PNU resembles what the opposition looked like during Kanu’s heyday

No, the 202-vote margin was not a good one. Not good at all given the stakes.

That was the meagre difference between the 1,486 votes for the PNU candidate and the 1,234 votes for his GNU opponent in the now famous Karima civic ward by-election in Othaya on Monday.

Famous, yes, because President Kibaki astonished everybody by camping there for two days and turning it into a personal contest.

Pundits across the land did not tire in pointing out the incongruity of the President’s ignoring a more important parliamentary by-election in Nyamira County as he concentrated on a ward few know.

What particularly heightened my curiosity was that GNU was not the only interloper that had fielded a candidate in Karima.

Narc-Kenya and the President’s old party, the DP, were represented as well. Yet it was clearly the GNU that was driving the President up the wall.

I took it upon myself to ask a cross-section of residents why. GNU is fronted by assistant minister Mwangi Kiunjuri of Laikipia and former MP Nderitu Gachagua of Mathira.

The latter especially is driven by a rather unsettling ambition that has seen him on a permanent campaign to become governor of Nyeri County.

In the process he is eager to score any point he can in his consuming and bitter rivalry with the man who ousted him in Mathira, Ephraim Maina, who wants to be the county’s senator.

I doubt the President could care less about that. But he did seem to care about Mathira rivalries spilling over into his constituency, and more so the manner in which GNU carried out its near-victorious campaign in Karima.

As far as electioneering goes, Othaya is a backwater politically. It has never experienced serious campaigns ever since Kibaki became the local MP in 1974.

But for the first time the residents were being sucked into a glitzy little contest where party T-shirts and caps were on display everywhere.

Plus money, too, which is something Mr Kibaki, in all his years as MP, has made a point of never dishing out.

President Kibaki remains wedded to an old-fashioned belief that conventional political campaigns should be about candidates telling the voters what they will do for them in a practical way, with a programme and all.

The weakness of such an approach is that you assume Wanjiku will make rational electoral choices.

Unfortunately, the Othaya voter is no different from others when it comes to being influenced by noise and pomp.

Much as President Kibaki has his undoubted strengths, politically savvy is not among his gifts.

As President, he has failed to capitalise on the bully pulpit afforded by the presidency to take charge of his own central Kenya backyard.

Every politician in that region hankers to be president. Any little disagreement with his/her party, and he/she is off to form a new party.

The majority of the numerous registered political parties have a connection with central Kenya.

This unbridled lack of focus is certain to end in only one thing: defeat in the 2012 General Election.

That is notwithstanding the fact that, as the outcome of the Kitutu Masaba by-election indicated, ODM is not invincible.

Strangely, despite being a de facto ruling party, PNU resembles what the opposition looked like during Kanu’s heyday – rudderless, divided, confused.

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Last week, former US President George W. Bush flew into Africa on a three-nation tour as Amnesty International called on his his hosts to arrest him for gross violations of human rights when he was in power.

Nobody would more dearly love to see this penguin put behind bars than I. But every twit knows the obvious impracticality of it all.

Likewise, our judges should take time to ponder the likely diplomatic and geopolitical implications of their rulings. No man is an island.