By PHILIP OCHIENG
Posted Saturday, December 31 2011 at 15:51
Posted Saturday, December 31 2011 at 15:51
It is precisely because I am a Luo that I feel I can render Prime Minister Raila Odinga the greatest service only if I am free to criticise (and to praise) on occasion.
Thus — although I find him the most proactive of all our presidential candidates — I will be happy only if he wins ultimate power through the most democratic method.
That is why I welcome two of his latest challengers in the race for State House. One of them — Mr Raphael Tuju — plunges right into Luoland, a place where Jaramogi’s son has hitherto been assumed to be unchallengeable.
That is courageous of Mr Tuju. It merits much more admiration than the vitriol that Mr Odinga’s supporters pour on him.
Political competitiveness
Even in tradition, the greater Luo community (known as Lwo or evenLwoo) was famous for internal political competitiveness, as celebrated by the “fraternal contendings” of Kuku and Koma (the latter being the first man ever to be called “Lwo”), Nyikang’o and Dimo, Dermor andOlum, Ochola and Lwo II, Gipir and Labong’o, Adhola and Owiny.
As BA Ogot shows in his History of the Luo-Speaking Peoples of Eastern Africa, the position of Ruoth or Ker (“king”) was rarely dynastic.
In Volume 2 of Unesco’s General History of Africa — entitled Ancient Civilisations of Africa — we read that even Daker Madit (as the Northern Luo called their prime minister) was usually elected.
This is the crime that you commit against the Luo whenever you stand in the agora to speak glibly about the need to respect Luo traditions while, at the same time, you pour bilgewater on the very same individuals — like Mr Tuju — who seek to maintain those traditions by challenging whoever may, at any given time, be incumbent as Ker.
To be sure, initially, Mr Tuju’s must be seen as a challenge for the ethnic leadership. But it is much more than that.
In the post-Berlin context, tribal leadership is invariably sought only as a springboard into the presidency. Because this is a much more national office, the contestants come not only from but also in the name of ethnic communities.
That is where Deputy Prime minister Musalia Mudavadi, Mr Odinga’s other challenger, comes into the fray, namely, from something called a political party.
The Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) purports to harbour politically like-minded individuals whose promise is to present a single presidential candidate against the candidates of such other parties.
But that promise depends delicately on the support given by the ethnic groups whose leaders have formed it.
Those communities will go along only as long as they perceive that their leader is being treated there in a manner that seems to “benefit” their respective communities. The party leader, then, is much more than a tribal chieftain. He is also the party’s candidate for the national State House.
Tribal chieftainship
But, I reiterate, it is from the tribal chieftainship that an individual can spring to State House. That is why our “democracy” is always a doctrine of numbers.
As the G7 shows, it is never a doctrine of social issues. That is why the leaders of the big tribes perpetually seek to gang up together so as to secure the number that can take one of them to State House.
And that is precisely why none of the individuals who gang up together into a party can hope to be declared the permanent leader of such a confederacy.
That is why, for the ODM’s leadership, Mr Odinga must expect occasional challenge from the leaders of other communities — because they, too, are under heavy ethnic pressure to vie for State House.
If we are to embrace him as a democrat, he must silence the cronies now condemning Mr Mudavadi and Mr Tuju for pursuing what is but their own democratic right.
ochiengotani@gmail.com
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