By PETER KAGWANJA
Posted Saturday, March 24 2012 at 18:38
Posted Saturday, March 24 2012 at 18:38
One agendum dominated the Gema leadership forum (christened Limuru II) at the Limuru Conference Centre: the ICC trials at The Hague.
Certainly, the war against impunity has turned the ICC into the crucible now poised to drive Kenyan politics for years to come.
The convenors of Limuru II envision it to have the same gravitas and impact as a July 2010 conference at the same venue.
The difference was that Limuru I had an indelible national agenda: to rally the vote-rich Mt Kenya region behind Kenya’s new Constitution, ensuring its emphatic victory.
As such, Limuru I attracted the participation and backing of leaders and lobbies from diverse walks of life and ideological hues.
In contrast, Limuru II had no overarching agenda that linked the region and the nation. True, the region had endured a string of misfortunes.
To begin with was the confirmation of charges of Public Service boss Francis Muthaura and Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta.
An even greater loss was the demise of three of the region’s towering figures: environmentalist Prof Wangari Maathai, the Environment minister John Michuki and former Defence minister Njenga Karume, also the Gema patron.
A string of political setbacks had also taken a heavy toll on the region’s collective psyche, fostering a deep sense of siege.
Embarrassingly, nearly five years on, thousands of their own are still languishing in refugee camps as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).
Over the years, the region’s weak and fragmented power elite has been outnumbered and out-gunned in Parliament, civil society, government, academy, and in the newly created commissions spearheading the reform process.
As the region sinks to a siege mentality, its political class has blamed its woes on an evil trinity: Raila Odinga, ICC and Britain.
First, the Limuru gathering left no doubt that at the national level, the demon is Raila Odinga, not the Luo people. For 2012, the formula is patently clear: Anybody but Raila (ABR).
Tactical goofs
The premier’s periodic tactical goofs – which the columnist Philip Ochieng recently suggested are in his DNA (SN 18/3/12) – have virtually wiped out the support base he had built over time in the region.
The second demon is the ICC, parodied in the meeting as a “political court” rather than a “court of justice”.
Because it failed to charge those who called for “mass action,” leading to the 2007/2008 crisis, speakers chastised the ICC as abetting “selective justice”.
Confirming the charges against Uhuru Kenyatta is an act of decapitation that deprives the community “the right to vote for the leader of its choice”.
The gathering resolved to collect two million signatures to get the ICC to defer the trials to allow Uhuru to participate in the election, a tall order by all standards.
The third demon in Gema’s evil trinity is Britain. The British are accused of financing civil society and manipulating the ICC to re-colonise Kenya and to impose an alternative pliable leadership under its thumb.
The community is made to pay for its role in the Mau Mau and President Kibaki’s “Look East” policy, which has seen China eclipse Britain in the commanding heights of Kenya’s development.
Beyond this rhetoric is a love-hate relationship. Mr Kenyatta’s lead counsel, Steven Kay QC, is British so is his team-mate, Ms Gillian Higgins.
As a pathway out of this conundrum, the region has embarked on a ecstatic foray into what scholar Gabriella Lynch called dynastic politics.
The parallels between Mr Kenyatta’s tribulations with the ICC and his father’s Kapenguria trial have combined with a palpable nostalgia about the “golden Kenyatta era”.
From the time Mr Kenyatta was crowned in Limuru as a regional chief in July 2010, he has metamorphosed from a “crown prince” to a “must-join cult” for the Kikuyu.
Woe unto you if, as a Kikuyu, you have not embraced the Uhuru mystique or is suspected of harbouring a contrary view on the ICC.
Embryonic sense
In an embryonic sense, the region is hurtling down to a thick winter of McCarthyism. You are either with us or against us!
“Dynasticism” as a new cult in central Kenya is swiftly replacing political monism of the Kenyatta and Moi States as the greatest threat to civil liberties and democracy.
The Limuru meeting may have legitimised a refurbished Gema as the main beneficiary of the radicalisation of Kikuyu politics by the International Criminal Court.
But on the road to the watershed election in March 2013, the region’s choices are stark: return to enlightened politics of reason and nationhood or perish in the dynastic ghetto.
Prof Kagwanja is a senior consultant with International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance and AU
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