By KWENDO OPANGA
Posted Saturday, February 2 2013 at 17:48
Posted Saturday, February 2 2013 at 17:48
IN SUMMARY
- Strategy: Cord’s strategy seems to be to tie Mr Kenyatta to Kenya’s land problem and, therefore, historical injustices
- In the Kenyan situation, it is not blueprints that send the crowds into cheers and jeers or leave them in stitches
The carefully written and colourfully packaged manifestos political parties are unveiling ahead of the March 4 General Election will not be in evidence when their various candidates take to the stumps.
It is not manifestos that send the crowds into cheers and jeers or leave them in stitches.
It is why no sooner had Prime Minister Raila Odinga been handed his presidential campaign certificate on Wednesday than he lit into Mr Uhuru Kenyatta. Mr Odinga asked Mr Kenyatta to surrender part of his huge tracts of land to squatters if he really was serious about helping the poor.
In the same breath, he directed his caustic and populist campaign style at Mr Kenyatta’s running mate, former Eldoret North MP William Ruto. Mr Odinga asked Mr Ruto to explain how he could possibly have amassed his immense wealth yet he did not have an employment record.
Let me tell you something. The PM was not asking his rivals to declare their wealth and how they acquired it. If that were what he wanted to do, he would have led by example and declared his not inconsiderable wealth. He would have taken the moral high ground and forced his rivals on the defensive.
It is highly unlikely that the PM thinks the problem of Kenya’s landless poor will be solved by asking those who have large tracts of land to parcel out pieces of them to squatters.
And, it cannot be Mr Odinga’s government’s poverty eradication strategy is to ask the rich to share their property with the poor.
Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto do not propose to literally help the poor; they say they want to alleviate poverty. They say they want to create wealth, which is the same thing Mr Odinga and his running mate say their platform is about.
So, why go after Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto on account of their wealth?
I am reminded that in 2011 Mr Odinga took a great deal of flak from Mr Ruto and Mr Kenyatta, especially regarding their pending trials at the International Criminal Court. The two men time and again blamed their arraignment at The Hague on crimes against humanity charges on Mr Odinga.
When the PM hit back, he tore into an unnamed person whom he called a drunkard and accused another of smoking bhang. In the eyes of many, he should not have done it.
The response from the pair was crude and unsavoury, but it was widely cheered, just as the PM was when he went on the attack.
Notice that this time round Mr Odinga did not suggest that Mr Kenyatta’s land was acquired illegally or irregularly as he insinuated when Cord was unveiled.
In this Mr Odinga failed to take up the gauntlet Mr Kenyatta hurled at his feet. Mr Kenyatta asked the PM to make public the public property he accuses him of grabbing.
He turned Mr Odinga’s accusation on the man; he asked the accuser to produce the evidence. And Mr Kenyatta got in a punch of his own. He asked Mr Odinga to answer queries about his Kisumu-based Spectre International, the ethanol-making outfit commonly known in the country as Molasses plant.
In the lead-up to the last presidential election, Mr Odinga was accused of irregularly acquiring the land on which the molasses plant sits. It is this Mr Kenyatta had in mind when he talked of “hiyo Molasses aliiba” (the Molasses he stole). But should that not have persuaded Mr Odinga to quit brickbats for brass tacks this time round?
It cannot. Cord’s strategy is to tie Mr Kenyatta to Kenya’s land problem and, therefore, to the historical injustices thought to have contributed to the post-election violence that rocked the Rift Valley in 2007 and 2008.
This message is therefore meant for the Kalenjin who support Mr Kenyatta and the Coast where the Kenyatta family owns land.
This strategy similarly seeks to plant seeds of doubt among the Kalenjin about Mr Ruto’s wisdom in entering an alliance with Mr Kenyatta. By questioning Mr Ruto’s source of wealth, Cord implies that his alliance with Mr Kenyatta may be driven more by personal interests than the country’s or his community’s.
This is not the kind of stuff that gets into manifestos, but there is no doubting its potency. What the PM says on the campaign stump regarding stolen public property is the tip of the propaganda iceberg. It is meant to get under Mr Kenyatta’s skin, strain his alliance and excite Cord faithful.
Kwendo Opanga is a media consultant opanga@diplomateastafrica.com
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