She is the smartest, most exasperating, stubborn and committed politician I have ever met. She pushes buttons without fear or favour. She has a knack for rubbing her detractors' buttons, usually driving them to apoplectic rage with her I-don't-care certainty backed with facts, figures and steel. I have a feeling that she is going to make the next two years mightily uncomfortable for many men. That's why despite my better judgment I think Martha Karua is easily the conscience of the nation, a field that has been abandoned by one and all in the mad rush to the winning of tenders, the grabbing of school playgrounds, the murder f devolution fighters and the greedy grasp for political and material power.
Ms Karua was going to lose the presidential election in 2013. Of that only the die-hard fanatics would have doubt. In her heart of hearts she knows this to be true. But she would not bend, she would not compromise, she would not hunt with the hounds while running with the hares if it meant that she would have to give up on principles that had stood her in good stead through both good times and bad. Her robust defence of Mwai Kibaki's victory in 2007 rubbed the opposition the wrong way, but it was entirely in character. I was wrong to ascribe her defence to her being a member of the Mt Kenya set around the president; Ms Karua believed that the letter and the spirit of the law had been upheld and she defended Mr Kibaki's re-election on principle. It is principle too that led her to resign from Mr Kibaki's Cabinet, with some of her former Cabinet colleagues accusing her of betraying the president.
She has been out of the limelight since the general elections of 2013, though not so far outside that she did not contribute to public discourse from time to time through social media and some media appearances. It is on principle again that she persuaded her party leadership not to be co-opted into the Jubilee government, and it is on principle that she re-enters active politics today. I cannot wait to see what she brings to the arena this time around. For sure she will stand for the presidency again and I hope that the political field will be fertile enough for some of her ideas, if not all of them, to germinate and, perhaps, blossom.
Before her loss in 2013, Ms Karua had been an elected Member of Parliament for twenty years. In that period she had stood up to not one but two presidents, had served in two Cabinet positions with distinction, headed a political party and helped negotiate a settlement that papered over the political problems Kenya had faced. Her principles made her, sometimes, inflexible, but I believe that she has the capacity to bend when bending is the only rational, lawful option left. Ms Karua and, to some extent, Mrs Ngilu and the late Nobel peace prize winner Wangari Maathai, are the leading lights of the woman rights movement in Kenya, not for the woman-centric stances they took but for the successes they achieved simply by being better than their competitors in many respects. They are the proof that intellect, hard work, networks and luck are not the preserve of the menfolk, but that women too have the capacity to engage in matters of national importance at the highest levels without their femininity being used as a weapon to defeat them.
The Iron Lady from Gichugu faces a daunting task in rebuilding her party, Narc-Kenya. The Jubilee parties seem to be going from strength to strength and the CORD does not seem to be falling apart as many commentators seem to have predicted. Her party has lost some of its lustre and it will take considerable resources to reawaken the network she had built for her presidential bid. Many have underestimated her in the past; they do so again to their regret. I hope that she manages to offer the Third Way that Ekuru Aukot and John Githongo have been preaching about, and that principled politicians will coalesce around her agenda rather than the big-party corruption of both the Jubilee and CORD outfits. Ms Karua's return is a welcome development in pre-2017 electioneering. I hope she shakes things up sufficiently that current orthodoxies undermining the Constitution are shelved for good.
No comments:
Post a Comment