Will Kalonzo agree to be Raila’s running mate?

A week of significant anxiety over the future of the nascent National Super Alliance (Nasa), which is supposed to unite the opposition to take on Jubilee in the elections in August, has ended with a reported proposal on a possible presidential candidate for the alliance.

It is reported that ODM leader Raila Odinga is proposed to be the presidential candidate for the united opposition and will share a ticket with Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka. This would be a repeat of the ticket that brought the two together in 2013 in Cord under which they unsuccessfully ran for president against the current Jubilee incumbents.

It is reported that the position of Chief Minister will be established and will be offered to Amani National Congress leader Musalia Mudavadi. The last of the four Nasa principals, Moses Wetang’ula, who is the Ford Kenya leader, is reported to be proposed for the position of Speaker of the National Assembly.

LOST TO KIBAKI

Mudavadi and Odinga were running mates in the fateful 2007 elections in which they were adjudged to have lost to Mwai Kibaki’s Party of National Unity.

In the elections, Musyoka broke away from the two to run under ODM Kenya, and then ended up as Kibaki’s vice-president in a post-election coalition formed to stabilise the country that was by then bleeding from the violence resulting from ODM’s rejection of the election results.

While it remains to be seen how the four principals will react to the proposals by the technical team, Odinga should have no problem accepting the proposal to become the opposition presidential candidate, and with Mudavadi and Wetang’ula widely viewed as likely to accept the positions that are on offer for them, much now turns on whether or not Musyoka will accept to be Odinga’s running mate.

Musyoka has lately made a very public case as to why he is the most suitable presidential candidate for the opposition alliance and has also stated that if he fails to get the nod to run for president, he will leave the coalition. Although both Wetang’ula and Mudavadi had initially also made strong claims for the presidency, based on a widely-held view that it is the turn of the Mulembe Nation to lead, they have been quieter of late, leading to a conclusion that they would be more willing to compromise than Musyoka.

BARGAINING HARD

Just by bargaining so hard, Musyoka has significantly increased his stock in the country’s politics and is likely to use this for leverage in the opposition negotiations.

While this is what he would have desired, it is a result that comes with huge responsibilities for him. Already, Musyoka is accused of having betrayed opposition unity in 2007, first, by walking out on ODM, and then by agreeing to a coalition with Kibaki without which the president’s narrowly constructed support would have been insufficient to form government for his second term.

Although Kibaki did not support Uhuru Kenyatta’s candidature in 2013, the succession of the former by the latter has created an ethnic continuum that is seen as entertaining an ever-growing supremacist ideology.

In the bitter recriminations that characterise Kenyan politics, Musyoka regards himself as a victim of Kibaki’s betrayal.

Although he went against the opposition’s wishes by entering into a coalition that allowed Kibaki to save his presidency, the former president was ungrateful to Musyoka whom he failed to anoint as successor.

At the same time, if Musyoka had made different choices in 2007, Kibaki may not have had the chance to betray him five years later. Further, by supporting Kibaki, regarded as having stolen Odinga’s victory in 2007, Musyoka supported, and benefited from, Kibaki’s alleged electoral fraud.

DEPUTY PRESIDENCY

Whether or not Musyoka accepts the position is also likely to turn on what else is offered to him, in addition to the deputy presidency.

The spoils of office formed an elaborate part of the agreement made between The National Alliance of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto’s United Republican Party in 2013. Bizarrely, their agreement has led to an ethnically exclusive government, as each of the two principals has tended to reward only co-ethnics with public appointments.

Nasa would need to guard against this problem, and would need to ensure that the need to share spoils of office, if they ascend to power, does not lead to the kind of ethnic exclusion that Jubilee has been practising.

The idea of creating the position of Chief Minister is likely to elicit reaction in many quarters and would need to be clarified. Would the creation of this office require a constitutional amendment?

AMENDING CONSTITUTION

Opposition to the idea of amending the Constitution, just to create a position for one person, is a likely criticism. In principle, there would need to be exploration over whether a position of this nature could be established by executive order, in which case a constitutional amendment can be avoided.

Another issue of importance would be the succession plan that goes into whatever agreement is reached by the Nasa leadership. It is now known that, in 2013, Odinga and Musyoka reached an agreement that the latter would succeed the former after five years. Elements of this nature may need to be considered for inclusion in the Nasa agreement.

A possible complication is the fact that the Nasa agreement involves more than two parties, each one of whom would like to be president at some point. This almost means that the agreement has to be short-term in nature, and should contain elements to the effect that each presidential candidate serves for one term and hands over to the next in line.

TRANSFORM KENYAN POLITICS
A consequence of an agreement of this nature is that it will transform Kenyan politics, and demystify the presidency as an object of the cut-throat competition that characterises the country’s politics at the moment.

Another consequence of one-term clauses is that it will create a situation where all the co-operating parties will have clear choices between staying in the coalition because of the relatively short waiting period, or breaking away in search of what might be an unlikely search for ascendancy to the presidency.

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