KIBAKI WINS

This is a letter to the Prime Minister, Hon Raila Odinga.

Greetings, Mr Odinga.

With the resignation of your two aides, you have earned my respect. Good sir, you are real. As I have said in the past, you are more misunderstood than appreciated.

But now I must end the platitudes! Sir, allow me to get real as well. Although I am impressed, there is a lingering question. Did you do this for the love of Kenya or to look good?

Were you playing to the public gallery in order to score with us? Either way, I am ok. Besides, Kenya is me, my woman and my children. Period.

Everything else is a detail. And, indeed, Kenya is you. If you did this for Raila reasons, you did it for Kenya. I can live with that. But as you harvest the praise, I have a concern.

Your intentions are good; your execution is poor. And if this is true, allow me to make a wild hypothesis in the midst of your celebration. Come 2012, you will be third.

We have no idea who will be first or second in the presidential election. But you, good sir, will be number three. End of discussion! Now I must explain.

I refer you to His Magnificence Lorenzo de’ Medici of Florence. During his reign, Niccolo Machiavelli sent him a dispatch dated 1512.

He advised him as follows: A new prince must fight in two ways. He must use the law, and use force. Law is peculiar to men; force is peculiar to beasts. A prince must, therefore, be half-man and half-beast.

But even then, he must borrow from only two beasts; the fox and the lion. The fox is crafty, but weak. The lion is strong, but dim-witted. To succeed, therefore, a prince must be both the lion and the fox. He must be forceful, but crafty. Like a good prince, sir, you are half-man and half-beast.

However, you are more ‘‘lion’’ than ‘‘fox’’. Like a lion, you have a big bite and a scary roar. We loved it when you ‘‘roared’’ at the ‘‘timid Ongeri’’. You made him look like a church mouse. Bravo! But that is all you have: a scary ‘‘roar’’.

You have no tact, no craft and no ‘‘fox’’. And because of this, you are easy prey. As you ‘‘roared’’ and barked at Mr Ongeri, the PNU ‘‘sharks’’ released the PwC report.

This report was submitted on December 22, last year. Why release it now? The intention was simple; to portray you as a man of double standards.

Did the PNU ‘‘sharks’’ succeed in their scheme? Yes they did. But were they right? Do you have double standards? Absolutely not.



You have proved them wrong. Bravo again! Unfortunately, you have also missed the point. And nothing demonstrates this better than the belated actions of the President. What he did was to take the ‘‘thunder’’ away from you. By extension, he is showing you ‘‘who is boss’’.

More fundamentally, he is setting you up. I need to illustrate this intrigue using my grandmother’s stories.

Once upon a time, there was a great famine. There was no food, no hope, just hunger. In this desperation, the hyena and the hare held consultations. After much deliberation, they came up with only one solution. To survive, they both had to go home and eat their mothers.

The hyena was foolish. He went home, hugged and kissed his lovely mother. Then he hacked her pretty face to death, ate her up and ran back to report to the hare. On his part, the hare was evil and crafty. He refused to eat his mother. Instead, he took her to a cave which could not be reached.

Secure in her safety, the hare avoided the hyena until the famine was over. And this is what the President has done to you sir. Up front, you ate your ‘‘mother’’.

In fact, like the Black Jacobins in the French Revolution, you seem prepared to eat your ‘‘children’’ as well. Personally, I am impressed by the commitment.

Politically, I think you are naive. Moreso because of the President’s actions. As you ‘‘ate’’ your mother, he decided to hide his in a cave. Instead of firing the implicated technocrats (including yours) he has decided to suspend them for three months.

This way, he offends no one. But to the contrary, it depicts you as an aggressive, self-preserving leader. This might not be true, for a fact. But remember that ‘‘politics is perception’’. And if your brother Dr Oburu was booed in Kisii yesterday, it was because of this ‘‘perception’’ of aggression.

But how is the President setting you up? In my view, you continue to underestimate him. Twice now, he has cheated you out of an election. First through the MoU, then through a contested election. But after these experiences, you continue to believe he is your friend. In my view, he would want to downsize you.

And as I noted in the past, he gave you the ‘‘Mau saga’’ to destroy you. It was a suicide pill, which you swallowed happily. Now he wants to set you up on this corruption fiasco. The intention is to put you on a collision path with him. But to bite his bait is to be myopic. More so because he has a bigger scheme. Consider my thoughts.

One, Mr John Michuki told us that he will seek re-election in 2012 or before. You must take this seriously. In fact, you should prepare for an election next year. If Mr Michuki is right, the President will dissolve Parliament during its fourth year.

Then he can argue, convincingly, that he did not do two constitutional terms. The constitution defines a term as constituting of five years. This might sound like a conspiracy theory, but you should brace yourself for such theatrics.

The second battle you should brace yourself for regards the constitution. On this, you are also being set up. If you go north, he will go south. And the intention is to get a justification to end the coalition government. If you play to his games, you will rank third in the 2012 presidential election. Take it easy, sir!

mutahi@myself.com