In the recent presidential elections in Senegal, it was clear - long before the final votes were cast - that because there was no outright winner in the first round of voting, President Abdoualye Wade's dream of extending his rule by a few more years was doomed. Wade may have got the most votes in that first ballot; but it was fairly obvious that the losers would support the runner-up in that race, Macky Sall, and send Wade into retirement.
The lesson then, is that you may well be the most popular politician in the country, but that alone cannot guarantee you the presidency. You need the support of other leaders and other communities for that. Now of particular interest to us as Kenyans, is that the outgoing Senegalese president has a great deal in common with our own president, Mwai Kibaki.
In the first place, both Kibaki and Wade are economists. And both took great pride in launching unprecedented infrastructure projects the significance of which could not be disputed. Then neither of them had an easy ride to the presidency: Kibaki won on his third attempt, while Wade only got there on his fourth attempt.
Finally, both only made their way to the presidency with the support of other opposition leaders. In Kibaki’s case, this was through an informal understanding reached in 2002; while for Wade, the support only came after he was the runner-up in the indecisive first round of balloting in 2000. Now, you would think that the similarities between Kibaki and Wade would end there.
But after last weekend’s ‘Limuru II’ meeting of the Gema Cultural Association (GCA) I begin to suspect that the last chapter of their careers as president may also end up being very much alike. Abdoulaye Wade did not just want to extend his own stay in high office: he had also nurtured a hand-picked successor, who happened to be his son, Karim. And getting Karim to be the next president was the ultimate objective of all his maneuvers.
Well, Uhuru Kenyatta is not Kibaki’s son. But in the Kenyan political setting, there is little difference between trying to get your son to succeed you, and having your tribesman strive to have one among them succeed you as president. It all reeks of a dynastic imposition - an attempt to perpetuate the intrinsically tyrannical rule of a small circle of oligarchs.
And once a narrative of imposition is established, the rules of engagement change abruptly. To illustrate how effective such a change of narrative can be, let me outline what happened in Matuga constituency in 2010. The current Environment Minister, and the MP for Matuga, Chirau Ali Mwakwere, was forced into a by-election in 2010 after the High Court found that the 2007 poll (which he very narrowly won) was riddled with irregularities. And it was widely expected that he would lose this by-election to Hassan Mwanyoha of ODM.
But the over-confident ODM strategists, seemed to be unaware that the Digo community of Kwale County (who are the great majority of voters in Matuga) have a deep historical resentment of Mombasa’s Swahili and Arab communities, whom they allege have always despised them. Due to this oversight, the ODM campaign team was led by non-Digo MPs, mostly from Mombasa.
And Mwakwere had no difficulty shifting the narrative of his election from being a referendum on his “development record” (which would have guaranteed his defeat, as he had not done much) to a narrative of the attempt by wealthy, Mombasa-based Swahili and Arab interests to contemptuously dictate to the Digo who they should vote for. He challenged the Digo voters to resist the impositions of these 'outsiders', and easily won.
At the national level, declaring Uhuru Kenyatta to be the official Gema candidate for the presidency plays straight into Raila Odinga’s hands. It revives the spectre of the old Gema; brings back bitter memories of the worst exclusionist practices of the Jomo Kenyatta era; and alienates all those who are not indigenous to Central Kenya.
Such bitter memories can be readily translated to a unifying resolve to resist any latent Gema hegemony. The 2013 election can thus easily be presented as a referendum on whether Kenya is to be henceforth ruled solely by presidents from Central Kenya, with no other community being permitted to provide national leadership. And I foresee a massive rejection of the Gema candidate - if indeed his name appears on the ballot papers, and the presidential election goes into a second round of voting.
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