Kenyans are clearly not more united now that parties merged

What you need to know:

  • Senior management of the cash-rich or powerful government ministries like the Treasury, Energy and Petroleum, Transport and Infrastructure and Agriculture appeared to be reserved for the President and his deputy’s tribesmen.
  • The so-called grand merger didn’t shake up the national political landscape either, and the new party is anything but a behemoth.
  • Defections by MPs are among the most overrated political rituals in Kenya where more than 70 per cent of them are never re-elected any way.

So what changed after the dust settled on Saturday on the political fanfare at Kasarani during which 14 parties affiliated to the ruling coalition were collapsed into one Jubilee Party?

Not much in terms of the national unity narrative President Uhuru Kenyatta’s strategists wish to fashion for his second term bid next year, if you ask me.

Kenyans still widely use top public service appointments to rate an administration’s performance on inclusivity, and come the next elections Mr Kenyatta will face the same questions that he is keen to run away from on the campaign trail.

Why the senior management of the cash-rich or powerful government ministries like the Treasury, Energy and Petroleum, Transport and Infrastructure and Agriculture appeared to be reserved for the President and his deputy’s tribesmen, for example.

Or, why a Kenyan of an ethnic extraction other than the ones the two leaders belong to couldn’t be trusted to be in charge of “sensitive” security agencies like the Police, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations and the National Intelligence Service.

NATIONAL POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

The so-called grand merger didn’t shake up the national political landscape either, and the new party is anything but a behemoth. The core support base remains unmistakably that of TNA and URP, the two parties that drove the Jubilee coalition in 2013.

Granted, the occasion was used to parade more than 20 Members of Parliament said to be defecting from the Opposition.

Indeed the display of the defectors harvest was easily the highlight of the event. But questions will be raised about the quality of the catch.  

The Coast group, for instance, discovered it was out of touch with reality when it couldn’t deliver the Malindi parliamentary seat to Jubilee in the March by-election despite the formidable State machinery backing its campaigns.

Then there is the whole joke about parading fellows who have defected to the same party more times than I can remember in the recent past.

From State House to the Deputy President’s Sugoi home, church fundraisers in Ukambani, title deed issuing ceremonies in Kilifi, cheque presentations in Mumias and funerals in Bungoma, they simply never saw a place they didn’t want to announce their defection before.

The whiff of staleness aside, defections by MPs are among the most overrated political rituals in Kenya where more than 70 per cent of them are never re-elected any way.

It is no longer easy to tell when an MP defecting to the ruling party is doing so because he or she has read the mood of voters in his backyard right or he or she has decided to cash in and feather the retirement nest.

All said and done, the Jubilee jamboree at Kasarani was just another week in Kenya’s politics.

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