Do
not presume that this disquisition is going to be fair or balanced; it
is going to be divisive and deeply partisan and I am not sorry to be so.
Let us begin with the sainted Raila Odinga of the Second Liberation and
his acolytes in the Orange Democratic Movement who include but are not
limited to Prof Anyang' Nyong'o, James Orengo and the lunatic fringe
that hails from certain parts of Luo Nyanza. To say that he has been a
disappointment is do do immeasurable disservice to disappointing men and
women. His relentless campaign to step into the presidency should have
disqualified him for high office ever since he lost the leadership
battle in Ford-Kenya. His calculating and self-interested decision to
"merge" the National Development Party with KANU in the dying days of
Moi's hegemony took everyone, including Moi, by surprise and it is no
surprise that Moi still went ahead and chose his own successor, the
neophyte Uhuru Kenyatta.
Mr Odinga's stints in the governments of Daniel Toroitich arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki, and in his stint as Prime Minister, have been accompanied by controversy and incompetence that it beggars belief that he is still the peoples' favourite, three months to the general election. His party's decision to whinge and whine while serving in government, and to participate in the truffle-snout thieving of national treasure in the National Assembly, meant that millions of Kenyans who could have been unable to find employment, whether in the formal or informal sectors, public or private. It also means that policies adopted by the Cabinet have been decided not with the peoples' interests in mind, but with the insidiousness of political self-interest and calculation for the survival of the ministerial incumbent and the allocation of public resources to buttress political fiefdoms of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. Mr Odinga's leadership of his party has been at times shambolic and dictatorial in equal measure. Every black mark identified with the KANU school of political leadership has been carried over to the ODM by the last serious Secretary-General of KANU. Mr Odinga has disappointed his millions of loyalists as Prime Minister and as leader of the Orange Democratic Movement. His party is increasingly seen as the party of the Luo cabal that sings his praises at every opportunity. ODM is today a fringe movement kept alive by the near-fanatical following of the Prime Minister in certain, though not all, quarters.
Mr Odinga's nearest serious challenger, the darling of Central Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta is not the counterfoil to the Prime Minister that his ardent supporters think he is. There is not a soul, other than a sour-grapes type, that will deny that as Finance Minister, Mr Kenyatta was indefatigable and unlikely to be swayed by material desires in his decision-making. Those that tried less than honest discourse with one of our most youthful heads, bar only Musalia Mudavadi, Mr Kenyatta's co-Deputy Prime Minister, of The Treasury was quickly disabused of his ideas and sent packing. He is rightly lauded for maturing rather quickly in the past three years to a sober-minded, pragmatic politician. The sins of his political past cannot be wished away so easily though. In 2002, when President Moi hand-picked him over his rivals Kalonzo Musyoka and Raila Odinga to be KANU's presidential nominee at that year's general election, he should have said "No!" That he did not is an indictment of his strength of character. Despite his gracious concession speech, Mr Kenyatta had been infected by hubris and he has spent the last decade attempting to live up to the hype that the Kenyatta name perennially conjurers.
His political philosophy remains unknown. His claims to be a man-of-the-people, sympathising with the plight of the poor and the vulnerable in Kenya is mere political piffle. How can a man sitting at the head of a business empire and who has never spent a night in the filth that we call daily life ever empathise with what the so-called common mwananchi's daily grind? To even imagine that Mr Kenyatta understands the life of the ordinary Kenyan is to suppose that the sky is green and that unicorns are real. Why he enjoys mythical status among the elite of the House of Mumbi can be reasonably explained by the promises he will keep as opposed to those he will make while on the presidential campaign trail. Unless Mr Kenyatta tells us who will pursue a social policy for the radical redistribution of Kenya's capital, all his talk of solving our economic and socio-political problems merely by electing him to succeed Mwai Kibaki continues to be a vast waste of oxygen. And his, and William Ruto's, innocence notwithstanding, Mr Kenyatta must persuade us that he is innocent; not in a court of law but by dissociating himself once and for all from the men and women who stood to profit from the deaths of thousands, the expropriation of billions of shillings of private property, and the untold suffering of hundreds of thousands after the general election of 2007. It is not enough to claim innocence; Mr Kenyatta must prove it once and for all.
William Ruto's is our cautionary tale. An intelligent political operative, Mr Ruto has not had a meteoric rise as is supposed by his fevered acolytes. He has had to work for everything he has accomplished politically since he decided to join the Youth for KANU bandwagon in time for the 1992 general election. Mr Ruto is intelligent and ambitious in equal measure and were it not for the small matter of the ICC, he would be the serious challenger to Mr Odinga's presidential ambitions. Mr Ruto, though, is deeply flawed. One flaw that was revealed starkly regards the property he decided to purchase in 2008. Despite the fact that a man had gone to court to challenge the ownership of the property, Mr Ruto did not think that there were any doubts over the transaction despite the record of displacement and unlawful expropriations that had taken place in that dark year. Why he persisted in defending his claim long after it became clear that the doubts around the land would not go away should trouble the consciences of those determined to avoid the spectre of mass deportations after the 2013 general election. His callous disregard for the facts on the ground should be a warning for those determined to see his claims of innocence as a shield; he may not be in a position to empathise with victims of gross unfairness when he sits in his office at Harambee House.
It is Kalonzo Musyoka though, who makes this campaign season so sapping on the spirit. His waffling and toing-and-froing have been maddening. His continued pursuit of an arrangement with Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto when all pointed tot heir disdain for him should awaken in us a sobering thought: he is without an ounce of depth or strategic thinking. Now that he has decided to re-unite with the Prime Minister, and revive the moribund spirit of the Orange Revolution, he must surely hope that Kenyans are so short-sighted that they will not go over his record in the past five years. Whether his new found bonhomie with the Prime Minister will yield a deal that Kenyans can live with depends on whether he will attempt a back-room deal or whether the two will go for an open contest. Those who have examined his record fear that the former is true while those determined to see him for the saint they claim he is think the latter possible. In three days' time, we will know.
Not even the "principled" campaigns of Martha Karua, Peter Kenneth or James ole Kiyiapi have raised the spirits. Small and insignificant as their parties are, and incapable of rousing rhetoric as they are, it is impossible to see their campaigns elevating the level of political discourse displayed so far. Martha Karua comes across as a harridan out to ruin everyone's party. Peter Kenneth comes across as the Holy Joe in high school who told on everyone elsewhile secretly engaging in questionable tactics to win Teacher's favour. James ole Kiyiapi simply comes across as a man who stumbled into a presidential campaign and prays that no one will notice that he is all alone in the field, without even a semblance of a team to keep him in the game. 2013 may be momentous in the minds of a few, but to my mind it will be more of the same and with the same level of political disappointment the last decade has engendered.
Mr Odinga's stints in the governments of Daniel Toroitich arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki, and in his stint as Prime Minister, have been accompanied by controversy and incompetence that it beggars belief that he is still the peoples' favourite, three months to the general election. His party's decision to whinge and whine while serving in government, and to participate in the truffle-snout thieving of national treasure in the National Assembly, meant that millions of Kenyans who could have been unable to find employment, whether in the formal or informal sectors, public or private. It also means that policies adopted by the Cabinet have been decided not with the peoples' interests in mind, but with the insidiousness of political self-interest and calculation for the survival of the ministerial incumbent and the allocation of public resources to buttress political fiefdoms of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. Mr Odinga's leadership of his party has been at times shambolic and dictatorial in equal measure. Every black mark identified with the KANU school of political leadership has been carried over to the ODM by the last serious Secretary-General of KANU. Mr Odinga has disappointed his millions of loyalists as Prime Minister and as leader of the Orange Democratic Movement. His party is increasingly seen as the party of the Luo cabal that sings his praises at every opportunity. ODM is today a fringe movement kept alive by the near-fanatical following of the Prime Minister in certain, though not all, quarters.
Mr Odinga's nearest serious challenger, the darling of Central Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta is not the counterfoil to the Prime Minister that his ardent supporters think he is. There is not a soul, other than a sour-grapes type, that will deny that as Finance Minister, Mr Kenyatta was indefatigable and unlikely to be swayed by material desires in his decision-making. Those that tried less than honest discourse with one of our most youthful heads, bar only Musalia Mudavadi, Mr Kenyatta's co-Deputy Prime Minister, of The Treasury was quickly disabused of his ideas and sent packing. He is rightly lauded for maturing rather quickly in the past three years to a sober-minded, pragmatic politician. The sins of his political past cannot be wished away so easily though. In 2002, when President Moi hand-picked him over his rivals Kalonzo Musyoka and Raila Odinga to be KANU's presidential nominee at that year's general election, he should have said "No!" That he did not is an indictment of his strength of character. Despite his gracious concession speech, Mr Kenyatta had been infected by hubris and he has spent the last decade attempting to live up to the hype that the Kenyatta name perennially conjurers.
His political philosophy remains unknown. His claims to be a man-of-the-people, sympathising with the plight of the poor and the vulnerable in Kenya is mere political piffle. How can a man sitting at the head of a business empire and who has never spent a night in the filth that we call daily life ever empathise with what the so-called common mwananchi's daily grind? To even imagine that Mr Kenyatta understands the life of the ordinary Kenyan is to suppose that the sky is green and that unicorns are real. Why he enjoys mythical status among the elite of the House of Mumbi can be reasonably explained by the promises he will keep as opposed to those he will make while on the presidential campaign trail. Unless Mr Kenyatta tells us who will pursue a social policy for the radical redistribution of Kenya's capital, all his talk of solving our economic and socio-political problems merely by electing him to succeed Mwai Kibaki continues to be a vast waste of oxygen. And his, and William Ruto's, innocence notwithstanding, Mr Kenyatta must persuade us that he is innocent; not in a court of law but by dissociating himself once and for all from the men and women who stood to profit from the deaths of thousands, the expropriation of billions of shillings of private property, and the untold suffering of hundreds of thousands after the general election of 2007. It is not enough to claim innocence; Mr Kenyatta must prove it once and for all.
William Ruto's is our cautionary tale. An intelligent political operative, Mr Ruto has not had a meteoric rise as is supposed by his fevered acolytes. He has had to work for everything he has accomplished politically since he decided to join the Youth for KANU bandwagon in time for the 1992 general election. Mr Ruto is intelligent and ambitious in equal measure and were it not for the small matter of the ICC, he would be the serious challenger to Mr Odinga's presidential ambitions. Mr Ruto, though, is deeply flawed. One flaw that was revealed starkly regards the property he decided to purchase in 2008. Despite the fact that a man had gone to court to challenge the ownership of the property, Mr Ruto did not think that there were any doubts over the transaction despite the record of displacement and unlawful expropriations that had taken place in that dark year. Why he persisted in defending his claim long after it became clear that the doubts around the land would not go away should trouble the consciences of those determined to avoid the spectre of mass deportations after the 2013 general election. His callous disregard for the facts on the ground should be a warning for those determined to see his claims of innocence as a shield; he may not be in a position to empathise with victims of gross unfairness when he sits in his office at Harambee House.
It is Kalonzo Musyoka though, who makes this campaign season so sapping on the spirit. His waffling and toing-and-froing have been maddening. His continued pursuit of an arrangement with Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto when all pointed tot heir disdain for him should awaken in us a sobering thought: he is without an ounce of depth or strategic thinking. Now that he has decided to re-unite with the Prime Minister, and revive the moribund spirit of the Orange Revolution, he must surely hope that Kenyans are so short-sighted that they will not go over his record in the past five years. Whether his new found bonhomie with the Prime Minister will yield a deal that Kenyans can live with depends on whether he will attempt a back-room deal or whether the two will go for an open contest. Those who have examined his record fear that the former is true while those determined to see him for the saint they claim he is think the latter possible. In three days' time, we will know.
Not even the "principled" campaigns of Martha Karua, Peter Kenneth or James ole Kiyiapi have raised the spirits. Small and insignificant as their parties are, and incapable of rousing rhetoric as they are, it is impossible to see their campaigns elevating the level of political discourse displayed so far. Martha Karua comes across as a harridan out to ruin everyone's party. Peter Kenneth comes across as the Holy Joe in high school who told on everyone elsewhile secretly engaging in questionable tactics to win Teacher's favour. James ole Kiyiapi simply comes across as a man who stumbled into a presidential campaign and prays that no one will notice that he is all alone in the field, without even a semblance of a team to keep him in the game. 2013 may be momentous in the minds of a few, but to my mind it will be more of the same and with the same level of political disappointment the last decade has engendered.
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