By MURITHI MUTIGA
Posted Saturday, February 4 2012 at 17:14
Posted Saturday, February 4 2012 at 17:14
The battle between Raila Odinga and Musalia Mudavadi for the ODM presidential ticket––which could prove to be the political story of 2012––will end in one of two ways.
It could go like the epic contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2008.
That battle — a clash of ideas and political wiles, a contest marked by a refreshing absence of blunt personal attacks and negative campaigning — left the Democratic party substantially stronger than it had been before the elections.
It prepared the largely untested Obama for the battle ahead, helped introduce him to the public as a serious politician and did no harm to his electoral chances.
The appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State to a “team of rivals” after the elections provided a fairy tale ending to the contest and, shrewdly for Obama, knocked Clinton out as an opponent in the 2012 race.
It also meant that the president would be in a good position to woo core Clinton supporters such as women and older Democratic party supporters in his re-election bid.
ODM will be hoping for a similar outcome. Many in the party will hope that a spirited competition ends in a result that is accepted by all concerned and that the outcome substantially boosts the most popular party in the land in the Kibaki succession battle.
Of course, it could also end in tears. That’s what happened to the Democratic party in 1980 after one of the ugliest presidential nomination battles in American history.
Jimmy Carter was a hugely unpopular incumbent facing a tough re-election fight against the Republican candidate Ronald Reagan.
Ted Kennedy, the dashing younger brother of the assassinated Kennedy brothers, John and Robert, decided to launch an insurgent campaign to oust Carter and claim the Democratic party ticket.
Neither could build a decisive advantage. They competed for months, trading bitter insults in the process until they got to the party convention in New York where Ted Kennedy sought to change the party rules for picking a candidate.
A bruising competition ensued, and Kennedy was narrowly defeated. He accepted defeat only grudgingly and refused to offer a fulsome endorsement of his rival.
The forces of real change, he said, would live to fight another day. “The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die,” he told the convention, in a transparent dig at the winner.
Carter’s loss of the liberal supporters of Ted Kennedy significantly contributed to his crushing defeat by Reagan.
The way the ODM competition concludes will speak volumes about the party’s electoral chances.
In many ways, the battle between Raila and Mudavadi is also a contest for Kenya’s soul and a harbinger of the direction the nation will take in future.
In fact, Raila and Mudavadi have many of the traits that characterised Kennedy and Carter.
Ted Kennedy was a brash, ambitious (put-a-man-on-the-moon) character with a common touch despite his privileged origins. An aggressive man with big ideas, he more closely resembles Raila in the Kenyan context.
Carter, on the other hand, was a bit of a Mudavadi; cautious, well- meaning, largely uncharismatic, resolutely uncontroversial. In other words, the kind of leader Africans find very electable but the continent probably does not need.
It will be a fascinating ride. Many in ODM have only recently realised that Mudavadi is making a serious stab at heading the party’s ticket and is not running for second place as he did last time.
The party could pay a steep price for adopting the American model of picking presidential candidates rather than the consensus model preferred by parties in places such as the UK, Germany, France and South Africa.
The eyes of the nation will be on little else when the contest kicks off in earnest.
It could end in joy for ODM or spell the end of the strongest party Kenya has known since Narc fell apart after the MoU was discarded in 2003.
mmutiga@ke.nationmedia.com
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