BOLD NEW IDEA: Hon Kalonzo Musyoka. He and Mwingi Central MP Joe Mutambu told a small gathering that what Kenya really needs is a consultative referendum to introduce a rotational Presidency.They declared that this crucial change in the constitution would ensure the minority tribes would also produce presidents of Kenya. Photo/Duncan Ndotono
Kalonzo hints at key referendum question
Some of the biggest developments in the history of the politics of presidentialism in Kenya have begun in far-flung rural places at an apparently innocuous and routine function on a slow-news weekend.
Cord principal Kalonzo Musyoka’s proposition of last week about Kenyans getting to vote for a rotational Presidency has all the hallmarks of something really big being deliberately began in a sleepy rural place on an otherwise unremarkable weekend.
One such weekend in 1983, somewhere in Kisii, the then President Daniel arap Moi told a gathering hosted by the then chief secretary Simeon Nyachae that there was a traitor in his administration, who was plotting to take over the government through unconstitutional means, and with the help of foreign mercenaries and powers.
The announcement was so unusual and unexpected that the mainstream press of the time only reported it two days later. This was the beginning of the so-called Msaliti (or Traitor) affair, the bringing down of the then powerful Minister for Constitutional Affairs Charles Njonjo and all his influence networks built up since 1963.
Exactly a week ago today, Kalonzo and Mwingi Central MP Joe Mutambu told a small gathering that what Kenya really needs is a consultative referendum to introduce a rotational Presidency.
They declared that this crucial change in the constitution would ensure the minority tribes would also produce presidents of Kenya.
The 10th and last Vice President of Kenya and Engineer Mutambu were speaking at a fundraising event at Kwa-katile Day Secondary School, Kyuso District, Kitui county.
In a clearly synchronised move, Mutambu went first, saying the time was ripe for Kenyans to go for a referendum to stop the dominance of the big ethnic groups in national leadership.
Mutambu vowed to mobilise MPs to support his Eureka moment.
When Kalonzo rose to address the gathering, he fully seconded Mutambu’s emotion.
Kalonzo, who was Foreign Affairs minister for years long before he became VP in the Grand Coalition regime of 2008-13, invoked the spectre of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, saying it was the consequence of one tribe dominating one nation for far too long.
Kalonzo has been quietly condemned in many 'big tribe' circles since his utterances in his own Kambaland backyard, and not only in the Mt Kenya and Rift Valley 'tyranny of numbers' regions.
Even among the Luo Nyanza and Luhyaland backyards of his Cord co-principals Raila Odinga and Moses Wetang’ula respectively, there were stirrings regarding what, exactly, Kalonzo was up to.
The Luhya are Kenya’s second-most numerous community, followed by the Luo, who were once second. Indeed, at independence, the Luhya were lumped together in Kadu with the then much smaller communities and ranged against the 'big tribe' factor of Jomo Kenyatta’s Kikuyu and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga’s Luo in Kanu.
In Mt Kenya, the reaction against Kalonzo included being appalled at the fact that a diplomat of his standing (he featured prominently in the South Sudan peace process that culminated in that country’s independence) can so facilely invoke the Rwanda genocide. One online commentator descended into political insults, telling Kalonzo that no “watermelon man” like him will ever get to lead Kenya.
The 'watermelon' epithet was first used against Kalonzo in the 2010 national referendum on the new constitution campaign, whose Yes colour code was green and Nowas red. Kalonzo was the VP in the then President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s grand coalition, and the latter were the champions of the Yes vote.
Interestingly, both VP Kalonzo and the then Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta were widely perceived as not being for the Yes vote, although they campaigned very vigorously for it, in other words, of being green on the surface and red inside.
William Ruto, then a former Cabinet Minister fired with extreme prejudice by PM Raila, was the explicit leader of the No vote, complete with major support and funding from the USA Christian far right.
Then as now, and as always in Kenya politics, nothing was as it seemed on first sight.
The eddy of Kenya politics
Referenda have a history in Kenya that is only nine years old. However, the eddy of Kenya politics has been such that the most interesting and paradoxical pairings have emerged. Raila and Uhuru were on the Yes side in 2005, when they thoroughly beat the then incumbent Kibaki’s No, only to join him on the Yes side in 2010, when the proposition changed and they were all in the grand coalition together.
The dictionary definition of an “eddy” is a circular movement of water, counter to a main current, causing a small whirlpool. The synonyms of “eddy” include vortex and maelstrom, both of them conditions that we have witnessed in our politics in the years since 2002.
The vortexes of Kenya politics since the fall of long-ruling party Kanu a dozen years ago have been such that everybody has been in bed with, figuratively and politically speaking, everybody else. For instance, Kenyans can remember Kalonzo and Wetang’ula defending both Moi and Kibaki to the hilt against the Raila factor, and yet, today, the two are some of the most ardent supporters the former PM has ever had. They tear into Uhuru and Ruto relentlessly and with maximum disrespect.
By the same token, Kenyans can remember Uhuru in his role as leader of the opposition in Parliament in 2003-05, giving Kibaki such a hard time as the “see nothing, do nothing, completely laid-back” President, that delegations of mediation had to be quietly sent to the younger man to get him to tone down the rhetoric.
As in the dictionary definition of the word “eddy”, the movement of water counter to a main current causing a small whirlpool, so with the Kenyan politics of the past 52 years.
The Kikuyu factor
The main current against which the movement of the water of Kenya politics swirls is the factor of Kikuyu preeminence. It was there at the independence general election in mid-1963; it persisted throughout Jomo Kenyatta’s 15 years at the top, and it was a constant feature of Daniel arap Moi’s 24-year-long tenure at State House.
Kenyatta was not succeeded by a Kikuyu, and Moi took the greatest care to retain only Kikuyu VPs until his final three months in power, when he dropped George Saitoti and appointed Wycliffe Musalia Mudavadi.
The Moi succession itself, which resulted in two elite Kikuyu candidates facing off, Kibaki and Uhuru, was also all about flowing counter to the main current, believe it or not. When Raila declared: “Si Mzee Kibaki tosha?” in October 2002 and the mammoth crowd roared in the affirmative in Uhuru Park, Nairobi, the calculation, and every assumption outside Mt Kenya region, was that Kibaki would be a one-term President.
However, matters developed in such a way that Kibaki got himself the full two-term tenure, although Kenya almost went over a cliff when Raila disputed Kibaki’s second-term victory as declared by the then, and now-defunct, Electoral Commission of Kenya.
And not only that, Kibaki, against all of Raila’s expectations and stratagems, was succeeded by Uhuru, now in the second year of a first term and talking confidently of a second term at every opportunity he gets to hold forth on the subject.
When Mutambu declared at that quiet function in Ukambani last weekend: “It is time we legislate a law which gives room for every region in this country to produce a president, be it Coast, Ukambani or Turkana, so that even the small tribes can get a chance to grow”, his words resonated with Kenyans everywhere outside Mt Kenya region and Rift Valley.
If it is indeed true that Cord is planning to embed the rotational presidency proposition into the multiple choice referendum question that its committee of experts is crafting far behind closed doors, then one of the most dangerous and decisive points in the long eddy of Kenyan politics is in the works.
Remarkably, this is a question that did not occur to both ordinary Kenyans and opposition strategists and kingpins during the 20-year-long struggle for constitutional and institutional reform in Kenya, culminating in the 2010 Constitution.
If it is indeed a question whose time has come, then the Jubilee administration, still in its infancy, could be staring the foreclosure of its second term in the face.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment