By KWENDO OPANGA
Posted Saturday, November 26 2011 at 20:00
Posted Saturday, November 26 2011 at 20:00
Tomorrow (Monday) the Orange Democratic Party of Kenya, better known to one and all as ODM, will have a new national leadership to complete the process of internal democracy and re-organisation that began on Thursday.
In holding elections from the grassroots up, ODM was not only fulfilling a constitutional requirement that political parties hold free and fair elections, but also according its rank and file the opportunity for popular participation.
The strength of a political party rests in its membership, leadership and programmes of action. A good political party thinks about the next General Election in terms of how it will test or enhance its popularity and whether it will form the next government.
Best suited
A better political party thinks about the next General Election in terms of whether the electorate is convinced that its programmes of action are best suited to not only take it into government, but to also make better the lives of the coming generations.
The best political party invests great stock in discipline. It should set the political agenda for the country by putting forward the best and most people-centred programmes and hold internal polls well in advance of a General Election.
In my definition then, the best political party would be the Martha Karua-led Narc Kenya if only because it long ago held its recruitment drive, then its internal polls and unveiled its presidential candidate. Two months ago, it published its statement of account.
In this definition, Narc Kenya comes across as planning well ahead of the General Election.
The challenge is its programme of action remains fuzzy and its leadership, save for Ms Karua and secretary-general Danson Mungatana, remains unnoticed and unknown.
What Narc Kenya has been doing is what ODM, as the country’s leading political constellation, should have perfected to an art form. It is what the Party of National Unity (PNU), as the second major assemblage of political unions, should have made its own.
ODM and PNU have spent the better part of the last three years wrangling internally and fighting each other in government.
PNU has changed names without re-branding and then gone back to its original name without saying, or even knowing, it was doing so.
ODM split as a party a long time ago as rebels became the enemy within and, for good measure, targeted the party leader, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, for unprecedented and unsavoury barracking.
The PM and rebels have fought like ferrets in the ODM sack.
We are not done yet. Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka’s party is an affiliate of PNU. Months back it rebranded, changing its colours and symbol and, last week, it became the Wiper Democratic Party to distance itself from ODM from which it broke away in 2007.
The upshot of all this is that our political party is rather like a breed between an amoeba and an octopus.
The issue from this union is itself a feral beast that wants to participate in the next General Election. After that, and irrespective of the result, it can go to sleep.
What this means is that Kenya’s parties have failed to present disciplined leadership of equally disciplined outfits, propagating clear values that differentiate the parties and offering programmes to better society for the Kenyan electorate to choose from.
This will not change tomorrow for ODM when its glitterati and rank and file converge to choose the party’s national office.
What is certain is that at the end of the exercise, the party will parade its share of the Big Beasts of our political jungle for next year’s war.
On Monday, ODM should not only conduct a disciplined, free and fair election, but that this should also mark the start of a journey towards becoming the best party. This means differentiating itself as a brand from the commodities that are its rivals.
That also means that if ODM emerges as a brand and goes ahead to win or lose the next General Election, it will not go to sleep, but work to make the best party better.
* * *
He is leading by example for he wants the constituency’s population to increase. So he is paying every Nithi woman who gives birth Sh5,000.They are really hilarious our MPs. Nithi’s Kareke Mbiuki is expecting his fourth child, but his target is to have seven.
Mr Mbiuki is in good company. It was Chancellor Helmut Kohl who told Germans “I don’t have to tell you what to do, but this country needs children!”
Kwendo Opanga is a media consultant opanga@diplomateastafrica.co.ke
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