Is there an ideological difference between Raila and Uhuru?

National Super Alliance leader Raila Odinga, and other members, addresses a news conference at Sarova Panafric Hotel, Nairobi, on March 22, 2018 about wrangles in the coalition. PHOTO | DENNIS ONSONGO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Raila Amolo Odinga often seems to follow in the footsteps of Jaramogi Oginga, his own adventurous bio-ideological father.

A popular Nairobi daily newspaper asserted in a page one story the other day that Raila Amolo Odinga is the only human being in Kenya who can “open the way” for Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta to visit Nyanza Province — that is to say, so that the President can tour Mr Odinga’s own political parish without occasioning any unhappy newspaper headlines.

However, if it is true that Mr Odinga is the one who raises roadblocks in Mr Kenyatta’s way whenever the President tries to visit Luoland, then, in that way, Mr Odinga is the one guilty of undermining free movement in Kenya.

However, do please note my phrase “if it is true”.

For, quite clearly, freedom of movement is central both to the universal definition of democracy and in Kenya’s constitution.

IDEOLOGY
If and when a country’s whole president is not free to visit any part of his or her country, then we cannot claim that ours is a free land.

But another question that the newspaper raised in its report was the claim that Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga have never had any real differences in terms of ideology – in terms, that is to say, of intellect or of ideological philosophy on how to organise a society in order to rule it in the best interests of all members.

The differences between Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga have usually consisted merely in how to capture and retain the minds, especially of their own very large respective ethnic communities, the Kikuyu and the Luo.

But, in terms of ideo-social philosophy – in terms, that is, of how to organise and govern a society into maximum work productivity and full welfare – in such terms, Raila Amolo Odinga often seems to follow in the footsteps of Jaramogi Oginga, his own adventurous bio-ideological father.

POLITICAL PARTIES
But my knowledge of history’s general ideological categories does not include awareness that Kenya’s political parties even today have any essential socio-ideological differences.

To be quite sure, Uhuru Muigai, the Kenyan President, claims to follow in the footsteps of Jomo Kenyatta, his own very colourful, very effective and nationally respected bio-political male parent.

That is why it always tends to mystify me whenever a newspaper writer claims that a political ideology is the only thing between Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta and Raila Amolo Odinga.

The question that I often ask myself and want to raise even here is this: Is there any real ideological difference between Uhuru Muigai and Raila Amolo, his chief challenger for Kenya’s highest office?

That, exactly, was the question that the Nation raised the other day when – probably unconsciously – it reported the opposition’s political meteorite as having opened “… the way for Uhuru in Nasa zones …” (Nasa being both the abbreviated form of the name of Kenya’s opposition alliance of parties and a Kiswahili verb, which means to set up a trick by which to catch a wild animal, a human thief or, for that matter, even a political challenger).

DEMOCRACY
If Nasa really named itself with that last purpose in mind – namely, so as to eventually catch the Government in the evils being committed by many individuals who work for it, then Nasa can achieve its purpose and fully earn its Nasa name only when it comes to power and only if it finds a method by which to effectively remove corruption and other social malpractices being perpetrated through loopholes in the present system.

What we learn from the failings of our socio-political system is that, only if and when we have succeeded in removing all the corrupt individuals from the corridors of power and expelled them into what Jesse Jackson, the black American oppositionist, used to call “the Outhouse” (namely, away from the White House) – only then shall we be in a position to say that ours is an effectively working democratic system.