Uhuru, Raila deal is stifling a more urgent, inclusive national dialogue

As Parliament hurriedly endorsed and legitimised the secret and private deal between President Kenyatta and his political nemesis-turned-bedmate Raila Odinga, and as the latter’s popular Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) became an accessory of the governing Jubilee Party, I wrote thus on March 24:

“Now the danger is not that the legislative dictatorship I warned about last year is complete. It is that there is no knowing what legal or constitutional changes the President and Mr Odinga would put before a rubberstamp Parliament ...” Now we know but, still, just a tiny wee bit. Information about this contract is doled out in measly dribs and drabs exclusively by Mr Odinga as the President assumes a sleeping partner profile. Last week, Mr Odinga ominously warned that unless there are legal and constitutional changes “confusion, heartaches and possibly chaos” would mar the 2022 General Election.

The 2010 Constitution is the property of Kenyans which is why the framers, cognisant of the wanton mutilation of its predecessor by successive dominant political classes, made amending it an uphill task. It will be steep, even for President Kenyatta and Mr Odinga, because they seek to change it on the basis of a private deal only whose skeletal outline they have made public.

DEBATE

The point of departure should have been to put the entire deal before the public, explain it and let the country debate it. It should have been to sell the objectives and chapter and verse of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) whose existence Mr Odinga revealed last week, to the public and seek its buy-in and ownership of the change process.

The President and Mr Odinga should have published the legal status, standing and terms of reference of the 14-member team touted as implementers of the deal. Instead the two men want to hold Kenyans to ransom by threatening those criticising their nebulous contract on Kenya.

They have also described their deal as a Bridge Building Initiative to a prosperous, graft-free Kenya devoid of negative ethnicity. But Senior Counsel James Orengo firmly asked Nasa co-principals to give the President and Mr Odinga space to exclusively execute their deal. That’s a bridge to exclusion.

DIALOGUE

It would appear the deal, MoU and 14-member panel have pushed national dialogue out of the picture. But Kenyans have different views regarding how they want Kenya post-2017 General Election to shape up and cannot be railroaded into President Kenyatta’s and Mr Odinga’s tunnel vision.

Some, including myself, prefer a national dialogue, which Mr Odinga and National Super Alliance (Nasa) favoured before the former jumped ship and cut the deal with the President. However, the pact appears on collision course with the statutory National Cohesion and Integration Commission and the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission. The deal appears set to ride roughshod over these commissions or to duplicate their roles under an as yet unexplained force of law.

Is the pact about the 2022 General Election or, put another way, the Kenyatta II succession? Mr Odinga  and ODM say they are currently focused on uniting Kenyans and not the next General Election.

But Mr Odinga then links the General Election to chaos if there are no changes to the law. That’s the giveaway. Apart from shaking hands and declaring an end to the post-2017 General Election related hostilities, the President and Mr Odinga have not yet embarked on a determined and deliberate peace-building campaign. And contrary to popular expectation, the President did not dwell on the Building Bridges Initiative in his State of the Nation Address.

EXPANDED EXECUTIVE

However, Mr Odinga’s high profile visits with former Presidents Moi and Kibaki, and his call for an expanded Executive coupled with the President’s attack on elements in Jubilee opposed to his pact, have led to speculation of an emergent President-Odinga-Moi alliance aimed at scuttling Deputy President William Ruto’s 2022 ambition.

Mr Odinga says the deal is too big to be reduced to creation of Executive jobs. Perhaps. Let the MoU show the scope and size of the pact as should the TOR of the 14-person panel and the attendant campaign to popularise the bridge-building initiative and define the road map of inclusivity.

Questions, suspicions and speculation will abound as long as the March 9 pact and the work of the 14-person panel are not comprehensively explained. Until that happens, popular opinion will hold it to be conspiratorial, about the presidential succession and about subverting the constitution to serve exclusive interests.

Opanga is a commentator with a bias for politics [email protected]