After the glittering launch, which way forward for Jubilee Party?
What you need to know:
- ODM professes the ideology of social democracy, though it often operates as a one-man show.
- There is a widespread feeling that Jubilee was put together as an election vehicle for the Deputy President with an eye to 2022.
- I don’t agree with ODM that the emergence of the Jubilee party is of 'no consequence.'
Without me taking away ODM’s pedigree as the only big political party to have lasted more or less intact for a decade post-2002, Suna MP Junet Mohamed is nonetheless technically not factual when he describes the Orange party as the second-oldest surviving party after Kanu.
That distinction goes to the Democratic Party of Mwai Kibaki. It was the first Opposition party to rush to get registered when multipartyism was restored in 1991. It still exists, though in a comatose fashion.
It was followed by Ford-Kenya, currently the party of Moses Wetang’ula. The original Ford had not been officially registered before it splintered.
Even the forerunner of Wiper – ODM-K – is a bit older than ODM. Indeed, there are scores of parties out of the dozens registered presently whose existence predates ODM, never mind that many of these are briefcase outfits. There are others like NDP that got swallowed up along the way and vanished.
Anyway, I was just correcting the record. The question now is whether the newly minted Jubilee Party will learn the lessons of Ford and Narc and PNU, which were all mighty movements before they quickly self-destructed.
The issue is, is Jubilee just an election war machine? Which path will it take? Mass movements like old Kanu and South Africa’s ANC were launched with a liberation credo. Upon winning independence they became dominant political parties.
Tanzania’s CCM, another mass movement, was started in 1977 to nurture a homegrown ideology. However, CCM has since withered into an ordinary albeit still powerful political party as Tanzania gradually abandoned her Ujamaa socialism.
ODM professes the ideology of social democracy, though it often operates as a one-man show. Jubilee has yet to give clarity on where it stands ideologically.
However, President Uhuru Kenyatta is on record as saying that, of all the world leaders of the modern era, the one he admires most is the late Singaporean titan Lee Kuan Yew.
It is possible, then, that he would be tempted to model Jubilee on Lee’s People’s Action Party (PAP), primarily because of its uninterrupted electoral success that has ensured it has retained power in Singapore up to today.
NATURAL HATRED
PAP is action-oriented, programmatic, technocratic, pro-capitalist – and highly adaptive. Something else that Uhuru must never forget: in its lifetime PAP has had absolutely no stomach for corruption, which is Kenya’s Achilles’ heel.
Alongside a natural hatred of communism, Lee didn’t care about ideological ‘isms’ as long as his government delivered – on jobs, education, housing, integration, investment. Singapore owes her huge success to this remarkable man.
If Kenya were part of Europe, ODM would be what they call there a left-of-centre party, Jubilee a centre-right one. ODM leans on the distributive side; Uhuru’s circle is pro-business.
It will be interesting to see how an untamed populist like Kalembe Ndile – whose TIP party was among those that merged into Jubilee – will fit into the new set-up. But the guy is quite flexible and worked very well with Mwai Kibaki, the ultimate pro-business politician.
There is a widespread feeling that Jubilee was put together as an election vehicle for the Deputy President with an eye to 2022.
If that is really the case, then the long-term vision of the party which should be broad and all-encompassing is left looking narrow. As a matter of fact, I find the Jubilee party’s logo of two clasped hands too limiting. It conveys the message that only two entities – TNA and URP – are the ones coming together. I wish this logo was changed to something more inclusive.
I don’t agree with ODM that the emergence of the Jubilee party is of “no consequence.” Deep down, the opposition party does not believe its assessment either. No wonder it scrambled to hold a rival bash in Mombasa on the day of Jubilee’s launch. The flood of defections, especially from Wiper, cannot be easily dismissed either.
This brings us, finally, to the expense of the Jubilee party launch. The media speculation on this was obsessive. Depending on where you stood, you either marvelled at the glitz, or recoiled at the extravagance. Either way, it was an early warning of the kind of resources and razzmatazz the Opposition will be up against in next year’s General Election.
The buzz about “opulence amidst poverty” should be taken with a pinch of salt. ODM was striving for a similar splash if only they could afford it.
Senator Hassan Omar warned that ODM was making a strategic mistake by trying to copy Jubilee in its money game.
