Peter Kenneth’s gubernatorial ambitions and murmurs about 2022

I have never figured out how Peter Kenneth’s political decision-making works. The former assistant minister and Gatanga MP likes to aspire for the impossible when more realistic options are available.

Aiming for the unreachable as the key to personal success is the usual pap you read in so-called aspirational books. That is not how the real world works. Take Kenneth’s doomed 2013 run for the presidency. Tunawesmake as a rallying cry fell embarrassingly flat.

Well, here is Kenneth again, still striving for the big leagues, though he has cleverly stepped back from aiming for State House – for now. He just wants to be governor. In his usual coy manner, he is not saying of where, though he has indicated it will either be for Murang’a, Nakuru or Nairobi.

Whereas Murang’a would seem to be his for the taking, the smart money is he will settle for Nairobi, never mind that it is a far trickier proposition. Johnson Sakaja, one of the city’s gubernatorial aspirants, says he is “100 per cent sure” of this.

Why Nairobi? Kenneth likes posing as an urbane, sophisticated man. He was born and bred in the city, no less. He is, however, stressing he has no higher ambitions come 2022. I don’t buy that. It so happens that cosmopolitan Nairobi would be the ideal springboard for such ambitions better than rural, mono-ethnic Murang’a.

SUCCESSION PLANS

National Assembly Majority Leader Aden Duale unwisely let the cat out of the bag when, while “welcoming” Kenneth’s decision to support Uhuru Kenyatta’s re-election, he pointedly told him that Jubilee’s succession plans had been laid out.

Still, it pays to listen carefully to the delicate way Kenneth is going around it. What he is telling the Duales is that he is not interested in disrupting Jubilee’s 2022 plans. If I hear him correctly, he has not said that he is categorically ruling out a higher goal than the gubernatorial office when the right time comes. He doesn’t have to add that there are dozens of parties other than Jubilee to serve that purpose, and that there is room for more.

One really doesn’t have to subscribe to Duale’s questionable edict that Kenneth must shy off from running for president. Why should he? It is his right. Those intimidating him by citing ambiguous ethnic “agreements” don’t say when Wanjiku was enjoined in those pacts.

I also consider the ultimatum by Jubilee zealots to Kenneth and Martha Karua to dissolve their parties objectionable. Karua, of course, will have none of that nonsense, but I suspect Kenneth went along in resigning from the Kenya National Congress because he calculated that being in Jubilee best serves his larger objective.

Kenneth is taking a big gamble if it’s Nairobi he has set his eyes on. Politicians like Governor Evans Kidero and Senator Mike Sonko can frustrate him sufficiently to leave him wishing he had contested elsewhere.

His fellow Murang’a kinsman Jimnah Mbaru, the investment banker, has firsthand knowledge of how slippery city politics can be for anybody who enters the field with a sense of entitlement.

MESSIAH COMPLEX

It would be unfair – and a tad gross – to describe Kenneth as somebody afflicted with a Messiah complex. He can be quite presumptuous nonetheless.

He claims to have been approached by the three counties of Nairobi, Murang’a and Nakuru to run for governor. How did they do this? Through their elected leaders? Or through brokers and political blabbermouths? When were these approaches made?

For years I have wondered what makes Kenneth so confident that he is exceptional – other than his mixed-race heritage, perhaps. He left an excellent record as MP when it came to Constituency Development Fund utilisation. He was always tops in the country.

Yet what other set of skills does he offer that makes him feel unique? Granted, he has certain measurable accomplishments in public service unlike another Nairobi gubernatorial aspirant with a Greek name and a colourful social life, one Esther Passaris.

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Predictably ODM, through its mouthpiece Junet Mohammed, has come out in opposition to diaspora voting. The unspoken reason is because the party knows it can’t get the majority of those votes. The IEBC should stand firm against being dragged in circles by disgruntled political parties.

Diaspora voting is mandated by the Constitution, and the Supreme Court once ruled as such. That is how matters are.

@GitauWarigi