Mathare loss a wake-up call for Jubilee to oil its machine

What you need to know:

  • Writing on the wall: If ruling coalition does not put its house in order, and soon, then the referendum is a one-sided contest.
  • Mathare is a wake-up call for Jubilee to re-build its strong political machine to face the looming referendum.

The curtain has fallen on the August 11, 2014 by-election in Nairobi’s Mathare constituency that occurred in the shadow of an opposition-led push for a national referendum.

In its wake, the ruling Jubilee Alliance has lost in a fierce war of perception that it needed to win.

Mr George Wanjohi of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s The National Alliance (TNA) lost the by-election to Mr Stephen Kariuki of former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), who garnered 14,996 votes against Wanjohi’s 14,082 votes.

Opposition spin-doctors are already on the plow, hyping the razor-thin victory of 884 votes as “a reflection of what will happen in the referendum.”

Undoubtedly, the loss of a seat that the Alliance previously held is painful. But this is a self-inflicted pain. Soon after victory last year, the alliance packed the political machine with which it rode to power.

A low turn-out and the obvious impact of the Monday blues aside, Kariuki’s victory was long coming. A rather bizarre view why ODM won Mathare is that it exploited the gap created by the trip to the Washington for the US-Africa Summit by the President and Jubilee kingpins to sneak through the lines and clinch a narrow victory.

NOMINATION PROCESS

But the problem runs deeper than this. It all started with a prickly party nomination process that failed to foster a sense of internal democracy as a vital step in uniting party leaders behind a candidate.

In this regard the Gatundu and Mathare by-elections alike exposed the feeble structures and processes of nominating candidates as the bane of party democracy in Kenya.

A subtle mix of a weak structure to support the candidate and low level of esprit de corps within its ranks created by supremacy wars and internal schisms cost Jubilee its Mathare seat.

As such, Jubilee MPs were either absent in the campaign trails in Mathare and Gatundu South while some openly campaigned against Alliance candidates.

A weak political machine is likely to hurt the Jubilee Government’s ability to face-off with an emboldened referendum axis.

Second, also contributing to the loss is a creepy ethnic logic pushed by some pundits that Mathare was a win-win for TNA because both Kariuki and Wanjohi are from central Kenya.

As its net effect, this logic lowered the stakes for Jubilee’s campaign architects, and reduced the incentive for resource mobilisation to ensure support and a large voter turn-out.

Cord exacted revenge, astutely playing the ethnic card by fielding a Kikuyu (Kariuki) to vanquish the incumbent (Wanjohi) and cause a rout within Jubilee.

Notably, in 2012, the Party of National Unity (PNU) fielded a Somali candidate, Yusuf Hassan Abdi, for the Kamukunji by-election who went on to thrash his ODM’s ethnic kin, Ibrahim Ahmed (Johnny).

Moreover, the ethnic logic fostered an ethnic-focused campaign structure that easily played into ODM’s campaign strategy of reducing the by-election to a straight fight between two Kikuyu political foes in Starehe/Mathare politics in 2007 and 2011 by-election.

The campaign pitted Bishop Margaret Wanjiru, Kariuki’s mother, against Maina Kamanda, the chair of Wanjohi’s by-election campaign.

CAMPAIGN TRENCHES

Similarly, the import of the Mathare seat was also eclipsed by the high-profile role in the campaign of 2013 Nairobi Governor candidate, Ferdinand Waititu, who has petitioned last year’s results.

Similarly, the visible absence of Mike (Mbuvi) Sonko in the campaign trenches deprived TNA strategists of the option of pitching the ballot as a Sonko-Wanjiru contest, which would have upped the ante in the contest, draw in non-Kikuyu voters and possibly tip the balance in TNA’s favour.

Third, because of the above factors, Jubilee’s wonks admit that their Mathare strategy was weak. TNA Secretary-General Onyango Oloo conceded that Cord/ODM “must have put in place a formidable strategy to win the seat,” adding: “TNA will have to review the whole process with the aim of reinvigorating the party.”

While TNA’s “consensus-building” strategy of encouraging rivals to step down in order to leave one candidate minimises internal contest and promotes a sense of unity in the leadership worked in Gatundu, it failed in Mathare.

Even with covert behind the curtain negotiations, Kariuki declined to step down. In the end, negotiations slowed down the TNA candidate’s campaign to the advantage of Kariuki, who allegedly benefited from the tacit support of the Young Turks in the TNA brigade as a well-plugged in and polished urban youth.

WAR OF PERCEPTION

ODM’s Mathare victory has given an edge to Cord in the war of perception as it pushes for a referendum. Buoyed by the victory, ODM pundits are putting Jubilee on notice, warning of a coming political tsunami and touting the election as an indication of Cord’s popularity nationally and “a reflection of what will happen in the referendum”.

Perhaps emboldened by the victory, Jubilee critics in central Kenya have trooped into the campaign for a national referendum. Former presidential candidates Martha Karua and Peter Kenneth officially joined Cord’s campaign during the official launch of its one-million signature campaign at Ufungamano House.

Small registered parties, which are not beneficiaries of the Political Parties Fund, have also backed the referendum to push for equitable funding for political parties.

It has not helped matters that Jubilee’s elected leaders have not spoken with one voice at a time when they are required to do so. In the wake of the Anglo-Leasing saga, key Jubilee MPs openly criticised the government’s position. Jubilee’s rebel governors are now in the frontline of pushing for the plebiscite.

Against this backdrop, Cord is creating the perception of a powerful build-up to an unstoppable referendum while broadening the referendum push from a partisan affair to a nationwide movement.

However, the entry of players known to be close to London such as Richard Leakey, John Githongo and the Africog crowd is already causing unease within the Jubilee Government, and is likely to introduce a new ideological fault line into the referendum debate.

Even then, Mathare is a wake-up call for Jubilee to re-build its strong political machine to face the looming referendum.

Prof Peter Kagwanja is the Chief Executive, Africa Policy Institute