Season of primaries which parties dread, but Jubilee has tougher task

Those who remember the bad old days of Daniel arap Moi know the man was a bagful of personal insecurities.

That is what defined his nasty little klepto-dictatorship. When the 1990 Saba Saba riots happened, I recall he demanded that lawyer Paul Muite present himself in person to him with an apology.

For what, Muite publicly wondered? I pictured the then high-flying pro-democracy activist sneeringly asking himself: I present myself to Moi? With an apology?

Even as the lawyer denied instigating the riots, he made it abundantly clear that an apology was the furthest thing on his mind, and certainly not to Moi.

In the end, Moi let the matter go, other than making a show of asking the lawyer to come out of hiding, which again Muite sharply responded to by insisting he had never gone underground.

DISCIPLINARY ACTION

I am in agreement with ODM that disciplinary action was necessary against Senator Elizabeth Ongoro and Migori Governor Okoth Obado over the disgraceful conduct of their supporters.

They needed to be punished for commandeering violent mobs to party headquarters and to a Migori rally, respectively. Nobody should tolerate such behaviour, in whatever party.

However, there are two things in Ongoro’s matter I have some trouble comprehending.

One, why fine her Sh1 million and then go ahead to rule her out of the contest in the Ruaraka Constituency she is familiar with which, in effect, amounted to a disqualification?

Two, why demand the two write letters of apology to their party leader? I think this amounts to overkill.

ONG'WEN ROUGHED UP

Why not confine the apologies to the party rather than to an individual who wasn’t even there during the twin fracas? What kind of mindset are we re-inventing?

In Ongoro’s case, my view is that any such apology should be sought and given to party executive director Oduor Ong’wen, who was visibly roughed up by Ongoro’s gang.

That would be the appropriate thing to do. One can already see the signs that this is going to be a very ill-tempered General Election.

In the ODM Busia County primary whose results were belatedly announced on Friday morning and later nullified, there was a suspiciously high turnout in the Teso strongholds of the gubernatorial incumbent, Sospeter Ojaamong.

Jubilee is taking a very risky gamble by holding all its primaries on a single day: April 21. This will pose a logistical nightmare which I very much doubt the party can handle.

STAGGERING NOMINATIONS

ODM thought better by staggering its nominations for about two weeks. That gives ample room to handle the torrent of complaints from aggrieved aspirants.

Jubilee has almost this delusional belief in its abilities and the technical gizmos it is continually introducing.

In its obsession to look techno-savvy and ahead of rivals, it unveiled Sh20 membership “smart” cards which it touted in the giddy manner it is promoting the government’s new internet “delivery” portal.

Then the smart card failed to work and many aspirants have rejected its use in the primaries.

Candidates who had hoarded the cards expecting to inflict a knockout punch on their opponents have been left counting their losses.

ETHNIC CONTESTS

Elections in Kenya are nothing more than ethnic contests. The commentariat tends to make too much of this fact while conveniently forgetting that the case is the same in much of Africa, and even further afield in “developed” places like Belgium where two dominant tribes, the French-speaking Walloons and the Dutch-speaking Flemish, live uncomfortably together.

In such situations, coalition-building is complicated by the fact that each ethnic formation does not want to see its leaders made to play second fiddle which, in effect, is seen as downgrading the status of that ethnic community. That explains why the search for a single Nasa presidential candidate is becoming so problematic. 

* * *
Lately, Ford-Kenya frontman Moses Wetang’ula is coming out as the most passionate defender of Nasa unity.

That should not come as a surprise because he has the most to lose in the event of a fallout. He has no major ethnic bloc to fall back to if things go haywire, unlike his other co-principals.

His artificially elevated rank as a co-principal depends entirely on the coalition sticking together.

Only then can he win the kind of spoils which ordinarily would not be commensurate with his status.

It is no accident Weta is always on the sidelines when his partners are endlessly peddling their intrigues on who should be the flagbearer.

[email protected]