How the Kajiado Central by-election will be won, and lost

The Kajiado Central by-election, slated for March 16, 2015, calls to mind the powerful dictum that “All politics is local.”

It is Thomas Phillip “Tip” O’Neill Jr, the late American politician and Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, who popularised the idea that victory and defeat in politics are decided at local spaces such as communities, constituencies and counties.

His book, All Politics is Local: And Other Rules of the Game (1995) is now a classic in political strategy.

In this context, the coming Kajiado Central bye-election will be won — and lost — on the battleground of issues and interests that matter to clans and sub-clans of the local Maasai community.

But the outcome of the bye-election will decisively change the political landscape and perceptions in the run-up to 2017.

As such, the bye-election is not just another poll — as it may appear on face value. Kajiado might actually become the place where presidential hopefuls meet their waterloo.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) cleared three candidates: Elijah Memusi Kanchory (ODM), Patrick Tutui (JAP) and Nkashuma Kuntai (an Independent candidate). But the race for Kajiado is steadily shaping into a two-horse race.

And Jubilee appears at ease with the media billing of the by-election as “yet another epic political duel” between President Uhuru Kenyatta and his political arch-rival Raila Odinga.

Kajiado is a classic buy-one-get-two scenario for JAP. In wooing and appointing ODM’s Major-General (rtd) Joseph Nkaissery as Cabinet Secretary for Interior and National Coordination in December last year, Jubilee hoped to calm the waters after a long winter of populist politics over spiralling insecurity.

But it also brought to its ranks the only Cord legislator in Maasailand, ODM’s kingpin in Kajiado County politics, and to cap it all, forced a rare by-election.

ELABORATE PLAN

The by-election fits well in Jubilee’s elaborate 2017 political game plan to subdue ODM in Kajiado County politics.

For starters, Kenyatta has seized the Kajiado poll to popularise the new JAP outfit as a vehicle for the his final presidential bid in 2017 and his legacy.

The Kajiado contest is new, but the Jubilee script is familiar. It expects Kajiado County to give JAP its first MP just like the county delivered the first MP to TNA, Moses Sakuda, in the 2012 Kajiado North by-election.

Second, Jubilee is massing its vast troops for the final assault on ODM’s bastions in Kajiado County. Among these are four out of five MPs, all but two Members of County Assembly (MCAs), the Senator and Women Representative.

Kajiado Governor David Nkedianye is ODM’s biggest gun after the grand old man of Maasai politics, William ole Ntimama, warmed up to Kenyatta in March 2014. But like his party, the governor is out-numbered and out-gunned.

It has not helped matters that the straight-talking National Assembly Majority Leader, Aden Duale, now has his gun on the governor’s temple.

Duale has put Nkedianye on notice that he should not use government resources to campaign for the ODM candidate. “If he does, we will use the tyranny of numbers to impeach him,” he warned.

A COMPLEX MAZE

However, the Nkaissery succession is a complex maze of deep politics involving four rival Maasai clans distributed across the constituency’s five County Assembly Wards and constituting over 75 per cent (or 29,660) of a total of 39,545 registered voters in 102 polling stations.

Clan-orientation to the by-election accounts for the frenzied scramble by political parties for candidates from Nkaissery’s Il-Matapato clan, the largest in Kajiado Central, estimated at 55 per cent of the voting population and more than 20,000 votes in the constituency.

Expectedly, all the three candidates in the Kajiado poll are from the clan.

With party feuds likely to split the Matapato vote, pundits are refocusing attention to the other three clans to tip the balance, mainly the Dalalekutuk (or Kankere) clan (24 pc), the Il-Damat (15 pc) and the Purko clan (6 pc).

On its part, JAP has mooted a two-pronged “peace diplomacy” aimed at ensuring that the Il-Matapato deliver a solid vote to Tutui and uniting other clans behind him.

President Kenyatta reconciled Nkaissery, who had supported Captain Anthony Kiroken — from Dalalekutuk/Kankere clan — during JAP party primaries, with his political nemesis for over a decade, businessman Tutui.

In turn, Nkaissery helped convince Captain Kiroken to back Tutui.

Rival coalitions will also battle it out for nearly 25 per cent registered Kajiado voters from non-Maasai communities.

Top on the list are the Kamba near the border with Makueni County (estimated at 12 per cent) and who voted for Nkaissery and the Cord Alliance in 2013.

But Tutui may count on his trans-ethnic marriage to a Kamba to sway the vote. The Kikuyu voters (8 pc) and a fast-growing population of Somali voters estimated at two-three per cent may be inclined to rally behind Tutui.

Kajiado Central, however, will not be a blissful walk in the park for JAP. Raila Odinga, who garnered 117,856 votes against Kenyatta’s 138,851 votes in 2013, and now seeking to rejuvenate his political fortunes after three unsuccessful attempts at the presidency, is still a formidable competitor.

A win for ODM is the white smoke that Raila needs to show that he is still relevant ahead of 2014.

ODM is fully aware that a Jubilee win will be a killer blow to Cord in Maasai politics and Odinga’s presidential ambitions.

It is playing a fine blend of local and national politics, nominating as its standard-bearer Kanchory, a Matapato who came second in JAP nominations. But it is also flagging national issues such as corruption and land grabbing.

Prof Peter Kagwanja is Chief Executive of Africa Policy Institute and former Government Adviser.