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Our elections are changing in strange and interesting ways
What you need to know:
- While it was generally agreed that with devolution, and so much money and power over local affairs moving to the counties, national politics and the presidential elections would cease to be a big deal, no one was sure how that would come down in practice.
- In the case of Jubilee, where some are wondering if indeed Deputy President William Ruto can be assured, should Kenyatta win the elections next year, that his mountain region base will support him in 2022, it probably will.
For several months recently, Kenya’s ruling Jubilee was in the news as it gobbled up small parties to form the Jubilee Party.
Now the opposition looks likely to coalesce around a big-tent rival thing that Musalia Mudavadi has proposed should come together under the banner of the National Super Alliance.
Barring a mega surprise, President Uhuru Kenyatta has the nomination of Jubilee Party in the bag. If the National Super Alliance materialises, or even if it does not and Cord remains outside it, it seems it is there that we might see a contest.
However, while all this is important in as far as it relates to the 2017 elections, something else far-reaching seems to have happened in Kenyan politics.
We are beginning to see the early impact of the 2010 Constitution and devolution.
While it was generally agreed that with devolution, and so much money and power over local affairs moving to the counties, national politics and the presidential elections would cease to be a big deal, no one was sure how that would come down in practice.
It would seem devolution and governors have reconfigured regional and tribal politics. It is no longer easy to go back to the countryside, emerge from there as a tribal political overlord, and use that to lay claim to a seat at the table of national government in Nairobi.
If I were President Kenyatta, for example, why should I bother when I can go over your head and deal directly with the governors on the ground, who have power in part because of the patronage of their office?
The result is that we seem to finally be heading for a two-party system in Kenya. It is probably a moot point what happens to the smaller parties. If they do not join one of the two big blocs, they will perish.
People like Peter Kenneth and Martha Karua are smart enough to understand this dynamic, and also what happens to the leaders of these parties.
Joining these blocs will give them a platform to launch their quest for governorship — Ms Karua for Kirinyaga, and Mr Kenneth likely for Nairobi.
This is because some governors have formed or are about to form their own parties, setting the scene for the shaping of the future contest for governorship. They will feature candidates sponsored by or allied to the governing big-tent ruling party in Nairobi and a nativist local party of the governor.
Which brings us to the meaning of all this. By loosening the regional grip of old parties and giving rise to local nativist organisations, Kenya could be back to the past, where one party (Kanu) ruled for decades.
The party that gets the calibration of its alliance right could be assured of at least 20 years in power. In the case of Jubilee, where some are wondering if indeed Deputy President William Ruto can be assured, should Kenyatta win the elections next year, that his mountain region base will support him in 2022, it probably will.
Not because of any particular reasons of loyalty or paying back a good turn, but because these “super” alliances seem likely to be very inflexible, making an exit from them very difficult or too costly.
By the same token, should the bigger opposition coalition come to be, then it will be less dependent on the reputed charisma of Raila Odinga, as that would no longer be critical for electoral outcome.
Finally, something else unexpected has happened. The governorship races are slowly becoming a contest among clans and villages, the presidential ones between rigid Leviathan coalitions.
The most unpredictable, and the only classic multiparty election, will be the one for Nairobi governor.
This is because the Nairobi electorate, because it will be ever the most diverse and representative of Kenya, cannot be organised around clans or even purely tribe.
Secondly, Nairobi — as the spate of global conferences of the past year and the rise of infrastructure that follows it attest — has continued a dramatic recovery as a major African capital.
Kigali has probably done a better job of it, but that is the point. The race is now really between cities in Africa, not countries.
When you are deciding on a conference it is not between doing it in Kenya or Rwanda. It is between Kigali and Nairobi.
The future ruler of Nairobi will be the governor of a small city state.
The author is publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3
