Cleaning house in ODM the right thing to do now

The internal problems of opposition party, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), were back in the news last week with renewed attention on the activities of Budalang’i MP Ababu Namwamba.

Namwamba had run for secretary-general in the party elections in February which broke down in chaos.

In the latest round of attention, Namwamba was reported in the media as having delivered a withering attack on his party boss, Raila Odinga, after reports that a new line-up of proposed officials that excludes him had been hatched by the party.

Namwamba’s attack drew a ferocious response from other party members, who accused him of serving as a Trojan horse in ODM for the benefit of Jubilee.

Several other members then came to Namwamba’s defence, including Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho and a group of politicians from western Kenya, Namwamba’s home area, who brought a sectional tinge to the issue.

Joho took offence with claims that Namwamba was funded by outsiders in his high-profile campaign for the position of secretary-general in the abortive elections, saying he had funded Namwamba’s campaign himself.

KANU PROJECT

Trojan horse tactics are a tried and tested technique in Kenyan politics.

When Kenya resumed multi-party status in 1991, the late Johnstone Makau formed the Social Democratic Party (SDP), amid whispers that it was a Kanu project to crowd out legitimate opposition parties.

SDP, however, asserted its independence and said it intended to compete for power against Kanu in the 1992 elections.

Late in the day, after the opposition Ford had splintered, Makau defected to Kanu, on whose ticket he went on to capture the Mbooni parliamentary seat.

He became Minister for Information and Broadcasting in the next government, a role he played with hawkish loyalty.

The split in ODM before the 2007 elections gave rise to ODM Kenya whose contest for power in the elections was viewed as benefitting President Mwai Kibaki’s party, the Party of National Unity.

When the ODM Kenya leader, Kalonzo Musyoka, accepted the position of Vice-President in the Kibaki government in 2008, weakening the opposition’s dispute over the election results, this was viewed as confirmation of the existence of a pre-election understanding between the two parties.

More recently, both Eugene Wamalwa and Musalia Mudavadi have been accused of working with the establishment in order to split the Luhya vote and, therefore, deny Cord what, it was thought, would have been bloc support from that area.

The point to be made is that spoiler tactics, of the kind that Namwamba is accused of, are part of the arsenal in Kenyan politics.

Also, sectional fights within political parties are part of the history of Kenyan politics, and the big split in Ford which gave rise to Ford Kenya and Ford Asili was motivated by sectional competition within the party.

DISORGANISED OPPOSITION

Since the 1990s, a consistent problem in Kenyan politics is the internal disorganisation of opposition parties, out of which Kanu always sought to benefit.

A major difference between then and now, however, is that while the disorganised opposition of old had the support not only of a large part of the country but also the sympathy of the media, there is much less media sympathy with the opposition today.

In the 1990s, aligned with the opposition, the media were also on the receiving end of state repression but today, aligned with the state, the media have a comfortable relationship with the government, while exhibiting intolerance towards the opposition.

In these circumstances, media are less forgiving of opposition frailties, and will dissect and magnify their every failure mercilessly.

Further, the media will portray opposition weaknesses as supporting the position that the opposition is not ready for power and the country, therefore, lacks choices outside the ruling party.

In truth, Kenya’s ruling parties are no less dysfunctional. However, incumbency acts as the glue that motivates the members to stick together.

Secondly, as a ruling party, Kanu’s main method of weakening the opposition was through staging defections from opposition ranks.

While political party reforms have raised the cost of formal defection, space still exists for the governing party to raid the opposition through de facto defections, now a feature of Kenyan politics, including under the Jubilee government.

What Kanu never perfected was the Trojan horse method, of which Jubilee now stands accused, and which has apparently frozen ODM into internal inertia.

DEMONSTRATE FAIRNESS

The burden that the Namwamba issue places on ODM is to demonstrate fairness to him.

If, as claimed, Namwamba is working for outsiders, and even though evidence of disloyalty is not always easy to establish, ODM must somehow demonstrate his disloyalty if it is going to rely on that claim to his prejudice.

If ODM is unable to demonstrate that Namwamba is working for outsiders, it must live with him inside.

Whatever ODM chooses to do about its internal situation, the party needs to recognise that the polarised politics in the country, a predatory governing coalition looking for profit in ODM’s slippages, and a largely hostile media, creates a ruthless atmosphere under which its frailties will be examined.

In these circumstances, even though risky, cleaning house in ODM is not just the right thing for the party’s evolution, but also a debt to its support base.

Party elections will not only renew ODM but will also demonstrate that the party has the courage to take the risks that accountability brings, and will place the opposition in a much better position to demand similar accountability elsewhere.

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