ODM failed to understand Kitutu politics
Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) apparatchiks are saying that the recently-concluded Kitutu Masaba by-election could not have been won by their party.
This, they say, is because the constituency is a solid Party of National Unity (PNU) enclave.
Is that really the case? Let us look at this statement from six possible angles.
One would be to establish that the people of Kitutu Masaba espouse certain political, social and economic values which PNU best exemplifies.
Two, is to ask whether ODM had a campaign strategy aimed specifically at critiquing PNU’s stated values and to show the people of Kitutu Masaba that its ideals were indeed better.
Three is to establish that the PNU candidate best expressed these values on the stump so much so that the people of Kitutu Masaba identified him as the one who best articulated their likes and hates, fears and hopes.
Fourth is to argue that it was not the candidates or ideas that mattered but that the race turned on the entry of the big beasts of Kenya’s political jungle into the fray.
Five is to find out whether ODM was up against PNU or the so-called G-7 Alliance.
And six is to ask whether what happened in Kitutu Masaba backs, or appears to establish, a pattern regarding past by-elections in which ODM has participated.
Regarding values, as I say, this is not what you hear on the stump in our campaigns.
Secondly, as I say, there is not much of a philosophical difference between our parties. No politician takes to the stump to clearly differentiate his party from the next.
All politics, as they say in the UK, is local. Therefore, the politics of Kitutu Masaba, as of Matuga at the Coast, Starehe and Kamukunji in Nairobi and Ikolomani in Kakamega, is about roads, schools, health, water, security, cost of living, agriculture, jobs and youth to name but nine.
These are the issues that dominate local and, therefore, national politics. It is to these issues that Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta addressed himself in Kitutu Masaba. Indeed, he said government would provide funds for on-going projects identified by constituents.
Therefore, ODM ought to be very concerned because it lost in Matuga, Kamukunji and Kitutu Masaba.
The party did not run a candidate in Ikolomani, but the man it backed lost, so ODM lost.
The party lost because it failed to come to grips with local politics.
It failed to see the issues that are close to the hearts of the people and to address them sensitively.
When, for example, ODM’s big beasts were in Matuga, they failed to counter Mr Chirau Mwakwere’s portrayal of them as outsiders “here today and gone tomorrow”.
Mr Mwakwere was unequivocal in Kitutu Masaba, declaring that he was in the constituency to show the constituents how the people of Matuga defeated ODM in their by-election. He asked them to own their by-election.
Second, ODM has not shown the hunger for the seats it has campaigned for the same way PNU has done.
In Starehe, for instance, a desperate Bishop Margaret Wanjiru camped at Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s office to convince him to go with her on the campaign trail.
In Kitutu Masaba, when bad weather could not allow his helicopter to land, Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka addressed rallies via his mobile phone.
It was a stroke of genius; it showed the people what they meant to him and it showed this seat mattered to PNU.
Over in Kamukunji, Mr Musyoka again stole a match on ODM. He moved swiftly to announce government had released money for re-carpeting the roads in the constituency and especially in Eastleigh.
A government decision was claimed and owned by PNU.
Where PNU moved to own the ground in Kitutu Masaba, flooding the constituency with foot soldiers who were embedded with local leading lights for the long haul, ODM ground troops were not in evidence. The few around were outnumbered and outlasted.
Did ODM know who the enemy was? Mr Walter Nyambati was the PNU candidate but, in this fight, PNU metamorphosed into G-7.
Therefore, the strategy was to frame the by-election as a local battle in the on-going war for national leadership.
It was a fight in which Mr Nyambati and the Omogusii community were presented as important players on the national plane to be protected by all means possible against predatory forces fronted by Mr Odinga.
When ODM failed to see beyond those behind Mr Nyambati, it was game over. ODM complacency lost to G-7 strategy.
Kwendo Opanga is a media consultant [email protected]
