When truck drivers received 60,000 title deeds at the Moi International Airport in Mombasa last week from Ardhi House in Nairobi, one could have mistaken the consignment for campaign posters, arriving four years ahead of the next political season.
The mode of delivery underscored the urgency, sensitivity and the politics of the event, especially at the Coast, where the Jubilee coalition had a poor showing during the March 4 General Election.
Transporting this politically symbolic load, the equivalent of 240 reams of foolscap, via road was risky. Strategists might have considered the possibility of a lorry of Jubilee-inspired title deeds stalling in Mtito Andei, in Wiperland, the heart of CORD county of Makueni! Airlifting the consignment, with onward relay into guarded trucks, was safer, with less risk of the title deeds landing in the hands of partisan land sharks.
Coming five months after the General Election, there is a way in which the race for the next contest for State power has begun. There is no more strategic place for the Jubilee regime to start the campaigns than at the Coast, and with land matters taking priority.
Jubilee had its poorest showing in the six coast counties - Mombasa, Kwale, Kilifi, Taita Taveta, Tana River and Lamu. Coalition for Reforms and Democracy claimed about 90 per cent of the vote in an area where upcountry landowners 'host' disenchanted squatters from the Mijikenda and other indigenous coastal communities.
Appeasing this constituency makes political sense. Starting with 60,000 squatters is a better strategy of trying to convert electoral rejection into possible acceptance. Better still, the beneficiaries of the title deeds are drawn from the six coast counties, possibly in lots of 10,000 per county, even in sparsely populated Lamu.
Starting with cells of 10,000 new certified landowners means much more than the number, even if each title carries only the name of the man or woman of the household. Now consider that each household will have a mother and at least four children. Two of these children may be of voting age in the next four or five years. This means one title deed may represent four potential voters in 2017. Every 10,000 title deeds could mean an investment in 40,000 potential voters. Sixty-thousand titles dished out to public cheer, gives a possible vote harvest 240,000 now, and a potential 350,000 when some of the children in the current squatter households enter the voter register. The thought of all these voters in an area that rejected the Jubilee carrot is a strategic investment, supposing winning hearts and votes is that straightforward.
Never mind the means because the end is worth the gamble. It shows someone in the Jubilee Government is trying to win the hearts of squatters, in time for the next General Election. Even the digital find the temptation to deploy old habits irresistible.
The National Land Commission whose function is to advise the Government on registration of title deeds, process and procedure, should stay out of this one to avoid the delay. It shall have many other occasions to be relevant.
Analogue ways work. The old ways have always served the interests of incumbents and the status quo. Old habits give incumbents a lead-start above the competition.
The logic is easy to understand: if luring impoverished peasants with title deeds worked for founding president Jomo Kenyatta during the acquisitive 1960s, when land alienation peaked during the first decade of independence, there is no good reason this tested old habit should be discarded. Jubilee must let the love flow across the country, where all that landowners have is parcel number and no title deed to prove ownership.
If the trap of title deeds served president Daniel arap Moi during the exploitative 1990s, when Executive orders attracted faster execution than legislation, there is no reason to involve the National Land Commission in small matters like issuing 60,000 title deeds to squatters who have waited for proof of their property rights for about 50 years this Jubilee moment of independence.
Mr Moi put dishing out public land and title deeds to such better use, he won over a divided opposition twice even when the Kibaki-led contingent of change promoters thought they had the big man of African politics set up for defeat.
As incumbent president facing a divided opposition, thousands of title deeds given in Kwale, a district offered in Wajir and another in Gucha, huge cash contributions for public causes elsewhere, and opposition leaders lured into strategic defections always gave Mr Moi an edge. Incumbents have access to public resources they can raid to advance partisan causes.
President Kibaki also found these tested ways useful during the divisive decade of his presidency. In 2006, a year before a bungled General Election, Kibaki gave out 30,000 title deeds at the coast to try to win potential voters.
With trailblazing examples from Old Jomo, Moi and Kibaki presidencies, Jubilee rulers find no reason to reinvent the wheel. Now it can be declared, with evidence, the rhetoric of analogue versus digital was was always a trap for the gullible.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment