President Kibaki, Uhuru Kenyatta and Mama Ngina Kenyatta, Uhuru's mother and a former first lady
Did Kenyans notice something interesting when President Mwai Kibaki attended a public meeting in Nyeri last week to begin what his handlers say are farewell meetings ahead of his retirement next year? Yes!—the President virtually endorsed Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta as his preferred successor.
How? Being a laid-back politician who does not use many words to reveal his intentions, the President’s body language and the protocol at the Nyeri meeting said it all.
First and foremost, it is Uhuru who officially received the President to the venue, and having gained considerable experience over the years he has been in politics, the Finance Minister exuded the confidence and demeanor of someone who is ready to fill the shoes of the ‘big man.’
Indeed Uhuru looked mature, looking the President straight in the eye and giving him a firm handshake with Special Programmes minister Esther Murugi keeping a discrete distance the way a maid would do when her boss receives an important visitor.
In fact, Uhuru looked like the President’s host despite the fact that Kibaki was in his own backyard and that the Finance Minister comes from Kiambu. And given that First Lady Lucy Kibaki was conspicuously absent, the entire Nyeri arrangement left no doubt that Uhuru was the man in-charge of the President’s first public meeting which his immediate family convened to give the ‘old man’ a chance to thank Kenyans for entrusting him with various leadership positions for the over four decades he has been in politics.
Granted that President Kibaki has, in not so many words and fanfare, endorsed Uhuru as his preferred successor, what does this mean for the crowded field of candidates that is seeking to succeed him?
There are a number of individuals and interest groups that are certainly going to be affected by this move and the impact will vary in degree depending on how each has been hanging on Kibaki’s tailcoats.
First to be affected will be the G7 Alliance that loosely brings together Uhuru himself, Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka, Eldoret North MP William Ruto and his Saboti counterpart Eugene Wamalwa.
Although the G7 Alliance has said it will conduct free and fair nominations to pick a common presidential candidate to face Prime Minister Raila Odinga at the 2012 general election, Kibaki’s endorsement of Uhuru certainly scatters this arrangement.
In this regard, Uhuru should prepare himself for a repeat of what happened to him in 2002 when then President Daniel arap Moi endorsed him as his preferred successor to the disgust of other contenders in Kanu who included Kalonzo, Raila, Local Government minister Musalia Mudavadi and Internal Security minister Prof George Saitoti. It, therefore, took Raila’s courage to marshal other disgruntled contenders of the time into rebelling against Moi’s choice and crystalise into a formidable force against Uhuru.
The rest as the saying goes is history, because the anger that Moi stoked by endorsing Uhuru saw the emergence of a political steam-roller in the name of the National Rainbow Alliance that vanquished ‘Project Uhuru’ at the 2002 polls and swept Kibaki into power.
Hence, if Uhuru learnt any lessons from the 2002 experience, then he should be very careful about a Kibaki endorsement for 2012 because such endorsement puts him in a similar position as the player in a game of rugby who keeps possession of the ball for a long time—such a player is a candidate for tough tackles and his safely only lies in relinquishing the ball.
There is also another reason why Kibaki’s endorsement of Uhuru may not be of much help to the Finance minister. Kibaki, unlike Moi, is not a forceful politician that can afford to risk everything to push a “project” the way Moi did in 2002.
It would be significant to cite former Gem MP, Joe Donde’s, description of President Kibaki in 2003 in order to understand why Uhuru may not gain much from Kibaki’s endorsement.
“Kibaki is like a signpost. A signpost only points to the right direction but it cannot take someone to the destination. If someone wants a vehicle to carry him to a particular destination, he should pick Moi to carry him,” Donde said in 2003 soon after Kibaki came to power.
In this regard, as much as Kibaki has endorsed “project Uhuru II”, his contribution may just end at that—he is unlikely to campaign vigorously for the project the way Moi did in 2002. Besides, Uhuru would wish to be seen to be his own man this time around and it would do him a lot of good if he avoided another piggy-ride.
As for the rest of the G7 Alliance, Kibaki’s endorsement of Uhuru should be good reason for them to stop counting on the support that Uhuru’s constituency brings to the Alliance. There is no way Uhuru’s constituency will support a presidential candidate in the Alliance if that candidate is not Uhuru because this will amount to letting down President Kibaki—and nobody in Uhuru’s constituency will be prepared to disappoint a leader like Kibaki who salvaged their fortunes during his reign.
In this regard, it is safe to conclude that the G7 Alliance is headed for a major split because other members of the Alliance will find it very difficult to persuade their constituents to support Uhuru.
Besides, Uhuru being a man of means and with Kibaki’s endorsement in the bag, he will simply bulldoze any nomination exercise, if it ever happens, to ensure that he emerges victorious. Why? Because nobody would like a nomination exercise whose outcome would embarrass President Kibaki.
To have a feel of how things will play out in case the G7 conducts nominations to pick a common candidate, one only has to relate to how the Kenya Police has handled certain cases. In the case concerning the death of former world marathon champion Samuel Wanjiru, the Commissioner of Police Mathew Iteere declared that it was a suicide even before investigations were carried out. In this regard, there was no way Iteere’s juniors would later conduct investigations and give a report that contradicts what their boss had said earlier. The same happened in the case of University of Nairobi student, Mercy Keino, whose badly damaged body was found on a Nairobi highway after being run-over by speeding vehicles. Despite there being other persuasive accounts of how Ms Keino could have met her death, the police boss announced, beforehand, that hers was a case of a “normal road accident”, yet investigations were ongoing. In this regard, how would anyone expect junior officers investigating the Ms Keino’s death to give a report that contradicts what their boss had already said!
This is the same fate that will meet any nomination exercise that the G7 Alliance may hold to pick a common presidential candidate—truth be told, there is no way the nomination can be expected to produce a candidate other than the one President Kibaki has endorsed. In this regard, with Kibaki’s silent endorsement of Uhuru at the Nyeri meeting, there is no way the G7 nomination exercise will produce a candidate that contradicts the “boss’s” preferred choice.
In view of this, just as much as the rest of the G7 Alliance should forget counting on the support that Uhuru’s constituency brings to the outfit, Uhuru should also forget counting on the support that the constituency of the rest of the G7 members brings to the Alliance so long as his endorsement from Kibaki stands.
But this analysis depends on one condition—that Uhuru and William Ruto’s case with the ICC at The Hague does not go to full trial. If the case goes to full trial, the whole equation changes because this would have knocked out both Uhuru and Ruto from contention—the two most formidable contenders to the presidency under the G7 Alliance.
Once Uhuru and Ruto are out, the Alliance still collapses because Kalonzo and Wamalwa don’t have the financial means and political charisma to hold the Alliance together. Neither the Vice President nor the Saboti MP has the capacity to galvanise the political orphans that Uhuru and Ruto would have left behind. In fact, Wamalwa’s bid for the presidency under the Alliance or as an individual was a still-birth from the word go. In the words of Mr Karim Khan, Ambassador Muthaura’s lawyer in the ICC case, even if dressed in his Sunday best, Eugene Wamalwa would still be in tatters as far as seeking the presidency is concerned.
As for Prof Saitoti, his pussy-footing approach to politics will not help him in 2012. Many Kenyans are already decided to choose between ODM’s Raila and G7’s Uhuru or Ruto. If the ICC knocks out Uhuru and Ruto, Kalonzo has no chance of posing a serious challenge to Raila his membership of the G7 notwithstanding. But given a choice between Kalonzo and Saitoti, Kenyans will elect Kalonzo because the Vice President is someone who has openly declared his stand and Kenyans voters usually prefer someone who pursues things openly.
As for Raila, Kibaki’s endorsement of Uhuru does not affect his political fortunes significantly because this is a man who is always prepared to face any eventualities. Being a self-made politician who does not need a piggy-ride to clinch the presidency, Kibaki’s endorsement of Uhuru does come as a surprise to him—if anything, this is something he has always expected to happen.
However, Raila may be the one to earn the dividends from Kibaki’s move to endorse Uhuru just the way Kibaki himself earned the dividends of Moi’s endorsement of Uhuru in 2002. The split of the G7 as a result of Kibaki’s endorsement of Uhuru will certainly leave many free atoms scattered around and Raila may just be the nucleus to attract those atoms. This will certainly reinforce his current positions as the candidate to beat in 2012.
There is a misconception that given the apparent fall-out between Raila and Ruto in ODM, Ruto’s constituency will never vote for Raila. However, truth be told, Ruto’s constituency would prefer Raila over Uhuru in a situation where the Eldoret North MP is not the G7 candidate. Likewise, in the unlikely event that Uhuru is not the G7 candidate and Ruto is, Uhuru’s constituency would not support Ruto. This still leaves Raila the most favourite candidate even if Uhuru’s constituency does not support him.
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