THE MAINA NJENGA FACTOR
Also in the nature of a psychological warfare scenario is former Mungiki leader Maina Njenga's declaration at a rally last weekend that he had entered the Presidential race on the ticket of a party called the Mkenya Solidarity Movement (MSM), whose symbol is an elephant. Not since the first multiparty General Election after the 1991 restoration of political pluralism has the massive Kikuyu vote had two such potent political formations going for it than a contest in which both Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru and Njenga actually get to run.
From their mode of dress, hair styles, song and dance, the vast majority of people at Njenga's rally in Ihura Stadium, Murang’a town, were clearly Mungiki adherents. When politician-businessman and Central Kenya ODM Representative Peter Kuguru rose to address the crowd and prefaced his remarks by simply declaring factually that Uhuru's TNA party was the dominant political force in Central Kenya, he was booed so massively he was left flapping his arms in the air.
All his pleas to be heard out and make his point were ignored. There has never been such a publicly anti-Kenyatta-sentiment moment caught on camera in the Mt. Kenya region, not even during the campaign Kibaki waged against Uhuru for State House in 2002. Maina was accompanied by Kuguru and Murang’a County ODM Chairman Mike Rubia, among others.
Earlier, Maina had officially opened MSM offices in Kangema and Kiria-ini towns. He was in Murang'a on a very special mission: MSM has declared that it will front John Gathogo Githaiga for the Kangema seat in the by-election to replace the late John Michuki. Uhuru's TNA was watching carefully, for it, too, wants to take Kangema by storm. MSM is talking big, with Maina saying it will have a candidate in every constituency and county ward.
Neither TNA nor MSM has a Member of Parliament, being new-fangled political formations created specifically for the 11th General Election. If MSM beats TNA in Kangema, Uhuru and Njenga will be embarked on one of the most intriguing political wrestling matches in Kikuyuland. That Mungiki has a following among a generation of poverty-stricken and otherwise disaffected youth in Central Kenya and its internal Diaspora has not been in doubt for a decade-and-a-half now.
Neither has the fact that what Mungiki plans to do and strategizes they do with remarkable and far-flung unity of purpose. What remains unclear and unexamined is their political clout in terms of numbers and voter turnout. Nonetheless, Njenga's declared entry into the race is a stark development: It is either Uhuru's worst nightmare in his quest to have the Mt. Kenya region line up behind his own bid, or the political Kiss of Death for any large-demographic Kikuyu candidature in quick succession to President Kibaki.
But is the emergent order in Kenya as Kibaki leaves State House such that it can haul the PM, VP, both DPMs and Ruto to integrity court and allow Njenga to run? The mind boggles. The Mkenya leader has a robbery-with-violence case pending in court in Kenya and all the baggage of not very long ago having headed up Mungiki when the banned sect was universally regarded a murder cult.
And yet no other Mt. Kenyan leaders have the pull of Uhuru or Njenga. Karua and Peter Kenneth have nowhere near the following that these two do.Njenga, who hails from Ng'arua in the Rift Valley, made a point of announcing his bid at a massive gathering in Murang'a County, epicentre of the titanic clash between Kibaki and Kenneth Stanley Njindo Matiba 20 years ago.
It was in 1992, at the first multipaty Presidential election ever in Kenya, that two potent Presidential candidates from Central Kenya stood alongside other regional heavyweights with national recognition - Kibaki and Matiba. But their potency only ended up dividing and scattering the huge Kikuyu vote, for Moi won a handy minority victory and proceeded to rule Kenya for another two five-year terms, and yet Kibaki and Matiba had, combined, garnered more votes.
When a Kenyatta goes for the Central Kenya vote, he is a jealous god indeed. If the Supreme Court decides that all comers are fit to stand for President, Uhuru has a real fight on his hands for the youth vote in Central against the Njenga factor and is likely to want to move heaven and earth to be rid of Mkenya.
A blood-curdling made-for-TV documentary commissioned by former Commissioner of Police General (Rtd) Hussein Ali a couple of years ago will doubtless be replayed endlessly or even widely distributed free-of-charge in DVD formats by Njenga's legion of enemies in the outgoing Uhuru-compliant officialdom. However, given the bizarre politics factor, we could yet see a thoroughly heterodox scenario whereby the Njenga campaign sues before the National Chesion and Integration Commission to have the video declared a species of hate speech.
Outside Central Kenya, Mkenya will have little-to-zero, appeal thanks to its inescapable Mungiki tag. Ten years ago when Kibaki was incoming and Uhuru tried to stand in his path, it was the Mungiki that drove the penultimate nail into the coffin of the younger man's hopes for State House by rampaging in the streets of Nairobi's CBD allegedly in his name and on his behalf a couple of weeks to Election Day.
Voters both inside and outside Central were so repelled by the spectacle that Uhuru's goose was well and truly cooked. The final nail in his State House bid at that time was hammered home by the electorate - Kibaki garnered 3.6 million votes to Uhuru's 1.8 million. Ten years later, when Uhuru is all-poised to make a second stab at the place he once called home, the Presidency and State House, here comes Njenga, seeking to stand alongside Jomo's son and make at least as controversial a bid as his.
Njenga is widely regarded as a latter-day nihilist, being a self-confessed one-time leader of a proscribed society. In an hour-long interview on Citizen TV's Cheche talk show, he came across eerily as a figure straight out of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, a latter-day Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov on the Equator. Mungiki is an organization of dispossessed youth who clearly feel that taking the law into their hands attenuates their suffering, an attitude that won't wash anywhere else in the country, including most of Central.
Kenyans both inside and outside Central are unlikely to forget the sect's mass slaughter, atavistic oathing, grand personal profiteering on extortionist cash and a myriad other evils, or to perceive a disconnect between these vile deeds and Njenga's current brand of politics and religiosity. What's more, the next thing Njenga could well see in this season of the truly bizarre could well be the former leaders of other banned cultic militias such as Chinkororo, Baghdad Boys and Jeshi la Mzee also seeking to join the Presidential race alongside TNA, URP, ODM and Wiper. At this point, all such fringe candidatures would collapse by simply being laughed out of town by an unamused electorate.
But while he may have no mileage outside Central, inside the Mountain Njenga can prove to be a major spoiler factor for Uhuru when the DPM least needs a spanner in the works in his own political backyard. In fact, deep inside the Uhuru machine, word has it that Njenga's run is little more than part of a classic Raila Odinga strategy, first tested with great success during the ODM Pentagon, in which regional political kingpins are encouraged to declare their candidatures and then at the last minute pass the ball to the PM.
Uhuru and Kalonzo's handlers are also suspiciously eyeing Water Minister Charity Kaluki Ngilu's own recently declared bid in the same jaundiced light. Njenga is therefore viewed as a paper candidate - but one who could cause TNA sleepless nights at the youth grassroots.
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