Everyone knows how the Kikuyu bloc will vote in 2017, but the Kalenjin factor, widely regarded as crucial to a second term for UhuRuto, is so inscrutable as to be unpredictable. This state of affairs has a long history . . .
TWENTY-seventeen is the penultimate year to a General Election in Kenya, the 11th since Independence and only the fourth in which a sitting President is defending his position.
This year and next, particularly on Election Day August 8, 2017, all eyes will be on two of Kenya’s biggest vote blocs – the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin, but particularly the latter. These two big battalions pulled off one of the greatest political surprises ever at the 2013 Presidential election by coming together for the first time in the history of electioneering in this country.
The Kalenjin and the Kikuyu did not even vote on one side for the Independence General Election of May 1963, or the National Referendum of August 2010.
The disposition of the Kikuyu vote in 2017 is a foregone conclusion – the bloc will vote as one for President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta’s comeback and final term.
The Kalenjin, on the other hand, remain both inscrutable and unpredictable.
Twenty-seventeen will be the 15th continuous year of a Kikuyu Presidency in the multiparty era. President Kenyatta, son of founding President Jomo Kenyatta, who put in 14 years at the helm, will be seeking a second term to stretch Kikuyu incumbency to a full 20 years in the multiparty era begun in 1992 alone.
Added to Mzee Kenyatta’s 14 years, a Kikuyu will have had Presidential incumbency for 34 years since Independence by the time Uhuru steps down in 2022, assuming he is making a comeback in 2017. Twenty twenty-two will be Kenya’s 59th anniversary of Independence.
Daniel arap Moi, a Kalenjin, put in 24 years at State House, surely a record that will never be broken.
The proverbial visitor from Mars would think two communities that can hold the Kenyan Presidency for 60 years in a country of 47 diverse communities must be joined at the hip, politically speaking. Nothing could be further from the truth, despite the fact that Uhuru is supposed to be succeeded by Deputy President William Ruto in 2022 for a proposed two-term run to 2032, the 69th anniversary of Independence.
Will the Kalenjin help the Kikuyu make it 70 years of Rift Valley-Mount Kenyan State House occupancy, beginning with the 2017 General Election?
This question is much on many Kenyans’ minds, including, even especially, outside Rift Valley and Mount Kenya.
The other big blocs are watching
The other big blocs – the Luhya (bigger than the Kalenjin but the latter are better resourced and mobilized), the Luo and the Akamba – would like nothing better than to see an end to the Jubilee Coalition’s “tyranny of numbers” incumbency and long-running occupation of State House.
Unlike the Kikuyu and their legendary insularity and unity when it comes to the Presidential poll, the Kalenjin vote bloc has twice voted against its political leadership’s directions – in 2007 and 2013. That leadership was widely presumed to be Mzee Moi’s in his post-Presidency retirement. Given the hold Moi had on the Rift Valley in his marathon Presidency, it is amazing how little power and influence he has had on the vote bloc in retirement.
The rise and rise of Ruto entered this breach and he has twice defeated the political patriarch who was also his mentor.
Regarding 2007 and 2013, a Kalenjin “elder” who did not want to be named told this correspondent about the Rift Valley vote bloc’s thinking and actions: “In 2007, we didn’t refuse to listen to Moi. We cheered him, attended his rallies, but when the vote came three of his sons who were candidates lost. We voted for Raila, not Kibaki as instructed by Moi.
“In 2013, Raila was never chased away from the Rift Valley or insulted or stoned. It’s only when the election came that he realized he had lost our support completely.
“We are now looking towards 2017: We will attend Ruto’s rallies, we will cheer him on, but none of that means that we will vote as he directs us. We may have a surprise for him just as we had a surprise for Moi in 2007 and for Raila in 2013.”
No one ever sees a political change of the Kalenjin vote bloc’s collective mind coming. There is no Intelligence beforehand about what they will do, whether from the State or non-state actors, for instance in the Opposition. That is why it was such a staggering shock for Raila and his Cord co-principals when the Kalenjin voted with the Kikuyu in 2013.
The big questions
How do they do it, when and where do they meet and how is the decision communicated to the grassroots? What kind of political coded language is used that betrays no secrets until it is too late, not even to spies on all sides?
Former Prime Minister Raila, former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka and former Foreign Affairs minister Moses Wetang’ula have all worked in government and have their own Intelligence networks, but they never saw the Jubilee proposition as workable. They were particularly focused on the unlikelihood of the Kikuyu and Kalenjin uniting and getting their voters to vote in large numbers.
They laughed, jeered and sneered so long and so hard at the UhuRuto ticket and the idea of candidates who were both suspects with ongoing crimes against humanity charges at the ICC that they were caught in mid-laughter/sneer when the IEBC announced Uhuru as winner.
The Cord leaders’ shock was almost comical to behold. They said the election had been stolen or should at the very least have gone into a runoff. Raila made a beeline for the Supreme Court. The seven judges pronounced Uhuru the winner as announced by the IEBC.
Will the Kalenjin follow Ruto one more time, the third in a row, or will enough of them vote in such a way as to break the “tyranny of numbers” combination and their lock on State House with the Kikuyu?
President Kenyatta must also be watching closely, complete with all the State’s watchful agencies’ capabilities at his disposal. But even with the full panoply of the State’s intelligence organizations at his beck and call, the President and his handlers must still wonder. Can the Kalenjin be so heterodox in their collective thinking and strategy for 2017 as to turn their backs on an incumbent regime in which they have the closest thing to a 50-50 power-sharing pact that has ever been seen in Kenya?
If the answer to this question is yes, why would they do it and who benefits and would they still have a share of power?
The complete element of surprise of 2013 would be converted into total shock: no bloc has ever walked away from incumbency. How would they sell the idea? A Kalenjin walkout in Jubilee can only work if it is sold as the proposition that no two communities should lock all others out of State House in perpetuity.
The campaigns that would result from this argument would produce the perfect storm of 41 communities ranged against 1, Raila’s long-term dream that nearly seemed to work in 2007, but then tragedy followed. Such a political storm would have no other objective but to remove the Kikuyu Presidency once and for all (or for a minimum 50 years) and to laud the Kalenjin “self-sacrifice on behalf of the rest of Kenya”.
Among other things, this would mean the rise of the first non-Kikuyu and non-Kalenjin President of Kenya. But the Mountain and the Valley would necessarily not be locked out of the Running Mate positions.
Twenty seventeen will have more than its share of big questions, intriguing answers and even imponderables.
Will insecurity and corruption be 2017 issues?
Five years of a troubled incumbency in which the insecurity and corruption concerns, both of them on a runaway scale that gave the impression that Jubilee was occasionally overwhelmed, are not exactly the best credentials to enter a General Election campaign of the ferocity likely to characterize the 2017 edition.
Although insecurity and corruption have never galvanized Kenyans as General Election issues there are signs, including via opinion polling, that 2017 could be different, particularly if Cord campaigned smart and converted these questions into quality-of-life issues.
The element of complete surprise of 2013 does not appear to exist for the Jubilee Coalition the way it did when they were incoming, unless of course it appears in the form of the Kalenjin vote bloc taking a walk, in which case it would boomerang on the ruling parties.
The possibility of pulling off a brand new surprise and transitioning from Jubilee the ruling Coalition to the ruling Party also exists – and it must be said that it is not as remote as the coming together of the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin seemed to be in 2011 on the way to the 2013 race.
http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2016/01/02/the-year-of-historic-reckoning_c1267503?platform=hootsuite
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