Jubilee would be ill-advised to handpick nominee for city seat

The suggestion that Water Cabinet Secretary Eugene Wamalwa could be the Jubilee candidate for Nairobi governor seems to have hit a raw nerve with the coalition’s city MPs. A group of them have testily claimed he is being planted by the Deputy President, and vowed to fight the choice.

Like any person, Wamalwa is of course within his rights to contest anywhere he chooses, the capital city included. That is assuming every competitor will be given a fair shot at the ticket.

Jubilee is a pretty crowded house already when it comes to the city gubernatorial race. Naturally, all those in it are promising to respect the party nomination outcome, and to fulsomely back the winner. In practice, things don’t go like that. There will be the inevitable vicious disputes and charges of rigging or other hanky panky.

The aggrieved lot will likely defect to other parties or at best refuse to support the chosen party nominee. The incumbent, Evans Kidero, has a good reason not to be overly discouraged about his chances at this stage, barring an unexpected eventuality. Nairobi happens to be full of surprises.

Kimondo Kogi is a streetwise taxi driver of my acquaintance in the city centre who vows his gubernatorial vote will go to Senator Mike Sonko the minute the polls open.

The buzz on the street places the senator as the frontrunner. And it is not just the young and the large bloc of low-income residents who have a soft spot for this colourful and unusual politician.

Ms Margaret Wanjiru knows her way around city politics well and has a gift of the gab the manner preachers do. In contrast Johnson Sakaja, the TNA chairman, is quite new to Nairobi politics. He is targeting the youth as his primary vote, which will bring him butting heads with Sonko, who sees that as his terrain.
I personally know Dennis Waweru of Dagoretti South to be a decent person, though many say his footprint beyond his Dagoretti fiefdom is uncertain. He may also be handicapped by his association with Starehe MP Maina Kamanda, whose grip in the city is surely in its sunset days.

Kamanda has been around nearly as long as from when Nairobi was created from a swamp. He is one of the survivors of city politics who counts himself as a kingmaker. His record on this is mixed as Mwai Kibaki, who once relied on him to tame City Hall, found out when he could never quite win control there the way Ford Asili at one time did.

PROBLEMS BREWING

The choice of Wamalwa obviously would be to lure the large Luhya vote in the city to vote Jubilee. During the last election cycle this vote went strongly to Kidero.

However, with the much-publicised problems brewing for ODM in the former Western province, the calculation is that Wamalwa’s candidacy, all else being equal, could tilt the scales. The Luhya vote is quite heavy in Nairobi, on par with the Kamba one which is particularly concentrated in places like Embakasi, Makadara, Kayole and Dandora.

Wamalwa is a big name in Trans Nzoia and Bungoma counties, a legacy of his late brother Michael Kijana Wamalwa. Still, in Nairobi his viability is uncertain. Him being picked by Jubilee would almost certainly prompt the mercurial Sonko to defect, and thus throw the entire gubernatorial race into uncharted waters.

I am betting the party’s honchos will not be so shortsighted as to handpick a nominee.

Aha, and there’s the other colourful and interesting character Miguna Miguna to contend with as well in the city contest. He would definitely be a challenge for either Jubilee or Cord to nominate. The possibility is he could opt to run as an independent candidate.

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It could be television is slowly killing mega-sport events like the Olympics by drawing away spectators who crowd the stadia to watch the sportsmen compete. Initial reports from Brazil indicated poor attendance at the early women’s football games. Matters will hopefully improve after Friday night’s official opening ceremony.

The absence of Russian athletes over doping transgressions will rob these games of a certain competitive edge which this European sports superpower always brings to the Olympics. Well, they had to be punished to clean up their act. Kenyan athletes were nearly barred too from competing due to what the World Anti-Doping Agency called non-compliance.

Mercifully they got a last-minute reprieve. All the best to them in whatever disciplines they are competing in.

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