Odinga do to ensure that his fourth (and most likely final) bid for
State House, come 2017, is successful?
The first thing he
must do is mobilize the public around a galvanizing idea. This idea
cannot be just that the casual insistence that the incumbents of the Jubilee government are hopeless or incompetent, and that he would do a better job. Crucially, it must
include the fact that those who vote for him will receive benefits from the change of
guard that results in his becoming the Fifth President of Kenya.
In the years leading
up to Independence in 1963, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s political machine
and strategists popularized the clarion call ‘Uhuru na Kenyatta’
– Freedom and Kenyatta. They galvanized the population.
Immediately after Uhuru was achieved, they cunningly calibrated the
call to proclaim ‘Uhuru na Kazi’ – Freedom and Jobs (or alternatively, Freedom and Hard Work).
In much the same
way, when, after almost 30 years of increasingly repressive
single-party rule the activists who mobilized for an end to the then
ruling party Kanu’s domination got Kenneth Stanley Njindo Matiba to
proclaim the “Second Liberation”. It was so successful that
although President Daniel arap Moi remained in power for another two
terms of five years each, he never came close to winning 40% of the
presidential vote race. The great majority of Kenyans - though
hopelessly divided by Moi's clever scheming - were for "The Second
Liberation".
Why
now? Do the math
And so it is now, that on the road to the
2017 General Election, Raila must proclaim the ‘Third Liberation’.
Raila must point out
the fact that only two communities out of 42 tribes have had one of
their own as the tenant of State House across 52 years of
Independence. What’s more, their principals and strategists make no
secret of the fact that they intend to occupy State House into the
foreseeable future.
The ruling Jubilee
Alliance’s State House triumphalism could see just two communities
out of 42 occupy State House, the center of power, privilege and
patronage in our system, for at least 70 years, with strategies to
take it to a full century. Even 52 years is way too long and a
strategic blunder of enormous proportions. Although they no longer
talk about it at every opportunity, President Uhuru Kenyatta and
Deputy President William Ruto entered office in 2013 with every
intention of serving two full terms each as President, or until 2027.
The euphoria of their 2013 victory when they won against all
conceivable odds – including the fact that both had crimes against
humanity cases at the International Criminal Court; and the Kukyu and the
Kalenjin had never voted together in a general, presidential or other
electoral event including the two national referenda since
Independence – made them reckless for quite a while.
Their victory was
all the more smashing for winning the majority in both Parliament and
the Senate, making Raila’s challenge against Uhuru’s win as
declared by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission less
convincing.
The time to
challenge the Kikuyu-Kalenjin lock on State House has arrived.
UhuRuto’s folly of insisting that they are at State House to stay
and giving every impression that the next three general elections are
as good as won and in the bag and everyone else is therefore wasting
their precious time needs to be seriously interrogated before the
2017 campaign. This gives Raila a wonderful opportunity to convert
UhuRuto’s most vaunted strength into their electoral undoing and do
so fair and square. The ODM and Cord leader must capitalize on his
great rivals’ mistakes and break the Mt Kenya and Rift Valley lock
on State House. The Third Liberation will have an impact as profound
as that of the first Madaraka Day on June 1, 1963, and first Jamhuri
Day on December 12, 1963. What’s more, it will genuinely save Kenya
and the Kikuyu and Kalenjin elites ought to be among the first people
who celebrate the superb value addition to Kenyan democracy that this
ending of the ping-pong game inside the Presidency will bring about.
Why am I talking as
if the Third Liberation is a foregone conclusion and a definitely
coming attraction? Simple. The other game cannot go on forever and if
it attempts to there will be serious trouble in this country.
Give
inclusivity a chance
Raila can
effectively mobilize the rest of the country around the idea that in
a country with 42 tribes two communities have absolutely no business
trying to occupy the Presidency for 70 years. All the 42 others must
be given a chance as well of producing the President of the Republic
of Kenya, if only to give the vital idea of inclusivity a credible
chance.
If Raila can
persuasively sell this self-evident idea and communicate it
successfully – including in Mt Kenya and Rift Valley – he will
have roughly 65% of the 2017 electorate behind him before a single
vote is cast. The Presidential race will be over before it has begun.
In Mt Kenya and Rift
Valley he must point out the implications of a continued two-tribe
lock on State House and choose his words with consummate care. He
must condemn it as unfair, undemocratic and bizarre and worthy of
being denounced as caste elite behavior. The Mt Kenya-Rift Valley
Cult of State House must be shown the door.
To this end, Raila
must rollout a communications strategy such as he has never
contemplated. He must do half-a-dozen things and do them absolutely
right and in their time. The timing will be everything and almost as
important as the content of his unimpeachable message.
The first order of
business is to reassure the existing cultic order that there is life
after the lock is broken. Raila must drastically tone down the pure
hostility and seeming spite of his stance against Jubilee and the
offices and persons of the President and Deputy President. His
reassurances must also be directed at the extended Kikuyu and
Kalenjin elites. He will not be reinventing the wheel here. When, in
then long-ruling Kanu’s final days, it appeared as if Daniel arap
Moi and his handlers were never going to let go of the levers of
power, Mwai Kibaki and his handlers quietly let it be known that they
would not pursue Moi and his sons and associates on the corruption
question. This pledge was made at such a level and with such
goodwill that Moi and Co remain unmolested 13 years and three
successor Presidential terms later.
Watertight
guarantees for Mountain and Valley elites
It is the kind of
elite guarantee that saw Independence come to Kenya and Mzee Kenyatta
tell the Brits that Kenyans had “forgiven” them “but not
forgotten”. This is the kind of elite guarantee that saw Robert
Mugabe pledge never to molest Ian Smith just a jump before Zimbabwean
independence in April 1980. These guarantees stick because if they do
not a nation cannot remain unitary and the doors to civil war and
secession are thrown wide open.
Raila must find a
way to calm the Mt Kenya and Rift Valley elites and impress it upon
them that the Third Liberation is really a Big Picture proposition
that is essential for the good of all Kenyans, going forward.
Kibaki and his
strategists won Moi and his family and associates over. Even when the
Young Turks of the National Rainbow Coalition made a move to audit
the Moi years for corruption and currency flight and called in Kroll
Associates, the international forensic accounting and private
security specialists who also train the US Secret Service
presidential detail, there was never any fear that the guarantee
given to the Moi elite would be rolled back.
By the time the
Kroll Associates report to the Kibaki administration was leaked on
the Internet by people inside the regime, it hardly mattered that the
Mois were among the very richest Africans, as certified by the
experts. Both the government and Kroll denied the contents of the
leaked report, saying primly they did not transact their official
business via online leaks. It was time for the first national
referendum, on the Bomas Draft of the then new constitution, quickly
followed by Kibaki’s bid for a second term at State House.
At the point when
the Second Liberation as proclaimed by Matiba became a foregone
conclusion, Matiba and his handlers communicated completely the wrong
message, one predicated on vengeance and massive consequences.
Moi, who had to be
weaned from power with long-term pledges, offered his opponents no
assurances, instead he actively undermined them by empowering their
own worst enemies, including financially. Raila has never been in
Moi’s all-powerful position but he needs to be the Fifth President
of Kenya – badly. And Kenya needs that to happen too – badly.
Raila cannot afford to take Matiba’s haughty attitude and route; it
leads nowhere. He must make the eternal assurances and they must
never be broken. He and his strategists must keep their focus
unerringly on breaking the undemocratic lock on State House.
Second, which could
very well be first, Raila must attend to the question of his own
image management. Part of the long-term unbreakable assurances must
be the question of forgiveness. Raila has nothing to
lose in proclaiming his one-off forgiveness of the Mountain and the
Valley elites. He occupies a unique position among Kenya’s
political elites. Raila has a larger-than-life political brand. His
clout does not fit into an office; everyone else’s does –
including President Kenyatta’s and Deputy President Ruto’s.
Everyone else pays their way, even for rallies and delegations. Not
so Raila, he is the commodity, they pay to see him.
Raila must change
his Second Liberation credentials narrative on the road to the Third
Liberation, the climactic event of his life. He must emphasize the
contributions he has made and how they benefitted even his most
inflexible foes. He must control the narrative of his past by talking
about his sacrifices, the things unique to him, the benefits, even
for Uhuru and Ruto. He must tell all Kenyans that his incarceration
was for a purpose, with the emphasis on the fact that he “did not
steal anyone’s goat”.
An entire generation
of voters who will vote in 2017 does not know what Raila did. Even
Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta have reaped from the benefits of
Raila’s struggle – he ushered in the multiparty era Presidency.
Towards the
all-important 2017 Presidential campaign, Raila must project the
image of the epoch-making statesman. He must be magnanimous towards
Kenyatta and Ruto, the two men whose political careers and strategies
he is about to end, at least as far as State House goes, at all
times. He must give credit where it is due, praise both the men and
their offices, call them worthy opponents. Accentuate the positive,
downplay the negative: Anything but business as usual.
In victory, Raila
must throw away Kibaki’s formbook. Kibaki delivered an Inaugural
Address on the penultimate day of December 2002 that rubbished Moi’s
long tenure and was extremely rude to the older man, making him sound
like he held the patent on corruption. Kibaki did not realize it at
the time but what he was doing was building up stocks of bad blood
that contributed to later upheavals, particularly his second round
bid and the post-election violence of 2007-08.
Third, above all,
between now and the 2017 campaign, Raila must decommission the serial
loser narrative and announce the fact that Kenya has entered the end
of his losing streak.
Debunk
the toxic ‘serial loser’ myth
The quest for the
Presidency is a long and zig-zagging journey and only the most naïve
and ignorant people imagine it is a stroll in the park. Even Uhuru Kenyatta lost
two elections consecutively – his first parliamentary bid in
Gatundu South in 1997 and his first Presidential bid in 2002.
Kibaki lost twice in
consecutive Presidential races, winning on his third attempt. This is
a pattern replicated globally. In the US we recently saw the
Republican televised Presidential debate, which had at least 17
hopefuls. These would-be-candidates are only getting the public
accustomed to the idea that they are contenders, although some of
them will not be that until the 2020 race.
Hillary Clinton lost
to Obama seven years ago; served in the Cabinet of the man who
defeated her and is once again the frontrunner just as she was in
2008.
In Africa, Michael
Sata of Zambia, Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria and Abdoulaye Wade of
Senegal all lost three times, just as Raila has, and only won on
their fourth try.
The only thing that
matters when it comes to previous Presidential elections for Raila is
that each time he has emerged with an even larger tally of votes.
This is the pattern that matters and what he must emphasize to
demolish the myth that he is a serial loser with unique problems.
Fourth, Raila must
define what he is offering. He must categorically state the things he
plans to do and why he thinks they constitute change, right down to
quantifiable items and timelines.
Fifth, Raila must
address the question of his track record in government. He must begin
by reclaiming his legacy in the massive construction of
transformational infrastructure during the Kibaki era, beginning as
Roads minister in the first term and culminating in his being Prime
Minister and co-principal in the Grand Coalition regime. He had early
input into the best things of the Kibaki years and supervised the
second term regime.
Martha Karua, who is
now once again alongside Raila in opposition, prides herself on, and
is well regarded for, having long before devolution effectively
devolved water supply across the country as Water minister in
Kibaki’s first term, in a rollout of potable water projects that
met the needs of local communities nationwide like never before. Both
these unsung ministerial achievements represent a massive failure of
national development communications and propaganda across political
divides that Raila can no longer afford.
Lose
the ‘dictator’ tag
Sixth, Raila must
attend to the question of his larger than life persona as it impacts
his democratic credentials. Two people who have formally worked very
closely with Raila – lawyer Miguna Miguna and activist
Ngunjiri Wambugu, a Luo and Kikuyu respectively – have painted
Raila as running a one-man show, everything revolving around him and
his extended family. Miguna and Wambugu have alleged that there is no
chain of command around Raila, no structures and no succession plan.
Raila must demonstrate that, whether this was true or not, going
forward, it is not.
Pre-State House,
Raila must demonstrate that there is room for dissent around him
inside both Cord and ODM, up to the highest levels. When ODM was
first formed in 2005, no less a political personage than Uhuru Muigai
Kenyatta was a member. In time, Uhuru found reason to leave ODM. Ruto
was forced out and Musalia Mudavadi left in a huff, designated Deputy
Prime Minister and Deputy Party Leader but dissatisfied with
Presidential nomination procedures that fit Raila like the proverbial
glove.
This is not a
persuasive history of managing dissent at the highest levels. These
too many cases of genuinely influential politicians who once worked
with Raila but then became implacable foes have to be addressed
conclusively.
What is odd is that
when you speak to those who have known Raila up close and personal,
they paint a picture not of the dictator of so many other people’s
perception but of a fiercely focused democrat and team player. They
say he is a very keen listener, constantly seeks advice and is
willing to be influenced by a strong argument and often has to resist
pressure from those around him in order to pursue the right course.
He absolutely needs
to let people see the real Raila who is so evident to his closest
friends and associates who are staying the course with him all the
way to the breaking of the lock on State House.puf
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