Matiba and Raila: The boycotts, diplomats and political gamble
What you need to know:
Two things worked against Mr Matiba: His coffers had run dry and the opposition thought he was a spoiler too; taking blame for the collapse of the original Ford.
The question that is not being loudly asked is whether Mr Odinga has made a political goof, like Mr Matiba before him, or not.
While Mr Odinga may not fade as quickly as Mr Matiba, the boycott complicates his chances of ever winning the presidency.
Before he surprised everyone by boycotting the December 29, 1997 General Election, Mr Kenneth Matiba — like Mr Raila Odinga today — was the doyen of opposition politics.
After that political folly, Mr Matiba faded into oblivion and when he tried to come back in 2007 he only received 8,000 votes — losing even to political nondescripts like Mr Nazlin Umar, Mr Joseph Karani and Nairobi city evangelist Pius Muiru!
For Mr Matiba’s supporters, the boycott was a painful blunder. As he realised, rather too late, it was only then Ford Asili Nakuru East MP Francis Wanyange who was willing to boycott the elections.
The other Ford Asili politicians — all of whom owed their victory to Matiba’s prowess — quickly decamped to Mr Mwai Kibaki’s Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) fronted by Dr Apollo Njonjo and Prof Anyang’ Nyong’o with Ms Charity Ngilu as its presidential candidates.
SDP surprised many by winning seats in Kiambu and Murang’a.
WORKED AGAINST
Two things worked against Mr Matiba: His coffers had run dry and the opposition thought he was a spoiler too; taking blame for the collapse of the original Ford.
At the moment, National Super Alliance (Nasa) presidential candidate in the last election Raila Odinga has said that he has withdrawn from the forthcoming presidential race ordered by the Supreme Court after it annulled President Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory citing illegalities and irregularities.
Mr Odinga says without changes in the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the results would be the same arguing the electoral body had become “rogue and unhinged” and has turned “out to be a tool of political bandits”.
IEBC and the Jubilee Party seem unfazed with both continuing with planning and campaigning.
POLITICAL GOOF
The question that is not being loudly asked is whether Mr Odinga has made a political goof, like Mr Matiba before him, or not.
While Mr Odinga may not fade as quickly as Mr Matiba, the boycott complicates his chances of ever winning the presidency.
Again, he has an agreement to support Kalonzo Musyoka’s future presidential bid.
Mr Odinga’s Nasa, like Mr Matiba’s Ford Asili then, is also supposedly short of cash. British weekly, The Economist, says he has been running a “bare-bones campaign.”
GAME PLAN
This has also been voiced by the New York Times which quotes analysts suggesting Mr Odinga is “running low on campaign money” and “is withdrawing from the race for tactical reasons.
They speculate he may not have enough support to win the vote under current conditions and is bowing out to save face”.
The newspaper claims this withdrawal “may allow him to maintain his legacy as a veteran fighter for democratic reforms and for having instigated the Supreme Court’s historic ruling”.
Again, nobody seems to know Mr Odinga’s game plan after the withdrawal. Wrote The Economist: “By walking away, Mr Odinga seems to be gambling on his ability to threaten chaos to push Mr Kenyatta to negotiate. But the trouble with that strategy is that Mr Odinga is running out of money. The worst outcome for Mr Odinga is that his bluff is called and the election goes ahead without him…”
MATIBA BOYCOTT
While Mr Matiba’s boycott was projected to force President Moi to agree to more constitutional reforms to allow for a free and fair election — he found that MPs were only willing to negotiate for minimal reforms through what became known as Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group (IPPG) which was used by Mr Moi to hoodwink the opposition that it was in their interest to go for minimal reforms.
Mr Matiba had hoped that Mr Kibaki and other opposition politicians — Mr Wamalwa Kijana, Mrs Ngilu, Mr Odinga and Mr Martin Shikuku — would join him. They didn’t.
In April of 1997, a “no reforms, no election” campaign had been started in Limuru by the Citizens Coalition for Constitutional Change (4Cs) led by Dr Willy Mutunga, later Chief Justice, and by Prof Kivutha Kibwana’s National convention Executive Council which had, among others, lawyers Paul Muite and Kamau Kuria.
This had the support of some Western diplomats.
REFORMS
While Mr Kibaki, Ms Ngilu, Mr Wamalwa, and Mr Shikuku attended this meeting funded by the Ford Foundation — both Mr Matiba and Mr Odinga skipped it — it was the start of some short-lived dalliance between the opposition and the civil society in the push for reforms.
By this time, Mr Matiba, Mr Odinga and Mr Muite had hinted they could launch a campaign of civil disobedience against Mr Moi and perhaps boycott the elections.
While NCEC’s agenda was to curb President Moi’s power, repeal the oppressive laws and change the electoral system as part of a wider goal to have a new constitution, most of the opposition politicians were not for the push for a parallel government in case President Moi and Kanu did not give in.
That was the time that then Vice-President George Saitoti started approaching individual opposition politicians before he floated the idea of forming IPPG, which would be charged with the minimum reforms in Parliament.
TRAP
They fell for Saitoti’s trap and both Dr Mutunga and Prof Kibwana — and their lobby groups were sidelined after the government insisted that MPs were the people’s representatives and the only ones who could change the Constitution. Even Mr Matiba dismissed NCEC.
Mr Muite would later laugh at the IPPG deal and those who had joined it: “They deserted us and went and struck a deal with Moi in order to go to elections, thinking they would win the elections on the basis of those piecemeal reforms. We warned them against it, but we were in a minority. They lost the elections (and) came back to us to continue to demand for comprehensive reforms”.
IPPG managed to have the number of commissioners for the electoral body increased to 22 to give political parties a chance to nominate their representatives.
It was the failure to institute comprehensive reforms that saw Mr Matiba call for a boycott at a time when the opposition was divided between moderates, hawks, doves, and leftists.
BOYCOTT CALL
Those who opposed the IPPG reforms in parliament included Mr Odinga who unsuccessfully voted with 26 others.
But it was Mr Matiba’s boycott that threw a spanner into the works. He had hoped to scuttle the polls.
In the previous December 1992 election, the opposition had called a press conference at Chester House, some eight days to the elections and threatened a boycott.
It was diplomats in Nairobi, led by US Ambassador Smith Hempstone, who coaxed them to abandon the boycott call.
Again, the call for boycott was being interpreted as “a recognition of defeat, made far too late to have much credibility” according to historians David Throup and Charles Hornsby in their book, Multi-party Politics in Kenya.
REGISTRATION BOYCOTT
That June, Ford Kenya had also urged its supporters to boycott the voter registration but the Electoral Commission of Kenya chairman Justice Zaccheus Chesoni ignored the call and went ahead with the registration.
That would later harm Jaramogi Oginga Odinga’s Ford Kenya’s fortunes as many of his supporters kept off the registration.
The boycott also never worked after Mr Hempstone told the opposition: “Even in an unfair situation, I think the opposition should contest it if only to get an opposition voice in parliament”.
This logic was shared by the likes of Mr Muite who felt it was better to have opposition MPs in parliament to push for reforms than none.
RALLYING CALL
Interestingly in 1992, Mr Matiba was not for a boycott and his rallying call was “Let the People Decide’”
For refusing to join the proposed boycott, Mr Matiba’s Ford Asili became a victim of fake news when Mwai Kibaki’s Democratic Party (DP) decided to play dirty.
They had photocopied and distributed a fake cheque dated December 8, 1992 and ostensibly signed by President Moi as payment to Ford Asili to show that Mr Matiba was President Moi’s project.
There were other such comical fakes which would either be published by Njehu Gatabaki’s Finance magazine or Pius Nyamora’s Society as the divided opposition — of course with the tacit help of intelligence service — damaged itself from within.
SUPPORT
Pundits now say President Moi had the support of the British government which was afraid that a Matiba victory could see the departure of the Asians to London after the politician kicked off an anti-Asian campaign.
While the US had been funding the opposition, their interest shifted again to President Moi who was willing to help Washington after they launched Operation Restore Hope in Somalia — a few weeks to Kenya’s election.
With the Unified Task Force charged with carrying out United Nations Security Council Resolution 794 to create a protected environment for conducting humanitarian operations in the southern half of the country, Kenya became the most important platform for Washington and democratic push took a back seat.
As Ambassador Hempstone would later admit, the US appeared less interested in observing that election: “Certain elements did not take part. No CIA guys went because the acting station chief didn’t think it was what she wanted them doing. No military people were engaged. All the rest were volunteers.”
FRACTURED OPPOSITION
On December 30, 1992, both Jaramogi and Mr Kibaki had a meeting at the Democratic Party Bruce House headquarters and threatened to pull out of the entire process unless fraud in 65 constituencies was rectified.
A day later, Mr Matiba, Mr Kibaki and Jaramogi called a Press Conference at Intercontinental Hotel rejecting the outcome.
But follow-up meetings in The Stanley and Ambassadeur Hotels could not agree on whether to boycott Parliament or to take up seats.
The fractured opposition could not agree on a common ground.
Had they boycotted Parliament, perhaps Kenyan politics would have taken a different route but they were all under pressure from Western diplomats, led by Mr Hempstone, who was christened nyama choma envoy by Kanu publication Kenya Times.
RELATIONS
Again for its part, Britain was happy Mr Moi had beaten Mr Matiba and the opposition and that is how relations with UK remained steady (but rocky for US).
“Had the Opposition come to power, Britain’s relations might not have been quite so warm and cosy in Kenya,” Mr Hempstone thought and said as much in his book, The Rogue Ambassador.
What worried Britain, and they quietly said as much, was that they had large investments in Kenya and their trade with Nairobi was much larger that of the US.
They feared that a Matiba victory would alter the politics: “Finally, they did not want 40,000 Indians dumped on them if things went as they did in Uganda…I happen to believe now, as I did then and I told them so that I could not understand their position,” said Hempstone later.
GRANDSTANDING
The only diplomat who shared his feeling was Germany’s Bernd Mutzelberg. While the Scandinavians were small countries with little muscle, Mutzelberg came to Kenya (his first posting as ambassador) as the country prepared for its first multi-party election since 1966.
For demanding transparency and prosecution of the corrupt, he rubbed the Kanu mandarins the wrong way but also did not support the calls for boycott.
At the moment, some Western diplomats have been pushing Mr Odinga — and Jubilee — to stop grandstanding threatening sanctions.
But what political observers will be keenly watching is whether Mr Odinga will follow the Matiba path and fade away — or he will retain his frenzied supporters who have kept the government on its toes with the “No Reforms, No Election” mantra.
[email protected] Twitter: @johnkamau1
