ODM beware, Kalenjin are the most suave and calculating voters

Abdulahi AhmednasirThe Orange Democratic Party (ODM) has a Kalenjin problem which no one in authority seems to acknowledge. Party functionaries and some politicians see the restiveness and at times forceful demands of the community as divisive, a symptom of political greed. If there is somebody in authority who assumes that the problem is a passing cloud or a figment of some individuals’ fertile imagination, it is the party leader and Prime Minister Raila Odinga.The failure to understand and address the demands of the Kalenjin community is a classic example of political miscalculation. Their demands have at times been wrongly diagnosed as dissatisfaction relating to the sharing of Cabinet positions, the Mau forest evictions and lately the mode of implementing the Waki Report.The issues the community has been raising, even in instances where they are wrong — like the evictions from the Mau Forest — herald the beginning of a new dawn in Kenyan politics. It ushers a new rule of transparency and accountability in a post election paradigm. The assertiveness and tone in which the community is demanding the need to address some of its concern cast a fresh breath of air and sets a new tone on the interaction between the leader and the voter after the election. The demands are welcome in the sense that they provide a constant audit between these two political players which was hitherto unknown.The grievances being raised by the Kalenjin community and the inability of the ODM hierarchy to appreciate them pose a mortal danger to the ethnic coalition that constitutes the party. It also poses something akin to a rhetorical question to the party leader. The community is subtly telling Raila that: "Having thought we knew what you stood for when you were wooing us during the campaign period, we are not entirely able to appreciate what you really stand for now that you are in power!"So unlike in the past when the leader assumed the people and the voters forget what the leader promised them as soon as the ballot is cast, the Kalenjin community — due to certain historic exigencies — is constantly auditing Raila’s actions and omissions. This political assertiveness after election negates the political assumption that was hitherto the political common currency among leaders that voters are a constant sum in their political calculation and do no appreciate the need to periodically appraise MPs on what they really stand for.Raila put together a powerful political machine during the electioneering period. What is uncertain is whether he has the same political acumen to hold it together. A fundamental mistake Raila makes in relation to the Rift Valley voters is that he fails to appreciate that the Kalenjin voter unlike, for instance, the Nyanza voters didn’t vote for him out of love or ethnic allegiance. Because of the historic interaction between the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin, the latter is engaged in a delicate political tussle with the former. Thus the post-Moi Kalenjin voter is the most suave and politically calculating voter in the country. In the last election, Raila merely provided an opportunity for the community to settle a score for the time being and provide a political checkmate. To assume for a moment that the community’s political programme is in tandem with Raila’s political ideology is to engage in a grandiose political dilution. During a certain historic moment in time they merely found in Raila a convenient political vehicle to take them to a certain destination.The Kalenjin community played two vital and interrelated roles during and after the elections. First it provided ODM the largest ethnic bloc in terms of votes. Second, it also provided the largest number of Members of Parliament from one ethnic group. More importantly, the theatre of the dispute that created a political stalemate which gave birth to the Coalition Government was in the heart of the Kalenjin land. It was the skirmishes and atrocities that occurred in this region that forced President Kibaki to share power with ODM. So even though Raila in his ministerial appointment has taken cognisance of this and has given the community its fair share, he has not gone the extra mile to bed the grievances of the community.The gulf between the party and the community is both psychological and real. The Kalenjin community sees Raila’s articulation and adoption of certain national issues as too similar to those adopted by PNU leaders. For them this is a gross breach of trust. They also see it as unacceptable tilt in the balance of power and a breach of political equilibrium the community brought about with blood and iron. It is thus imperative for Raila to address in greater depth than he has so far done some of the issues the leaders of the community have been raising. Or ODM will be another great party that dies a premature political death.

ODM beware, Kalenjin are the most suave and calculating voters

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ODM beware, Kalenjin are the most suave and calculating voters

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