Plebiscite call is all about giving big boys jobs
Ford Kenya leader Moses Wetang'ula. He has called for the amendment of the Constitution through a referendum to create positions in government to accommodate disgruntled election losers.
PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
What is remarkable about Mr Wetang’ula’s change of tune is his relative honesty.
Other leaders who have been seen to back the referendum idea have preferred to wrap their real motives in a cloak of vagueness.
- Thanks to Mr Wetang’ula’s vocal indiscretions, the more politically discerning Kenyans will now see the campaign for what it is.
The Tuesday terror attack on Nairobi’s 14 Riverside offices and hotel complex has rudely distracted Kenya’s public square from its pet topic: Politics.
News of investigations and arrests related to the attack executed by suspected Al-Shabaab militants is likely to dominate the headlines many days to come.
But matters like security tend to rank much lower than power politics in our public debate agenda, and sooner or later, we’ll pick it up from where we left on the referendum campaign.
VAGUENESS
Just before the terrorists interfered, the campaign had gone up a notch, with Ford Kenya leader Moses Wetang’ula among the newest converts. Speaking in Kericho last weekend, Mr Wetang’ula called for the amendment of the Constitution through a referendum to create positions in government to accommodate disgruntled election losers. The Ford Kenya leader’s support for a plebiscite represents a spectacular somersault from his earlier view that some power-hungry individuals were behind the renewed push. Not that it wasn’t expected. Kenyan politicians shamelessly pull such stunts all the time. What is remarkable about Mr Wetang’ula’s change of tune is his relative honesty. Other leaders who have been seen to back the referendum idea have preferred to wrap their real motives in a cloak of vagueness. When President Uhuru Kenyatta first dropped hints about his position on the debate, he was still able to leave a lot to the imagination.
Explaining their Handshake deal with his erstwhile bitter rival Raila Odinga, the ODM party leader, to a crowd in Kisumu early December the President was quoted as saying: “We said we must look at this issue of winner takes all. If that is why some people feel left out of government, we must ask ourselves, 'Is it a good thing or not?’”
Even Mr Odinga, the chief referendum proponent, has often sought to fudge the issue, trying to cast the renewed clamour for constitutional change by the political elite as meant to ensure ‘national unity’ and ‘inclusivity’.
PUZZLE
Thanks to Mr Wetang’ula’s vocal indiscretions, the more politically discerning Kenyans will now see the campaign for what it is. It is all about creating jobs for the big boys, folks. Those reports about some community elders going in for power-sharing negotiations with President Kenyatta and offering him the post of the prime minister in a future government might have sounded crazy at the time.
But, are they?
To borrow from the pulpit, nothing should really puzzle anyone in Kenya’s power politics.
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The Somalia-based Al-Shabaab once again managed to stage a deadly terror attack on Kenyan soil. The casualty from the siege on 14 Riverside, according to official accounts, was lower than the ones at Westgate Mall in 2013 and Garissa University in 2015. This has been widely attributed to swift response by security agencies. But it does little to address the concerns that involvement of Kenyan troops in the military campaign in Somalia isn’t make us any safer.
