Odinga’s pathway to dismantling Jubilee and remaking post-poll Kenya

Kenya has another rendezvous with destiny on August 9, 2022. However, the big question remains: Is the Kenyan State (democracy) politically resilient enough to weather the gathering storm of elite power tussles, to underpin Kenya Vision 2030 and President Uhuru Kenyatta’s legacy (Big Four) agenda?

After the 2017 double-election in August and October, it was tempting to view the country’s most protracted election as a smoking-gun proof of the mettle and resilience of the Kenyan State (Sunday Nation, 14/1/18). But intellectual debates are beginning to cast doubts on this wisdom.

In a regional seminar in Nairobi last week, Mutahi Ngunyi turned the spotlight on what is theorised as the “Elasticity of Democracy”. 

POLITICAL ELASTICITY

To be sure, the concept of political elasticity – connoting an order that is relatively sensitive or responsive to changes in political conditions – is not new to political scientists. But the looming clash of the titans in Kenyan politics is poised to test the resilience of the Kenyan State.

From a critical analysis of recent events, Raila Odinga is the spider weaving the political web to dismantle Jubilee power and remake post-election Kenya. 

Certainly, Odinga lost the trophy in the 2017 election — and he is, undoubtedly, a “bad loser”. But he is winning the larger moral war.

Odinga’s ODM juggernaut and allied civil society nihilists subtly denied Jubilee the out-and-out moral victory it needed to stabilise the state and install a victor’s order.

Universally, a decisive political and moral victory is a pre-condition for stability based on the “victor’s justice”. 

INTERNATIONAL LIBERAL ORDER

The prevailing international order is anchored on victor’s justice. Victory over Hitler and the Axis powers during World War II enabled America and the Allied powers to stabilise the world and enthrone the victor’s international liberal order.

In Africa, battleground victories enabled Yoweri Museveni (Uganda, 1986), Meles Zenawi (Ethiopia, 1991), Paul Kagame (Rwanda, 1994) and Eduardo Dos Santos (Angola, 2002) to establish a victor’s order. 

A resounding win (65 per cent and above) in democratic elections is the equivalent of a battleground victory. Jubilee’s failure to completely vanquish Odinga and his National Super Alliance (Nasa) in the 2017 election marked a turning point in its fortunes.

Recent events bring back an eerie sense of déjà vu. Predictably, in his assault on the bastions of Jubilee power, Odinga’s main assets are the resilience of his party (ODM) and the hard lessons in political elasticity he has learned over the years.

DEFEAT KANU

After the 1997 presidential race, where he came third after Daniel Moi and Mwai Kibaki, Odinga artfully played on Moi’s vulnerability to infiltrate, dismantle and eventually defeat Kanu.

In the wake of his razor-thin victory in the 1997 election, Moi faced the acute risk of a united and way stronger opposition in Parliament shutting out his government or even impeaching him.

Odinga seized upon Moi’s political vulnerability, jettisoned a pre-election pact with Kibaki, merged his National Development Party (NDP) with Kanu and joined the government.

Odinga deferred his presidential ambition ahead of the December 2002 election. Instead, he opted to be a kingmaker and threw his lot behind Kibaki under the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), handing a historic defeat to Kenya’s liberation party.

In the 2003-2007 hiatus, Odinga formed ODM as a vehicle for his 2007 presidential bid. 

In an ironic twist ODM, like a giant octopus, co-opted Kanu and its Young Turks (Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto, Kalonzo Musyoka, and Musalia Mudavadi), swallowed Kibaki’s NARC and won the November 2005 constitutional referendum as a trial run for his December 2007 presidential bid.

MORAL WAR

Odinga lost the December 27, 2007 battle but won the moral war, and eventually half of government as Prime Minister in Kenya’s first experiment in executive power-sharing. 

Odinga’s lessons have come from serious gaffes relating to the 2013 election. As an incumbent, in a continent where incumbents seldom lose elections, during the 2010 constitutional referendum Odinga abandoned his long-term ideological crusade for a parliamentary system under a Prime Minister, endorsing a pure American-style presidential system ostensibly to give teeth to his “reform agenda” and as the lynchpin of a new constitutional order.

He lost the 2013 election. Out-numbered, out-gunned and out there, Odinga re-invented himself as the paragon of social justice fighting “an exclusive coalition of two ethnic aristocracies” (the Kikuyu and Kalenjin) that had monopolised power since independence in 1963, calling for a referendum on the constitution under the banner of Okoa Kenya (save Kenya).

Unwittingly, Jubilee missed the larger context of Odinga’s moral crusade. A regime based on one tribe (Hutu in Rwanda or Burundi) or a coalition of two tribes (Kenya) may garner the tyranny of numbers to win an election. But in divided societies with deepseated ethnic consciousness amid widespread poverty, an ethnically exclusive government is morally vulnerable.

VOICES OF REASON

In the 2017 battle for the soul of Kenya, and increasingly on the road to 2022, Jubilee’s supremacists have rejected voices of reason to replace the Kikuyu-Kalenjin diarchy with an expanded ethnic coalition based on the principle of inclusivity. 

Instead, they have pursued a zero-sum “one-man-has-to-be-defeated” (Odinga) scenario to retain the presidency in 2022. 

However, the long electioneering process and post-election impasse signalled the failure of this strategy.

After the March 9 handshake, Odinga has strategically shelved adversarial politics and launched a robust scramble for Kenyatta and the soul of the Kikuyu Nation.

He is shrewdly forcefully pushing for a genre of politics based on the “destroy and rebuild” theory of change.

SHED OFF EXTRA BAGGAGE

Odinga has abandoned the NASA ship to shed off extra baggage, instead positioning ODM as the official opposition party in Senate (James Orengo) and National Assembly (John Mbadi).

Odinga is weaving a new inclusive multi-ethnic coalition, and calling for a referendum as a trial run for 2022. In this configuration, a two-tribe formula is the Ruto camp’s waterloo. 

A two-tribe option will radicalise Kamba politics, embolden Kanu in the Rift Valley and Odinga’s support in the Coast, Northern and Western Kenya.

In the absence of an offer the Kikuyu elite cannot refuse, Jubilee might face Kanu’s 2002 scenario where an alliance of the Kalenjin and sections of the Kikuyu lost to a broader multi-ethnic coalition. 

This scenario is even more likely if Odinga plays the “Tosha” card as a king maker.

Prof Kagwanja is a former Government Adviser and Chief Executive of the Africa Policy Institute.