Why ‘Building Bridges’ is the wrong job for Uhuru, Raila
What you need to know:
Why are Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga are bothering themselves with a task they are clearly ill-equipped to deliver in the first place?
Nation building is the forte of statesmen and stateswomen, not ruthless power dynasties or political cult leaders.
President Uhuru Kenyatta sounded fairly passionate about the Building Bridges Initiative he started with his erstwhile political rival Raila Odinga during the Friday TV interview.
The President also appeared to believe that the two of them have cultivated the mutual trust needed to achieve the goals of their national unity project.
In addition to their now familiar public reference to each other as "my brother", he sought to put an official seal to the nine-month-old bromance, calling Mr Odinga a partner in the initiative several times. But Mr Kenyatta also came off as a bit deluded about their ability to deliver their lofty unity agenda and how the public debate around it should proceed. Notably, he was rather dismissive of leaders who have linked his deal with the ODM party boss to 2022 politics, describing them as ‘petty’. Such an attitude doesn’t help the President’s cause at all given the kind of clout or influence some of those leaders command in their respective constituencies.
THINK AGAIN
Someone like Deputy President William Ruto, who hasn’t concealed his reservations about Mr Kenyatta hobnobbing with Mr Odinga, has the political muscle to make their national unity project fall like the Sidindi Bridge. Dismissing people who read 2022 politics in the Building Bridges Initiative also portrays the President as being either out of touch with reality or sly. In his own political backyard, people are already discussing the legitimacy of a pre-election MoU he presumably signed with Mr Ruto about 2022 in the era of the Handshake or singing the Hakuna Deni song. And if he thought his recent euphoric reception in Mr Odinga’s political strongholds of Kisumu and Siaya was down to some vague post-2022 national unity agenda, then he certainly needs to think again!
STATESMEN
The long and short of it is that the ultimate test of the Building Bridges Initiative will come in 2022. It could also collapse along the way with the anticipated referendum falling-outs or government shake-ups. The only puzzle about the Building Bridges Initiative is why Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga are bothering themselves with a task they are clearly ill-equipped to deliver in the first place. Nation building is the forte of statesmen and stateswomen, not ruthless power dynasties or political cult leaders. Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga are Kenya’s most polarising political figures, each of them having his core support base in his ethnic community. Each of them has been involved in the country’s past four elections either as a presidential candidate or a key campaigner for one of the leading contenders. All the elections have been marred by various degrees of violence and bloodletting.
In the aftermath of the two worst episodes of election-related violence in 2007/8 and 2017, Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga have been part of political formations — Grand Coalition and Handshake Coalition — that have emerged to share the spoils. The two gentlemen surely couldn’t have transformed into statesmen overnight.
