Why politicians are now retreating to their backyards

It is that time of the election cycle again when politicians change loyalty and retreat to their backyards where they can count on the mostly ethnic voting bloc to ascend to power.

The latest high-profile politician to take this well-beaten path is former secretary-general of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s defunct TNA party, Onyango Oloo.

By virtue of his top position as spokesperson of the President’s party, Mr Oloo was a national political figure. However, last Tuesday he opted to defect to the rival ODM at a venue in his rural hometown of Kisumu, where he is reportedly eyeing a parliamentary seat, instead of the capital city of Nairobi where he has played most of his national politics over the last five years.

While the move may give Mr Oloo some political mileage at a personal level, the idea of retreating to his Kisumu base where Opposition chief Raila Odinga’s Orange party is dominant, significantly takes away the national stature the hitherto President’s ally has enjoyed all this while.

Little wonder, Mr Oloo’s critics, mainly from Jubilee Party, have termed his defection a retreat to ethnic politics: “It is sadly evident that by choosing to move to ODM specifically, he has reverted to tribal politics, something the Jubilee party firmly opposes and we can only speculate that he does so in a bid to use tribalism to win a local seat,” former Cabinet minister and head of the Jubilee party secretariat Raphael Tuju said in a statement to the media on Wednesday.

But Mr Oloo maintains it is for these very ethnic reasons that he was sidelined and elbowed out of the leadership of President Kenyatta’s re-election bid. Mr Oloo is, however, not the only politician retreating to his rural backyard. Among those who have already opted to “return home” include ODM legislators Stephen Kariuki (Mathare), Aburi Mpuri (Tigania East), Kubai Iringo (Igembe Central) and Isaac Mwaura (Nominated).

These legislators will be vying for seats on the Jubilee Party ticket which is believably more popular in the areas and communities where they hail from. Other former ODM legislators, Margaret Wanjiru, Henry Kosgey and Franklin Bett have similarly announced their “return home”.

MADE ABOUT-TURN

And besides Mr Oloo, the President’s party is also set to lose Migori Governor Okoth Obado, Richard Onyonka (Kitutu Chache MP), former Lands Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu, former assistant minister Wavinya Ndeti and former minister Prof Sam Ongeri, all who are headed to the Opposition, which is popular in their rural backyards.

Mr Onyonka recently defected to Jubilee where he spearheaded its election campaign in the Nyacheki Ward by-election in Kisii County. He, however, made an about-turn after Jubilee lost the seat to ODM. Meanwhile, Ms Ngilu’s and Ms Ndeti’s political outfits were member parties of President Kenyatta’s Jubilee Coalition in the 2013 polls. Ms Ngilu, who was one of the four principals of the Jubilee formation, has expressed interest to work with Opposition leaders Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka.

The tribe has, indeed, dictated Kenyan politics since independence. Even the bigwigs, including retired President Mwai Kibaki and independence hero Achieng’ Oneko, sought political comfort among their tribal communities in Othaya and Rarieda when the going got tough in the 1960s.

Kibaki fled from Nairobi, where he was MP for Doonholm (present day Makadara) constituency, following an electoral scare in 1969 from one Mrs Jael Mbogo. In an earlier interview with this writer, Mrs Mbogo claimed to have been the first victim of high-profile poll rigging in independent Kenya.

Mr Oneko’s instance was a little different. He won the Nakuru Town constituency seat in 1963 but quit government three years later to join the newly-created Kenya People’s Union party led by his comrade and Kenya’s first Vice-President, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.

Mr Oneko was arrested and detained till 1975 when he was released. However, when he resurfaced in elective politics in 1992, he opted not to recapture the urban seat of Nakuru but vie in his rural constituency of Rarieda.

ISSUE-BASED CAMPAIGNS

Former Subukia MP Koigi wa Wamwere recalls with nostalgia the electoral campaign process in the 1960s and 1970s that was more issue-oriented than tribally driven. Such were the days that persuaded, for instance, the late veteran politician John Keen to contest a parliamentary seat in the Luhya community dominated Trans Nzoia region.

“He did so fully aware that at that time there was probably no single member of the Maasai community residing in Trans Nzoia, yet still hopeful that his policies would sell and get him elected,” says Mr Wamwere of Keen, who narrowly lost the Kitale seat in 1963.

Acknowledging that tribal inclined politics has nonetheless been around since independence, Mr Wamwere, who was first elected MP in 1979, says the situation has become worse over the years.

The trouble today, he claims, is that Kenyan politics is 100 per cent ethnicised. Lawyer Harun Ndubi is equally disturbed by the tribalised pattern of Kenyan politics, which he observes, raises the fundamental concerns in terms of political dynamics in the country and the general disregard for issue-based campaigns.

This trend worsened from the era of the second phase of multiparty politics in 1992 with politicians aligning themselves with parties led by individuals from their communities. But at the onset, the Ford Kenya party seemed to achieve the rare feat of running a non-tribalised campaign. The Jaramogi Oginga Odinga-led party managed to get an MP elected from each of the former eight provinces.

However, during the next polls in 1997, most of them “ran back home” — Mr Odinga and Nyanza region MPs to National Development Party, Paul Muite and Central Kenya MPs to Democratic Party and Ford Asili as Michael Kijana Wamalwa and a section of Western Kenya MPs remained in Ford-Kenya. 

Mr Wamwere attributes this shifting pattern to the goals of politicians, which are more about winning an election than propagating the ideals they believe in: “This means that if projecting a national face of Kenya as was the case for Ford Kenya in 1992 and Narc in 2002 then that is the way to go. Alternatively if the tribal card does the trick, as witnessed in 2007 and 2013, then that is where the politicians head.”

At independence, explains Ndubi, the country united as one because of a common goal to end colonial rule: “However the founding father (Jomo Kenyatta) gradually resorted to ethnic mobilisation in subsequent polls, a factor that eventually introduced the tribal factor in Kenyan politics.”