem to be obsessed with forming and owning parties? Surely, the vehicle cannot be the destination? So, why does it seem to be so important?

Kenyans have learned that a political party is an instrument. It has a name, a constitution, a flag, a registration certificate, and a leadership structure. It may even possess a proud history, or leaders with such a history, in the case of a new outfit like Linda Mwananchi. Yet it may also be not more than a temporary arrangement, assembled to facilitate an electoral transaction.The distinction is important.

A vehicle may be beautifully painted and impressively decorated, yet mechanically unsound. Its passengers may be promised comfort, speed, and arrival. But the splendour of its exterior is not what gets it safely to the desired destination. Political parties, too, can become exercises in appearance. Their names will become brands to be fought over, as their identities. Their leaders themselves become institutions.  Coalitions morph into exercises in ethnic arithmetic.

The electorate is expected to applaud. But what is the programme? Who wrote it? Who was consulted? What obligations will the leaders assume? Who can hold them to account when the promises evaporate? At the time when Linda Mwananchi should be explaining where she intends to take Kenya, individuals are taking off at a tangent, declaring at once gubernatorial ambitions today, and presidential dreams for tomorrow. Could hunger for power and self-aggrandizement be more brazen? What is the difference between this individual and the one in power today?

The Opposition needs to begin telling Kenyans whether it is assembling a vehicle to win an election, or building an institution capable of sustaining democratic government. The two are not necessarily the same thing. What good is an opposition coalition that changes the occupants of State House, but fails to change the grammar of power?

Like Ford in 1992, Linda Mwananchi is losing the script. Focus is shifting from the desired destination to the captains and the owners. The passengers are getting relegated to the margins under the assumption that they are already on board, anyway.

All eyes in the top cream are shifting on who owns the vessel and who is going to negotiate alliances. James Orengo is saying, “I must be there with Edwin Sifuna.” He is saying, “I am the most senior politician in the country. I was first elected before any of the people in political leadership today.  I must be the captain.”

Now that is how a group of people with nothing in common, except thirst for power behave. Their coalition is not necessarily a democratic project because it is opposed to the established order. It wants to be the order; its turn to eat. Can the Opposition confront this contradiction with honesty? For, how could it demand institutional accountability from the government while treating its own internal arrangements as private matters?

It cannot condemn the concentration of power at State House while also scheming to concentrate party power in the hands of a few individuals and imagining that the citizens are cargo. Kenyans are more likely to trust them if they demonstrate that they are not about individual appetite for power. The passengers may want to have this clarified before the vessel leaves the habour.

Separately, there is also growing suspicion that some of the players entering the Opposition camp may be acting on behalf of the Ruto government. Political co-option is not an unfamiliar feature of Kenya's history. Yet suspicion is not evidence. And not every disagreement is sabotage. Not every independent ambition is treachery, nor every compromise a capitulation. Indeed, is the Opposition so fragile that only one individual, or one private bargain can derail its entire political project?

Linda Mwananchi will especially want to know that people will not always agree on everything. It is a give and take affair. A movement that cannot tolerate scrutiny from within will struggle to convince the public that it can tolerate scrutiny from without. And those who run away to form and own private outfits must especially be feared. For such individuals are often control freaks, who consider themselves to be owners of people.

Then there is also the question of seeing the country beyond Ruto.  The Opposition must also resist the temptation to make President Ruto the organising principle of its politics. Defeating an incumbent is one objective. Knowing what comes after him is another one, and just as important, perhaps even more important. Ruto knew that he wanted to become the President. But did the country know with him what he wanted to do after that? Those who voted for him saw a messiah. today, after the evaporation of the bottom up fantasy do we need to guard against rational ignorance and emotional intoxication?

As has happened in the past Kenya faces the danger of mistaking gatherings of political figures as a messianic moment and a political solution. A familiar face may inspire confidence and a new alliance generate excitement. As I have written here before, a big rally creates the right excitement. But political excitement is not political accountability. Nor is it inevitability. In 1992 the FORD political class mistook the crowd for inevitability. They began fighting over leadership portfolios. The inevitability that followed was defeat, as a factor of wrong focus. Is it about to happen again?

Kenyans have demonstrated through attending the Sifuna rallies that they are unhappy with the present regime. They have every right to demand a new direction; a right to refuse abuse of power and to seek an alternative government. Hopefully, they will not surrender their judgement in the process. Hopefully, they will see a pious political imposter where there is one.

Nobody has an automatic claim upon the citizen's loyalty. It must be earned through conduct and credibility of promises. The citizen's frustration with the incumbent is never an unconditional endorsement of his challenger. One lesson Kenya Kwanza has taught Kenyans is that an anti-incumbent protest is not, by that fact alone, a democratic alternative. Perhaps the messiah has not yet arrived?

We have travelled this road before, as we say. Before we board, this time, we need to be sure that we are reading from the same script with those seeking office. Ruto’s wheelbarrow party was born out of popular hope. ODM, too was also an instrument hope. today both ODM and UDA have fused into a vehicle of elite bargaining and accommodation. The leadership of ODM, especially, speaks a political tongue that is difficult to associate with the original reformist spirit.

We have witnessed moments when political organisations opened genuine possibilities for democratic change. Yet, the language of reform turned out be deployment for pursuit of office. It should not happen again.

Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser