Wanted: Someone to squeeze 2012 rain cloud

By Dominic Odipo

The Kenyan political chessboard is getting more intriguing by the day. The bishops are moving up and down their diagonals while the knights are jumping up and down, left and right as they seek to baffle and confuse the opposition.

The pawns, both black and white, are being arrayed as menacingly as possible, even though, in line with the rules of the game, they cannot be moved backwards.

Meanwhile, the queens, the strongest pieces on the board, are strutting arrogantly, even though they all know that they do not quite know what is likely to happen next.

For those who understand the great game of chess-and its uncanny correlation with the great game of politics — watching Kenyan politics has probably never been more fascinating.

In the piece carried in this column two months ago, we wrote:

"On the Kenyan political chessboard today, there are very many different and disparate pieces or factors. There is the post-election violence of 2oo8. There is Luis Moreno-Ocampo and International Criminal Court (ICC). There is the tribal or ethnic piece. There is big money and all those things it quickly translates into.

"There is the new constitutional dispensation. There is the out-going president and, therefore, a lame-duck presidency-at least in theory. There is Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks. There is the piece representing Maina Njenga and Mungiki waiting either to be moved or left in place. There is the media with its overwhelming power to set the national agenda either by shouting from the rooftops or remaining selectively silent."

Concluding, we wrote: "Like a grandmaster or master chess player, the next president must thoroughly understand all the major pieces on the Kenyan political chessboard. He (or she) must know which pieces are where and how they move. Then he must arrange all these pieces in such a manner that they will make it impossible for the opposing king — in this case his principal opponent — to move."

Private feelings

When this column was written, the momentous events that we have been witnessing in the Arab world had not yet occurred. Popular street demonstrations had not yet deposed the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt.

And William Ruto had not yet openly moved into the PNU camp even though he serves as the MP for Eldoret North on a different party’s ticket.

WikiLeaks had not yet stripped and demystified our leaders, splashing their private feelings about each other and their political fears and apprehensions on the Internet. President Kibaki had not yet announced his controversial list of judicial nominees and had it thrown back at him by the Speaker of the National Assembly.

And the millions of signatures, both for and against the deferral of ICC cases against six Kenyans, had not yet been collected. These new developments have all now been added to the already overflowing political chessboard, making the ongoing political chess game that much more complicated.

In an earlier piece we had written that the man (or woman) who will win the 2012 presidential elections would be the one who will be able to seize the defining political idea of that year and ride it effectively until Election Day.

But, obviously, before seizing and riding any such defining idea, one must first identify it from the cloud of political ideas that floats above the entire country.

As one gropes through this political cloud, it is becoming increasingly clear that the defining ideas of 2012 will be the twin issues of the ICC prosecutions and the brutal struggle between the wave of the future and the insecurity and uncertainty of the past.

What this means is that those candidates who will vie for presidency on an anti-ICC platform while at once epitomising the values and ways of the past 50 years of our independence, will find it very difficult to convince the majority of ordinary Kenyans to trust them with the control of the country’s highest office.

In the wake of the new Constitution, particularly the cardinal principles of devolved government that have been enshrined into it, those who will stand on the platform of the past will be steering their political boats against the defining currents of history and what the new Kenyans, particularly the youth, now believe to be the way forward.

wheel of history

It is those who will stand on the platform of the new Constitution, preaching the gospel of maximum devolution and the empowerment of all the people at the lowest level possible, who will stand the best chance of running away with the majority at the 2012 presidential elections. Ten years later, the giant wheel of history will have swung to where it stood in 2002.

In that year, President Kibaki rode to victory on the simple and clear platform of change. The message was unmistakable: Vote out the old system and those who epitomise it. That, I believe, will be the central winning message yet again in 2012.

The writer is a lecturer and consultant in Nairobi.

dominicodipo@yahoo.co.uk