AMBITIOUS: The Gikuyu4Raila chairman Peter Kuguru says their aim is to garner one million votes from the Gikuyu community for Prime Minister Raila in the next general election
As Lenin observed, authoritarian regimes eventually fall when the people at the top are incapable of ruling in a new way, and the people at the bottom can no longer bear to live in the old way.
Taking cue, supposedly, is Peter Kuguru, a precocious industrialist whose past attempts to resuscitate a bruised political career at his ancestral hood of Mathira, Nyeri county, has routinely faced punishment at the ballot box. Thank God for common sense, the guy has since raised his hands and walked away. But ever resilient with creative juices, Kuguru is back again. But the conundrum is whether the people want him back.
With a huddle of messianic elites, exclusively drawn from his Kikuyu community, this 69-year-old former brewer is high, proselytising a redemptive gospel to his ethnic group: That Raila Amolo Odinga widely thought to be a gentile within the numerically strong community is the long–awaited messiah, who will liberate this apparently siege-mentality inclined ethnic group from its tribulations.
As expected, a palpable disdain for the campaign within the community has sprouted. “The Gikuyu4Raila is an illegal grouping. It’s made up of opportunists who are misusing the great name of the Agikiyu people. The organisers of the organisation should be ashamed and cursed. They create the indelible picture of Raila becoming desperate. The man (Raila) in truth is certainly headed to oblivion,” says Kabando wa Kabando the MP for Mukurweini.
Trouble for the Gikuyu4Raila outfit is arguably self- inflicted. And were the leadership of the organisation circumspect about its audience, a derisory dose of due diligence ought to have counselled for a tapping of leadership that inspires amongst other feelings charisma, courage, confidence and clout and not discord, decay, debility and deceitfulness to be able to leverage its Herculean agenda.
For example, Charles Njonjo, famously a former powerful Attorney General is privately thought to be Achilles without the heel, within the community and anointing him to spearhead a Raila-for President Crusade in Kikuyu begs the raw question of whether the Gikuyu4Raila plot has the back of the Langata MP. Amongst opinion shapers who intransigently berated Njonjo for selling the Kikuyu community down the river included former Githunguri MP and publisher of the local monthly Finance magazine, Njeru Gatabaki.
He said, "The onslaught against the Kikuyu began immediately after Kenyatta was buried and was initially entrusted to Charles Njonjo, the once proclaimed confidant and adviser to Jomo Kenyatta. In the new administration, Njonjo and GG Kariuki teamed up with Moi into a mighty triumvirate of power never before witnessed in the history of Kenya.
“The role and influence of Attorney General Charles Njonjo in Moi’s ascendancy to the presidency and the immediate commencement of systematic pruning of the community from government and public service as well as other positions of influence and power remain enigmatic. And here was Njonjo, a replica of a sophiscated English gentleman becoming a willing tool in the most sweeping purge of Kikuyu from public offices and positions of influence and power. Before he himself would suffer even worse fate than his victims under his ally –turned executioner, Njonjo had unleashed turbulence in the erstwhile placid waters of Kikuyuland whose fatal impact would leave the community severely disfigured and hopelessly directionless, perhaps for a generation.”
Indeed with Njonjo acting as a point man for Raila within the Kikuyu community, one may ask: Does he need another enemy in the region? Apparently, every time Njonjo opens his mouth on behalf of Raila, a vote arguably evaporates. Other big–hitters associated with the Gikuyu4Raila outfit include Kiambaa MP Stanley Githunguri and Samuel Macharia, two mega- tycoons with vast commercial interests. And while the duo embody the enviable monetary depth of the Gikuyu4raila bench, the political stock of the grouping dips irretrievably to a study of what comes through as men of straw.
Nevertheless, Kuguru’s never-say-die attitude remains buoyant, believing Gikuyu4Raila's declared goal of getting one million kikuyu votes is within reach. “We are a big movement and we are on the ground. We believe that amongst all the candidates seeking the presidency, Raila offers the best philosophy, vision and objectives for this country. He has proved it with his own life. He has suffered incarceration for a bigger cause that has triggered singularly the freedoms that Kenyans enjoy today.
He has been selfless even precluding his own presidential ambitions for Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu. A lot of ignorant and cynical people think today that we have hinged our bandwagon behind Raila because our agenda is tied to self-aggrandisement. Nothing can be further from the truth. My personal relationship with Raila began when we both worked for the Kenya Bureau of Standards in the early 1970’s. I can claim unambiguously that I know the man," he says.
“It must be pointed out that the Kikuyu community is not exclusively found in Central Kenya. A big chunk of the community also resides in the Rift Valley. And over the years, the Kikuyus residing in Central have made declarations on behalf of the community without due regard of the Kikuyus settled in the Rift Valley. I can assure you today the Rift Valley Kikuyus have freed themselves from the shackles held by the leadership of Central Kenya. That constituency is with us. Also, do not forget the Kikuyus in the diaspora. They form a very special bloc of voters and they have openly declared support of what we are doing. They are with us. To hit the one million-voter threshold within the Kikuyu community is a task that remains doable.”
And according to the vice chairman of the Gikuyu4Raila platform, Alex Mbote, a councillor within Maragua township, Muranga county, there is an unraveling going on within Central Kenya, a reawakening to realities that have hitherto remained obscured by lies, innuendoes and half-truths. He says, “Unless you have not lived in Kenya, you do not need to be told that the Kikuyu and Luo community have since independence formed formidable political alliances beginning with Kanu, the independence party and gone ahead to work as a united front.
The fissures that form challenges within the alliance have always been political in nature, a situation where ideas clash in the political market place. And we have explained this phenomenon to our Kikuyu people and they have tended to agree and we are encouraged that the truth is eventually emerging. We have also told them that Raila, as a person does not need to protect their interests because ordinarily under the new constitutional dispensation, the law takes precedence over any carnal dictate. That's the truth and that’s the reason they have nothing to fear about a Raila presidency.
“But the most interesting bit is when we ask the Kikuyu people what their biggest problem has been in the past and affirmatively they say the issue of land in the Rift valley has been their biggest headache. The ethnic clashes that have dogged the community beginning in the early 1990s have had nothing to do with Raila, probably William Ruto. And our people (the Kikuyu) agree on this score. When we ask them whether they would vote in an Uhuru Kenyatta-William Ruto arrangement or a Raila Odinga- Martha Karua ticket, a resounding majority, opt for the latter. That is a telling statement of what lies ahead,” says Mbote.
Invariably, Uhuru’s dalliance with Ruto has been a sore fixture within the Kikuyu nation. Privately, a large legion of Kikuyus consider Ruto the quintessential villain, responsible for some of their gravest problems within Rift Valley. And it’s not an idle thought that many Kikuyu’s would not hesitate to bench Uhuru, said to be the presumptive favourite in Kikuyuland were he to go to bed with Ruto.
Probably, Kuguru and Co. think, this might be an opportune time for the Kikuyu nation to consider the penetrating statement made by John F Kennedy, perhaps some truth lies therein. Conformity he said “is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” Lawyer Paul Muite, a leading light within the Kikuyu community offered scant reprieve regarding what he thought of the Gikuyu4Raila association. He said, “That’s not an issue that Paul Muite deals with. I deal with weightier issues. Spare me from this one and get back to me when more important issues dealing with constitutionalism crop up.”
Wanyiri Kihoro, a former political detainee and MP for Nyeri Town said Kuguru and his group were "basically not genuine people and Raila’s new-found intimacy with the likes of Njenga Karume is an outward show seeking to gain political mileage within Kikuyu land." "Its a misnomer for the Gikuyu4Raila organisation to pigeonhole itself as a parochial outfit because if Raila were to ascend to the presidency, he would be the leader of the Kenyan nation not the Kikuyu nation alone. Therefore those so called leaders of the Gikuyu4Raila organisation unknowingly are reducing their preferred presidential candidate to a tribal chief. And anyway whether these guys have sufficient clout to galvanise the Kikuyu community is an issue that is debatable.”
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