Anarchic strategy that cost Cord victory in security laws debate

The new security laws were signed by President Uhuru Kenyatta on Friday. But this is hardly the end of the acrimony it stoked or the end of the road for Cord’s determination to fight it as “draconian and anti-democratic”.

Opposition leader Raila Odinga has vowed to fight the new laws.

In a less poisoned political environment, the passing of the new security laws and the appointment of the opposition’s most accomplished securocrat, retired Major-General Joseph Nkaissery, to head the Security docket would have been celebrated as a double victory for Cord’s unrelenting campaign for security.

But Cord hardliners and allied neo-liberal activists in civil society have prevented the opposition from picking these low-hanging political fruits by claiming a landmark victory in Kenya’s security debate and galvanising the surgery of the country’s security architecture.

Notably, the security laws are the government’s considered “soft power” response to unrelenting and palpable pressure by opposition leaders and civil society activists to restore security and protect the citizens and their property against the backdrop of spiralling insecurity relating to banditry, rustling and terrorism.

ANARCHIC STRATEGY

Ahead of the debate on the laws, an alliance of opposition radicals and human rights fundamentalists in civil society rallied behind an anarchic strategy that the ODM cobbled together to filibuster the passing of the laws.

This anarchic strategy resulted in the most ignominious chaos in the country’s history, which has left Parliament and the opposition with egg on their faces.

Genealogically, the ugly events in Parliament reflected a stridently anarchic strategy that ODM adopted in a Kisumu party meeting in January 2014 in preparation for the 2017 elections.

However, the anarchic strategy nearly brought Kenya to a tipping point after May 31, 2014, when Odinga returned home from America, and stridently turned insecurity into the pivot of opposition revitalisation agenda.

Cord’s anarchic approach informed the shoe-throwing incident in Migori on September 8, where youthful hooligans chanting opposition slogans hurled shoes in the direction of the dais in President Kenyatta’s rally at Migori Primary School. This sparked an outpouring of fury and disgust and won the admiration from many Kenyans because of the restraint that the presidential guards showed by not opening fire.

In an ironic twist, Cord’s anarchic strategy is also exacting its toll on the opposition’s internal democracy. The opposition’s anarchic strategy has enthroned chaos as the “new norm” in Kenyan politics.

This is true of the “Men in Black” who disrupted ODM party elections at Karasani on February 28, 2014 to the Nairobi Members of County Assemblies who stormed and violently ejected ODM Executive Director Magerer Lang’at from a parliamentary group meeting; and the “Men in White” who violently disrupted ODM party primaries in Homa Bay last week.

This week, anarchy broke out in Parliament as the “Honorable Men in Suits” nearly violently disrupted parliamentary debate on the security laws Bill undermining the credibility of the opposition and the reputation of its doyen — Raila Odinga.

ANARCHY IN PARLIAMENT

The anarchic strategy also informed the thinking behind the chaos witnessed in Parliament.

The anarchy and mayhem were a logical outcome of several meetings organised by Cord stalwarts and civil society human rights crusaders to plan how to disrupt the debate on the security laws Bill in Parliament.

As such, on December 15, 2014, Cord convened a strategy meeting at Ufungamano House, a venue associated with the activism for multiparty system, to explore several options, including mass action and disruptions in Parliament.

However, on December 17, Cord resolved to employ the tactics used by the opposition against Kanu during the Eighth and Ninth Parliaments in the 1990s.

This eventually forced Kanu to the negotiation table, leading to the Inter-Party Parliamentary Group that agreed on minimum changes to the constitution.

This was reportedly followed by intensive coaching of parliamentarians and signing up to be in Parliament to execute the strategy.

A day before the debate, in what appeared like a deliberate move to divert the attention of the Jubilee security strategists from the real strategy, Cord announced that it would hold street protests against the Bill. But its real focus was Parliament where it deployed its legislators to disrupt debate on the Bill.

FAILED STRATEGY

The idea was to make the House ungovernable by raising countless points of order, shouting and taking off with the mace to paralyse parliamentary business.

However, the strategy failed and the Bill was passed into law with all the amendments. Again, this is a double jeopardy for Cord and Raila Odinga who have lost morally and politically.

Jubilee stalwarts argue that the reason Cord and Raila fought so hard to disrupt the Security Laws Bill is because its passing and the likely restoration of law and order would deny the opposition a potent campaign issue which is now the pivot of its 2017 campaign. But the new law is unfolding into a new frontier of Cord’s anarchic strategy. The former Prime Minister has vowed to fight it.
The writing is starkly on the wall. A lethal mix of ODM’s anarchic strategies amidst a growing threat of terrorism casts a dark shadow on the prospects of a peaceful General Election in 2017.

Professor Peter Kagwanja is the Chief Executive, Africa Policy Institute, and former Government Adviser