Sunday, July 15, 2012

What Miguna thinks of the top leadership of grand coalition


What Miguna thinks of the top leadership of grand coalition

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Miguna Miguna during the launch of his book titled Peeling Back the Mask at the Intercontinental Hotel, Nairobi on July 14, 2012. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU
Miguna Miguna during the launch of his book titled Peeling Back the Mask at the Intercontinental Hotel, Nairobi on July 14, 2012. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU  

Posted  Saturday, July 14  2012 at  23:30
IN SUMMARY
  • Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s former aide Miguna Miguna had a ringside view of the mechanics of government during his stint at the heart of the office of one of the principals in the grand coalition.
  • In his new book, Peeling Back the Mask, which was officially launched on Saturday, he offers his thoughts on some of the key players in the political arena. Here are some of his views on various public figures
Raila Odinga, 
Prime Minister
Raila might be very good (especially as a political comedian and conversationalist) at public rallies, roadside and funeral meetings, but he is disastrous in structured meetings.
He is obviously a good listener. But he isn’t a good and organised leader, manager or administrator. He rarely delegates, and when he does, it is often to the wrong people – people who are either incompetent or irredeemably corrupt, or both.
Now, many would argue that such ailments are widespread among world leaders throughout history and that Raila isn’t an exception.
That might be so, but any good leader that finds himself with Raila’s many and serious failings ought to surround himself with well trained, knowledgeable, experienced, dedicated and loyal and hard workers of integrity.
The leader’s work would then be to focus on his broad vision and legacy and leave the “operators” to implement decisions made. Unfortunately in Raila’s case, most of the people he prefers don’t have these qualities.
In the office, for instance, only Sylvester Kasuku and I carried out our functions with diligence and national purpose; almost all the other senior officers were busy chasing deals. And Raila preferred the deal-makers to his ideologically clear and diligent work-horses.
Raila on note-taking
During the Raila Odinga Centre (ROC) so-called strategy meetings, nobody took notes. There was only one laptop which Dick (Ogolla) carried and used.
Raila distrusted note-taking. He has, on occasions, lashed out at me with fury, out of the blue, for my note-taking.
Perhaps this was partly a throwback to his “underground” past, when everything was committed to memory for fear that Moi’s Special Branch boys would use any written record to obtain quick and easy convictions from trumped-up sedition and treason charges… But much later.
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William Ruto, 
URP presidential aspirant
Ruto is charismatic, articulate, hardworking, rambunctious and ambitious. He is also extremely restless. Unlike both Raila and Mudavadi, he is also a teetotaller, and thus less distracted from political campaigning.
But even more importantly, Ruto is also fabulously wealthy. And notwithstanding the mystery surrounding his wealth, unlike Mudavadi and Raila, he can be very generous, especially when he has an agenda to execute. He also has charisma.
Mudavadi is the exact opposite: dour, technocratic, patient and soft-spoken, he exhibits the characteristics of a traditional English gentleman. Mudavadi rarely shows emotion no matter how angry or aggrieved.
He projects the image of a slow, methodical and calculating person; difficult to agitate. I would observe that he never openly opposed the party leader. He rarely spoke during meetings, but took care to always present cogent and logical arguments.
The Kenyan media complain that he is boring and doesn’t have the knack to give them sound bites. I have never heard him shout.
His ambitions, although barely concealed, would never be displayed until the very end when he would eventually openly rebel against Raila.
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Musalia Mudavadi,
UDF presidential aspirant
Interestingly, Musalia Mudavadi never showed up at both (the) Kilaguni (retreat) and at the Serena Hotel. Mudavadi had been expected at Kilaguni and had confirmed his attendance.
As stated before, I had even struggled with the State House and hotel management to reserve for him a room of equal size and value as that of Uhuru Kenyatta’s.
But Mudavadi neither showed up, nor telephoned to explain why he hadn’t shown up, despite members of our team – Raila, Orengo and I – trying to reach him to no avail. My suspicion is that Mudavadi, being a natural survivor, knew that there would be fireworks at Kilaguni.
He is known to have no stomach for controversy or a fight, partly I think because he likes to be loved by all sides, but also because, not falling out with people has allowed him to emerge as a compromise candidate.
Mudavadi never learnt an important lesson during his time at university: nobody succeeds without taking calculated risks.
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James Orengo,
Lands minister
Ugenya MP-elect James Orengo stood up and spoke (during the state opening of Parliament in 2008). This was long before he graduated into being a ‘lyrical sycophant in the king’s court’.
This was Jim the intellectual activist. He was concise, clear and on target. He pointed out that when parliament opened, there would only be three items on the table: election of Speaker and Deputy Speaker and the swearing-in of members before Parliament adjourned. There would be no other business.
He went on: “The office of the Speaker can never be vacant. Parliament must always elect a speaker… The first day, Kibaki comes as a voter. Standing orders don’t allow him in the chair of state …
After finishing the business of voting in the Speaker and Deputy Speaker, we can refuse to swear in … If the MPs aren’t sworn in, then nobody can take their seats in Parliament. MPs-elect can then state that the issue of the presidency is not resolved. It is completely watertight if you have your Speaker and Deputy Speaker.
“Whoever we elect Speaker must be both friendly and loyal. The question is: how do we ensure that Kibaki does not use Parliament to transact business? By electing our own Speaker and Deputy Speaker and ensuring that no business is transacted …”
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Dr Mohammed Isahakia
PS in the Office of the Prime Minister
I regret now that I didn’t raise more objections when I found out that Raila had appointed Mohammed Isahakia as his campaign manager.
Purportedly a veterinarian, with absolutely no political training, experience or background, he struck me as a lethargic, lazy character.
He had also been implicated in a list of alleged corruption as long as the River Nile. There are a few court judgments on these. I was befuddled.
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Dr Sally Kosgei, 
Agriculture minister
Based on my conversations with people who had worked closely with (President) Moi, but who had never been sucked too deeply into the Nyayo ways, (Franklin) Bett was considered a loose cannon; someone you couldn’t rely on.
But Sally was different. She was learned, urbane and sophisticated. She was remarkably bright. Among the ODM cabinet ministers, Sally and Orengo were closest to me.
We spent hours upon hours arguing, debating, reasoning, intellectualising, philosophising. Sally had an interesting background and history.
As a brilliant young university student at the University of Dar-es-Salaam, she had studied under the inimitable Dr Walter Rodney of Guyana, the author of the irreplaceable How Europe Underdeveloped Africa – required reading in my student days along with Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Paulo Frèire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
At Dar, Sally had been a fiery radical, associating more with Marxist-Leninists than with the dour reactionary types like Mutula Kilonzo, who was a good crammer, but a lousy intellectual, even in those early days.
I respected both Sally and Orengo tremendously. I deeply valued their friendship, although the two had what could only be described as an “interesting love-hate” relationship.
One day they would be very chummy with one another – kissing and hugging – then the next they would be frosty and refuse to take the other’s calls.
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Kofi Annan 
Chief Mediator and former UN secretary-general
Annan hadn’t really been “appointed” by the parties to the dispute. His name was first suggested by the UK and UK administrations; and had been backed by John Kufuor, partly because they were both Ghanaians.
Essentially, Kibaki and his PNU cohorts had been forced to accept him, grudgingly. In my view, the process of choosing a mediator or negotiator was too important to have been treated in this manner.
Both parties’ confidence and trust in the mediator and the process as a whole are two significant ingredients on the process.
Once both ingredients are missing, it’s always a sign that the process is fundamentally flawed and might not succeed.
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Mohammed Elmi, 
Minister for Northern Kenya
He seemed to have developed a very close working relationship with Uhuru (Kenyatta). He actually believed that Uhuru not just respected him but trusted him as well.
My feeling, however, is that Uhuru and the PNU side only used Elmi. Any perceptive person who has closely worked with Elmi knows that he is generally clueless. He tends to ramble on everything. He is incoherent, confused and shallow.
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Amos Wako, 
Former Attorney-General
It wasn’t just Kivutha Kibwana and others who were trying to muddy the coalition waters. The ‘embodiment of the culture of impunity in Kenya’, that ever-smiling Amos.
Wako, the then Attorney-General, was adding his own legal clay and intellectual alluvial soil, and I quickly sent out a right jab to Wako in February 2010 that lit up the blogosphere and re-energised ODM.
Essentially, Wako continued to argue that the National Accord hadn’t changed the executive power arrangement at the top of Kenya’s political system. As far as Wako was concerned, “The President is the absolute and sole appointing authority”. To Wako, Raila was nothing but a joy-rider in government.
After this article went live, hundreds of readers sent me congratulatory emails from all over the world. I knew that the country was keenly listening. That gave me the motivation to continue (writing my column).
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Nick Wanjohi and Michael Gichang’i
President Kibaki’s senior aide and NSIS chief
These two were Kibaki’s submarines: They operated beneath the surface. Those two were lethal, but operated largely out of sight.
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President Kibaki
When the coalition government was sworn in on April 12, 2008, few of ODM’s demands had been met. We tried to save Raila from Kibaki, but he had consistently fallen into the lion’s jaws.
Nothing could restrain, discipline or teach Raila a lesson. Contrary to popular myth, Kibaki was the more focused one.
He never slept during meetings. He remained alert even if the meetings took more than three hours. He never wavered; never veered off his script.
Kibaki was as tough as a nut. When he said no, he meant it. He rarely said yes during negotiations. He took and took. He rarely gave.
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Prof Anyang’ Nyong’o, 
Medical Services minister
I sometimes wonder if Raila’s political enemies – the ones who goaded him into breaking with me – planned exactly the scenario now playing itself out.
They wanted Raila to self-destruct. I can’t even rule out that deep down, even hidden away in their subsconsciousness, Orengo and Nyong’o aren’t loving what is happening.
I am doing what they would have wanted to do, what they longed to do, but didn’t have the guts, the discipline or the skills to do.
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Ida Odinga, 
Jakoyo Midiwo and Oburu Oginga
But I suspect that the more my column and articles became popular, the more Raila and a few of his relatives like his cousin and ODM Chief Whip, Jakoyo Midiwo, his elder brother, Bondo MP and Assistant Minister for Finance, Oburu Oginga, and his wife Ida, became jealous and resentful.
To them, I was becoming too influential. In the process, they believed that the public was and would continue to give me credit for any or all the successes Raila or ODM made.
That, they might have believed, placed me too close to the succession equation within Luo Nyanza. Raila was now approaching 70. These members of the kitchen cabinet must have panicked that should something happen to Raila, I would present as a serious contender for the Torch.
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Francis Muthaura, 
Former head of public service
A further impediment to ODM’s negotiations was, to my mind, the part played by Ambassador Francis Muthaura.
As the country’s most senior civil servant and permanent secretary to the cabinet, his role should have been to impartially shepherd the two parties towards a coalition.
Instead, he worked for Kibaki. In fact, at no time did Kibaki personally and directly respond, by letter, to Raila; he chose to communicate to Raila through his permanent secretary; thus clearly indicating the level at which, at least in his mind, Raila belonged.
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Fred Outa and Ochieng’ Daima
ODM MPs
This is not to say that I found Outa or Daima good or better parliamentarians than Nyamunga and Peter Odoyo; on the contrary, they were dour, lacklustre and clueless; their contributions in Parliament couldn’t fill a two-lined paragraph.
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