Winners and losers in National Super Alliance deal

It is now official. On April 27, 2017 Raila Odinga was selected to fly the flag of the National Super Alliance (Nasa) to challenge President Uhuru Kenyatta and the ruling Jubilee Party in what is evolving into a two-horse race in the August elections.

While it is too early to predict who will win between Jubilee and its new challenger, the million-dollar question is: Who are the winners and losers in the new opposition deal?

Nasa is a triumph of strategy in the new era of post-truth politics. Seemingly, it was purposefully created to dramatise the opposition’s rise, like the Sphinx, from the ashes of defeat and despair.

It follows the odd tradition of “new super alliances” bearing catchy names to create a sense of “newness” such as the National Rainbow Coalition (2002), the Orange Democratic Movement (2007) and the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (2013), which were formed on the eve of Kenya’s general elections – and whose skeletons now litter the political landscape.

These alliances are created as “new brands” in the political market as a strategy to enable generations of opposition stalwarts to hew “coalitions of the willing” from Kenya’s “super tribes” (the Kikuyu, Luhya, Kalenjin, Kamba and Luo), which collectively constitute over 70 pc of the country’s voting power.

PALE SHADOW

Touted as the return of pentagon, Nasa is a pale shadow of ODM’s 2007 Pentagon. Like Jubilee’s Kikuyu-Kalenjin détente after 2013, Nasa’s Luo-Luhya-Kamba ethnic matrix has a serious inclusion deficit.

As the obvious victor in the bruising battle for Nasa leadership, Raila will fire his famous “last bullet” after three failed attempts in 1997, 2007 and 2013.

This is a triumph of the political capacity and strategy Raila has accumulated over his 25 years political career. The huge capacity, which includes in-house polling capacity, enabled Odinga to clinch the Nasa leadership.

A poll in March showed Odinga as having 68.3 pc of backing of Nasa supporters, against Musyoka’s 13.1 pc, Mudavadi’s 12.1 pc and Wetang’ula’s 2.2 pc. MPs aligned to Kalonzo rubbished the poll as “biased” or “cooked” but they had no capacity to release a counter poll.

Moreover, as soon as Raila was declared Nasa captain, his economics adviser, David Mwangi Ndii, tellingly released the results of another poll to justify Odinga’s selection showing that the Raila-Kalonzo ticket was supported by 55 pc of Nasa supporters with a Kalonzo-Mudavadi ticket endorsed only by 4 pc.

Be that as it may, Odinga’s trophy is Kalonzo finally agreeing to be his running mate. Like Charity Ngilu in the 2007 ODM pentagon matrix, Kalonzo is expected to deliver the Kamba vote.

LUO-LUHYA ALLIANCE

Get the Wiper Democratic Movement leader out of the equation and Nasa will be no more than a Luo-Luhya alliance marooned in the country’s far Western fringes.

But Kalonzo is running against serious political headwinds. The Minority Leader in the National Assembly, Francis Nyenze, David Musila and other luminaries of Kamba politics have publicly dismissed Kalonzo’s decision to deputise Odinga as a raw deal for the Kamba nation.

“It is a tall order to convince our people to vote again for someone else and not Kalonzo as the flagbearer”, said Nyenze.

Expectedly, the winners of the absence of Kalonzo from the presidential ballot are the Young Turks in Ukambani politics, aligned to Jubilee or coalescing mainly around Machakos Governor Alfred Mutua and his Maendeleo Chap Chap.

But the real loser is Amani National Coalition leader Musalia Mudavadi who inspired the formation of Nasa, but has accepted the obscure position of “chief minister,” grafted onto the technocratic office of Secretary to the Cabinet.

Social media is awash with messages where the ANC leader is parodied as having received the “tail and the skin” after he gave his cow to Raila to slaughter. Earlier on, Mudavadi’s supporters had taken to the streets in Kakamega to protest when it was leaked that he was to be “chief minister.”

THINK TANK

In a strategy document titled “Crunching Numbers 2017” unveiled on April 8, 2017, Mudavadi and his think tanks declared that: “Raila can’t beat Uhuru,” adding that the best ticket for Nasa was Mudavadi for President with Kalonzo as his running mate and Raila backing both of them.

Based on the outcomes of the 2007 and 2013 elections, Odinga and his think-tanks have become convinced that he does not need Mudavadi to win the Luhya vote. In 2007, Raila got 639,246 votes in Western Kenya, double the number of Kibaki’s 312,300 or Kalonzo’s 6,729 votes. And in 2013, he secured 755,525 beating Mudavadi who got 353,864 votes in the region and Uhuru Kenyatta’s 66,185.

Moreover, Raila’s ODM strategists stress his direct relations with the Luhya, asserting that he is more Luhya than most Luhyas. The story goes that Raila is eighth down the line as a great grandson of the fabled Nobogo Mumia, the monarch of Wanga Kingdom.

In this regard, he is a royalty among the Luhya. A proof for Raila’s Luhya royal bloodline is an iconic 1890 picture of Nabongo Mumia with his grandfather standing guard as aide de camp of Mumia!

WIN-WIN SCENARIO

Ford-Kenya’s leader Moses Wetang’ula is running a win-win scenario. He may become Speaker of the National Assembly if his coalition wins, or settle for Minority Leader if it loses.

Bomet Governor Isaac Ruto, recently declared the fifth Nasa principal, may be a featherweight but he gives the alliance a vital entry point to the Rift Valley.

Ultimately, the question is whether Nasa will fundamentally shake the political landscape.

As the American political analyst Jared Jeffrey rightly observes, the alliance is not a game-changer. Without a new younger generation of leaders at its helm, Nasa is no more than old wine in new bottles.

Despite this, Kenya’s democracy is the overall winner in the Nasa deal. The alliance was launched on January 11, 2017 to break the wave of euphoria generated by the launch of Jubilee Party in November 2016, where mass defections of opposition figures to the ruling party seemed to sound the death knell for the opposition.

Nasa will definitely make 2017 elections competitive. For democracy, a competitive election (obviously without violence) is way better than a fait accompli that there is no contest.

Prof Peter Kagwanja is chief executive, Africa Policy Institute.