Tribe-based parties only serve to propel their sponsors to power

We have in the past few weeks been powerfully reminded that an alliance between two individuals can never provide a long-lasting and sustainable solution to any of the intractable conflicts that so often bedevil our nation.

It was sold as the answer to perennial warfare in the Rift Valley between their two communities but we can now clearly see that the Uhuru Kenyatta-William Ruto pact was built on quicksand.

ETHNIC BETRAYAL

There is no doubt that the partnership, which became the Jubilee Party, successfully delivered the presidency for Mr Kenyatta and his deputy, Dr Ruto, in successive elections. Now with the two seemingly drifting apart in yet another of those confounding permutations of Kenyan politics, at stake is not just survival of the party or fate of the power-sharing and succession deal between two individuals, but the illusory peace engendered by the alliance.

The Deputy President’s acolytes in the Rift Valley are angry. They suspect that President Kenyatta plans to renege on the presumed deal to support their man for the presidential succession in 2022 following his separate peace pact with perennial foe-turned-ally Raila Odinga.

They also feel threatened by the renewed war on corruption, finding every excuse to insert the DP’s name into every investigation or wave of arrests, although he has never been a suspect.

But maybe they are justified in feeling aggrieved and betrayed.

In their increasingly shrill and strident public demonstrations of anger, however, they are taking ‘personal challenges’ and transposing them to the wider arena of ethnic betrayal.

ORGY OF VIOLENCE

Dr Ruto’s allies are implicitly beating the drums of war. To them, President Kenyatta and his deputy going separate ways also represents an end to the political pact that bound their two communities — and, more seriously, an end to the ceasefire that ensured calm in the volatile Rift Valley after the horrors of the 2007/2008 post-election violence.

This is the uncomfortable fact most would rather steer away from. Some politicians from President Kenyatta’s ethnic wing of the Jubilee coalition, notably Kiambu Governor Ferdinand Waititu and Bahati MP Onesmus Kimani Ngunjiri, have publicly cautioned the President that ‘our people’ in the Rift Valley will be in grave danger if he ditches Dr Ruto.

The fear is that yet another orgy of bloody atavistic violence could be unleashed in Dr Ruto’s strongholds. This fear itself stands as proof that Jubilee was not built on any bedrock principles but, like all other political formations in Kenya, is nothing more than a special purpose vehicle put together with the sole aim of propelling its principal sponsors to power.

As a ‘ruling party’, Jubilee might be no more sustainable than its predecessors in the various alliances President Mwai Kibaki used to ascend and hold on to power — the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) in 2002 and the Party of National Unity (PNU) in 2007. Both went into disuse after fulfilling their missions.

BLIND FEALTY

The same applies to all the other parties and alliances that have come and gone since the return of multiparty politics. Mr Odinga, the ODM chief, contested the 2013 elections at the head of the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (Cord) and 2017 as flag-bearer for the National Super Alliance (Nasa). But again, both were movements put together as convenient platforms for temporary ethnic alliance building with nary a thought for long-term presence.

What this means is that all the political movements with any pretence to being serious national parties are dead or dying. That is the difference between parties or coalitions that are mere instruments for politicians seeking power and those grounded in something more solid in terms of guiding ideology, principles and platforms.

Kenya will remain stuck in this rut until the day voters abandon blind fealty to ethnic kingpins and look to leadership that really means well for the nation.

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Shocking images have gone around in the past few days of people dead or dying of hunger in Turkana, Baringo and other counties in northern Kenya.

The national and county governments have been roundly condemned for criminal misrule that allows poor Kenyans to die of hunger while corrupt leaders wallow in ill-gotten wealth and spend all their time plotting to capture or hold on to power.

It is a great indictment of leaders at all levels if people are dying for lack of food. However, resultant anger and indignation would be totally misplaced if based on fake and manipulated images. That seems to be the case in some of those pictures.

[email protected]; @MachariaGaitho